Thursday, May 29, 2014

Popeye Post Card


New postcard to a friend who doesn't know about this site.

New Post Card




I made this postcard a while ago and forgot to post it because after I made it with the intention of sending it to a friend and family member, my girlfriend, Jess, liked it so much I gave it to her. 
It's got a frame on it now as you can see that Jess picked out and I think it goes really well with it.





Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Rarebit Post Card


I used old Winsor McCay illustrations to make this postcard for my sister

Saturday, May 10, 2014

The Amazing Spiderman 2 Review

 BE WARNED HERE BE SPOILERS!!!!!
I won't take you through every minute of the film but here are the notable points.  I'll say first that I bet it's really hard for the writers to have to start up a franchise and not only have a first movie out but a sequel to that movie within seven years of one of the worst super hero movies of all time.  The general public is pretty knowledgeable on this franchise.  On one hand you have people that want you to stick to the comic origin and on the other you have the fans of the first two SM movies from the 2000's and let's just not talk about the third movie (just like the 2014 Superbowl).
The whole thing felt rushed.  Which is something considering it's 2 HRS and 15MIN.   Even the trailer gave illusions to different storylines (like Norman Osborne talking directly to Harry about taking down Peter Parker when in the movie Norman dies after one scene) so it makes you question when did they actually finalize the plot? They must have jumped back and forth so much in every stage of development the result is something that makes good scenes hard to remember and bad scenes linger and linger and linger.

The theater didn't make a peep when I saw it, none of the jokes landed and it really made me miss Sam Rami's first two films.  Remember when Doc Oc ripped off the safe door and grabs bags of cash and coins with huge dollar signs on them?  That was perfect!  It looks like a comic and the fight scene was amazing.  That's what most of us are there for!  Gimme that and lots of... that!
Maybe I'm  idolizing those movies a bit too much because they certainly had their flaws but when this film really began with Paul Giamatti as a Russian mobster tearing through the streets,*  it felt like there was no force behind anything because everything was CGI and Peter's banter was off putting. Even though Garfield does a good spiderman in that first sequence he's acting like a middle-schooler.

From the start there was just too much going on for any one scene to have any sort of resonance.  Marc Webb seems to like to give his protagonist actors room to breath and improvise but the result in this movie was waaaay too many scenes with Peter and Gwen just looking awkward in front of each other. So imagine all of those mushy/break up scenes in addition to : Aunt May's storyline where she's bumbling through everything (AND YES, she has a speech where she uplifts Peter's spirits AGAIN while moving things into boxes AGAIN to get peter  back to being spider-man without knowing he is : "If i could talk to spiderman I would tell that kid..." ughhhh Aunt May) , Harry Osborne's entire origin story to becoming Green Goblin along with Norman Osbornes life and death, Max Dillard's entire storyline in becoming Electo, teasing to Rhino and we see him fight for all of 2 minutes at the end (he does look awesome though), Peter's struggles with Captain Stacey's memory (Denis Leary's easiest paycheck hands down,  3 or 4 scenes where his memory looks menacingly at peter, that's it, that a wrap! ) , Peter discovers the truth about his parents disappearance and a his work at Oscorp... and his fathers underground secret subway laboratory (Hmmmm...Ok),  and then two or three fight scenes of course between spidey and the baddies.  Does that sound like a lot? because it was.

There were literally 4 scenes where P and G get together and break up and then they do a flash back when SPOILER Gwen dies at the end.  Like we needed to be reminded of her when it felt like she had way more time on screen than Electro.  So while the first movie was about lizards taking over manhattan, it had an underlying plot with Captain Stacey saying stay away from my daughter to peter.  UNDERLYING.  This movie though was about Gwen's death.  We led up to it the whole time and then after we dealt with it's meaning to Peter.  Oh and then I guess the movie was also about the formation of new bad guys.  I understand they want to make the sinister 6 happen but holy crap do they have to make it happen in the next movie? It would have been awesome if electro had this movie to himself, they proved with the special effects he's a really cool character and Jamie Fox has the chops to delve even deeper. It took 4 movies (two Ironmans, a Thor and a Captain America) to get to the Avengers and if we're trying to get to do the same for the villains in the Sinister Six, considering the villain in the first film, The Lizard, is not a part of the Sinister Six, maybe we could pace ourselves a little!  But I guess they can make the 6 villains whoever they want so who knows.
As far as they're costumes go - they all looked pretty cool.  Anybody who says Electro should have had the big rays on top of his head is kidding themselves, while I'd love to see it... just to see it in real life, Jamie Fox radiating blue in a hoodie/un-explained-spandex costume looked awesome.  His transformation to electro fixed his teeth which I guess makes sense if he can evaporate. Then I already mentioned Rhino looking good. The suit of metal armor instead of trying make a rhino skin like material, was also a good choice. (insert any photo of THE THING in a movie ever here if you don't believe me).  Then the Green goblins costume was the least exiting of the three but still fun.  They also decided to go against the comic look, a guy who's face/mask looks much more like the wicked witch, and instead went with a smiley greying Heat Miser with cracked teeth. I thought it was less exiting because he lacked any sort of storyline to GET the suit.  It just happened to be there. He ate some bad venom (is there good venom?) and then he just crawled to it.  We've now established that there are a ton of other suits being manufactured like the vultures wigs and Oc's arms so he could have just crawled to any of them for that matter.  How's that for an origin story "yeah I guess that suit was the closest to me so..."   He's got bombs apparently that he knows how to use.  I know that is part of the character but he went from 0 - 60 in no freaking time, and to that point, he becomes Goblin, fights spidey just after electro did and then gets knocked out.  I've read there were a ton of alternate scenes with Harry but what we're left with is the quickest rise and fall of a villain I've ever seen. 
Let's talk about Dane DeHaan real quick.  I liked him in Chronicle and I thought he was pretty good in this but anybody who's being compared to Willem Dafoe has a tough job.  Technically HARRY was played by James Franco in the other films, in which case DeHaan was perfect for the role and a much better choice than Franco in my opinion, but the villain GREEN Goblin was Dafoes role not Francos and differs from the two soon to be trilogies.  So in that way it's hard not to watch it without seeing Dafoes amazingly expressive face looming in my mind, but DeHaan does creepy really well so it was all good.
Random note:
What the hell was that Dr. Kafka guy?  He's only on the screen for 5 minutes so understandably he's over the top but because we didn't see more of his character, all we do see is what looks like a German Doctor who looks like an extra in Madona's Vogue music video, who's sado masochistic and who surrounds himself with effeminate goons.  What the hell was that!  Am I supposed to feel good when he's killed? Because all I felt was weird.

All in all this was a fine movie.  Just fine. Overall Sony bit off way more than they can chew.... again.

*Is it just me or did a ton of people die in that car chase?  Those cars were totaled by a semi and we're just going to assume nobody was in them... driving...in an intersection.  But everybody says spidey saved the day, so ok.