There is a scene in Georges Franju’s Judex where the titular character, dressed in a slick black suit and wearing a large bird mask, picks up a dead dove outside a large estate and enters the belle époque ballroom. After he slowly floats through the crowd, as if he is dancing his way deeper and deeper into the party, he stops in front of the crowd, snaps, creating a short-lived flame, and magically revives the dove. Then, he proceeds to pull doves out of thin air, letting the graceful birds flutter all around the amazed crowd. After he personally gives a bird to a lady (Favraux’s daughter) we momentarily shift attention to two other gentlemen wearing black bird masks. They wonder what Favraux will be wearing, and one of them responds, “A vulture mask.” Then, like magic, the vulture masked Favraux appears to do a toast. However, in order to do so, he removes his mask, meaning he is the only exposed individual in the entire party. Mid-toast, the clock strikes midnight, and we zoom in on a clock atop a mantelpiece and as we do so, we see, reflected in the mirror behind the clock, a terrified Favraux looking towards the clock and a placid Judex standing next to him. As we zoom in more and more however, the clock blocks out Favraux, leaving only Judex in the reflection. The time for judgment has arrived and Judex magically presents a glass of champagne to Favraux and the man then drops dead. However, he never drinks before falling.
This is my favorite scene in the entire movie. It’s so precise and magical. The camera remains placid while the content is surreal and magical. It’s as if two perspectives are colliding. Whenever I mention this film to my friends, I always have great difficulty in giving them a brief synopsis to intrigue them. This is simply because I can’t really say, with absolute certainty, that I know what happened in the film. But I still love it, and I find myself revisiting Judex, over and over again.
Remarkably, this is not the first film I left saying, “What the fuck happened?” It happened when I watched Inherent Vice and it happened when I watched The Big Sleep. But I absolutely loved these movies because, regardless of whether I understood the plot or not, I was invested, almost in a hypnotic state, but conscious enough to know I’m enjoying the moment. It’s a kind of magic.
There is a contextual history for this film that’s too long to go into, so by considering this film in isolation one of the biggest questions is why is Judex doing all this? Which makes him, in turn, an enigmatic wonder. However, that is what the present day me would say, but watching Judex, I wasn’t watching it academically; I reverted to a little kid who was just amazed by the magic – Judex is just really fucking cool.
I love when the mechanics of the craft and the content are almost separated, but paradoxically, play with one another in such an intricate way that it completely goes under your radar – thus creating a surreal experience where you are smiling and you aren’t quite sure why right away.
A small flame flickers for an instant and the dove flutters to life. Judex has arrived to execute his judgement and you will see the magic that transpires when his sentence falls.
Sean Gordon Murphy is a comic book artist/writer who has worked on famed ongoing titles like Batman and Hellblazer, but the title he created on his own, is Punk Rock Jesus; a comic about a clone of Jesus Christ who then rebels and becomes a punk rocker. Ya.
The first time I encountered Murphy’s art was when I picked up Tokyo Ghost, a new Image series he developed with Rick Remender (Deadly Class, Low, Black Science). His art melted my eyes, so I wanted to share some of it with you.
Splash page from Punk Rock JesusSplash from Tokyo GhostSplash from Tokyo Ghost
Needless to say, Murphy is technically excellent and a remarkably talented artist. But it’s his ability to lead the eye via black and white ratios that really amazes me. Just looking at his art, you realize, he gets it (he explains it in the video). Oh, and that understanding of the elliptical. Beautiful.
“What was the first anime you ever watched?”
“Dragonball.”
“Sailor Moon.”
“Pokemon.”
These are but typical answers for a dull question. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and watched every single episode of these shows or read every single chapter of the manga the shows were based on. I specifically remember watching Dragonball quite sporadically, to the point where the narrative never made sense to me.
For nostalgic purposes, I recently picked up a copy of the first volume of the Dragonball manga series by Akira Toriyama. But like I said, I never read the entirety of the series, and ironically, I never even read the first chapters before. So this nostalgia was very narrow, for I was nostalgic for the aesthetic and characters rather than the narrative itself. Anyways, here is a notable scene I encountered.
