I’ve been playing around with the idea, that if I do some of my concept sketches on watercolor paper, I can paint them later. This didn’t well at first, because I was using some really cheap paper I was trying to get rid of. It wasn’t exactly what one would call water-soluble. because of this, I could barely do more than one layer on it. If I wanted to do more than one layer I had to wait for it to dry completely unless I wanted to ruin what I had.
Once I gave up on the stuff, things went much better.
So here are my first finished images of Dielle in the fall ensemble she’s going to be wearing in her next appearance.
Continuing my slow track through the works of George A. Romero, I returned to one of the recurring themes of my Halloween marathons, the zombie apocalypse.
The apocalypse has been going on for at least nine months, with the cities completely abandon to the zombies. Meanwhile, hidden in a Florida bunker, scientists desperately try to find a cure for the plague of the living dead. But as the months of isolations go on, their military entourage has gone slowly mad… and the head scientist (Richard Liberty) has been spending most of his time testing hypotheses that are… Counterproductive.
This was an interesting film. It was well up to Romero‘s usual standards. Makeup lies the effects are much better than his previous efforts., Though considering the past films consisted of painting people gray that’s not saying much. There were some very nice practical effects, the best being one of the zombies on an operating table with most of its spot lower half missing and it’s got hanging out.
To the movie’s credit, it also is the first one in the series of attempts to try any technobabble. For example, The lead scientist explains that the zombies aren’t rotting and don’t need to eat human flesh and it’s just instinct. Speaking of instinct, some of them are getting smarter.
Interestingly, my favorite performance in this film was entirely a pantomime performance from Sherman Howard as Bob the zombie that is beginning to remember things.
The next film on my list, Train to Busan, starts with a man hitting a deer after passing a quarantine stop. After he drives away, the deer gets up, its eyes a pale white. We switch to downtown Seoul, where Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) a divorced and workaholic fund manager is taking his six-year-old daughter on the KTX 101 train to see her mother in Busan. Just as they leave Seoul, the apocalypse begins. Now the train must reach its definition as the country burns.
This was a very good and well-paced film, with some fantastic performance. Is taking his six-year-old daughter on the bullet trip train to see her mother in Busan. Just as they leave soul, the apocalypse begins. Now the train must reach its destination as the country burns.
This was a very good and well-paced film with some fantastic performances and the rise of the zombie plague almost as subtle as the one in Shaun of the Dead. Regrettably, I didn’t like it. My appreciation and tolerance for horror have evolved over the years, just like I now like Tabasco on my eggs. Taking that particular metaphor all the way, now and then you get a ghost pepper.
I’m usually able to a detach myself from the horror and gore by studying the craft of the practical effects, this time I found the zombie effects too good to effectively pull myself away.
Also considering South Korea is a country that is no stranger to civil unrest, this was one of the most believable portrayals of the collapse of civilization I’ve seen on film in a while.
So so for me, this movie was very hard to watch… For everybody else, that’s a good thing.
Halloween marathon, I went back to the classics with James Whale‘s Bride of Frankenstein and its remake/sequel, Franc Roddam‘s The Bride.
In Bride of Frankenstein, we find ourselves back in the Swiss Villa where Mary Shelly first wrote Frankenstein. Lord Byron and Shelley ask Mary (Elsa Lanchester) Shelley if the monster survived and what happened next and so, Mary continues the story.
The Monster (Boris Karloff ) indeed survives and, having met a friendly blind hermit, has learned something about speech position. He also meets Doctor Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) one of Henry Frankenstein ‘s former mentors. Together they confront Frankenstein. Henry (Colin Clive) is about to get married and wants nothing to do with his old life. Pretorius and the monster want him to make them a Bride.
This is definitely one of the classics of the Universal monster movies, the iconic end with the Bride (Elsa Lanchester again) screaming at the camera is just as cool as the textbook says. If I have any problem with it, it’s that it’s far more beautiful than scary. But who cares when it’s that beautiful?
The sequel, The Bride, starts up where the last movie ends with the Bride (Jennifer Beals) being created, rejecting the Monster (Clancy Brown) and the lab exploding. However, everybody survives, and Frankenstein, played by Sting, teaching the bride, now name to Eva, to be a proper lady. The monster goes out on his own and joins the circus.
