April is shaping up to be an insane month. I've got a lot of family commitments, including my cousin's wedding, and I'm not even sure if I'll be able to go to Boston Comicon at all! This is the point where I'm going to have to start posting things whenever I can instead of regularly.
So because this may be the last new post for (horrors) a week or two, I've got a special treat. I've talked about this documentary a lot in the past but I do not think I ever sat down to watch it in full to discuss it in detail. Well, it's late at night and I'm bored, so...
When I was about seven years old, this show melted my face off. Now I wasn't keen on the old movie footage (mostly because I didn't know who Ray Harryhausen was yet) or the scenes where Christopher Reeve is walking around in the museum or even the interviews with the paleontologists. Nope, I was AAAAaaaall about Phil Tippet's animation. And hot dog, does it look better than like 70% of the effects in feature films today.
More importantly, this was the first piece of animation I ever saw where the dinosaurs were allowed to act like normal animals in their own environment instead of some kind of fantastic monsters out to kill all humans. This probably doesn't seem like a big deal today. Indeed, around last year, dinosaur-involving media had got to the state where "Dinosaur Revolution" was controversial because -horrors- some of the animation was exaggerated and silly. But it was downright flabbergasting to my young mind and I loved the film for it.
Other fun things to notice:
* - The aforementioned vintage film clips. They run the gamut from stone-cold classics like "The Lost World" and "King Kong" to some of the aforementioned Ray Harryhausen's stranger offerings to... not-so-classic things like the weird remake of "Gertie the Dinosaur", "Baby", and "Caveman".
* - The interviews with all the paleontologists, mostly because everyone is so young!
* - The school group making stop-motion animated films. Holy cow, they are so quotable. "Brontosaurus is a sweet guy". Indeed.
* - Overall, the reminder of what dinosaur popular culture was like in a pre-"Jurassic Park" world. I kind of want to build some fanciful animals out of repurposed scraps of metal, don't you?
* - Most notably, this documentary takes a turn for the very strange in the last twenty minutes or so:
In quick succession, there is a long discussion of cryptozoological animals that MIGHT be dinosaurs but probably aren't, and anyway plesiosaurs aren't dinosaurs and we just heard Bob Bakker explain that sauropods do not work that way so never mind. Then there is the very briefest mention possible of the dinosaur-bird connection. This is ended as swiftly as possible so that Dale Russel can talk about your friends and mine, the Dinosauroid.
So, basically, "Okay there MIGHT be real dinosaurs around today and that would be awesome except that the two ones we're talking about here are probably mythical creatures. Oh wait, yeah, birds are dinosaurs, so there's that. But since nobody could possibly wish for that to be elaborated on here in 1985 when it is still a pretty mind-blowing concept, let's talk to this dude about his deeply embarrassing Human Alien thing!"
I'll tell you up front, I wasn't kidding when I said this was the most frustrating of all the books I've reviewed for Retro-Paleoart Month. There may be some foul language ahead. The awful, awful full title of the book in question is Raptors! The Nastiest Dinosaurs, and it's written by Don Lessem, published in 1996 by Little, Brown and Company.
What'd I tell ya?
For those wondering what the big deal is, the maniraptors throughout the book - and this is especially remarkable when you read the introduction and find that the whole impetus is "Jurassic Park" - are exhaustively researched and anatomically accurate. The book does not do the usual "F*** it; let's just copy 'Jurassic Park' again" approach, nor does it contain a single 80's HMNH style maniraptor (big and burly, huge head, skinny little kangaroo hands), like we've been seeing all month. This is unspeakably refreshing. My gosh, they have propatagia (that gross tendon-thing on the leading edge of the wing you're not sure whether you should eat or not). They have propatagia!!!
There's just one tiny little problem...
All of the Maniraptors are bare-ass naked.
And that's a damn shame. A big, damn shame. Because the art is really really good. The painter went all out in making his 'raptors as avian as possible, posing them like badass birds of prey. And then no feathers. Not a stitch (or filament, whatever.)
The "fun" begins right on the front cover. I mean, what do you even do with a book like this? What do you...
Hold the gorram phone. David Peters?!? David PETERS?!?!? Holy crap, David Peters! David Peters, you magnificent bastard!
And yes, it is THAT David Peters (as per a helpful comment in the Nemo Ramjet piece I am about to link to in a couple of paragraphs)! Hahaha, oh, WOW, David Peters...
Hoo. Okay. Some of you probably do not know who David Peters is; I will tell you.