In the manga, there is a moment where, after having slept in the same vehicle/mobile home as Bulma, Goku gets up and finds a sleeping Bulma. He then finds her “pillow,” pats the area a couple of times, and then takes off her panties to discover she has no balls at which point his panicked scream wakes up Bulma. He screams at her, “You have no balls!” She thinks he is talking about the Dragonballs and is completely oblivious to what had transpired during her slumber.
“What? Is this legit?”
Turns out it was, apparently I was completely oblivious to the instances of panty dropping and flashing in the anime.
But now, before we get all hot and bothered and classify Dragonball as some borderline soft porn, lets consider the context of this scene. The scene is actually quite funny if you think about it. You just have to consider the context; Goku has never seen a girl up until he met Bulma. He thought everyone had tails until he met her. This is innocent, nothing sensual about it.
Which brings me to a work that predates these famed shows and manga – Lupin III. This manga is downright raunchy at times. Lupin is not just a thief, but he is also sex hungry. Leaping out of his clothes and jumping on top of women (who are virtually indistinguishable from one another, all of them sporting Barbie-like proportions) who are lying naked on beds in some bedroom of the building he is robbing. The manga also doesn’t shy away from full nudity, however, an interesting stylistic choice is that Monkey Punch, or Kazuhiko Katō, the creator of the series, draws Lupin’s penis as the gender sign for males. Does this objectify men? Stating that the entirety of the gender can be reduced to the penis? I guess, very slightly. But not nearly as much as the naked women who seem to appear every other chapter in this manga. Also, I mean, the gender sign penis is kind of funny. But anyways, maybe you’d think the manga would stop at nudity. No. No it doesn’t. There are explicit lines about climaxing and pleasure and graphic Lupin on objectified woman action.
Now, why am I reading this? I seem to be saying that it’s horrible, yet here I am, reading it, again. One reason is because I love the art style. It’s incredibly sketchy, and it feels borderline unfinished at times. However, the quick lines and overtly cartoonish postures and expressions add a kinetic energy to the art that I find rare in overly polished comic book art. This is reflective of crudeness of the content at times. Which works. For a long time, Monkey Punch had failed to really develop the characters beyond mere cartoonish caricatures. I mean, the manga volume I’m pulling these scenes from, was published in 2004. It isn’t very progressive, especially considering the second reason as to why I’m reading the manga.
Perhaps the most famous version of Lupin III is his depiction in the film, The Castle of Cagliostro, by the now retired Hayao Miyazaki. This was Miyazaki’s debut and it improved upon the source material in so many ways. First of all, the gender sign penis was gone, the vast quantities of sexual drive was gone, Lupin was now far more chivalrous, and the focus of the film in general was shifted towards a heavy concentration in the adventure aspect of the series. First and foremost, Lupin III is about a thief with a blend of Indiana Jones-esque adventure and James Bond debonair. Miyazaki nails this. Honestly, there was nobody better suited to direct Lupin in the proper manner than Studio Ghibli guru – for he excels at creating films primarily for children.
But although he got rid of most of the adult content, he still retained the cartoonish essence at the heart of the original. This feels like the opposite of the direction many comic book movies are taking nowadays. Miyazaki embraces the silliness and is not concerned in slathering on a layer of drab malaise and deep brooding to characters who were never like that in the first place. Perhaps all directors should see this movie so they may learn about how important it is to retain the essence.
I’ll end with a clip from the film that showcases this arguably inexplicable feel of joy that is so subtly captured in this film. Spielberg himself described this scene as arguably the best car chase scene of all time, simply because you can see how much the characters are enjoying the chase. It also helps that they are in an adorable little Fiat 500.
Blade Runner is a film that has stuck with me since I first saw it. It’s been my go to recommendation for anybody who claimed Ridley Scott was a bad director and a constant recommendation for anyone who was looking for a great sci-fi flick. In many ways, this is true science fiction rather than say, Star Wars, which I classify to be more fantasy in space than anything close to science fiction. As snobbish as it may sound, I do believe a film must hold some intellectual weight, explored via scientific context, to be considered as science fiction. What I mean is that there needs to be an intellectually inseparable bond between the context of the film and its preoccupations. Star Wars doesn’t need to be set in space. Like really, it doesn’t. I’m glad it is. But please, it’s no Blade Runner.
