The Evil Dead 2013 Drawing post on my site seems to have become one of the most popular pages here, thanks to everyone who retweeted and shared the link at various places. I think it was one of the earliest pieces of Fan Artwork to be put online for the movie, and that’s why it got noticed. Besides, I think that’s a pretty good poster for the movie, if I do say so myself! I did another piece of artwork based on the movie, this one done entirely digitally, on my Micromax Canvas HD phone. Here it is –
This was done using a few apps – the basic drawing itself was done on Sketch Guru (the app seems to have been renamed to Paint Joy now), I then got it into Snapseed and added the textures, grunge look and the frame, and then finally took it into Pixlr Express to add the text.
The drawing is based on the opening scene of the movie, that shows a possessed girl. That scene is probably up there on the list of effective movie opening scenes – it really gets you into the movie!
Here is the drawing sans text, if the language is not your cup of tea –
Many months after I did that early fan art for Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead 2013, I finally got to see the movie. Sadly, the movie was not theatrically released in India, due to the graphic violence and blood, so I had to wait till it was released on disc. The movie is very well done, I will write a detailed review of it in another post.
[UPDATE 13-AUG-13]:
Here is a video showing how this drawing was made –
I filmed it on my Nokia 808 PureView phone. The music used is a remix of “Closer/Last” by Nine Inch Nails.
I am a big fan of 1980s action movies, and as a kid, I used to idolise Arnold Schwarzenegger. Commando, Predator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day I think I would have seen about 50 times or more. Well, recently, I was looking up some 1980s music tracks on YouTube and I came upon the track “Kaminski Stomps” from the 1986 Schwarzenegger movie Raw Deal. This is one of Schwarzenegger’s lesser-popular movies from that era, and I had only seen it a few times, many years ago (watched it in the theatre when I was in school, and then later on on VHS, and on TV). So I rewatched it a couple of days back, and while not up to the standard of those other movies, this was pretty fun. That inspired this drawing –
The drawing was done in ballpoint pen mostly. I used a bit of red gel pen to add the blood splats, and the gun was done with a black marker pen. Nothing that fancy. I scanned the image and then added a paper texture to it, and then the text, in Helvetica Neue font.
You may notice that the title of the movie is different in my poster – it says Triple Identity. That was one of the working titles for the movie, before it got retitled to Raw Deal. I thought that sounded stylish, so I used that instead.
The movie stars Schwarzenegger as Mark Kaminski, an ex-Federal Agent working as a Sheriff in a small town (doesn’t this sound very similar to his 2013 The Last Stand?), after a legal case forced him to resign. He is approached by the FBI’s Harry Shannon (Darren McGavin) to infiltrate the gang of Chicago mobster Luigi Patrovita (Sam Wanamaker) and take the whole operation down. Kaminski enters the gang posing as the criminal Joseph P Brenner, and what follows is a fun outing as he carries out what he was asked to do.
I’d rate the movie overall a 7/10, as the action quotient is a bit less here, but one thing to enjoy are the one-liners. I also liked the music by Cinemascore (which I guess is an umbrella term for the people who contributed music to the movie – Chris Boardman, Tom Bahler, Albhy Galuten).
In-progress Drawings
Here are a few in-progress shots as I was drawing this. These were all taken on my phone (Micromax Canvas HD) camera and processed in Snapseed. The collage was made with the PhotoGrid app and I finally posted both of them on Instagram.
This below picture I call “Kaminski Stomps”, after the name of the track that inspired me to do this entire drawing.
Soundtrack
You can find music from the soundtrack uploaded on YouTube. Below are two of my favourites.
“Kaminski Stomps” – this is the track that plays during the end credits –
“Brains & Trains” – this is the track that plays during the opening scene of the movie –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4itXxljsBQ
The movie is good fun. Nobody Gives Schwarzenegger a Raw Deal!
Ever since I saw the trailers for the Bejoy Nambiar movie David (a couple of months back), I have been eagerly waiting to watch the movie. I really liked the director’s debut feature Shaitan, and from the looks of it, this movie seemed to be bigger and more ambitious. I finally got to see the movie yesterday (at Cinemax, Banjara Hills) and thought it was very good, and that inspired me to do four drawings (all of them in this post).
First about the movie – David consists of three stories, each with the protagonist named David. These are presented in an intercut fashion (as was done in Cloud Atlas), that come together by the end. The first story is set in 1975 London, with Neil Nitin Mukesh as David, a gangster and an adopted son of Iqbal Ghani (Akash Khurana). The second David is played by Vinay Virmani in a story set in 1999 Mumbai. This David is a musician and lives with his Christian father Noel (Nasser) and his sisters. Everything changes when a Hindu fundamentalist, Malti Tai (Rohini Hattandgadi) orchestrates an attack on Father Noel. The lightest segment of the three is the one set in 2010 Goa, about drunken fisherman David (Vikram) who falls in love with a deaf-mute girl Roma (Isha Sharvani), who his friend is going to marry.
The acting by the leads and supporting characters in all three segments is very good, and the movie is well written. It’s a little long though and the stories themselves I thought, were good but not anything extraordinary. However, where David absolutely excels is in its storytelling – the way it is all put together. In Shaitan, Bejoy Nambiar used stylish camerawork and music wonderfully – here he just takes everything one step further.
David is one gorgeous looking movie. Three different cinematographers worked on the movie – “Gangster” is shot by Sanu Varghese, “Mumbai” is shot by P S Vinod, and “Goa” is shot by R Rathnavelu. The work by all three (and their respective crews) is absolutely stellar – featuring beautifully composed visuals and wonderful lighting. The colour palette is different for each sequence, so you always know which story any particular scene belongs to. The 1975 scenes are in B&W, the 1999 scenes have a muted colour scheme, the 2010 scenes have a bright and colourful look.
The Production Design (Rajeevan) and Costume Design (Ameira Punvani) also are very well done. Like Shaitan, David is also edited by Sreekar Prasad. This is also very well done, since switching between multiple storylines thematically is not an easy thing.
Like Shaitan (remember “Bali – The Sound of Shaitan”, the remix of “Khoya Khoya Chand”?), David also uses music brilliantly. I love the dramatic “Ghum Huye – The Theme of David”, which opens the film, the light “Maria Pitache”, Anirudh Ravichander’s “Yun Hi Re”, and the English track “Out of Control”. Of course, as you’d have seen in the trailers, this movie also features a remix of an old song – “Mast Kalandar”. There is a rock version with an aggressive electric guitar sound.
Overall, I really liked David. Sure, there are some flaws, but I’d rather take an original piece of filmmaking like this any day, over a “lazy” blockbuster movie. Many filmmakers would probably kill to have a second film as good as this.
Rating: 8/10
Additional Notes:
Tamil Version
David was simultaneously shot in Tamil, with actor Jiiva playing the guitarist David in the 1999 story.
The Tamil version features only two stories (the “Gangster” one is not featured, since apparently it didn’t suit the target audience).
As of today, the Tamil version has not been released in Hyderabad. I had earlier tweeted wondering which version to watch first – I am glad I saw the Hindi version first, because I’d have missed the beautiful B&W segment and the “Mast Kalandar” song otherwise! I still want to see the Tamil one.
Cinematography
If you observe the end credits of the movie, there are logos for both Kodak as well as Red.
As I read, the Goa sequences were shot digitally – and if IMDb is right, Rathnavelu used the Red Epic on that. The other two sequences, I am assuming, were shot on 35mm film followed by a digital intermediate.
P S Vinod is the cinematographer for Panjaa – which I liked a lot. I mentioned the cinematography in this post from a year ago. I happened to see Panjaa on an IMAX screen – and it looked great!
Sanu Varghese is the cinematographer for Karthik Calling Karthik and also Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam, which I am seeing today (the Telugu version is playing on the IMAX screen too, which is what I have booked tickets for).
Now about the drawings I did. I did four of them in all – one for each David character from the movie, and one of the director, Bejoy Nambiar as well.
These were all done digitally on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. Previously, I used the Sketchbook Express app for doing some drawings (see this post and this post). But a few days back I got another application called Sketch Guru, which has some nice “sketch”-type brushes. I did all the drawings using that application, and with my fingers (since I don’t have a stylus that works with my Tab).
The drawings were then opened up in Snapseed to add some effects (grunge and the organic frames).
I put them together in Photoshop Elements and then added the text. The movie’s title is in the font Sketch Block. The other text is in the font Agency FB. Agency is also the font actually used in the titles for David.
A few months back, I mentioned that font in this post of mine, with a drawing based on the fifth season premiere of Fringe. The same font was used in the opening sequence of the show, and I used it in my drawing also.
Here you can see the individual drawings of the three Davids –
And this is the drawing of the movie’s writer-director Bejoy Nambiar –
I am eagerly looking forward to what the director does next!
Trailers and Music for the movie:
You can listen to the songs from the Hindi version of the movie here:
Here’s my very first drawing of 2013 – just completed! This is a picture of Ryan Gosling from the upcoming movie Only God Forgives, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (who directed Drive and the Pusher trilogy).
The drawing was done on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 with the Sketchbook Express app. The image you see above was cropped in Photoshop and the text was added. Otherwise no other editing was done to the actual drawing.
The drawing is based on the poster for the movie. You can read more about it on the Wikipedia page.
Here is the first teaser for the movie, on YouTube –
It looks like it will be a violent action thriller – I am looking forward to seeing it!
This being the first post of 2013, here’s wishing everyone a very Happy New Year! (I started writing this post last month, so it’s not designed as a New Year post.)
In the beginning of November, I bought myself a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. Now, this was an impulse purchase, I didn’t really need a tablet but I got one anyway, and am very happy with it. This is the first Android device that I bought, and I really like the OS (it came with Ice Cream Sandwich, and I recently got an upgrade that pushed it to 4.1 Jellybean). I’m using it for reading comics (in CBR or CBZ files), watching videos and taking photos with Instagram. Another application that I got for it, was Autodesk Sketchbook Express. It’s a great drawing app, and I have done three drawings so far with it. It takes a little getting used to (I’m not quite comfortable with it yet), and so far I’ve only been drawing using fingers (no stylus – I tried some pens turned backwards but they didn’t work).
This is the first drawing – a picture of Morpheus or Dream, from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series (done without reference – I was actually waiting idle after a conference and drew this) –
This is the second one, a drawing of Lena Headey as “Madeline Madrigal” a.k.a. “Ma-Ma” from the kickass movie Dredd –
That movie was one of the most entertaining yet underrated movies of the year in my opinion and Ma-Ma was a great movie villain. While doing this one I filmed some video footage, so I’ve posted that as a short clip on YouTube –
The third drawing is based on the Marcus Dunstan-directed movie The Collection. This also was a very entertaining (and quite violent!) horror/action movie, and I was pleasantly surprised that they released it theatrically in India!
While the earlier two drawings are straight from the tablet (I’ve posted the PNG files that I copied off the device), this one was edited in Photoshop to darken it a little and add the text.
I posted this one on Facebook and sent a tweet to the director of the movie about it, and was pleasantly surprised that he replied to me!
@karthik82 Thank you, Karthik! That is gorgeous! Bloody Good!
I still prefer pen or pencil and paper for drawing (you don’t have undo or customisable brushes, but that is easier to control and doesn’t require charging!), but this is also interesting to use. I will post more drawings as I do them.
Recently, a trailer for The ABCs of Death was released, and it looks great. Related to that is a drawing of mine that I wanted to post. Keep in mind, that this is a year old, but I never wrote in detail about it, so I’m posting it now. Explanation will follow.
The ABCs of Death
The ABCs of Death is an interesting project – this is an anthology horror movie consisting of 26 segments (each around 4 minutes long), one per letter of the alphabet. Each segment is about an instrument of death starting with that respective letter of the alphabet (say, “K is for Knife”). 26 different directors worked on this movie! More details can be found on the Wikipedia Page or this page on JoBlo, where you can view the trailer. Warning: Contains Blood & Gore, not for kids!
The people behind this anthology project left one slot free, for which they invited submissions from filmmakers from all around the world. This was the slot for the letter “T” and there were more than 100 shorts that they received (you can view them at this site). Out of all these films, “T is for Toilet” by Lee Hardcastle was selected to be in the final film.
T is for Turbo a.k.a. Turbo Kid – The Film
One of the top 3 finalists among the submitted entries was “T is for Turbo” by team RKSS (Roadkill Superstar – consisting of members Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell). I absolutely LOVED this short film, and in fact I felt that this would be the winning entry that’d make it into the final The ABCs of Death film.
Here, you can watch the short film (contains violence, blood & gore, not for kids!) –
I loved this film since it so very closely matched the look and feel of the 1970s/80s post-apocalyptic movie! Specifically, I think they were referencing the loads of cheap Italian-made knock offs that came out after bigger-budgeted movies like Mad Max. The costumes, the make-up/gore effects, the cheesy dialogues, all make for a wonderfully nostalgic experience.
The filmmakers have come up with interesting characters also (the villain Zeus, Shandella, Beardman, the Skeleton mask guy, etc). The Turbo Kid himself reminds me of an older version of Commander Keen.
I liked the cinematography in the film (by Jean-Philippe Bernier). The film was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR, but using an anamorphic adapter. The camera shoots video in 1920 x 1080 resolution, which results in an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 1.78:1. However, a lot of productions use a wider aspect ratio like 2.35:1, which gives a more cinematic look (since that is the ratio many films are presented in theatrically). One way to achieve this would be to film in 16:9 and then crop off bits from the top and bottom. This means that we’re not effectively using all the information that the camera has captured (the resulting image dimensions might be 1920 x 800). An anamorphic adapter optically distorts the image horizontally, so it squishes a wider image into the 16:9 frame. Later on, the image can be un-squished in post-production, so what this achieves is an image width of roughly 2500 pixels and a height of 1080.
I believe this is the source of the slight blur/distortions at the edges of the frames, which for some reason I find aesthetically very good looking, and it goes even further to enhance the feel of an old movie.
The submissions for The ABCs of Death were supposed to be kept to 4 minutes in length. The longer (by few minutes) ‘director’s cut’ version of this film is called Turbo Kid. I don’t think that version is online anywhere – I suppose you have to attend a film festival where it is screened, to be able to see it.
T is for Turbo – My Drawing
As is the case with things that I am deeply inspired by, I made a drawing based on this film. I did this based on screenshots grabbed from the actual film, and the shot of the Turbo Kid was referenced from a behind-the-scenes still.
The drawing was done with pencil on an A5 size paper. I scanned it and added the paper texture in the background and the subtle colours in Photoshop. The fonts used are Helvetica for the credits, and the title of the film is in a font called Headline HPLHS (this font is designed to mimic the look of old woodcut headlines – I got it from the HP Lovecraft Historical Society site). Perhaps not the most appropriate for a retro-futuristic film like this, but I think it looks good. Cthulhu fhtagn!
Want to see a few in-progress / behind-the-scenes photos as I was making this poster? Here is an album on Facebook which you can check out: T is for Turbo Drawing – Behind the Scenes [9 photos].
By the way, I posted this drawing on the RKSS Facebook page and even sent a message to them. They liked it – and that made me really happy.
The Music – “58 minutes pour vivre” by Le Matos
Apart from everything else I loved about T is for Turbo, a standout aspect for me was the music in it. It’s simply brilliant – the synthesizer-type music is exactly what you might find in a 1980s movie.
The track is called “58 minutes pour vivre” (translates to “58 minutes to live”) by the band Le Matos. A little bit of trivia – “58 Minutes” by Walter Wager is the novel that Die Hard 2 was adapted from.
Here is a music video for the track, also edited by RKSS. This video is called “58 Minutes dans le wasteland” which is very apt, as it is entirely edited together using footage from the very films that inspired Turbo Kid.
A full list of films featured in the video is there in the video description (if you view it on the Vimeo page). Should be a nice list to pick movies from and watch. And during the song, there is a bit of dialogue that comes up – that’s the voice of Bruce Willis and that’s a sample of dialogue from 12 Monkeys.
If you want to purchase the track, you can do so here (I did – I legally bought “58 minutes pour vivre”).
On a related note – you can also watch the grindhouse-inspired pulp horror fake trailer Demonitron: The Sixth Dimension by RKSS (it’s very good, and the look is again spot-on, though in some bits where they intentionally tried to emulate “unintentionally funny” – especially the ‘demon cake’ bit – I felt they went a little overboard, which kind of detracted from the experience). The music used in that trailer is called “Sarah” also by Le Matos. you can listen to the track and buy it here.
Other Notes
If you are on Facebook, you can view the “Making of T is for Turbo” album here (photos shot by Marie Raymond). In that album, this photo is the one I used as the reference for the Turbo Kid in my drawing. I think you have to “Like” the RKSS page to be able to see these photos.
There is an album with posters of their short movies. In that one, you can see the digitally-created official poster for the film. I love the look of the poster – I can almost imagine seeing this artwork on a VHS videotape and renting it immediately (back in the days when we used to rent videotapes). I love the caption – “This is the future, this is the year 1997”. Since Turbo Kid is inspired by those science fiction films made in the 70s and 80s, it makes sense that 1997 would be ‘the future’. (For that matter, even John Carpenter’s classic Escape from New York, released in 1981, was set in ‘the future’ of 1997.)
The latest update about Turbo Kid is that it is going to be adapted into a full-length feature film! This article has info about that. Count me in as a fan! I’m sure it’ll be a unique, quirky film that I will love. I look forward to seeing it, reviewing it and drawing something based on it, in the future… in the year 1997. “So what the fuck is your super power?”
As I’d mentioned in an earlier post, I thought I would do a quick recap of what I’ve been up to, in the last few months. This is presented roughly in reverse chronological order, and I’ve used photos to illustrate what I am talking about. (NOTE: I wrote this post in the mid of October, so it doesn’t cover absolutely everything right up to the present time.)
150+ Days at the Gym
Looks good, no? I’m quite proud of that photo! I started going to the gym at office in mid-December 2011. For whatever reason, I kept count of the number of days I was actually working out, and that count has crossed 150 by now. I go to the gym on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (since on Thursdays I attend Guitar class), so typically the count gets incremented by 4 every week, less than that if there are office holidays or I am travelling.
You could say this is a new hobby of mine and just like posting my drawings or photos, I’m uploading pictures taken at the gym to mark milestones. I posted the below one to mark Day 100, and that got a lot of Likes and comments on Facebook.
I was going to post one more when I hit Day 150, but towards that date, I knew there were going to be a few breaks since I was travelling for campus recruitment. Therefore, I posted the below photo when I reached Day 146.
I’d have left it at that but the Day 148 picture just kind of happened… and it looked good so that’s my current Facebook and Twitter profile picture.
Over the last few months I seem to have become an ‘unofficial official’ photographer for several events at work. It’s been a great experience for me and a lot of fun.
Covering these events teaches you a lot – how to get better at not missing important moments, how to plan in advance about what kind of shots you want to get, the importance of getting the photos right in the camera, and the importance of selecting the shots that you want to show to others.
For no particular reason, while I was working on the photos from one particular event, I decided to tweet about the process of selection (read the tweets from bottom to top) –
As you can make out from the tweets, I shot more than 1300 images during the four hour event, and made a selection of around 250 images to show to others. However, out of that set, I further filtered images and only uploaded the 180 best ones to Facebook.
At one of the events, apart from being the photographer, I also played a small bit of music on guitar.
I later recorded a video of what I played that day. Here it is –
This was recorded at home with my Nokia 808 PureView phone, and as you can make out, the audio quality is really great! I edited the video on kdenlive and Windows Live Movie Maker. The old videotape-type font is called “Camcorder” and you can get it here.
Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad
I attended Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Volumes 8, 9 and 10 in the recent past. I took photos at each one of them. I believe I may have put links to a couple of the albums in earlier posts, but for easy reference, here are the links (all are albums on Facebook) –
Two of the photos I took at PKN Hyd Vol 9 got printed in The Hans India newspaper.
(Both photos in that article are mine – you can see them on the Facebook album.)
Speaking of this, earlier (in May 2012), my Pecha Kucha presentation from November 2011 got mentioned on the Pecha Kucha Daily blog. My presentation is also there on the global site.
I took a photo of the Blue Moon from 1-Sep-12 – this is probably my best Moon shot yet.
At around that time, I also welcomed a new 1 TB hard disk to the family –
Mumbai Trip
In the beginning of August, I went on a short trip during a long weekend to Mumbai. I stayed at my cousin’s place, visited TCS Gateway Park office, met my friend Rajith there, watched Gangs of Wasseypur II, and participated in the TCS Fit4Life – 5 km Run with the CEO.
Here are the two Facebook albums that show photos from this all-important trip –
Two notable pictures – the below one shows me, Girish and Vrushodh – the crew behind the Gods of Galactica podcast (earlier known as Galacticast)…
…and here is a photo from the 5 km Run. This was the second 5 km Run I’ve ever participated in.
Secret Lake Photo
From earlier in August, here is a photo of Durgam Cheruvu, the “Secret Lake”. This was shot from Inorbit Mall one afternoon when I went there for lunch, on my PureView phone.
My post mentioned by Nokia
After I wrote that long post about the Nokia 808 PureView, I tweeted it to the official Nokia account (@nokia). It was really nice of them to retweet it – and they mentioned they liked the post. I felt very happy about that.
Han Shot First Drawing
I did the below drawing as a gift for my cousin on his birthday. I also got it printed on a t-shirt (that’s what Girish and I are wearing, in the Galactica crew photo above).
Star Wars fans will know the background of this. For the uninitiated, here’s the explanation in short. In the original Star Wars movie released in 1977, there is a scene in which the character Han Solo played by Harrison Ford, is confronted by the gangster Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina. Greedo points a weapon at Han and says that Han owes money to the ruthless Jabba the Hutt. Han then shoots Greedo and exits the cantina.
In the 1997 “Special Edition” re-release of Star Wars, this scene was slightly altered, to show Greedo shooting first and missing Han (at very close range), and Han shoots Greedo after that. This alteration (though made by the movie’s creator, George Lucas) was not looked at favourably by fans.
My cousin has a long post on this here. This is why I made this t-shirt for him!
On the topic of the alterations made for the Special Edition of Star Wars, it is to be noted that a fan called Harmy has created high-definition “despecialized” versions of all the movies in the Star Wars original trilogy. This is an assembled edit from various sources, since LucasFilm had not released the unaltered versions on Bluray.
Early in the month of June, there were a couple of days when the sky was a wonderful blue colour. A great opportunity for photography –
Here is the Facebook album with some more photos – Blue Sky.
Electric Guitar
For my birthday on May 15, I was lucky to get a great gift from my family – an electric guitar! I uploaded some photos of it on this Facebook album, and posted a short video of me playing it.
Rooftop Shooting Challenge
I had earlier written about a photo shooting challenge I’d done, of taking only B&W photos in my room at home. I tried a different challenge sometime later, of shooting with just one lens on the rooftop of my house.
I have been a fan of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series of movies for many years now. The three movies – The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness – are critically acclaimed as well, and one might even say that they have achieved cult classic status. Over the last several years, there has been talk of another Evil Dead movie – either a Part 4, or a remake. None of that actually materialised however… till now.
Of late, a remake of the first movie has been announced, being directed by Fede Alvarez with Diablo Cody contributing to the screenplay. I had only a passing interest in it, but the first red-band trailer (trailer intended for adult audiences) for the movie made me sit up and pay attention. It was so bloody and gory that it screamed to be noticed – and that inspired the below drawing –
The new movie seems to follow the broad template of The Evil Dead – a group of young people discover the Book of the Dead in a cabin in the woods, and on reciting passages from that book, evil spirits possess their bodies and mayhem ensues. The remake seems to be very serious in tone, though. They’ve also dropped the “the” in the title, this new one is simply called Evil Dead.
Here, see the notorious trailer for yourself (warning: lots of blood and gruesome stuff) –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxLjqazSmQo
This trailer was originally screened at the New York Comic Con, and it found its way online in a bootleg version (someone recorded it off the screen and posted it), which is what I first saw. The studio posted the official version a few days later.
For making the drawing, I followed my usual process – I took several screenshots from the trailer and used them as reference. The drawing was done using primarily a black ballpoint pen, but a black marker was also used for solid black areas, and all the blood was done with a red gel pen. A slight touch of blue ballpoint pen is also seen – on the guy with the chainsaw.
After completing the drawing, I scanned it in and then adjusted the contrast in Photoshop Elements. I also overlaid two paper textures (bashcorpo’s texture 5 and 6 – these two are favourites of mine and I’ve used them very often), and then added the logo and the text.
The logo is actually sourced from a screenshot from the trailer. I boosted the contrast and then inverted the image, leaving a nice solid black title. The font used for the rest of the text is Univers – a typeface from the 1950s/60s, which I believe adds to the ‘old’ look of the poster.
I came up with the caption. The first part “Within the woods…” is a reference to Within the Woods, a 30-minute film that was a precursor to The Evil Dead. The rest of it is taken from the trailer (the trailer says “Evil Lives Again”).
I am eagerly waiting to see the movie! IMDb says the movie’s release date is 12 April 2013 in the US, and the Worldwide Release Dates page from the official site says that it’s going to be released in India on 26 April 2013.
Warning: This post contains SPOILERS for Prometheus. So, don’t read if you haven’t seen the movie.
I watched Prometheus last night and liked the movie a lot. I thought the visuals were wonderful, and the intense yet gloomy tone and the suspense in certain scenes all were very nicely done. Noomi Rapace was great and Michael Fassbender was fantastic in his role.
BUT – I had the following nagging questions. Some of them may be because I wasn’t observant enough, or maybe because they’re just not explained in the movie…
The opening scene – what was that goo which the Space Jockey took, that caused him to disintegrate? Is that planet supposed to be Earth? If so, did that Space Jockey create life on Earth? Was that a mistake?
What was that hologram-thingy showing the Space Jockeys running and one of them getting its helmet knocked off, and later in the movie showing the Space Jockey piloting his craft with that flute? Security cam footage of some sort? (reminds me of a line from AVP – “finding Moses’ old DVD collection”, and here playing it back!)
What was the entire plan of the Space Jockeys? They created us and they wanted to destroy us? If so, why keep returning to Earth and leave behind a map of how to get to LV 223? Is that an ‘invitation’ or a ‘warning’ or a ‘trap’? And the Space Jockeys on LV 223 all died because they goofed up? The beasties they were going to use to kill us turned on them?
So does each canister contain a different gooey creature, or is it just the one tentacley facehugger-inspired creature?
When our guys open up the chamber on LV 223, how is it that after some 2000 years, stuff in there turns on? Is it like a tomb where the dead get reanimated? Or is it some sort of trap? If so, why booby trap your own station?
If I remember right, there were multiple structures (“military stations”?) on LV 223 – the Prometheus crew only entered one of them. So does that mean there are other stations on LV 223? If so, what happened to the Space Jockeys there? Are they in charge of destroying other planets or something? The Prometheus crew just happened to pick the right structure to enter, that pertained to human history?
The line “Prometheus has landed” was not there in the actual movie? Or did I miss it?
So what was xenomorph in the Alien movies? One more of the beasties that the Space Jockeys created to kill some other race?
Another Space Jockey was carrying one of those things, that guy also goofed up and his ship crashed on LV 426, and became the derelict in Alien?
Are both LV 223 and LV 426 in the same star system?
Why didn’t Fifield and Millburn just stay put in one of those chambers, instead of running about, trying to make contact with a blatantly obviously dangerous creature and getting themselves attacked?
What exactly does the icky sticky goo in the canisters do? It mutates Holloway and Fifield – does it just turn them into zombies or is there a purpose behind that?
