What do you think? Mendes looks hott.
7.6.08
2.6.08
Sneek Peak: Production Blog #9
THE SPIRIT Blog #9
TO MY READERS
Much has been the fuss in the comics' blogosphere about my SPIRIT movie—much justified, much hoped for, and much to my delight, that there has been a fuss at all. Some comics readers are terrified that THE SPIRIT will be a retread of my SIN CITY. Others quarrel over the change of the SPIRIT'S traditional blue hat, mask, and jacket, to black. These are understandable concerns for any lover of Will Eisner's masterpiece. I take this opportunity to address these concerns. With glee, I take this opportunity.
THE SPIRIT is, with every effort I give it, not a rusty, dusty old monument to the work of my beloved Mentor, so much as it is an extension of what I know to have been Eisner's central intent: to create something new, witty, and exploratory. That's what he did. That's what I'm doing.
It only resembles SIN CITY in that I am its director, and, well, yes, I have my ways and my proclivities. Luckily, I was able to discern three important proclivities I share with the Master. We both love good stories. We both love New York City. And we both love beautiful women.
(Please forgive my constant present-tense references to my dear friend. His creative force, and his force of personality, remains so strong in my mind that I can't often think of Will Eisner as a man who has left us.)
Now, about that blue suit.
Comic books have long traditions based on the limitations of pre-digital printing. Among these are traditions from the old newsprint-run-through-letterpress approach (yes, comics have been—and still do--follow tradition that dates all the way back to Gutenberg!). Bad printing on pulp paper is why it was necessary for every superhero to have his emblem printed on his chest, and that everything that's black be printed in blue. Hence Superman's preposterous blue hair. And the Spirit's blue hat, mask, and suit.
In tests—and we did several—the blue made the Spirit look like an unfortunate guest at a Halloween party. Going to black brings back his essential mystery, his Zorro-like sexiness. It also makes that red tie of his look very, very cool. So I made the call, with all respect to Eisner's creation, and most importantly, to what I perceived as his underlying intention. It was an easy call for me to make. The Spirit dresses in black, and looks much the better for it. As I said, my desire was never to slavishly follow the rules of '40s printing into campy oblivion, but to reintroduce Eisner's creation, via modern technology, to our brave new world.
And THE SPIRIT as some sort of SIN CITY REDUX? No, SIN CITY, that one's my own baby, folks, and it looks the way it does for its own reasons. THE SPIRIT is, and will always be, Eisner's SPIRIT. Anybody watching me on the set could attest that I very frequently drew a storyboard for a given shot first as I saw it, then as Will might’ve seen in—and, in every case, went with what I saw as Will's version.
To drive the point home, THE SPIRIT, despite any accidental impression left by that kickass teaser-trailer, is a full-color movie. SIN CITY—and I hope to make of it a movie trilogy all its own, come Hell and high water—is, visually, a playhouse for black and white.
THE SPIRIT's been one hell of an adventure, one that's made me love the world of comics more than ever.
I'm confident that it's going to be one hell of a good movie.
FM
Lord forbid we have to wait until tomorrow! Thanks to SHH! and GeeksOfDoom.
TO MY READERS
Much has been the fuss in the comics' blogosphere about my SPIRIT movie—much justified, much hoped for, and much to my delight, that there has been a fuss at all. Some comics readers are terrified that THE SPIRIT will be a retread of my SIN CITY. Others quarrel over the change of the SPIRIT'S traditional blue hat, mask, and jacket, to black. These are understandable concerns for any lover of Will Eisner's masterpiece. I take this opportunity to address these concerns. With glee, I take this opportunity.
THE SPIRIT is, with every effort I give it, not a rusty, dusty old monument to the work of my beloved Mentor, so much as it is an extension of what I know to have been Eisner's central intent: to create something new, witty, and exploratory. That's what he did. That's what I'm doing.
It only resembles SIN CITY in that I am its director, and, well, yes, I have my ways and my proclivities. Luckily, I was able to discern three important proclivities I share with the Master. We both love good stories. We both love New York City. And we both love beautiful women.
(Please forgive my constant present-tense references to my dear friend. His creative force, and his force of personality, remains so strong in my mind that I can't often think of Will Eisner as a man who has left us.)
Now, about that blue suit.
Comic books have long traditions based on the limitations of pre-digital printing. Among these are traditions from the old newsprint-run-through-letterpress approach (yes, comics have been—and still do--follow tradition that dates all the way back to Gutenberg!). Bad printing on pulp paper is why it was necessary for every superhero to have his emblem printed on his chest, and that everything that's black be printed in blue. Hence Superman's preposterous blue hair. And the Spirit's blue hat, mask, and suit.
In tests—and we did several—the blue made the Spirit look like an unfortunate guest at a Halloween party. Going to black brings back his essential mystery, his Zorro-like sexiness. It also makes that red tie of his look very, very cool. So I made the call, with all respect to Eisner's creation, and most importantly, to what I perceived as his underlying intention. It was an easy call for me to make. The Spirit dresses in black, and looks much the better for it. As I said, my desire was never to slavishly follow the rules of '40s printing into campy oblivion, but to reintroduce Eisner's creation, via modern technology, to our brave new world.
And THE SPIRIT as some sort of SIN CITY REDUX? No, SIN CITY, that one's my own baby, folks, and it looks the way it does for its own reasons. THE SPIRIT is, and will always be, Eisner's SPIRIT. Anybody watching me on the set could attest that I very frequently drew a storyboard for a given shot first as I saw it, then as Will might’ve seen in—and, in every case, went with what I saw as Will's version.
