Spin City

Sin City looks very cool, an intense, high contrast graphic novel noir opus. It appears that the team of innovative directors, Robert Rodriguez and comic book artist Frank Miller have pushed the envelope of how films can look. Both directors are cartoon artists, so strong comic book layout and storyboards should influence the crafting of this movie.

In my city, I’m taking a class at SF’s Academy of Art University, “The History and Technology of Visual Effects.” The syllabus is Richard Rickitt’s excellent book Special Effects: The History and Technique. We are studying visual effects in older films amd writing our comments in discussion essays. I’ve enjoyed the writing, and will edit and publish them as part of this blog soon.

A film covered in our reading, the 1978 Superman – The Movie based on the early Action comic book hero looks really awful upon DVD review. With a John Williams soundtrack the Superman movie struggles to mimic the contemporary Star Wars greatness. Starting with an overly long, boring opening credit sequence (during which I could have read 2 or 3 pages of a comic book!), and then a fly over into an obviously miniature set of planet Krypton. An art director was given too much range in creating a crystal Krypton world of an orderly civilization wearing glowing outfits. Senior scientist Jor El (Marlon Brando) manipulates mysterious glowing crystal rods with little cinematic results.
Next up, Fantastic Four. Flame on?!

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