Odds & Ends
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Star Trek: Rebooted
Ain't It Cool brought my attention to this post by writer Bryce Zabel about the treatment he wrote with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski to "re-boot" Star Trek. You should read the treatment yourself, if you're interested, but basically it involved starting from scratch, and doing a new television series about the original characters (Kirk, Spock, et al) on their five year voyage. Effectively, it's giving Star Trek the Batman Begins treatment, which seems all the rage these days (what with Superman Returns and Casino Royale both on the way). As described by Straczynski and Zabel, it's a fascinating idea. What really struck me was that whereas very other Trek incarnation has based the franchise around the universe (so that each new series covers different periods and events in a consistent chronology), this one bases everything around the original series characters and throws everything else out. In other words, the key to Trek is defined as being Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest, just as other franchises rotate around - and occasionally recast and reimagine - their lead characters (Superman, Batman, James Bond, etc). As interesting as it would have been to see this, at the end of the day I don't really buy it. Firstly, Kirk is William Shatner and Spock is Leonard Nimoy and Bones is DeForest Kelley. Those characters were defined by the actors who played them - often because the writing was pretty thin, frankly - and I don't think it would be a very productive exercise recasting them. (I think J.J. Abrams' mooted "young Kirk" project is a doomed exercise for much the same reason). The other thing is that for all Straczynski and Zabel's optimism about a "fresh take" on the format, I'm just not sure there's much more that can be done with the "starship cruising the universe" format. There have been an incredible twenty-nine series of Trek all up (including the animated series), which have picked over a lot of narrative ground. If you've watched a series or two of Trek, you've seen a lot of variations on pretty much every kind of story you can build into that format. As I alluded to in my review of Star Trek: Nemesis, I think the future of Trek lies in taking a break, letting demand build, and then returning with a decently budgeted feature film that had some real scope to it. Given the series some real grandeur and mystique, rather than having it constantly accessible in multiple versions that retread the original format, would be a much better way to "reboot." ...While I'm on Star Trek, there is one other thing I wanted to post - with a quick disclaimer. Below is a link to Master Replica's reproduction of the original Enterprise model, which you can click for more details. The disclaimer is that yes, this is obviously an ad. But I only get money if you buy it, not just for clicking through, and given the obscene cost (too horrific to repeat here) I wouldn't advocate you doing so. But if you're a Trek fan you should click it and salivate a little. I'm in nerd nirvana when I look at that thing. While I'm not a huge fan of the original series of Trek, I love the design of the original Enterprise. One of my fondest memories of my trip to Washington DC in 2002 was coming across the original TV model in a glass case at the back of the Air and Space Museum gift shop. It really is an amazing site, and was - embarrassingly - the highlight of the museum for me. (Wright Flyer? Bah!) So when is Lego going to sign a Star Trek licence? A Lego Starship Enterprise would go beautifully with their Imperial Star Destroyer. There is this thing:   But unfortunately it's actually made from Megablocks, the Lego for parents who don't love their children. Labels: rumours Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 24.6.06 - 1 comments  
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Now for Apocalypse Now Redux, Redux
Ain't It Cool have a very cool video showing the process used to create a three-dimensional Marlon Brando for Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, using the old footage from Richard Donner's 1978 movie. While you have to suspect there would have been simpler ways to achieve much the same effect, it's still pretty nifty.  Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 21.6.06 - 0 comments
At Least It Isn't Speedy vs Daffy
