Sketchin’ 39

Back in 1987 the movie The Lost Boys appeared in theaters.  Featuring a great cast of young (for the most part!) actors, the main draw was easily Kiefer Sutherland as the charismatic -and deadly!- vampire David…

Loved the film and loved his punkish/new wave look.

And it would seem heresy for me to say this, but I even loved Echo and the Bunnymen’s cover of The Door’s People are Strange, part of the movie’s soundtrack…

It’s that time of year…

…when “Best of 2017” lists start appearing!

One of my favorite topics in that regard are favorite movies of the year nearly past.

Here’s some interesting food for thought:

Esquire Magazine’s 25 Best Movies of 2017

Best Movies of 2017, The New York Times

Rolling Stone Best Movies of 2017

Vulture Best Movies of 2017

Slate Magazine’s 10 Best Movies of 2017

As I find (depressingly) from reading these lists, there are so many films I’ve missed out on… Some I do want to see but there are others where it seems pointless to do so.

For example, I was intrigued with the film Get Out, which made it to many “Best of” lists like those above, yet at this point -darn you, curiosity and internet!- it feels pointless to give up on some of my too precious time (where does it go every day?!) to watch something I kinda/sorta already know everything about.

Dunkirk also made it to plenty of lists but, I have to admit, I’m a little fatigued with war films.  That’s not to say there are plenty of great ones out there and Dunkirk may well rise to their level but, as I said, I’m a little fatigued with that genre.

Then there’s Wonder Woman.  While the movie didn’t make all the lists above, it did appear on several lists and it represents one of the few films on such lists I did catch in theaters and at the time of release.  I liked the film (you can read my review of it here) and would give it a very solid “B” rating, but was it the among the best movies released last year?  To some, it clearly was.  I dunno about that.

Here’s an interesting and somewhat different list, from Esquire magazine:

Esquire’s Best Action Movies of 2017

Now here’s a list that really interests me!

I’m going to spoil things and list the 10 films they feel were the best action films of the year:

  1. Dunkirk
  2. Wonder Woman
  3. Thor: Ragnarock
  4. Logan
  5. War For The Planet of the Apes
  6. Baby Driver
  7. John Wick Chapter 2
  8. Kong: Skull Island
  9. Spider-Man: Homecoming
  10. Atomic Blonde

Certainly the films listed above are among the best known action films of this nearly deceased year.  Of the films listed above, I’ve seen four of them (Wonder Woman, Baby Driver, John Wick 2, Kong) and have another two purchased and waiting for me to see them (Logan, Atomic Blonde).

As for the rest, I’ve already stated my opinion on DunkirkThor: Ragnarock intrigues me but the comparisons of it to Guardians of the Galaxy, a movie I still don’t understand what others found good in it, have really scared me away.  War for the Planet of Apes I’ve heard so many good things about but, like war films, I feel I’ve had my fill with the first -and original!- round of Ape films (yeah, I’m really old).  Similarly, I feel like I’ve had my fill of Spider-Man films and haven’t been interested in seeing another since Sam Raimi’s last iteration.

So, of the films I’ve seen, I liked Wonder Woman the most and thought Kong: Skull Island (you can read my review of that here) was good, if light, entertainment.

I hated John Wick Chapter 2 (here’s my opinion on that) and thought that while brilliantly directed, Baby Driver was a plot-malnourished bust (here’s my opinion on that film).

So I better get to it and see those two films I have.  Once I do, I’ll have seen a whopping six films on that list!

Incredible!

Oh Al…

Politics be here… beware!

There’s so much going on in the world -the Bizarro Trumpworld we’re currently in- that its hard to focus on one thing but I’ll try.

Time magazine offered a brilliant, IMHO, “Person of the Year”: The Silence Breakers.  It was about the women -and men!- who spoke out about sexual harassment and blazed a trail which has led us to a point where we, as a society, are finally confronting something which should have been confronted a very long time ago.

There are many people, some shocking to find, who have engaged in these types of sleazy activities.  Many of them have lost their jobs, rightfully, while at least a couple of prominent ones -talking about you Trump and Roy Moore- who are determined to swim against the tide and continue the “they are lying” defense, which rings hallow, to say the least.

Another who has been exposed is Al Franken.

I like Mr. Franken, senator.  I feel many of his philosophies are in line with my own and I think it was incredible the way he cornered Jeff Sessions in a lie.  I wish there were more senators out there who vote the way he does.

And having said all that… he needs to resign.

While the allegations regarding Franken’s alleged harassment isn’t anywhere near being in the neighborhood of what Roy Moore is accused of (let’s face it, that man is in a perverse, disgusting world of his own), there comes a point when one either is against harassment or isn’t.

If we are to believe the allegations about what he did, which included forcibly kissing unwilling women, that’s quite enough, thank you.

As a politician, I really like you, Al.

Now do the right thing and resign.

If you’re sincere about being ashamed of what you did, provide restitution.  Volunteer your time to shelters that provide aid and comfort to victims of sexual harassment.  Show penance.  One day very soon, you could step back into the political limelight, a renewed, hopefully forgiven man.

Who knows, you may even be elected again to office.

Oh, and Mr. Moore?  Mr. Trump?  I’d ask you two to drop out and do the same but it seems you’ve lost your shame a very long time ago.

