JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

Many films that have recently inspired me (and my friends) have been from abroad (and not just old ones). A few are from countries whose film industries I was previously unaware of. Here are some (both sublime and ridiculous) that may be worth your time…

NIGHT WATCH is a Russian movie just being released in American theatres (just as the sequel is coming out in Russia) but I was lucky enough to see it on DVD in late 2004 via some friends who are hooked into the film scene abroad. It has provoked more excited discussion amongst my pals than any film since we first beheld the majesty of Shaolin Soccer.

The context for my first viewing of Night Watch was that a largish group of us were at Maverix Studios watching movies on their stylin’ video projector, it was late and we were getting ready to leave. Derek and Bosco said that they wanted to show us a sequence from another movie. We groaned; we were tired from watching a bunch of movies already. “Just the first 15 minutes” they said. We grudgingly relented and they played the film, and hit the pause button at the 15 minute point, as promised…. to HOWLS of protest from everyone present. We were all wide awake and on the hook now. We HAD to see the rest of the movie! That’s all I want to tell you about that film. If you don’t like the first 15 minutes (it’s not everyone’s cup of tea) you may as well leave the theatre. On the other hand, if you like the first 15 minutes then hold on tight; this film is for YOU and it won’t let you down.

Some of my recent favourites have been from Korea even though I had never seen a Korean movie before 2004. When watching them I am on the edge of my seat at all times and have no idea what is going to happen next. Perhaps it is because Korean storytelling conventions are different (and consequently unpredictable to me) or perhaps part of the reason for these films’ impact is that I had not been exposed to any desensitizing hype?

OLD BOY is hard to describe without giving anything away. It would be criminal to expose the compelling plot or it’s weird twists and turns. The performance of Choi Min-Sik is absolutely superb; He’ll shock you, inspire your pity, disgust, and amusement… He’ll take you on an excrutiating emotional journey… it is a real workout, an emotional stair-master. There’s talk of an American remake of Old Boy and though the eagerness to mine the gold in this film is understandable, I cannot imagine it working as well as the original.

SAVE THE GREEN PLANET is another Korean Movie full of insanely intense emotional moments. Without spoiling anything, this film is about an eccentric trying to save the world. It will take you to weird and worrying places, and you’ll want to give your harried soul a warm bath when it’s over. At the mid point of this film, despite being absolutely enthralled, I had no clear idea of; 1) what was going to happen next, 2) what the film was about, or even 3) who I was rooting for, as all the characters were equally appalling and sympathetic.

From what little I know of the Robert Mckee ideas of story-structure, that should be a No-No; by the mid point of the film I SHOULD know what the film is about, who I’m rooting for, what his problem is and what he is looking for… But with many of these Korean films I’ve seen the story rules go out the window… but I love them.

JSA (AKA: “Joint Security Area“) takes place in the “no-mans land” between North and South Korea, and deals with the guards on either side who can clearly see the individuals on the opposing side of the border. In talking with Bosco about the moral ambiguities cleverly threaded into this, and other Korean films, we wondered if the complexities of the North/South split of that country may explain the ambivalent shadings of “good-guy” and “bad-guy” in some of the better Korean movies that we have seen.

Honorable mentions go to two other Korean films that I enjoyed, even though they were not as original as the ones already mentioned. “NATURAL CITY” has been described as a “Korean Blade Runner” in that it is set in a future where there are synthetic humans and the protagonist falls in love with a beautiful synthetic woman. “A TALE OF TWO SISTERS” is a gorgeously filmed taught psychological thriller with horror movie undertones (or is it the other way around?).

On my list of Korean films yet to see (recommended by John Stevenson, who turned us onto these films in the first place) are “SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE” and “A BITTERSWEET LIFE.” Those titles tell me to expect more mental punishment, Korean-style….

If you have a taste for something less high faluting (or emotionally harrowing) in a foriegn film, then you cannot falut any closer to the ground than “Turkish Star Wars” and “Turkish Spiderman” (AKA: “3 Dev Adam“). It is hard to find a “proper” copy of these films but don’t feel guilty for watching the grainy bootlegs (available for purchase on the internet) as the films themselves are hilariously bad ripoffs of other films.

In “Turkish Star Wars” they have swiped entire FX scenes from “STAR WARS” (the real one) which cut the effects budget down to… about $4.95 (or whatever a “Star Wars” VCR Bootleg costs in Instanbul). In the space-battle scenes, a grim Turkish “space-pilot” sits, wearing a natty Vespa helmet and Walkman headphones, while the world famous “Death Star” sequence is projected on a wall behind him, scene cuts intact.

At least the producers of “Turkish Spiderman” shelled out the money to make their own Spiderman costume (complete with scary eyebrows on the outside of the suit) which is worn by a squat pear-shaped man who has the inspiration of playing Spiderman as a knife-wielding villain… The highlight of this pulse-punding epic is seeing a chunky Captain America and a flabby El Santo teaming up to fight villainous potbellied Turkish Spidey in some pretty vigourous punch-ups where all kinds of 1970’s furniture gets smashed. It is certainly a lot easier to get those cross-over dream-teams to work when international copyright law isn’t an issue…
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Still on the subject of movies, a yet to be released American cartoon this time, the latest trailer for Open season is online and getting a good reaction from most people, including righteous animal lovers and hunter haters. Check out this thread on an VEGANS forum. For contrast, see the indignation being hosed around in the hunters forum.