Signs that a PG-13 was targeted – only two occurrences of the word “fuck” in the dialogue, one of which (said by Fifield) is partly obscured by static. So did they actually have more harder stuff planned in the movie that was cut out?
How did Janek & David figure things out so easily? (Janek – “It’s a military station”, David knows that one of the Space Jockeys is alive)
What exactly is Vickers’ agenda – she knew that Weyland was alive, so was her purpose on Prometheus just to babysit Weyland and carry him to LV 223 so that he could meet his maker?
Why were Weyland, David and the others so trusting of the Space Jockeys at the end? Especially after David and the others saw all the havoc going on?
What was that creature at the very end – mutated alien + human (from Shaw) + Space Jockey hybrid? Does this thing evolve into the xenomorph in Alien or was it just something cool they added in this movie?
Going by the fact that even several years after this (in Alien) people didn’t know about the Space Jockeys’ ultimate agenda (or did they, and they just never bothered explaining it to the low class people on the Nostromo), is it safe to assume that Shaw and David died on the Space Jockeys’ home planet?
This leads me to believe – either they had something more elaborate planned out, and the studio forced removal of scenes to fit it to a 2 hour length; or they intend to explain things more in a sequel; or, they were simply playing with us and being all mystery-like; OR… they just didn’t think things through well enough.
The briefing scene in the beginning (even when I saw it in the trailer) reminded me of the Bishop-Weyland briefing scene in AVP! Even the scene with Fifield and Millburn in the chamber reminded me of the characters caught in the tunnels in that pyramid in AVP!
So they’re entirely ignoring Charles Bishop Weyland from AVP, or is he some relation to Peter Weyland?
AVP: R if I remember right, had a reference to a Yutani, but in the timeline of Prometheus, that “merger” still hasn’t happened. But I think like the rest of us, the filmmakers also feel, the less said about AVP: R the better.
The line “We are leaving!” is a direct reference to Aliens. I saw on some forums posts referring to Vickers being an android too. Is that trying to reference Blade Runner? Did they just try including these references for fun?
[Note: This post was drafted on 15-Apr-12, rather than update it with another 15 days worth of stuff, I decided to publish this, and then write another post to cover the additional information.]
I’d mentioned in the last post that my brother spoke at Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Vol 8. Well, the official video for Varun’s presentation is up on YouTube now, and that’s what I’m opening this post with!
Here you go –
Great presentation, isn’t it? In case you missed it earlier, this post should tell you about what Pecha Kucha Night is.
Recent Trailers of Note
The trailer for the upcoming remake Total Recall is an interesting one, and it looks pretty flashy. It seems to be following the Schwarzenegger movie quite closely (some of the setups and lines are translated intact here), although this one isn’t set on Mars. Colin Farrell plays the character of Douglas Quaid, and Kate Beckinsale is Lori and Jessica Biel plays Melina (the character that Rachel Ticotin played in the 1990 movie). The trailer reminded me of Minority Report a little bit.
I didn’t know this, but my friend Kashyap Chandra had this to say about the tracking shot at around 1:06 in the trailer –
That shot is One Hundred percent practical. Zero CG camera movement. They actually rigged up the RED One cameras to move around the room at speeds of upto 35 mph!
That’s pretty fascinating! I assumed that was CG.
Talking about trailers though, this is probably the highlight of the recent past – the trailer for Rian Johnson’s science fiction movie Looper –
Incredible, isn’t it? Just check out that makeup on Joseph Gordon-Levitt, making him look like a younger version of Bruce Willis. The concept is interesting too, and I really like the music in the trailer. Obviously I was interested to know what was the exact track used, and a little Googling turned up the answer. It’s a track called “K.I.L.L.” by Nick Murray and Mark Moore. You can listen to it on this YouTube video titled Music from the Looper Trailer.
One Year and 15,825 Photos
April 2, 2012 marked one year since I got my Canon EOS 550D camera. And on that date, the number of photos taken with the camera numbered 15,825. Interesting milestone, eh? It has been quite a journey reaching this number, and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it.
@Galactica_gk’s Hyderabad Visit
Between 5-8 April, my cousin Girish visited Hyderabad. It was a hugely entertaining long weekend.
Here is how I received him at the airport –
I was flashing this paper with his Twitter handle, I thought someone would notice and smile, but no – it didn’t seem like anyone had a sense of humour about this. There was a guy from a hotel who was also receiving someone and he asked me why I was holding up this? Had I never seen my cousin before? I told him it was just for style.
We had a midnight movie screening every night that he was here, and I got to revisit some of my favourite movies – Fight Club, Grindhouse and From Dusk Till Dawn. Apart from this we saw 3 in the theatre.
Along with family we visited Golconda Fort, Salarjung Museum and had lunch in pitch darkness at Taste of Darkness in Inorbit Mall (this restaurant is the only one of its kind in India).
