* It’s been a bit of a mental shift to adjust from “not going to San Diego Comic Con” to “going to San Diego Comic Con” with less than two weeks to go before the event itself, but I’m managing, I think. The complete programming schedule for the show is up, along with the artists’ alley listing (I am ready for this show to destroy my David Bowie sketchbook), the autograph listings, and the exhibit hall map.
* And while I wait for individual exhibitors to produce their own at-the-booth signing schedules and so on, other interesting tidbits begin to materialize, like a screening of The Midnight Meat Train nearby to the con on Friday the 25th.
* Evil on Two Legs’ Jon continues his look at pop music in horror films, this time highlighting some very effective sequences in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead and Frank Darabont’s The Mist.
* Victoria Large of Not Coming to a Theater Near You on Hellboy II:
It’s a visual feast (Could we expect less from director Guillermo del Toro?)
* If it seems like I’m disproportionately harping on Del Toro lately, it’s just because I feel such a disconnect from my fellow genre enthusiasts regarding his work. It’s like I’m going out of my way to be a one-man CW-buster. That being said, it sounds like the folks at Reverse Shot like his stuff even less than I do, backhanded compliment for Clive Barker notwithstanding.
* Could all those dinosaurs with nostrils on top of their heads in the dinosaur books you had as a kid actually have possessed trunks? That’s the conclusion of Bill Munn, the designer of that awe-inspiring Gigantopithecus model from the American Museum of Natural History’s “Mythic Creatures” exhibit, as Loren Coleman reports.
Check out the creature gallery at Munn’s website, too.
* The great cartoonist Anders Nilsen has posted some breathtaking horror-inflected covers and interiors at his website.
One of the most frustrating aspects of being a horror fan who reads comics is that most Western cartoonists’ attempts at the genre rely on a surface “scariness” that delivers little in the way of actual fear. It’s a bit like if every horror movie was still shot on the same cobweb-shrouded Universal sets. That’s why it’s so compelling to see artists like Nilsen, Tom Neely, Jordan Crane, Al Columbia and others take things in a much more unorthodox and visually sophisticated direction.
comic con has me so excited that i could pee myself at any given time at the mere thought of it all.
I think Del Toro is kind of a genius. But not a storytelling genius.
Well, I’d never thought it possible to be in the same building as Richard Riehle, Daniel Way, and Tori Amos. ILLUSIONS SHATTERED!
re: Del Toro – he has some kind of gift for design and I appreciate that he’s really into monsters, but, not only do I not think he’s a particularly exceptional storyteller, I don’t think he’s much of a filmmaker. I get as much out of looking at his sketches and designs as I do out of watching his movies. (I feel the same way about certain “hot” super-hero artists: I get a kick out of the latest “unique” take on a familiar hero/concept/etc., but don’t care for the actual comics because the high impact/high concept visuals actually get in the way.)
I think he’s become the Great Nerd Hope because (a) he’s one of us, (b) he seems like a genuinely nice guy, (c) he does have that great design sense, (d) that design sense translates really well to selling himself/his movies on the “comic convention” circuit, and (e) he obviously isn’t just a hack – he cares about what he’s doing. (I think that Del Toro can usuefully be thought of as a “comic convention” filmmaker in the way that Serge Daney wrote about Wim Wenders as a “film festival” director).
My problem is simply that the movies don’t hold up. I mean, it depends on who we’re comparing him against, but put his movies so far (I haven’t seen HBII) –
Cronos, Mimic, The Devil’s Backbone, Blade 2, Hellboy, and Pan’s Labyrinth
– up against, say, the first six features from Tim Burton, another guy with a great sense of design who is working with “junk horror” influences –
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetle Juice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Ed Wood –
and the difference in quality is pretty striking. Granted, Burton’s work becomes somewhat more erratic from then on – or, at least, from that point on his admirers probably won’t agree on the good and the bad, but still…
Peter Jackson makes, maybe, a more apt comparison, but while his pre-LOTR work may not have marked him out to be the obvious choice to take on that project, it’s a pretty distinctive body of work. Not (IMO) comparable with Burton’s, necessarily, but Dead Alive and Heavenly Creatures are pretty strong.
re: Del Toro – he has some kind of gift for design and I appreciate that he’s really into monsters, but, not only do I not think he’s a particularly exceptional storyteller, I don’t think he’s much of a filmmaker. I get as much out of looking at his sketches and designs as I do out of watching his movies. (I feel the same way about certain “hot” super-hero artists: I get a kick out of the latest “unique” take on a familiar hero/concept/etc., but don’t care for the actual comics because the high impact/high concept visuals actually get in the way.)
I think he’s become the Great Nerd Hope because (a) he’s one of us, (b) he seems like a genuinely nice guy, (c) he does have that great design sense, (d) that design sense translates really well to selling himself/his movies on the “comic convention” circuit, and (e) he obviously isn’t just a hack – he cares about what he’s doing. (I think that Del Toro can usuefully be thought of as a “comic convention” filmmaker in the way that Serge Daney wrote about Wim Wenders as a “film festival” director).
My problem is simply that the movies don’t hold up. I mean, it depends on who we’re comparing him against, but put his movies so far (I haven’t seen HBII) –
Cronos, Mimic, The Devil’s Backbone, Blade 2, Hellboy, and Pan’s Labyrinth
– up against, say, the first six features from Tim Burton, another guy with a great sense of design who is working with “junk horror” influences –
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetle Juice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Ed Wood –
and the difference in quality is pretty striking. Granted, Burton’s work becomes somewhat more erratic from then on – or, at least, from that point on his admirers probably won’t agree on the good and the bad, but still…
Peter Jackson makes, maybe, a more apt comparison, but while his pre-LOTR work may not have marked him out to be the obvious choice to take on that project, it’s a pretty distinctive body of work. Not (IMO) comparable with Burton’s, necessarily, but Dead Alive and Heavenly Creatures are pretty strong.
Carnival of souls
* And now, a bunch of interesting (note: consult thesaurus for synonyms of “interesting”) reviews of older things… * Inveterate person who doesn’t have much use for superheroes Tom Spurgeon takes a look at Joe Casey and Frazer Irving’s beautiful-look…