Recently, I was thinking about Blade Runner, and in particular, the last speech that Roy says before he dies atop a rooftop, “All those moments will be lost, in time, like tears in the rain.” He is talking about various things he had seen, things that other people will spend their entire lives not seeing. The film as a whole is incredibly preoccupied with eyes, and seeing and revealing, but where all this imagery eventually points to is fairly indefinite to me – quite possibly because of how untrustworthy perception via vision seems to be, or at least, because of how the film suggests optical skepticism. What does it matter in the end? All these replicants look like people, or, rephrased, all these people could be replicants. Blade Runners use eye monitoring devises while questioning individuals to see whether or not they are replicants, but rather than the visual aspect, the true key in the test is the way in which the subject responds to the various questions. For example, whether or not they are given a default memory programmed into many replicants.
Which begs the question – we all see what we see, but the question is what do we make of our basic stimulations? This question extends to: how do we identify ourselves? Because amidst all these stimulations, whether they are tactile or illusory, is the formation of who we are. When one of these forms of stimulation becomes a point of skepticism or doubt, our identity is at risk of becoming unstable. We become uncertain of whom we are. But, is there a way to deal with this potential threat? For it is evident, in the modern age, the amount of stimulation is becoming more potent and more frequent. Then does the risk, perhaps, increase as well? If so, how do we deal with this?
I’m not sure if there is answer for that. But I keep coming back to that speech when I look for an answer. I think perhaps the lack of an answer is the answer. Who we are, will be lost. All those stimulations, all those moments of self-identification, upon our death, they are gone. But the way they are lost is in the endless rain, or the endless stimulations of our world, hiding those of the individual.
Recently, I had been working on an essay covering the story of my grandpa, and in relation, my relationship with him. We were both children at one point, but to consider, at one point in our lives, there was a time where his formative days were in the past while mine were still to come. How foundational are these moments of confluence between individuals separated by generations. When I ask myself, “What does my grandpa mean to me.” I can only say, although he is alive, he is first and foremost, a memory. A representation of rich 20th century Korean culture that I was never a part of, nor stuck around in Korea long enough to allow it to affect me.
I interviewed him recently, asking about the Korean War, his childhood, his time spent working in a post-war nation. He’d forgotten almost all the specifics. His moments are being lost, one by one. We talked to each other through Skype, a process he hardly understands. It’s jarring, talking to him on a screen, to realize that the man who played with me during my infancy is now half a world away and older than ever before.
I can’t help but feel, that once I answer the question – who is he to me – I will be able to find out who I am a little bit more. A form of stimulation I forgot to mention earlier, the interaction between people. Maybe the answer lies there.
Last week, I was surprised to find there was a new trailer for the Suicide Squad movie.
It’s very hard for me to dislike a trailer that utilizes Bohemian Rhapsody. But the song wasn’t used as just some deafening overlay that didn’t add anything to the visuals. Instead, they edited the trailer perfectly to the beat and utilized comedic cuts in between the transitions the song is so well known for.
The visuals were also impressive and served as a confirmation that this film was far removed from the Batman world that Nolan had created with his trilogy. But I suppose some are still skeptical about Jared Leto as the Joker, others are skeptic of the Harley Quinn performance, but some were pleasantly surprised at what seems to be Jai Courtney producing his best performance to date. As for me, I’m not one to really speculate about a movie after seeing an advertisement for it. When it comes down to it, these trailers and teasers are all just advertisements.
No. Perhaps that is simplifying too much, for the two mediums aren’t precisely synonymous with one another. Whereas a general advertisement, for instance, for a car, produces intrigue based on whatever price is flashed before the screen or what sexy celebrity is driving it, a trailer for a movie is producing intrigue via segments so that you go see the rest of the movie. Arguably, no other advertisement that is shown via video has this relationship that movies do with trailers.
But, even though these trailers are fragments from the movie, a good trailer doesn’t necessarily mean the movie is good nor does a bad trailer mean that movie is bad. In fact, there have been many cases where expectations have been disappointed or where audiences have been overwhelmingly surprised.