David Peters was once a very accomplished dinosaur artist, but today he no longer paints much. He is now notorious for having some theories about pterosaur anatomy and biology that are... very different. Many would argue that they approach the "This no longer looks like an actual animal that could have actually existed on this planet" level of different. Interpretations of his theories can be seen here and here. Have a strong drink ready.
So now that we know who illustrated the book, that makes some of the maniraptor appearances... more confusing, really. See, Peters' rather controversial methods include interpreting every little mark or stain surrounding a fossil animal as *part* of the animal.
So why is Archaeopteryx naked? Archaeopteryx, the one feathered raptor even the scaly raptor fanboys can't deny. WHY IS SHE NAKED?!? Why why why?
OK, I can't bear to bang my head against the desk anymore, so lets just end here with the funniest illustration in the book:
"Aw! I just bit Marvin in the face!!!"
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: The PaleoKing has a major update relevant to this blog post and I will not ruin the fun by explaining any further. Go there now, dear reader! (And now I have more books to look for.)
ANOTHER UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: Oh Em Gee, just... just read the comments. ----
Sketch of the Day!
Well, older art. Since it needs to be emphasized:
Teal Deer: Naked 'raptors look stupid. They do. You B.A.N.D. types need to get over it. (Addendum: I love you, Pristichampsus.)
(Although looking at this piece, which I dashed off while in kind of an emotional state, I may have to do the George Lucas thing to it...)
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Other Person's Art of the Day!
Phil Tippet has a YouTube Channel, and he has been sharing some of his early "Go Motion" work. One of his best-loved recent uploads is "Prehistoric Beast", which Tippet made to basically show off what he can do with metal, foam rubber, and plastic flowers. This is the first time I've seen this piece in it's entirety and... wow... WOW!
Additionally, some of the stop-motion work of the Chiodo brothers (they're best known for the all-too-brief analogue animated sequences in "Elf") has popped up on YouTube. This sequence is from an educational videotape called "Son of Dinosaur", and it is pretty much the cutest thing ever.
Squee! I want one!
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Announcement: Boston Comicon is this weekend!
Yeah, I think I'm ready for it. I'm not sure when the next update will be, which is why the last few posts have been rather "meaty". Wish me luck!
First off, we've had a bit of a crisis at ArtEvolved, but it looks like it will have a happy ending. Glendon Mellow did a fine recap of Monday's events here, and if you are a Deviant Art member, you can still help us.
I also want to re-re-emphasize something in that link. On behalf of all illustrators, if you like our art and you want to use it then please don't be afraid to just ask us!
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With David Fincher in the news with "The Social Network" (aka, "Call it 'That Facebook Movie' One More Time and I Will Hit You as Hard as I Can"), and me needing an excuse to finally show some love to the "Alien" film series, I decided it was high time to revisit Fincher's first feature-length film. It was time to see what the altered cut of "Alien 3" (available on the excellent "Quadrilogy" set and -yes!- for rental through Netflix) was all about.
Shamelessly copy-pasted from IMDB: "In December, 2003, the 'ALIEN QUADRILOGY' boxset was released with a newly created cut of 'Alien 3' entitled 'the assembly cut.' It attempts to reconstruct David Fincher's workprint (which the studio balked at), but goes one step further and adds color correction and remixed 5.1 sound. Several scenes, however, suffer from poor on-set audio quality (mostly due to the use of fog machines and steam which obscures on-set dialog). Optional subtitles transcript the dialog."
This is not a director's cut. Fincher considers this film to be his Old Shame, and did not participate in making the new version, although he approved of it. It's easy to understand why he has a hard time with this movie; if you were an "Alien" series fan in the early '90s, then you may recall that this film's production was... troubled.
The surprisingly frank bonus disk (also Netflixable) tells the long, strange story over nearly three hours worth of special features. To start with, there were several wildly different ideas for the film kicked around in the late '80s. Four of these made it to script form:
William Gibson's script is probably the most famous but is barely acknowledged in the special features here for some reason. It involved several ideas that would later show up in the fourth film (Xenomorph-human hybrids) and the comic (more fun with Hicks and Newt!)
David "Pitch Black" Twohy wrote a version that introduced the concept of a prison planet...
And Vincent Ward's script turned the prison into a monastery (these ideas would be rather bashed together in the final film). The DVD spends a lot of time with this version, possibly because it has the most surviving pre-production material. This version would have been extremely surreal, with horrifying nightmare sequences.