If you ever had any to begin with.

Puerto Rico and Tesla…

If there’s anything good to come from an incredible tragedy, it may be Tesla’s involvement in powering up the island of Puerto Rico with their battery projects, as presented in this article by Fred Lambert and presented on electrek.com…

Tesla deploys 6 battery projects in order to power two islands in Puerto Rico, more to come

When I first heard of Tesla’s battery pack idea, I was intrigued with the concept.  Essentially, the goal is to provide electricity to people via battery packs of various sizes.

In theory, one might in the future have solar panels (or some version of solar panels) on one’s house which feeds directly to a battery pack within your house which will then provide electricity to your home.

Granted, this is something that will work far better in areas like where I live in, which has plenty of sunshine.  However, even if one doesn’t live in an area like that, the battery packs could be charged on your local electrical grid and then used in peak hours of energy usage.

Its intriguing stuff and I’m most curious to see where this all leads… and, of course, whether it works!

Quentin Tarantino to direct… a Star Trek film?!?

Didn’t see this one coming.

The following article, by Mike Fleming Jr. and presented on Deadline.com, notes that…

Quentin Tarantino Hatches Star Trek Movie Idea; Paramount, J. J. Abrams To Assemble Writers Room

The bottom line is this: Mr. Tarantino apparently went to J. J. Abrams with a Star Trek movie pitch/idea, the idea was met positively, and as the article’s headline notes, writers are being hired to create a script based on Mr. Tarantino’s ideas.

As someone else might say…

Image result for fascinating spock

I’m not a huge Tarantino fan but the man, let’s face it, is a talent and can create some great -if often foul mouthed and violent- stuff.

It would seem a man like him is not the person you’d want doing Star Trek but, frankly, I find the concept (here we go again) fascinating.

Frankly, I don’t think this will come to fruition.  I’m not trying to be pessimistic, its only that Mr. Tarantino is currently (I imagine) getting things together for his latest film involving the Manson killings of the late 1960’s (the actual plot of the movie is unknown other than it is set in/around that time) and that movie is scheduled to be released in 2019.  With that in mind, I can’t help but think if he does go from that to Star Trek, it’ll be a while -if ever!- before we see it.

Still, I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t love to see a Star Trek film with Mr. Tarantino behind it, if only for curiosity’s sake.

Sketchin’ 38

Love the look of Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld movies, even if the movies got progressively worse as they went along.  Mind you, not trying to be judgmental here, as I have noted before I’ve positive feelings (guilty, admittedly) for the Resident Evil films.

So, here she is, Ms. Beckinsale as Selene in the Underworld movies…

Now for some insider type stuff:

What I love about digitally “inking” these pieces (I use an iPad and Apple Pencil with the Procreate program) is that it allows me to play around with white just as easily as I do with blacks.

Way back when I used to use an actual brush and ink in my work, black ink moved beautifully with a brush on the page but there is really no equivalent with physical white “ink”.  In fact, white “ink” is really just a corrective.  It’s used mostly to patch up errors in your work and is often used just to create certain effects such as stars or splatter.

Now that I’m doing my artwork digitally, all colors, including black and white, work the same and therefore I can now do white effects (I’m working up to going into colors, so bear with me).

In the case of the above piece, most of Selene’s hair was creating using white (digital) “ink”.

Enjoy!

Unproduced Police Squad script…!

If you were to ask me to state what my all time favorite comedy movie is, I’d probably say Airplane!

Don’t get me wrong, there are many, many, great comedy movies out there, but this film, IMHO, is the heights of absurdist, hundreds (seemingly) jokes a second, Mad-Magazine style parody/comedy which, thanks to the use of then very “serious” actors in absolutely absurd roles (believe it or not, when Airplane! came out, Leslie Nielsen -among other well known actors within the film- was known for his dramatic, serious roles!).

Now, if you were to ask me my all time favorite TV comedy, that one would be the very short lived (six episodes!) run of Police Squad!

After Airplane!’s its makers, Jim Abrahams and Jim and David Zucker recruited Leslie Nielsen to star in their very similarly themed absurdist comedy series.  Here is an example of one of the show’s intros…

I still chuckle at that opening bit, from the “In Color” announcement (TV shows of the 1960’s, when they went from Black and White to Color, would announce the fact that they were “In Color” to promote themselves to people with B & W TV sets and, hopefully, convince them to buy them), to the sequence with the shootout in the station (the guy on fire, the lady with the baby who flings it, etc.), to the wonderful special guest star (whose sole scene in the show was his/her death), to the “Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln” absurdity.

Then there were the show’s endings, which made fun of the popular “freeze frame” endings found on many TV shows back then…

Anyway, the show would be revived with the Naked Gun films, but I found this fascinating article concerning the script to an un-filmed episode of Police Squad!, which is now available online.  The article is by Matthew Dessem and is found on Slate.com…

All Units, There’s an Unproduced Police Squad! Script on the Internet, Please Respond

Read the article and find out that its about David Misch’s unproduced seventh episode of Police Squad!, the script of which can be found in full here:

Testimony of Terror

To all those fans of the absurdist Abrahams and Zucker Brothers comedy, its a neat bit of (unproduced) humor.

You’re quite welcome!