Ryan Colucci's Blog, page 20

Top 10 Gonzo Characters

What defines a 'gonzo' character?  Recklessness.  Fly by the seat of your pants attitude. They are troublemakers and pranksters.  When they enter frame things are ratcheted up on the crazy scale.  And, maybe most importantly, they represent an element of danger (to themselves or those around them).  However, they cannot be mentally disturbed.

My list is definitely thin on women, but not for lack of trying.  If you have some good ones that slipped through my cracks, let me know.

Tyler Durden – Fight Club
Willy Wonka – Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Al Czervik – Caddyshack
Joker – Batman and The Dark Knight
Walter Sobchak – Big Lebowski
Alex DeLarge – A Clockwork Orange
Johnny Boy – Mean Streets
Borat – Borat
Colonel Kilgore – Apocalypse Now
Rick Vaughn – Major League

Rest of the Best

Doc Brown – Back to the Future
Lil' Ze – City of God
Mark Brandon 'Chopper' Read – Chopper
Ace Venture – Ace Ventura
Harry Dunne – Dumb and Dumber
Roger Rabbit – Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Yoon Tae-goo "The Weird" – The Good, The Bad, & The Weird
Marty Augustine – The Long Goodbye
Jack Sparrow – Pirates of the Caribbean
Maude – Harold and Maude
Jackie Flannery – State of Grace
Steve Stifler – American Pie
Fred O'Bannion – Dazed and Confused
Animal – The Muppets
Chuck Barris – Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
John H. Mallory – Duck, You Sucker
Grandpa Edwin Hoover – Little Miss Sunshine
Frank Booth – Blue Velvet
Anton Chigurh – No Country for Old Men
Steve Lattimer – The Program
Charlie Wax – From Paris in Love
Brad Pitt – Kalifornia
The Cable Guy – The Cable Guy (never realized this was his actual name in the movie)
Michael 'Charles Bronson' Peterson – Bronson
Toecutter – Mad Max

 

Movie Review: Midnight in Paris

For the longest time I fought Woody Allen.  Growing up, I just had no taste for his films.  Then something happened.  I watched Match Point and enjoyed it.  Then I went back and watched Crimes and Misdemeanors and really responded to it.  It was funny and clever and I didn't want to punch Woody in the face.  Then I caught up with Manhattan.  The same feeling again.  About three films later I realized, I was a closet Woody Allen fan.  Then it dawned on me, I didn't dislike Woody Allen all of those years, I hated Diane Keaton.

It is with this new found attitude I went into Midnight in Paris. Just like his other movies that I was misjudging, it was a fun, whimsical romp through Paris.  Owen Wilson as Gil Pender is putting in his best Woody Allen impersonation, and he's rather good at it. Rachel McAdams plays Inez, the good looking woman we love to hate, extremely well.  We immediately detest Michael Sheen's Paul and it's just another reason we jump right into 1920′s Paris with Wilson… and don't want to leave.  It's good fun meeting all of these artistic legends, but ultimately Gil learns that the present is where he belongs and he goes back to embrace it.

Not all of Allen's movies are good, because he makes a helluva lot of them, but Midnight in Paris is definitely among my favorites of his.

Movie Review: The Mechanic

This update of the Charles Bronson starrer The Mechanic features Jason Statham and Ben Foster, with Donald Sutherland co-starring.  Simon West brings us a slick film full of the prerequisite assassin film double-crosses… but I guess my problem with this version is that, although Foster's character is a bit of a dick, we have every reason to root for him and not Statham.  Statham killed his father and lied to him.  It was an exciting journey, but one that left me unsatisfied.  And I like Statham, but there is only one Charles Bronson.

 

 

R.E.M. – First Page

It's official – the R.E.M. graphic novel is back underway. Got the first pages of pencils in from Zsombor Huszka last week along with some inks (and a pretty sweet cover design). I'm always amazed when I get art in and it is way better than I had in my head. It's a great feeling.

Below is the first page, without lettering.  We're going with NightwatcherBB font and it looks great on the pages.

Movie Review: The Adjustment Bureau

If you check your brain at the door, The Adjustment Bureau could be a fun movie.  Solely because the chemistry and banter between Matt Damon and Emily Blunt is fantastic.  The story that surrounds them falls a bit flat though.

Anthony Mackie is always solid and gives a good performance, in fact all of the performances were pretty good (Slattery is made for TV though)… the problem is they don't have much to do.  The concept that God is the chairmen and these angels are like 1950′s feds is kind of cool, but in the same way an SNL skit could be good for 3 minutes but not over the course of an entire feature.  As you're watching the thin mask starts to disintegrate.  And it is covering up a festering wound.

A word that maybe didn't come up enough in the story meetings is stakes.  They continually tell us there's a lot at stake, but it never really seems that way.  His job, his future, her job, her future… the future of mankind maybe… it's all very obtuse.

If your brain is melting and you don't want to think for two hours, throw it in… but if you're firing on all synapses then maybe hold off on this one.

Dueling New Film Projects and the iPhone 4S for a Feature Film

I posted a few days ago about a new film project I'm working on.  You can read about that here.

I'm working on that with Dikran Ornekian and his involvement has freed me up to turn some attention towards a project I started in 2010, but was never able to find the voice for.  An off-beat little thriller called Penny Black.  The problem was the lead character, a female.  She just wasn't interesting to me and it posed problems not only when sitting down to write, but in the outline.  So I went back to the drawing board and once I re-crafted her, it all sort of flowed.  I've found that a lot of times on projects I have trouble getting into, if I take some time off – whether it is weeks, months or sometimes years – it opens up a lot of doors and removes some roadblocks.

This is a project I started with the intention of doing ulta-low-budget.  But the way I want to do it now is even more so… I want to shoot it on the iPhone 4S with a seriously small crew. The 4S ships with an 8 megapixel backlit CMOS sensor that records 1080p video at 30 FPS, with an f/2.4 aperture and a gyro for video stabilization.  Word is that the automatic stabilization seems to work wonders, and gets rid of most the jello. 1080p resolution doesn't mean 1080p quality, but if the sensor supports it, there's no reason not to enable it.

I don't think the image from the iPhone is ready for a film blow-up yet (it gets a bit muddy in low-light and the blacks aren't that sharp), but the image is somewhat stunning and you can definitely shoot something you have smaller screen aspirations for.  There are more than a few apps that override the autofocus and controls on the camera, like Filmic Pro… as well as lens attachments (I'll do a post on those in the future when I've sorted through them all).

Here are a few 5D and 7D comparisons with the iPhone 4S.

 

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Top 5 Movies About Movies

Top 5

Boogie Nights
Mulholland Drive
The Player
Sunset Blvd.
8 ½

Honorable Mention

Cinema Paradiso
Lost in La Mancha
State and Main
Ed Wood
Last Action Hero
Living in Oblivion

Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is fun, pulpy film-noir.  David Fincher brings us a slickly made thriller, but was it worth his time?

One of the biggest problems I had with the film is just a general lack of cohesion.  Ultimately, Harriet's mystery is not linked to the mystery of who is killing these girls.  Finding out who is the serial killer it doesn't lead to Harriet.  Rather, they are found out simultaneously.  And they don't need to come at all to solve the other.  This was my problem with the Swedish film as well.

Also, I don't understand why movies set in foreign countries do this thing where they speak in English, but also in a broken dialect.  They call each other Her instead of Mr.  Some of them with a Swedish accent. It doesn't make sense.  If you're going to transpose this to English for American audiences, because ostensibly international audiences have already seen the movie, then why on earth would you not go all the way?  Set it in America.  A setting such as New England, maybe on Nantucket or a similar island, would have been an intriguing choice and quite possibly forced them to modify the story a bit.

Also, one of the problems, and I think the Swedish film did this better, is a lack of red herrings.  Really, the only person who is at all a suspect is Martin. There's never a hint that Cecilia is a possible suspect.  They try to point to the old uncle.  He actually seems like a nice guy (the whole Nazi thing aside).  In the Swedish version, they did a much better job of giving us a few possible suspects.  At the beginning Christopher Plummer says, 'You're going to meet my family, they're all detestable."  But we don't. I would have liked to meet them all.  Give us a bunch of culprits.  I think that is one of the major short comings of the movie.

I do think Fincher is a much better director and all the little flourishes he brings make the movie more interesting to the eyes.  I like Daniel Craig, but I like the idea that this guy is more of a mook.  Unathletic and unassuming.  They say he's a lady's man, but this is only because he's sleeping with his co-editor who happens to be attractive.  If he were sleeping with someone less attractive than Robin Wright (although she really doesn't look that good here) would he be a ladies man?  Lisbeth Salander is hardly a cover model.  In this version, the only reason she falls for him is he is Daniel Craig and the co-editor just seems like a whore.  In the Swedish version, he was a man of conviction – working at the Millenium for a cause greater than him.  Here, he's just a macho good-looking guy.

I do like Rooney Mara's performance here.  She is a lot more vulnerable than Noomi Rapace's Lisbeth.  Which is good and bad in some ways, but I liked it.  It gave the character more depth.  I enjoyed the scene they added with her old guardian because it shows that she has some feelings.  The fact that she's younger plays into this as well.

Ultimately this is Lisbeth's movie and when she's not on screen it's not exciting. She's only on screen for about 1/3 of the film.  The case is not hers, it is Bloomqvist's.  We have all of this character setup with her, which is all fun and interesting, but it does not drive the story forward at all. It could be considered meandering for some.  I wish they tied that all in better. And that Steve Zaillion didn't stay so close to the book, going out on a limb a bit.  Because this story has already been told.  And I don't think this version, aside from Fincher's technical abilities, brings much more to the table.

Horror Comic Awards 2011

Harbor Moon was nominated for Best Original Graphic Novel (OGN) of 2011 in the Comic Monsters Horror Comic Awards.

Just like the Goodread Awards, we're up against some big time titles.  The books were nominated by industry professionals, but the winners will be based on fan voting.  So get out there and vote!

http://www.comicmonsters.com/horror-comic-awards.html

 

Movie Review: The Muppets