art = smart

I Was Born To Raise Hell ...

2010-05-29T21:33:00.009-04:00

... to another level.

And that he did. Some people do their thing, and they just own it. Of course, I'm talking about the great Dennis Hopper, who died today. Easy Rider and Apocaplyse Now: Hopper owns the '60s. The whole decade is his. I'm hard pressed to think of a film that owns it's subject -- a major American cultural phenomenon -- the way Rider owns the hippie counterculture. Maybe The Godfather and organized crime (except Godfather was largely bullshit about the honorable mafioso who was too moral to deal drugs -- hah! -- and it has competition from Sopranos and Goodfellas). Rider's cinematic claim on the '60s is absolute. Not even Woodstock itself disputes. And you won't find any bullshit in a Dennis Hopper film about honorable crimelords and warm-hearted multiple-murderers.

Personally, I think Hopper's most brilliant film is Colors, one of my 10 Favorite Films. Just as in Rider, Hopper zoomed in on a critical, unfolding social phenomenon in America: the L.A. Gangs, the crack revolution in urban crime, open warfare between street gangs and the police, and hip-hop. And he did what filmmakers should do: he showed the rest of us. I remember coming out of the theater after seeing Colors; on the street right outside the theatre, cops were arresting a half-dozen kids (down on their knees, hands interlocked) exactly like I'd just seen on screen. Hopper showed us.

He was a ruthless film-maker, he'd kill off anybody. He was also ruthless in depicting sex on film, in Colors and The Hot Spot. I think Hopper liked the sound of women screaming during intense sex.

Most of all, as director of Easy Rider and Colors, Hopper was a master at matching music with cinematic image into a massively empowered symbiot. Born To Be Wild/Easy Rider: show me a more perfect match of image to sound anywhere! (Well, again I suppose The Godfather.) In the opening sequence to Colors, Hopper uses a police siren to morph from good ol' American rockabilly into a mortifying hip-hop track as the Crips execute a drive-by murder. Check out the scene where Crips ganglord 'Rocket' (played minimally/brilliantly by a young Don Cheadle) gets arrested in a round-up and swaggers like death itself into a holding cell to join his Crip underlings. Gated off from the Bloods in an adjoining cell, the Crips shout at their murderous rivals over the chilling title track by IceT. It's one the most terrifying, most vivid scenes I've ever seen on screen.

Concert Review: John Fogerty, Beacon Theatre

2009-11-25T04:03:00.014-05:00

And God Said Let There Be Music. And Fun. Then he sent John Fogerty down to earth ...

John Fogerty's sons Tyler and Shane and their band 'Steamtrain Mary' opened for their dad at the Beacon Theatre in NYC. They are formidable young musicians. In an ironic twist, Fogerty's younglings covered 'Dazed and Confused' with sufficient power and accuracy to make me wonder, more than a little wistfully, 'what was it like to hear Led Zeppelin live?' Never seeing Zeppelin--it's like a wound that can never heal. The same with Hendrix. Even The Stones' twin guitar titans are still 600-foot tall monsters, but you can never see a 20-year old Mick Jagger. If you didn't see the phenomenon then, it's lost to you forever.

Which brings me to Big Daddy: John Fogerty, the King Kong of Roots Rock. The one Classic Rock A-lister still in his prime 40 years later. Seeing him tonight at the Beacon makes up, at least somewhat, for never seeing Hendrix or Zeppelin. Have no doubt about this: Fogerty is one of the world's greatest musicians -- the air is so thin up at his level. He's Mark Twain on a Silvertone -- an iconic voice, song myths that strike deep into your soul, and that black magic in his guitar playing is a little scary. The guy is a monster!

Some of these Creedence songs are so good that when I hear them live, I can hardly believe its happening. These aren't just catchy pop tunes. Each one is rooted in some moment, some place, some deep longing, or just some really great party. 'My Backdoor?' Come on. Fogerty's vision of life in heaven is sweet musical perfection: as God said, Let There Be Fun! On the voodoo-inflected 'Old Man Down The Road'', the guitar licks get so hot, it's as if the man electrocutes himself right up off the stage. 'Green River' gets into your blood faster than a straight shot of Jack Daniels and just teleports you. And suddenly there you are, down on the bayou.