This pic illustrates a limerick based on a news story about the elephants having to leave London Zoo after crushing one of their handlers….

Bold Brian Kalin-O’Connell has recently wrought a powerful picture of Rocket Rabbit dodging disaster; a snarling, super-sized simian! I’ve already had the pleasure of seeing a few people do pin-ups of NAUTI GIRL (which you can see in my COMICS section under the “Pinup gallery” link) but not too many people (apart from my nephews) have had a crack at drawing Rocket. Perhaps Brian will inspire a few more?

To behold the full-size majesty of this super pin-up, get on over to Brian’s Blog and click on the small sized preview he has posted there. And while you are over there, don’t forget to look around and see more of Brian’s artwork.

I’ll copy this sketch onto Canson paper and go over it with colour pencil and some gouache.
I’m trying some different art styles and techniques for each of the illustrations, so that all these pics of elephants don’t get boring for me to draw, or repetitive for the reader to look at. The title of the book is going to be “Elephants in the news” as all the limericks are based on stories that my Dad (and his friends) cut from newspapers over the past few years.

Having been labelled pretentious for posting about Fellini, (and by an Italian no less) I’m now in tactical retreat back to lowbrow territory with a post about comics. Specifically Wondercon 2006, (AKA: the Nerd Prom) which I exhibited at this last weekend.

When exhibiting at conventions, Nerve Bomb international has been affiliated with the Abismo multimedia giant for the past few years. However on this particular occasion, Abismo CEO and CFO Mr Rhode Montijo, was attending to urgent affairs abroad, and so the fabulous Ms. Michelle Ritchie came along to move product in his stead.

The Bizniss:
There was a great reaction to the advance copy of Rhode’s latest book, CLOUD BOY. It was a tractor beam; stopping people in their tracks and reeling them in with its magnetic powers of cuteness. Everyone familiar with Rhode’s oeuvre agreed that this book is a huge creative breakthrough for him, because although it continues his focus on cute characters, this one doesn’t get murdered, mutilated, maimed or mauled by the end of the story.

Sales of Nerve Bomb titles were lower than last year, even though Saturday was so crowded that potential attendees were turned away at the door. I assume that my entire customer base was amongst those turned away. It has always been a mystery why sales are better some days than others. The calculus of sales are influenced by so many factors: attendance, booth-placement, booth-layout, sales-pitch, quality of display, quality of material and whether I have a shitty look on my face, or not.

The People:
But for me the cons are not only about selling my books (just as well, eh?). I also go in order to buy other stuff and to socialise, not only with people I get to see around town (such as Nate, Ted, the Ghostbots, the Maverix, Enrico, Ronnie and Tess), but all kinds of fun, cool, and crazy folks that I don’t see anyplace else but at cons (such as Mark and Anne, Ragnar, George, Amelia, and others). Where else can you chat with Spiderman and his Dad?

Although he was away for the con itself, the night before the show Rhode morphed into a Roadie, and helped setup the Abismo/Nerve Bomb booth, which is when we met the folks from Steam Crow. Thankfully, they took this photo (below) that provides documentary evidence that Rhode was physically present for at least part of Wondercon 2006. As you can see in this pic, Daniel is ready for action and that pumped up ‘tude is evident in the Steam Crow art and their fine booth display. The booth especially so, considering that this was their first show. I still haven’t got a nice vinyl banner, after a few years doing these things…

Socialising got off to a great start this year when I found out that we were sitting next to Rafael Navarro (who is also in that category of good friends who I only see at cons). This year Raf introduced me to some of his cronies, Mike Wellman and Joshua Dysart. The three of them lounged around like lazy rockstars strumming guitars, while waiting for their hangovers to wear out, occasionally leaping up to serenade any passing ladies with a pitch about their comics, and then languidly slouching back in their chairs again.

On the Friday evening a whole gang of us (including Mark and Anne, Rafa, Mike, myself and more) went out for Hunan Food. We managed to find a table that would seat about 10 of us in a place (the always good “Henry’s Hunan”) that would tolerate our loud, obnoxious conversations about a broad spectrum of assinine subjects.

Ms Monster and the B-minus crew graced me with their presence at my booth, (for photo evidence, see below) and I got to feel validated by their cool a few times during the weekend. Also I had quite a few fun and interesting chats with people who’s names I didn’t catch; just people who bought something and stayed to talk for a while, and that was a really fun aspect of the show for me this year. So thanks a lot to all you folks for coming by.