Turns out the theatrical cut of "Alien 3" began filming with no script at all; just all these half-formed ideas hovering around. The result was a movie that -even the cast and crew admit this on the DVD- isn't very likable.
Fincher is not to blame, however. I can tell when a director has been assigned a movie that has been in development hell for years and years, because the director will usually be, like, "F*** it". (As an example, I have a hard time blaming Tim Burton for "Planet of the Apes".) In this case, however, since there was no script and vast galloping herds of executives ready to meddle, it looks more like David Fincher was, like, "F*** you, Fox."
"Well, that was all very interesting, Trish, but what is the 'Assembly Cut' like?"
You should know that I've never seen the theatrical cut of this movie all the way through -- but I have seen enough of it (it's probably on FX right now). I could tell right away that the Assembly Cut was practically a completely different movie. Without spoilers, the opening sequence is very different, the closing sequence is slightly different, and there is a lot more character development. Heck, even the Alien itself becomes a more interesting character in this cut.
Though that brings us to special effects. Perhaps it is simply because it is, for all intents, the work print, but the animation simply does not hold up. However, I learned through the special features that the Alien here is not a CGI character at all ("Jurassic Park" was still a year away); it's actually a small puppet animated in a manner somewhat similar to Phil Tippett's Go-Motion creatures. In that respect, it could be considered the last of it's kind.
I should mention, for David Fincher fans who have not seen this film yet, that it is very, very dark even for him. Really, from the studio logo on, this movie is like the cure for joy. There is almost no humor at all in it and -- well, you may have heard that it has a sad ending...
However, it is a fascinating film to watch whether you are a curious Fincher fan or an "Alien" series fan who was disappointed in the theatrical cut. Just leave your pet ox out of the room when you watch it; your dog can stay though.
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Ye Art of Ye Day! So much text! Here is a very elaborate digital painting to make up for it.
I unfortunately need to start with a complete downer: Now we'll never know what would have happened in "The Breakfast Club: Monday Morning". :(
Now, If I'm remembering right, I'm pretty sure I have already mentioned one of my favorites from my childhood, the 1985 TV documentary "Dinosaur!" (not to be confused with the aforementioned Epic Fail, "Disney's Dinosaur".) This aired once on one of the (then) big three stations and was hosted by Christopher Reeve as he toured the pre-massive-update American Museum of Natural History in New York City.* "But, Trish," you ask, "why is this charmingly outdated dinosaur documentary relevant to this art/animation/pop culture blog?" I was just about to get to that. There are two fun parts to this particular doc. One is that it focuses more on the very unusual "dinosaurs in popular culture" angle. You don't see many people writing about this and it isn't like there's a lack of things to write about. But more interesting by far are the animated sequences:
Phil Tippett for the waffles. You think you're unfamiliar with Tippett, but you have, without a doubt, seen his work. And if you read over his very diverse filmography, you'll note that he loves all his "babies". Most notably, he perfected a variation on stop-motion animation called "Go-Motion". The technique utilizes a slight blur to achieve a somewhat more naturalistic movement. Originally, he was going to use this kind of animation in "Jurassic Park" and that's where the 'raptors come back in:
Woah. (At the same time, um... tongues? Well, it was very early in production and the character designs hadn't been finalized yet.) They did a few tests like this but ultimately decided to do a still-very-awesome-looking combination of (get a cold drink and a comfy seat) stop-motion augmented CGI, elaborate puppets, full-sized animatronics, and even people in suits a la classic "Godzilla". The fact that you really can't tell which is which even now tells you how awesome Tippett and his animation team really is. Heck, I'm still mourning the fact that we didn't get to see the rumored early proposal of "Disney's Dinosaur" that would have been animated by a team led by Tippet, would have had no dialogue at all, and would have been directed by Paul Verhoeven. Let me repeat that: a Paul Verhoeven Disney movie. With animation by Phil Tippet. And no talking. At all. Man, the world missed out on something Epic there. Epic Win or Epic Fail, we shall sadly never know. It also makes me wonder about this little slice of WTF...
* - I have a great tale of childhood woe to tell now that I've brought AMNH up. When I was a kid, my family and I visited New York City once. Only once. The post-massive-update Dinosaur Halls at AMNH were the one thing in the entire city I had any interest in seeing. We get to the museum on the last day of our trip. Guess what one part of the museum is closed? Go on!
Scarred. For. Life. All you kids who are sad because the things don't really come to life at night can bite me. And just for fun...