This film isn’t quite as bad as its reputations Jess but it’s no masterpiece either. For the most part, it’s pretty corny. Sting has good screen presence but can’t isn’t much of an actor. And for all her supposedly being a liberated woman, Eva is quite passive when it matters. I enjoyed the monster’s story the most which is mostly treated as a buddy between him and David Rappaport as Rinaldo the Dwarf. Even there, things fall short with lots of plot holes and things that just don’t make sense.
I’m getting back into my Game of Thrones series for the reason I started it in the first place, a way to warm up for Inktober. In this picture, we have Ned’s first encounter with Petyr Baelish, aka Littlefinger. Littlefinger tells Ned who the belongs to and tries to give him some advice. Then Ned says what many fans think is the smartest thing he ever said.
Too bad he didn’t stick to his own advice.
“You would be the last man I would willingly include in any party, Lord Baelish.” Game of Thrones – Chapter 20
So, after the first batch of this year’s Halloween marathon, I wanted to watch something with a bit more quality, and to really clear my palate with something funny. So this week I watched two zombie comedies that, coincidentally, were also two films on my “what do you mean you’ve never seen this?” list.
The first film, Andrew Currie’sFido tells the story of a slightly different 1950s where a Zombie apocalypse had occurred. It had been safely contained and now humanity lives in very pleasant gated communities safe from all of the zombies that have not been enslaved for humanity’s use.
One of these enslaved zombies (Billy Connolly) is bought by the family of a lonely boy named Timmy. Timmy immediately makes friends with the Zombie that he names Fido. Unfortunately, Fido’s restraining bolt breaks and he kills a few people. How will Timmy help his new best friend
This was a fun parody of the standard nineteen fifties boy and his dog formula. I mostly knew Connolly from his wonderfully manic standup comedy and seeing such a restrained (sorry!) performance was a pleasure to watch.
After that, the best part of it was the darkly satirical and remarkably well thought out world that at first glance looks like a pastel Leave it To Beaver setting, until you look at it a little closer and see that just across the fence surrounding this wonderful town is a zombie-infested wilderness, and children practice firearm skills at school
The next film on the list Edgar Wright‘s Shaun of the Dead tells the story of Shaun (Simon Pegg a 29-year-old slacker who lives with his best friend Ed (Nick Frost) who is even more of a slacker than he is. Things are not going well for Sean. His job is terrible, his step-father (Bill Nighy) is getting on his case and his girlfriend just dumped him for being a slacker. Is it any wonder he completely missed the start of a zombie apocalypse until it was too late?
Shaun of the Dead was so much better than I expected. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it was good, I just didn’t expect how good the cinematography and direction would be. The rise of zombies is wonderfully subtle gradually increasing over the first half-hour.
The only scene I didn’t care for was a rule of funny scene where Shaun and company do a terrible job fighting their zombified favorite bartender. I would have found it funny if I hadn’t watched Shaun master killing zombies for the last half hour.
Well the Halloween season has begun. So to start things off, my first theme is what I like to call Monsters; east meets west. That is to say eastern monsters meet, and possibly fight, western monsters. At least that was the plan.
So the first movie on my list, Tomo-O Haraguchi’sKibakichi, tells the story of Kibakichi, (Ryuji Harada) a wandering Werewolf Ronin arrives in a gambling town. It turns out to be run by yokai who are hiding from humanity. While at the same time using the their gambling house as a trap for unwitting humans. What can a sword fighting werewolf to do?
This was… okay. Not much of a story, but fairly good monster effects. As far as this week’s theme was concerned it more or less fit. While Kibakichi is very much a western style werewolf in the context of the film, werewolves are treated like another kind of Yokai.
The next film Chang Cheh and Roy Ward Baker‘s The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires has Dracula contacted by the minion of seven chinese vampires for help. Instead Dracula takes the form of the of the minion and travels to China to take over. One hundred years later Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is lecturing in China where he is contacted by Hsi Ching (David Chiang) whose village is being attacked by the vampires. Van Helsing has to travel with Hsi Ching and his brothers and sister to fight dracula and his associates.
A joint venture between Hammer Studios and Shaw Brothers Studios, this was pretty much an excuse for Hammer Studios to do a martial arts film and it does not work. There’s a reason this was Hammer’s last Dracula film.