Early one morning, before the doors opened, I got talking to Stuart Ng at his booth. He told me of his recent trip to the Angouleme comics festival in France, and his meetings with the artists and publishers there. I droned on about European graphic novels and my desire that more of them would be translated into English and distributed more widely in the English speaking world. To thank Stuart for patiently tolerating my bending his ear, I then bought almost my entire swag of stuff from his booth… As I said before, buying books was on my list of things to do. So without further ado here is…

The Swag:
“Claire de Nuit” is by one of my favourites, mr Jordi Bernet. This is a French collection of his strips about a cute streetwalker (”Clara de Noche” in the original Spanish) who is reminiscent of the pinup icon Bettie Page. (in English translations the character is called “Betty by the hour”). The art style is more cartoony than Bernet uses in other titles, such as “Torpedo” and the drawings are so full of appeal that he makes hooking seem wholesome and fun, so this book requires a lot of suspension of disbelief and certainly isn’t for everyone.

“Tao Bang” is an epic comics series that feels like an over the top fantasy film. The formula for a Gomer piece of popular culture is, any two fanboy obsessions plus sexy girls, so the recipe for this book is: pirates+dinosaurs+sexy girls=Tao Bang. The artwork is a superb collaboration between Fred Blanchard and a fellow I once worked with, the super talented Didier Cassegrain. Years ago, at the Paris Disney studio, he would distract the rest of us layout artists with his drawings of beautiful girls (usually featuring curvacious bottoms).

“les Lumieres de L’Amalou” by Claire Wendling. I’ve had my eye on this series of beautiful comics albums for a while, looking through the pages at cons before, but the cost of all 5 seemed exhorbitant. I finally broke down and bought the BIG album that collects the series. It was expensive but well worth it, as the art is simply amazing, page after page. Plus, at the slow speed that I read French, I have reading material to last me a year, so it wasn’t expensive at all, if I look at it like that… (rationalising guilty pleasures is one of my super-powers)

Without question Wendling is one of my all time favourite artists and she has exerted her influence on many others as well, including an artist I had never heard of before, but whose brilliant work I became acquainted with at this year’s Wondercon….

“AYANIMEYA”, the beautiful colour sketchbook by Alina Urusov, was the prize find of the show for me this year, and I recommended it to everyone that I could. The range and depth of her drawing skill immediately blew me away, but when I found out that she is a recent graduate from Sheridan college and is about 20 years old, It didn’t only blow my mind; It made me want to blow out my brains. But I quickly thought better of that particular plan, instead, I went home broke all my pens and pencils, threw my art supplies out the window, then set my portfolio on fire and danced around it in the nude, wailing and gnashing my teeth.

I’m hoping that in exchange for this ritual sacrifice, the gods of drawing talent will finally send me some… If not then I guess I’ll just have to do some more sketch practise…

For the past few years I’ve been posting about the elusive comics/animation artist Tony Salmons, both in this here blog (see posts here and here) and also on forums devoted to drawing (such as the DRAWING BOARD threads here and here.

A lot of people I know feel that Tony should be a lot more famous than he is, but part of the reason that more people don’t know about him is that there hasn’t been any one place where you can track the guy down and see his work (or even send him work) as he moves around a lot from place to place, and from industry to industry.

However that may be about to change, as the man finally has a site of his own where you can get all the Salmons you need in one hit. And if you still want more you’ll be able to contact the mysterious man himself for some commisssions.

The site is still under construction, but the best part, the art galleries, are already there; a very tasty two of them hilariously labelled “babes” and “brutes.” If you are a fan of fearless pen and brush work then get your bad self over to the official Tony Salmons website right now and start clicking!

This sketch illustrates a limerick about a beauty pageant for large ladies which is held each year in Thailand. The winner gets to be called Miss Jumbo Queen. No, really!
This contest was featured in a Thai comedy movie made in 2004. Here is the official site of the contest.
UPDATE: The finished COLOUR piece is HERE.

Yes! Rocket Rabbit is now a REGISTERED Trademark. Which means that he can not only throw a ™ around, but an ® as well. Which looks flashier on “cease and desist” letters.

I had long ago thought it may be a good idea to protect the name of my favourite character, because it is exactly the kind of aliterative moniker someone else could easily hit upon for a cartoon character (or for that matter a vacuum cleaner). But, like a lot of my flashes of insight, that idea was put on the back-burner… Until I found out that somebody else WAS trying to register the “Rocket Rabbit” trademark for themselves a year or two ago.

So, Rocket had to fight what may have been his most dramatic battle ever, with the help of a fill-in sidekick called LEGAL EAGLE (as The Professor was away on vacation). Using my money as freely as ammunition, the two of them prevailed in the end and Rocket prevented someone else from sullying his good name. Then Legal Eagle registered the trademark, so now “Rocket Rabbit” is well and truly protected by an in-penetrable shield of legalese.

I offer this story to anyone out there who has contemplated getting a trademark for one of their characters, but has put it off because of the expense. It is true that it is a little pricey, but I can tell you that it is much cheaper if you don’t have to dispute some else’s claim first. You can file to register a trademark yourself if you want to save some money, but I was glad to have someone to help navigate me though the process.

I have also benefited greatly from my membership in the Bay Area chapter of Lawyers for the Arts. They have chapters all over California, where they hold frequent seminars on Intellectual Property Law and other issues of interest to artists, illustrators and musicians.