To drive the point home, THE SPIRIT, despite any accidental impression left by that kickass teaser-trailer, is a full-color movie. SIN CITY—and I hope to make of it a movie trilogy all its own, come Hell and high water—is, visually, a playhouse for black and white.
THE SPIRIT's been one hell of an adventure, one that's made me love the world of comics more than ever.
I'm confident that it's going to be one hell of a good movie.
FM
Lord forbid we have to wait until tomorrow! Thanks to SHH! and GeeksOfDoom.
31.5.08
For New God's sake, stay out of the shadows!
Hey there, peeps, this is my first blog post, ever, and I guess I’ll start by talking about two things important to me: comics and Doctor Who.
I’ll talk about comics first. Personally, I’m more of a DC fan than Marvel, and Secret Invasion hasn’t got me that thrilled. Final Crisis, however, does. Trying to forget the joke that was Countdown (It had it’s moments, but the story felt like: Let’s throw all these people together and pull stuff out of our asses as we go along), I went into the first issue fully expecting to know what’s going on…and boy was I wrong. I mean…I could follow the events, but half the characters I didn’t know. Who the hell is Metron? And who the hell is Libra. I read DC Universe 0, and he appears to just come out of nowhere, saying I’m all powerful and you should follow me. Then he boomtubes J’onn J’onnz (spoilers, sorry!) into his little hideout, and torches him. I thought Martian Manhunter went out like a chump, he didn’t even have some awesome final words. The use of Turpin I thought was weird…he’s a great character( I cried when he was killed in Superman TAS) and I guess his link with Darkseid in that show kinda leaks into Final Crisis here. In the cartoon, Turpin takes Darkseids Omega Beams for Supes. In Final Crisis, Turpin goes to the Dark Side Club (Cute, Morrison, Cute…) and speaks to Darkseid, who is in some human form now after his crappy defeat by Jimmy Olsen ( : | ) and Orion.
Now…the part where I was really confused was Metron and Kamandi. I know nothing about Kamandi and Metron, other than they were both created by Jack Kirby.
And the Monitor becoming Human…I was confused about that at first. I couldn’t figure out who this weird guy was until I looked at his hair.
It’s very well written, but still incredibly confusing. And this being the “Final Crisis” (Final my ass), this story can go anywhere…and this first issue really doesn’t tell us where just yet. It felt like seeing only a small, minute, fraction of a big, huge, massive story that doesn’t really have many issues left.
Now…for my second thing, Doctor Who. OH! How I love it…even the newer episodes, which a lot of people aren’t that fond of. I only started watching it last year, and totally fell in love with it (Well…Captain Jack mainly…I want to have Barrowman’s babies so bad, but I’ll save that explanation for another day). Anyway…I cheated, and I’ve already seen the newest episode that us Yanks will have to wait a few weeks for, and I must say it’s spectacular (I say that about anything with the Doctor, but this time I REALLY mean it). Moffat’s stories tend to play off fears. His first story, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, plays off of the fear of becoming a mother, I guess. The Girl in the Fireplace starts with a monster under the bed, literally. Blink plays off of the fear of the unknown, because the main characters of that episode weren’t even the Doctor and Martha, but Sally Sparrow, who really had no clue what was happening to her life. This new episode, The Silence in the Library, plays off of the fear of the darkness. It starts off with a little girl talking to her psychiatrist Doctor Moon, played by Colin Salmon. When the girl closes her eyes, she enters this massive library. The Doctor and Donna appear, and freak her out. She’s never seen anyone else in her library before.
This Library is an interesting concept, I think. Despite it being the 51st century, an entire planet is dedicated to books. Despite being so technologically advanced, where people can have things beamed into their head upon demand, they still take time to read a book.
Now...Spoilers is another big theme of the episode(s). The Doctor meets his future wife, River Song, played beautifully by Alex Kingston. She has this little book, which contains spoilers about the future of the Doctor and Donna.
She’s an archaeologist (WOOT!). Which leads me to the first time I’ve ever been offended by the show: After learning the professions of these intruders, he says he laughs at Archaeologists (WHAT?!). I wasn’t really offended, ‘cause I know that statement was all in good fun.
There was one scene which, honestly, nearly brought me to tears, and that was the death of
Miss Evangelista. Sure... she was a complete idiot, but she was an adorable idiot. She "ghosts", which means her little communicator saves her neural signal for a few minutes, and she basically talks from the dead. It brought poor Donna to tears, because she had befriended the girl not long before she died.
Anyway…There are a few cliffhangers I won’t spoil…and the reference to Rose is very subtle. Look for a picture of a blond girl on the little girl’s wall, with a wolf below it.
29.5.08
A Few Changes.
As you may have noticed, We've done a few changes to the site. We're no longer 100% devoted to the Spirit but I will still cover it closely, we will now cover just about anything related to the comic, sci-fi, or fantasy genre.
Also, The site has a few new bloggers so Welcome them with open arms!
Also, The site has a few new bloggers so Welcome them with open arms!
No news :(
There really hasn't been anything to report on so I'm starting to think about adding a podcast or maybe some other Bloggers to write for the site and give opinions. I may branch out and start covering other movies as well but I'm not exactly keen on that as this is the "officially un-official" Spirit Film Blog. I haven't really seen any new adverts printed or otherwise for the film but I did get a chance to see Iron Man 4 times (Great film, I recommend it) and Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull once, that movie was terrible in my humble opinion. I'll be back to post some more once I get the site in order.
16.5.08
Teaser Trailer updated
Nothing really new added just changing the release date.
Also: News is kind of slow, I didn't want any of you readers to think I've stopped posting updates.
Also: News is kind of slow, I didn't want any of you readers to think I've stopped posting updates.
12.5.08
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