Vintage Paleoart: Rien Poortvliet's Journey to the Ice Age

Many of us probably know Rien Poortvliet for Gnomes, which is an undisputed fantasy/fantasy illustration/speculative biology(?)/well, spec-bio-adjacent masterpiece.  But he had many other beautiful books to his credit and among them, surprisingly, is a work of Paleoart:  

Journey to the Ice Age, published in English in 1994 by Harry N. Abrams is every bit as beautifully crafted as Gnomes and once again, Poortvliet's love and careful observation of the natural world shines through.  The paintings are based on his thoughts wandering while sitting in his hunting hide.  

A highlight of the book is it's focus on prehistoric people.  I'm especially fond of the series of paintings speculating that the first human to ride a wild horse was either very brave, very stupid, or some combination thereof and also somebody triple-dog-dared them.

And now, the mammoths.  Poortvliet had a few mammoth specimens on hand, like hair and a vertebrae; tactile reminders of the beasts, so they are never far from his mind.  This is a very beautiful book and I'm happy to have stumbled upon it.

In which Trish watches "Gnomeo and Juliet", so you don't have to.

You know, it's hard to be an animation fan sometimes. Sometimes enough comments of "it's better than it looks" and/or sheer curiosity can backfire on you. And you wind up with something like "Gnomeo and Juliet" in your Netflix queue. And since you hate to send movies back without watching them, you watch it.

Well here's the thing, dear reader. This isn't just a bad movie. It'd be one thing if it were a bad movie, I could just dismiss it in one throw-away line in a post about something completely different if it were just a bad movie.

But despite what anyone in their right mind would expect from the trailer and (let's admit it) the title, this isn't in the same family of forgettable and easily dismissed bad movies as "Meet the Fockers" or "Valentine's Day" or what have you. No, "Gnomeo and Juliet" has turned out to be more along the lines of "The Star Wars Holiday Special" or "The Room". It is a fascinatingly bad movie.

You may remember a little less than a year ago, I wrote a post about this movie that was almost entirely prompted by my disbelief that somebody actually sat down and made it. Long story short, this was a project that was pitched at Disney sometime after "Dinosaur" and "Home on the Range" and other Disney movies that probably never even got to go in the Vault. The studio was pretty desperate for another hit. So they almost made a movie where nonhumans sing Elton John songs in a very loose adaptation of a Shakespeare story. Again.

The project was scrapped years and years ago. However, last autumn, it mysteriously actually got made somehow by (according to what little I can learn from IMDB) the studio that gave the world "Space Chimps". It turns out, according to the making-of featurette on the DVD, Elton John loved this movie too much to let it die.

And so, in 2010, we got ourselves an animated film full of gags that only could have been pitched during the exceedingly specific time in history where a movie in which gnomes sing Elton John songs would have actually not been a wholly terrible idea. Thus the "American Beauty" reference pictured above. And a scene where a character does an impression of Borat. And a good old-fashioned scene where the Internet behaves like it has never ever done in anything resembling our reality.

But maybe the strangest part of this movie is the fact that the animators went all out with it. My gosh, the gnomes are adorable and the little details are stunning (if only because it's a shock to see such things in a movie like this). They've got little grass stains and moss and chips and dings and hand-painted flaws. The ivy and rhubarb plants have little veins and discolorations. Hell, this is one of the best-looking bad animated films I've ever seen.

(And as God as my witness, I wish I could say this was the only fascinatingly bad kiddie-oriented "Romeo and Juliet" adaptation I saw this year. Alas...)

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This article showed up in my feed via a toy collecting blog I like and...

Fellow Art Evolved-kateers, this is what we are fighting. I was ready to cry. (And the comments... Dear God, the comments...)

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Sketch Photograph of the Day! Just to show I have lost no love for gnomes.



This also reminds me: it's been a while since we had a gardening post hasn't it?

The Big Sit! Also, it appears that somebody got around to making "Gnomeo and Juliet".

(Record-scratch sound effects.)

No, really. Here's the announcement at /Film and the trailer:



I should probably explain why this was a little unexpected. You see, a long, long time ago, when Disney was in the depths of it's Dork Age, whoever was in charge of pitching story ideas there basically said, "You know what? F*** it! We're all trying to make the next movie that will make as much money as 'The Lion King', right? So let's just do ANOTHER loose Shakespeare adaptation with celebrities voicing nonhuman characters who sing lots and lots of Elton John songs."

And this happened back when there was a weird mini-trend, possibly inspired by "Amélie" or warm memories of Rien Poortvliet's art books or the beloved "David the Gnome" animated series adaptation of them, of collecting garden gnomes.

The last we Disney fans heard, the project had been scrapped. This happened back when "Meet the Robinsons" was being reworked. Since that was the last time I had heard anything of it, the sight of a trailer was a huge surprise. I guess another studio must have picked it up, which might explain why this is released under Touchstone. Disney (which is in the meantime working on a movie based on the whole Magic Kingdom because of COURSE they are) has been known to release "weird" movies under the Touchstone banner; the same thing happened to "Roger Rabbit" and "Nightmare Before Christmas". The whole situation was just too strange not to mention here.

What do I think of what we see in the trailer? Well, let me put it this way. I still dream of someday directing my own animated film. And when I do, I will insist that both the trailers and posters must include this or a similar tagline:

"From a person who was not at all involved in 'Shrek'! And while she kinda liked the first movie at the time, she frankly thinks that the 'Shrek' movies have a lot to answer for. (That God-forsaken 'Cat in the Hat' movie for example.)"

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Announcement: This Sunday is The Big Sit! Register your circle and keep track of the birds you see. This instructional video explains the rules further. Skip ahead to the six minute mark to learn why friends don't let friends drink and birdwatch.

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Sketch of the day: