Jason's Blog, page 155

Gorilla

Another illustration, a mix of watercolours and acrylics.

Rhino

Illustration done for encyclopedia, late 90s.

Papillon

Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman are prisoners in a French penal colony. Apparently based on a true story, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner.

Great film. I don't really have much to say about it. McQueen gives a bravura performance. It helps that he has some lines on his face and looks as if he's actually lived a life. He didn't graduate from the Hollywood Prettyboy Acting School (HPAS for short). Hoffman looks slightly Jean Reno-ish. A minor negative thing is that the actors don't age during the film, so you don't really get an impression of how long they stay on the island. There's something about the films from the seventies that make them perfect for watching on lazy Sundays. The Roger Moore Bond films, the Agatha Christie and the Irwin Allen Disaster movies with a million old stars in them, included.

Little Big Man

Dustin Hoffman is a 120 years old man telling a tall tale of how he was adopted by Indians and fought general Custer. Also starring Faye Dunaway, directed by Arthur Penn.

Another film I remember seeing on tv as a kid. It's a revisionist western that feels slightly dated. In the film all the Indians are noble and all the whites are assholes. As a contrast to the way Indians were depicted in westerns from the fifties, okay, it's earned, but surely, there must have been some Indian assholes as well, no? Maybe the most interesting part of the film is the homosexual Indian and the Indian who does everything backwards, and the way they're not ostracized from the tribe - I assume that is based on fact. The film is adapted from a novel, which I haven't read, but as is often the case, scenes that ring true in a book don't necessarily ring true in a film, the final scenes with Custer being an example.

Three Days of The Condor

I haven't seen any of the Oscar nominated films this year. I thought Sideways was quite good, so I'll probably end up watching The Descendants at some point, if I find a used dvd, and I'm a bit curious about Midnight in Paris. In the meantime I'm mostly re-watching 70s movies these days, one of them being Three Days of The Condor. CIA researcher Robert Redford finds his co-workers dead and goes on the run, not certain who he can trust. Also starring Faye Dunaway and Max Von Sydow, directed by Sydney Pollack.

Ah, the paranoia thrillers of the seventies. This film is maybe one of the more commercial ones, but it's still good. It has a small connection to comics since Dick Tracy is namedropped. The setup with the dead co-workers were later ripped off in a season of 24. I loved the little detail of Redford removing the smoldering cigarette from the dead body. There's some nifty spy stuff involving a telephone, the computer stuff is maybe slightly dated. There's a fight scene where you can actually see what is happening. Redford is good, but his hair is always annoyingly perfect (that goes for pretty much all his films) . He's on the run, without a hair conditioner, for chrissake! And hey, Max Von Sydow! What's a tall Swede to do in Hollywood? Play bad guys, of course.

What's this, an old cartoon?

-Take two cyanide pills and call me tomorrow.

Ah, comics...

I should be working on my new book, but I got volume 5 of Little Orphan Annie and Walt & Skeezix from amazon yesterday, so I'm spending the weekend reading comics.

Hey, another old cartoon!

Okay, it's not brilliant or anything, but anyway, the text is:
-No, you haven't quite got the touch yet. Try it again.

I optioned Adolf Hitler

So, yes, my comic book I Killed Adolf Hitler has been optioned for a movie. There is still a long way to a finished film and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. If I one day should sit there in the cinema with the ticketstub in my hand, the film hopefully won't look too MTV. Actually, the best thing would probably be if they could travel back in time and film it in the seventies.

Outland

Sean Connery is a marshal for a mining colony in outer space. A performance drug drives the miners crazy. Connery must face the man running the colony, only getting help from the local doctor, Frances Sternhagen. Directed by Peter Hyams.

I can imagine the director pitched this as High Noon meets Alien. Visually it's very much influenced by Alien and the story sticks pretty close to High Noon. There's even the close ups of a digital watch, counting down the time to the arrival of the bad guys. And Sean Connery and Gary Cooper have some of the same qualities - they wouldn't be caught dead Acting. There's a quite effective scene where Connery talks to his son via a video phone, and for all he knows it will be the last time he sees the son. And you gotta love that they didn't get some hot, young tomato to play the doctor, but rather someone the same age as Connery. So instead of getting, say, Farrah Fawcett Majors, they hired Sternhagen, clearly in her fifties.
Definitely worth checking out.