The more I think about it, the more I realize how much of an art form the trailer truly is. It’s very difficult to create a trailer that generates both interest and hype, while also remaining true to the project it is advertising. So let me show you a couple of trailers and teasers that I find were truly exceptional. But keep in mind, that all of these examples are for fairly recent movies or at least movies that came out during my lifetime. I cannot, for example, comment on the trailer for The Shining because I never saw it prior to seeing the film. In other words, the point of the trailer becomes mute for me. Now that that is said, let’s move on.
So I’ve already talked about the Suicide Squad trailer. It was a great trailer and it is certainly generating a large amount of hype for the movie. I will not talk about the other recent hype generating advertisement machine that was the Star Wars campaign. Let’s face it, they did an amazing job advertising the movie; revealing very little while giving us just enough to get excited by the new and the nostalgic.
But there is one amazing teaser that generated so much hype without a single bit of footage – the very first teaser for The Dark Knight. I’m sure you all know that the vast majority of people were not too excited about Heath Ledger as the Joker. Which makes sense given the only movies people had seen in him were probably The Patriot, A Knight’s Tale, and Brokeback Mountain. Don’t get me wrong; he was incredible in Brokeback Mountain. But playing a cowboy stuck in a complicated relationship is one thing; playing an insane iconic comic book villain is another. Arguably, playing the homosexual cowboy is a lot harder than playing the Joker. But ironically, messing up the Joker brings more public outrage.
So all that public skepticism was in the air after the casting news came out. Then, Nolan drops this teaser and shuts everyone up.
The amount of hype this one, 55-second teaser, generated was ridiculous. It was a genius stroke of advertising, to play on the doubts of the general public. I can only imagine that Nolan was always confidently smirking as people booed at the casting choice. He’d already seen Ledger’s Joker.
Perhaps I started off with a teaser that is too brilliant. Yep, I did. But the trailer for Sin City was probably the first one where I could feel the style oozing from such a short video.
I’m a sucker for good music and well timed editing. But I think the movie did a great job at giving us a glimpse of the interesting visuals this movie would offer, mixing literal comic book art from Frank Miller’s praised series with black and white clips from the adaptation. Also, when we start seeing the names of all the cast members and the song hits that climax, the trailer is just too cool to handle.
Both of these movies met the expectations that the trailers set up. The case of The Dark Knight is bit more complicated however because the marketing generated too much hype, meaning there was bound to be small bit of disappointment, but virtually everyone all agreed the movie was amazing – specifically Ledger’s performance. However, Prometheus was an odd one.
The teaser for Prometheus mimics the music and the title formation style from the trailer for Alien. At first, it may seem clever. After all, Alien is a sci-fi classic so of course drawing similarities will attract a lot of attention. But when the movie came out, people who expected an Alien prequel were disappointed. Now I, for one, have never seen Alien, so I only found out that there were similarities between the two teasers after some minimal research. I saw Prometheus without that knowledge and had a grand old time. I won’t go in depth into why I enjoyed it, or why I think it’s a good movie. And I definitely won’t talk about why I think everyone who was disappointed by the movie because it wasn’t similar to Alien, should just stop. Why? Because to be fair, the teaser led them on. On the other hand, we did see the origin of the Xenomorph, so it is technically an Alien prequel. But it just wasn’t the claustrophobic horror show that Alien was.
Oddly enough, for someone who doesn’t get the reference to the Alien trailer, the teaser for Prometheus works wonders. For those who understood the reference, it potentially set them up for disappointment.
Of course there are many great trailers out there that I haven’t mentioned: Mad Max: Fury Road, Guardians of the Galaxy, Birdman, The Revenant, Inherent Vice, The Master, The Incredibles, and the list goes on. In fact, some of the best trailers in recent memory haven’t even been for movies, but for games. Which is an entirely different interaction between marketing and product – one that I don’t understand well enough to speak even somewhat intelligently about. For instance, the incredibly recent trailer for the Final Fantasy VII Remake or the very first trailer for Starcraft 2. Both of these are incredible pieces of marketing.