If the Blue Ridge Rangers played basketball, they'd be The Dream Team. Every one is a world class musician, worthy to stand on stage next to John Fogerty.

Clone Wars Animation Review

2008-08-22T12:54:00.009-04:00

I saw Clone Wars Sunday night (late show). All in all, I’m excited by the prospects for the computer-generated Expanded Universe. Clone Wars looks effing fantastic. Many of the visual elements of A New Hope etc. (the Catina, Jabba’s go-go dancer, droids, aliens) are revisualized extremely well in all-CG. But first let’s get to the downside.

The Clone Wars creative team failed with Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Art design, animation, voice actors, character, dialog: all bad. But Star Wars is about the cool villains anyway. It looks like CG Skywalker and Obi-Wan were designed to look exactly like action figures. (“Merchandising! Merchandising! Where the real money from the movie is made!”) I tried my best to ignore them and just pretended they weren’t really Anakin and Obi-Wan--because they aren’t. There’s not a hint that action figure Anakin has already committed mass murder on the sand people. By contrast, the CG alien species are breath-taking! The CG humans were crap.

In defense of Lucasfilms Singapore, I don’t think anyone has done a good job with CG humans. Besides a character’s primary movement, animators create ‘secondary motion’--that’s body language plus all the Newtonian stuff. ‘Articulated’ animation includes facial expression, head gestures, talking with your hands, etc. Good secondary motion is the mark of a world class master animator. Look at Bugs Bunny hand-drawn, or Sepulba and Watto in Attack Of the Clones. It works with CG aliens and stylized toon characters, but I’ve never seen it done well in CG humans. Trying to make CG human characters look affable, they always look like re-animated corpses to me. I think it’s gross.

I don’t understand why CG Anakin and CG Obi-Wan have such stiff walks. The octoped droids have better walks than the CG humans, and believe me, designing a multi-legged walk cycle is rough. In hand-drawn, on a TV budget you animate a stiff walk to save money because you have to draw every cel. It’s a lot more work to draw smooth, natural walks. But ‘walk cycles’ are reusable in CG. Once the animator designs the walk cycle, you just slap it on the character and loop it. These walk cycles look like they were made literally in five minutes. But a pro animator could make a good walk cycle for CG Anakin in an hour; once it’s done, you’re set for the entire TV series. So that I don’t get.

Stiff walk cycles are part of ‘limited’ animation style -- simple, stripped-down animation used to save money. It takes a lot less time, but its not easy. That’s because limited animation looks cheap/stupid unless the team comes up with a brilliant stylization. Limited also needs a brilliant voice actor to work well.

Take the old Flintstones cartoons out of Hanna-Barbera Studio. Limited animation, yes, but it’s little stylizations like Fred Flintstone bowling on his tip-toes, little signatures that give the characters personality so they look cool/funny instead of stupid/cheap. South Park is another perfect example. The best example is Frank Oz’s puppet Yoda in Empire Strikes Back. With a handful of puppet gestures (e.g., Yoda poking at Luke with his cane), Yoda becomes an icon of wisdom in your imagination. I mean, how convincing is puppet Yoda? How convincing are Fred and Wilma? Barney Rubble? Forget about it. Fantastic stuff. So it can be done. It wasn’t done in Clone Wars -- at least not with Anakin and Obi-Wan.

I think it’s a mistake to skip the opening scroll. I guess they want to distinguish Clone Wars from Episodes 1-6, but I think they misjudged here. The scroll is just so basic to Star Wars. The sixth time you saw the scroll in Revenge of the Sith, did you think to yourself, ‘not that again?’ Maybe I’m wrong.

Another huge problem is the music. You cannot overstate the importance of John Williams to Star Wars. Think about it. At its heart, Star Wars is about fantastic visuals set to incomparable music scores. There’s other great efx houses besides ILM, other great stories with fantastic visuals. It’s the music perfectly matching the visuals that makes Star Wars unique. You’re not going to get Williams working for TV, and the guy is so in a class by himself. But I’d keep elements of the original movie scores as signatures in all future Expanded Universe spin-offs. John Williams is indispensable. If it doesn’t have John Williams, its not Star Wars.

