Friday, August 1, 2014

Movie time (or is it?)

I'm wondering about comic book people and movies.How one field might see the other as a place of liberation, and how that might effect them.

Guardians of the Galazy is basically two different series in the comics world: one based on the memory of the other and both pretty obscure.  Much has been made of how third-string characters like these never being the subject of movies.

Except now the Guardians are?  What to make of that?  At the Big Two comic book companies, there's tended to be more freedom on titles about minor characters.  But if this movie hits, that might be read as proof that there are no minor characters, so the corporate bigwigs might as well micromanage everything.  So whether the movie is good, bad or indifferent, creators trying to break in or just maintain their independence within the system might want to root for Guardians of the Galaxy to fail.  Or at least to be a perceptual failure like the Daredevil movie with Ben Affleck.

On a very different cinematic front, I watched F for Fake tonight.  This was Orson Welles' last film as director, and it's a "documentary" about fakery of different kinds, including a successful art forger and a journalist who seems to have manufactured an interview with Howard Highes.  (The journalist, Clifford Irving, is an intimidatingly tall man who almost always has a monkey on his shoulder.)  "Documentary" is in quotes because it's obvious that it's going to live up to its name to a large extent, and it's obvious this is supposed to be obvious.  One of the first scenes is of men on the street all ogling the same woman, and it could not be more staged.  (On the other hand, she was his real life girlfriend, so that counts for something.)

The movie doesn't entirely cohere, but Welles' voice and skill as  a raconteur carry it through.

2 comments:

susan said...

I haven't read many comics since I was a kid - the last I remember enjoying was a few years worth of The Fantastic Four. I did enjoy the Batman movies starring Christan Bale and Michael Caine though. As for the Guardians, your post is the first time I've heard of them so I'll have to take your word for it as to how the movie ought to be accepted or not.

F for Fake must have been kind of interesting just for the sake of high weirdness if nothing else. Welles was definitely a strange man.

Speaking of comics we've been enjoying a Calvin and Hobbes collection. Not movie material at all but still lots of fun.

Ben said...

I actually haven't read much of the Guardians, so most of what I know about them comes down to visuals. It's been said a few times that they're one of the lesser known properties, though. Guess that's a change now.

I guess you could call Welles an eccentric. One hopes he was a happier eccentric at the end than was Charles Foster Kane.

Calvin and Hobbes might be filmable, but I wouldn't want to see it happen. Bill Watterson but them in just the right place.