Thad Komorowski, over at Animation ID, has posted the five Larry Doyle-produced Looney Tunes that were made but never released a few years ago (here). Larry Doyle was an ex-Simpsons writer who was hired by Warner Bros to produce these shorts, and he picked up a whole lot of writers from The Simpsons and the then-recently-axed Family Guy to assist. Six shorts have now surfaced: The Wizard of Ow (with the Road Runner), My Generation G-G-Gap (Porky), Museum Scream (Tweety and Sylvester), Cock-a-Doodle Duel (Foghorn Leghorn), Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas (Bugs), and Attack of the Drones (with Daffy). Only The Wizard of Ow was ever widely seen: the others were quietly shelved. Larry Doyle tells his side of the story, in an interview dating from before the series was scrapped, here. Komorowski calls them the "worst Looney Tunes ever," arguing that they are worse than the Daffy vs Speedy cartoons produced in the 1960s, or the Rudy Larriva-directed Road Runner shorts from the same era. Which isn't true - those cartoons really are just about unwatchable - but certainly most of them are pretty bad, and you can see why Warner Bros wouldn't give them a proper release (they slipped out in Australia on a bonus disk with selected editions of Looney Tunes - Back In Action). The comments to Komorowski's post are full of derogatory comments about what happens when TV people try to do theatrical animation, and are generally pretty insulting to those involved. I think its better to look on these shorts as a cautionary tale: the interview linked above shows Doyle had the right sort of ideas about what he should be going for, and he assembled some talented people, but the results show just how hard it is to emulate the classic Looney Tunes. After all, they spent most of the thirties making Looney Tunes before the first good ones started to appear. Doyle's group, by contrast, was being asked to produce good cartoons straight away and use beloved characters others had created and work without anywhere near as good animators and overcome the fact that we know the originals so intimately and manage without the original voice talent and deal with much more studio interference and second-guessing than the original staff and try to live up to the legacy of the several of best animation directors ever... So let's just say they failed at a supremely difficult task.  However, there is a bit of a diamond in the rough here, and that is the Daffy Duck short, Attack of the Drones. I don't want to oversell this, either, but it's pretty good, and deserves much more credit than Komorowski gives it. Directed by Simpsons and Futurama veteran Rich Moore, the timing of the gags is much sharper than the other shorts, and the animation better across-the-board. There's even a variation on the age-old mirror-that-isn't-a-mirror routine. It isn't really a Looney Tune, so much as the strange bastard child of a drunken one night stand between Duck Dodgers and Futurama. But as a fan of both, I'm happy with that. And as a Star Wars fan, I had to laugh at Moore's take on the opening credits for the Star Wars films, which references the infamous opening lines of The Phantoim Menace: A complex trade negotiation threatens to bog down as three distinct federations of interstellar actuaries blah blah blah blah blah...If only that were really how Phantom Menace started. One footnote to this is that the list of shorts that were started but never finished includes a short called Guess Who's Coming to Meet the Parents. The concept: "Bugs brings a squirrel home to dinner. His mother disapproves." With plots like that, perhaps it is just as well the plug was pulled - the strange, limited virtues of Attack of the Drones notwithstanding. Labels: animation Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 21.6.06 - 0 comments
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Clampett vs. Jones
Noted animation historian Michael Barrier has posted a couple of pieces by his long time collaborator Milt Gray on his website. One is a piece on Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs which is merely okay (it gets too distracted by the whole argument about the film's racism, or lack of it, while adding too little to that discussion), but the other is a fantastic essay about Bob Clampett, which you can read here. Gray's essay - informed by his encounters with Clampett and other figures from animation's golden age - is the most illuminating piece I've read about the long time feud between the two great Warner Bros. cartoon directors, Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones. (My own piece on Clampett is here). It is fascinating reading for anyone even slightly interested in animation, but in the context of my recent commentary about Star Wars, I was also struck by this comment: On a few occasions, Benny [Washam, one of Chuck Jones' animators] was quite specific that if Chuck could have his way, all the Warner cartoons made before 1948 would be destroyed forever. I realized immediately what that meant: All the great Clampett and Tashlin Warner cartoons would become unknown, as well as all of Chuck's second-rate early works.In internet discussions about preservation of the Star Wars films, you'll often come across people arguing that they're George Lucas' films, and he can do what he wants with them. The above comment is a reminder that what artists think in later years about their own work cannot be an infallible guide as to what is important and warrants preservation. Labels: animation Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 1.6.06 - 0 comments
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