Futurewise, I’m still excited about seeing the Expanded Universe in CG for the rest of my life. Lucasfilms has to solve the problem of bland CG humans who look like crap next to the super cool CG aliens. The good guys need work. But the Sith, the Hutts, the droids! Oh man, they are so hot in CG! Bring on Thrawn!

Action: GOOD

Banter: BAD

CG Sith: YES

CG Jedi: NO

Make No Clones About It

2008-08-15T18:18:00.034-04:00

How's that for awful Clone War puns? Insane Clone Posse? Bad to the clone? E.T. clone home? Clicks and clones will break my bones? A rolling clone gathers no moss? Had enough?

I'm making fun of all the film critics who were out panning Clone Wars before they even saw it. I think these guys just type in movie keywords at ClicheSite.com and out pops a cliched title for their reviews. Complaining about Star Wars has turned into a cliche in and of itself. The cliche line among reviewers is to complain that George Lucas even bothered to make this movie--I don't follow that logic. If Lucas wants to spend his hard-earned megabucks and the movie flops--hey, it's his megabucks. On the other hand, if Clone Wars hits, people have fun and Lucas makes out, how can you say he shouldn't have made it? Where's the downside?

I'll go see Clone Wars on Monday and make up my own mind. Or Tuesday, Monday is looking like a beach day. I'm not an 'opening weekend' type of guy.

The big geek question is whether Clone Wars is G-canon or something else. I say it's not G-canon, precisely for the reason that some are complaining 'No mas, no mas!' We're done with the basic G-canon mega-storyline: the story of Darth Vader, the Fall of the Jedi, the Rise and Fall of the Sith, and the Unification of the Force. Clone War zooms in on a subplot to the mega-storyline. It fills the same purpose as the Expanded Universe, which makes it Expanded Universe. I also say Clone Wars is EU because a main character, Asajj Ventress, originated in EU. There's a sprinkling of minor references in G-canon to characters who originated in EU (e.g., Master Quinlan Vos in Revenge of the Sith (Star Wars Insider #101, May-June 2008, p. 39)). But there is no main character in Episodes 1-6 who wasn't first introduced in G-canon.

Is there any official word on whether Clone War is G-canon or EU? Star Wars Insider says, "The biggest EU project to date, or an official expansion of the film saga? Either way, we can't wait." (Star Wars Insider #101, May-June 2008, p. 42) That suggests it's an open question. IMHO, Clone Wars' release means G-Canon should be redefined from 'anything out of Lucasfilms' to 'the Vader mega-storyline.'

It doesn't make sense to me to cry 'enough, enough' of Star Wars. The EU came about because people couldn't get enough. It's not possible to exhaust the Universe. There's been more films out of the Marvel Universe than out of the Star Wars Universe (3 Spiderman, 3 X-Men, 3 Blade, 2 Hulk, 2 Fantastic Four, 1 Daredevil, 1 Iron Man, 1 Elektra, 1 Ghost Rider, 1 Punisher). So why don't critics say 'enough of the Marvel Universe?' Maybe because it's not a cliche to say it.

Futurewise, it's key for Lucasfilms to bring out more and more new characters and storylines. Right now, I don't think Lucasfilms could just jump right into New Jedi Order on the big screen. I hope the Expanded Universe plays out on film like the Marvel Universe: start with the most familiar/most popular territory (Spiderman, X-Men), and then just keep going on for the rest of my life.

Just one more. Please, I can't resist: Begun the Bone Wars have!

Twin blade assassin Asajj Ventress of those Despicable Separatists.
If the new characters in Clone Wars make a splash, we'll see more characters from the Expanded Universe on screen. I'm hot to see Admiral Thrawn, Jacen Solo and the Dark Nest!

Hot Buttered Soul

2008-08-11T14:36:00.019-04:00

If you feel like you want to make love
Under the stars above
Love on! Love on!

I was lucky enough to see the late, supremely great Isaac Hayes at the Brooklyn Bandshell in New York last June. Wow to the seventh power! I could tell he wasn't well. He walked very slowly (65 isn't really that old -- my mom speedwalks at 80). But his voice was in full force. The best part was when Hayes came center stage to conduct his band on 'Shaft'. The instrumental orchestration to 'Shaft' is so sharp and memorable, were conducting the band right along with Hayes: a unique and very cool way to experience a music event. After the orchestration, Hayes turned to the mike and sang "That man Shaft is a baaaaad muthafucka!!!!!" The crowd howled in delirium. Afterwards, we just showered Isaac with love, respect and applause.

Hot Buttered Soul was a revolutionary, nearly perfect concept album that instantly transformed Hayes into a superstar. It's the completely absorbing cure for attention-deficit disorder. You can't help but focus on Hayes' every word and note from the first track through the last. Just check out the balls and boldness of that album cover! This is how it's done, folks.

Hayes was a major influence on me as a kid. I first started to play music by pecking out the notes to Isaac Hayes' instrumentals on the piano. When my parents saw me lost in the twilight zone playing air guitar (actually a broomstick) to 'Do Your Own Thing', they decided to buy me a bass guitar to bring me back to reality -- a decision they came to regret.

Isaac Hayes also starred as 'The Duke' in one of my favorite all-time films. In John Carpenter's Escape From New York, society has abandoned New York City, turned it into a prison colony and thrown all criminals in the country into the colony. The state prison guards never enter the colony; they patrol the borders in choppers shooting any prisoners trying to escape. Inside the colony, the prisoners have total control. In this primal world, the perfectly cast Hayes rises to supreme coolness as ganglord king of the prison colony who kidnaps the President of the United States.

Clone Wars Rollout

2008-08-11T00:42:00.030-04:00

I'm up for Clone Wars, the new Star Wars movie that is totally animated. The character design looks good so far. Dooku looks meaner and scarier in CG than he did in live action.

Not only does CG Dooku look better than live action Dooku (no disrespect to Saruman The White, may he rot in hell), but CG Dooku is scoring some wild dark side nookie, befitting his status as a Sith Count. The fiercest CG art design goes to Dooku's main assassin, Asajj Ventress. That's Ventress, as in female for one who vents. I like her long turtleneck.

On the downside, CG Anakin looks like Dudley Do-Right. What's with the lantern jaw?

(Note: The guy is the black top hat is 'Snidley Wiplash', one of the best old corny cartoon villains. You can see from the drawing style, 'Dudley Do-Right' is by the great Jay Ward, creator of Rocky & Bullwinkle and George of the Jungle cartoons, some of the smartest cartoon work ever.)

It's not hard to make a CG Anakin Skywalker that looks like Hayden Christiansen, so the art designers consciously avoided too close a resemblance. Legally, maybe they'd have to pay Christiansen to use a CG look-alike in Clone Wars? I don't know.

Moving on, there is Clone Commander Rex, who's assigned to tame the Outer Rim. Good luck with that.

Clone Commander Rex, like all of the Imperial Army, is based on the DNA of Jango Fett. Again, the CG Clones look cooler than the live action Clones.

Anakin has a Padawan who looks okay--Ashoka Tano. She wears cool symetric warpaint and has big anime acqua eyes. I don't know what that thing is on her head, whether it's a headress or part of her alien anatomy.

Who Framed Rudy Podcast

2008-02-01T20:42:00.001-05:00

You can subscribe to my new animation/special efx podcast. Animated shorts for your podcasts and how-to's on special visual effects.

(subscribe thru Firefox (Bloglines/MyYahoo/Google)

Super Tuesday Smackdown

2008-01-28T15:49:00.000-05:00

Super Tuesday Smackdown - Metacafe

My new animation. I'm having fun. I know this is juvenile, you don't have to tell me.

Killer Bean Trailer

2008-01-28T15:02:00.000-05:00

Killer Bean Forever - Official Trailer - Metacafe

This is the trailer from Killer Bean Forever. Director Jeff Lew was lead animator on Matrix Reloaded -- in other words, HE IS GOD! The animation is just about flawless and you can recognize 'The Matrix' action style.

I'm Ronald Reagan and I Approved This Propaganda

2008-01-22T03:15:00.000-05:00

I love making fun of Rudy Giuliani. Obama gets a little jab too.