22 posts from 2008

I took a looo-oong break from this VOX blog in favor of twitter. (http://twitter.com/bernardr) and it was great while it lasted but I think it might be time to take a break from the "micro-blogging" and kick it old school by cranking out some posts that are longer than 140 characters.

Somwhere down the line I'll go back to the twitter and the other services I'm on.

But till then...

I'M BACK!

Wowzers!

I've been gone for a real long time now. I've mostly been over at the Twitter. Hanging out, and bullshittin'...

Anyway, I finished up work on a book today. Which was real exciting for me as it's my first handmade book. A friend and I sat together for about 2 days and just hammered out some books. He walked me through whole thing and I am forever grateful!

This little baby is going to be given to my girlfriend for her birthday. (Hope she like it). I figure she can use it as a sketchbook. There's also a little pocket that can be used for...well, anything that fits in there.

I remember the first time I heard the baseball vs. football speech. My fucking head exploded.

I've been thinking more and more about George Carlin since his passing. Its a real bummer as I used to watch his specials and listen to his albums with my dad. Because of this, Carlin had a huge impact on my world perspective and my humor. 

If you've got a moment take a listen to this full special. i'll post one of these everyday for a week.

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> Sitting at work doodling when a woman saw this sad bastard and asked > if I drew it. "Yes. Yes, I did. And its about to go in the garbage" > Theb she asked me to let her have it and sign it! Apparently this > sucker is going on her wall.
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> I wish I would've drawn something better.
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Speed Racer

So, call me crazy but after walking out of Speed Racer I was really stunned that this movie didn't make money.

Speed Racer's current score on RottenTomatoes is something like 36%. This is really odd to me.

It's a real sad state in the film criticism world where a film that is clearly trying to be inventive, and experimental, is just shunned for being too different.

Speed Racer is a visual feast. That doesn't mean that its mindless dribble. It means that here's a film that has clearly been designed meticulously from top to bottom and its so hard to believe that people aren't running out to go see this.

Now, this is not a Michael Bay movie.

There's a world of difference between Speed Racer and Transformers. Most of it is execution. The worst thing that you can say about Bay is that he's obsessed with making things "awesome". And you can tell that Bay really wants to be James Cameron when he grows up. The problem with Bay is he doesn't really design sequences, he just shoots the shit out stuff and cuts it together REALLY FAST. Now this is an art form in itself. But its more about fractured editing and imagery than it is about designing a frame. Bay's concern lies in the experience of a sequence.

The Wachowski's seem more interested in what the content of a shot is and building from there. This has always been true of their work. And while those last 2 Matrix film were shitty, you can tell that they really wanted play around with imagery they had created in the first film. Those last two seemed like experiments with how far they could take the imagery they created. The Neo vs. Tons of Agent Smiths and the big battle at the end of the last film are fucking great visually. But they kinda bore the shit out of you narratively.

And that's because that first film sparked such a fire in people's noggins that they wanted the philosophical head trip AND the bitchin' action sequences. It seemed to me that the Wachowski's gave up on the headier stuff and decided to play with their new bigger toys, while everyone was sitting around waiting for the next cultural zeitgeist.

That's what makes Speed Racer so fucking great. It doesn't have that baggage. It doesn't need it. It simple in its concept. Some kid named Speed Racer wants to race his car as fast as he can, and the Wachoski's want to watch him do it. And they want him to look cool. And they succeed.

Maybe I'm stupid or somethin' but I love, love, love, the color palette that explodes off the screen. It reminds me of Bava's Danger Diabolik! and (heresy) 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Tron, all mashed up in a blender. I've heard people say that the film looks crazy and is too much eye candy and blah, blah, blah. Funny how they didn't say the same thing for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Currently, Charlie has an 83% score on Rottentomatoes. What the fuck is that about? I love Tim Burton and Depp but this movie looks bizarre. I got no problem with bright costumes or sets but it looks nauseating when they're placed next to a brown river of sludge. And what is so great about Charlie that it gets an 83?! It seems like people see Johnny Depp and they refuse to give that guy a bad review. This movie was awful, the songs where horrible, the sets were psychotic and addition of the dentist dad was dopey.

But I digress...

There are sequences in this movie that  really make you smile at their sheer visual brilliance. The Wachowki's love playing with cinema as much as Speed loves racing. They're bursting at the seams with their joy of all things flashy. Scene after scene in this film is  really trying to do something inventive and different. With Speed Racer the Wachowski's seem like they really want to set themselves and they're movie apart from every other summer flick, and it seems now that they've alienated everyone in the process.

Funny how people complain about a lack of originality and experimentation in American film today. Then a movie that offers up those things gets ignored. Now everyone I talk to about Speed Racer says something like, "...yeah, but it didn't make any money". Since when was money the measuring stick for art?

Oh, the animationn

Just got back from the “OH, THE ANIMATION!” film festival at the Egyptian in Hollywood. There was some really great stuff there. Three of the films “failed to show up”, which was kind of weird. I think all of the films were CG so I don’t understand why they didn’t just send over a file. But the Egyptian probably isn’t set up for that kind of thing.

Here’s a quick rundown of the flicks that seemed to do well with the crowd - and by crowd I guess I really mean me.

Juan Pablo Zaramella’s "Lapsus" (Argentina, 4 min) really killed at the fest. Easily the biggest favorite all night. People couldn’t stop laughing at its seemingly endless wit.

Here’s a link to Zaramella’s site where you can check out the first 40 seconds of the short.

The big closer was  Bob Ray’s "Apeshit Wa-Hoo" (USA, 5 min), which seemed to get a lot of “What the Fuck?!” laughs. I thought it was funny but to be honest I was really distracted by how much the clerk reminded me of H.I. McDonnough in Raising Arizona.

Here’s a pic of H.I. and the short is right below it.

RaisingArizona

The Intruder Flyer

And finally there’s Alessandro Ceglia’s "Intruder" (USA, 3 min) which played really early on and kind of stayed with me throughout the rest of the festival. It’s pretty awesome in my book. Its heavy line work and clever 3D camera moves got me really jazzed about animation. The story is a little too simple for me but what I dug so much about it was it’s overall design. It feels crafted. Which is what i generally love about animation. That sense of the surreal. Because it’s the one of the few mediums where you can just go crazy in terms of visual playfulness.
Ceglia seems to be into dynamic camera moves and strong dynamic, framing. It’s gothic design and monochromed palette made it my personal favorite of the festival.

Here's the link to the films site.