Considering trailers in the world we currently live in is odd. We no longer only see these trailers right before a movie at the theatre with other people. Instead, more often than not, we see them on YouTube by ourselves. Also, many contemporary trailers reveal too much of the story, ruining the experience of watching the movie, months before it even comes out. I think filmmakers should study the art of making good trailers because in a lot of cases, the director edits the first trailer. Learning how to blend music together with quick commercial editing all the while giving glimpses of story but not revealing too much. It is a tight balancing act in a short duration.
The large wooden lion head, hanging from the wall directly above the escalators coming up from the Minskoff Theatre entrance, suggests that there is only one play that will grace the stage inside – again and again and again. Given that it was during the Christmas holiday season, the place was packed with tourists, many of whom, I assumed, were seeing the stage version of The Lion King for the first time.
I must admit, seeing the paper sun basked in an orange and yellow light and hearing the all-to-famous song, Circle of Life, creep, yet brazenly, ring in my ears, brought a tear to my eyes. For some reason, seeing animals with awe through an artistic medium, whilst being accompanied by appropriate music, makes me cry. I admittedly cry when I see the ending of the film The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where the second planet Earth is jump-started and the life cycle begins. The images are rather objective but awe cannot help but creep in, causing me to have this inexplicable emotional reaction.
The Lion King was not the Disney film that I watched over and over again. In fact, the Disney films that I did find myself watching repeatedly were: The Fox and The Hound, Tarzan, Hercules, Dumbo, and Robin Hood. I specifically really liked The Fox and The Hound, and I really can’t tell you why my childish mind at the time enjoyed a rather sad film.
Seeing The Lion King live, in a theatre in New York, was certainly a new experience. I’d seen some Broadway shows prior to this event. I’d seen Wicked, Peter and the Star Catcher, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the last of which was particularly notable because it was the first time I’d seen nudity in a stage performance. I was sitting there, thinking, this wasn’t in the movie. Then again, I’d never read Truman Capote’s novel either, so who am I to say? Although, I didn’t complain, after all, it was Emilia Clarke playing the role of Holly.
But the category, in which all these other plays pale in comparison to The Lion King, is costume design. Seeing all the animals march down the aisles was a treat, seeing the elephants, the rhinos, the birds, etc. I noticed the costumes never tried to mimic the animals completely, but they were well thought out, remembering, regardless of how accurate they were to the real animals, it was still a person beneath it all. So the lions heads were attached to beams that hooked over the actors heads, folding backwards when they were upright and then jutting outwards over their faces when they crouched like a lion. The hyenas had the same principle, with the addition of limbs. Zazu had a puppeteer, something that was actually addressed directly in a strangely Meta moment. Timon was a puppet as well, while the costume for Pumba, was essentially, his head that covered the entirety of the actors body. But all of these costumes allowed the actors to move gracefully in perceived animal movements.
The play was very similar to the film as well. So watching the play, I kept wondering, “How are they going to deal with the stampede scene?”
Well they dealt with it, and they dealt with it well, creating perspective through layers in order to really create a claustrophobic scene that was at the same time, wildly epic due to the dynamism of the movement that was happening through the depth created via stage design. It was the first account of when I truly saw the, lets call it the z-axis, utilized so explicitly. Another case was when the giraffes leaned their heads forward, almost touching the audience sitting in the front row.
There were cheeky moments that were at once references to the film as well as a reference to contemporary Disney. In the film, Zazu, while a prison to Scar, sings It’s a Small World After All, the wildly accepted “annoying” song of Disney at the time. In the play, when I saw it, Zazu sings Let it Go. It is one of those changes that makes me chuckle, but I’m both slightly annoyed yet charmed at the same time.
There was one thing that confused me more than anything. They changed Rafiki to a girl. I don’t know why. I get that there aren’t that many female characters in the film, but what does this add? Perhaps it adds female wisdom. But I found myself more confused then thinking, oh, that makes sense. It came across as a rather trivial shift that could have been handled better to justify it more precisely, but then how can you without changing a classically adored film like The Lion King?
I can’t say that I would have hated this play going into it. I knew I was at least going to enjoy it. I never knew how to critique theatre, but I found myself seeing why some things worked and others didn’t because I had the film to compare it to. I can’t say I’m an expert on theatre yet, nowhere near that level in fact. But I certainly appreciate it just a little bit more.