Another interesting thing which happened, is that one day, we were discussing about Jyothika and I wanted to search for the article on Wikipedia, but instead of doing that I typed the name into The Pirate Bay. And I was wondering why the autocomplete wasn’t working!
On the way back home from the airport, I took the above picture of the moon. Was shot handheld and is a definite improvement over the moon photo I took a year ago.
Insightful Commentary about Commentary Tracks
At FilmSchoolRejects, they write articles about commentary tracks on DVDs (this feature is called Commentary Commentary). I recently came across a bunch of these and found them very interesting to go through. Thought I would share two in particular, which I found very insightful.
“For me Dark City is a film of hope and optimism. It has a firm belief in the individual winning out over the mass mind, and I think that’s a very important feeling to have in this world.” – Alex Proyas
Type Camp India – Nice article by Todd Macfie from I Love Typography.
Mike Shinoda on scoring The Raid – Insightful interview with Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda on scoring The Raid: Redemption and on the direction of their next album.
Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad was mentioned on the Worldwide Pecha Kucha website. They posted the Behind the Scenes video – and I appear twice in that video.
Two more quotes from Facebook – this one from Arrow in the Head on April 5:
Happy Birthday Roger Corman! Thanks for all them years of monsters, boobies and blood!
And this one from my friend Abhishek:
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Tears in Rain Soliloquy) – Karthik Abhiram this one is for you 🙂
Collection of Tweets
As usual, here is the collection of tweets from 2-Apr-12 to 15-Apr-12.
RT @rob_sheridan You guys. Go see “Cabin In The Woods.” Don’t read anything about it. Just go before someone spoils it. Super super fun and inventive.
RT @omgthatspunny Why did the capacitor kiss the diode? He just couldn’t resistor. #punny
RT @mihirfadnavis Drinking Mogu Mogu with its little bits of fruit feels like accidentally swallowing your own mucus. #SardiKiGuthliyan
RT @AapChutiyeHain People connecting randomly on LinkedIn by mentioning you’re a ‘friend’ without even a message, jai veeru ki dosti ki kasam #AapChutiyeHain
Tweets 14-Apr-12:
@Galactica_gk It’s good, as I remember – lots of gore, action, weird stuff, more cartoonish than the previous ones! Writer is Joss Whedon.
@Galactica_gk I actually haven’t seen this “Assembly Cut” version… I should also plan a day for watching all 4 back-to-back 🙂
From the end credits of “Planet Terror” – “Mr. Rodriguez’s Chef – ROBERT RODRIGUEZ” 🙂
In kdenlive, I really like the “Technicolor” effect under the Colour Correction tools. Gives a nice boost to saturation in a video.
If you see the “scratch-free” version of @RobertRdz’s “Planet Terror” you’ll realise the genius behind its cinematography / lighting!
RT @Galactica_gk James Cameron’s Aliens is better than Alien. Could be because of the extra ‘S’ or more Aliens. @karthik82
RT @laughbook *Stalking crush on Facebook* * Accidentally likes status from 2009* *Deletes Facebook* *Sets computer on fire*
RT @mihirfadnavis I wouldn’t be surprised if someone finds RGV hiding in the bathroom of a girls hostel brandishing a camera and licking his lips.
Tweets 13-Apr-12:
RT @psam @dharmeshG Official synopsis for Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’ | http://bit.ly/IuG9Sn
RT @rob_sheridan It’s cute how flight attendants tell you sternly to “completely power off your cell phone” and then carry on as if ANYONE actually did that.
RT @Deepu2rebel Quentin Tarantino was in India past months, He spent almost 20-30days here. Delhi, Mhmbai and many other places. Should’ve met him #lifetime
RT @Nader230 Dropped my N8 while crossing the road. Minor scratches, screen as good as new, still working perfectly! @nokia @Nokia_Connects
@Nader230 @nokia @Nokia_Connects That’s not surprising 🙂 I’ve dropped my N8 a few times and I think the phone doesn’t care one bit 🙂
RT @cliffordsouza SRK – “Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hain.” New York Airport officials – “@AapChutiyeHain!”
RT @planet5D #VincentLaforet New Zeiss wide angle SLR Lenses – and how they stack up against their Canon EF counterpart #HDSLRnews http://bit.ly/Ik8ud7
RT @jakefogelnest Is it true that Friendster just bought Polaroid for eleventy-billion dollars?
#NowWatching Kickboxer (1989) – Good oldschool 80s action stuff with Jean Claude Van Damme.
So far, “Kickboxer” feels like an Americanised version of a 1970s Hong Kong martial-arts movie!
The training montage in “Kickboxer” reminds me of “The Fearless Hyena” and “Kill Bill Vol 2”.
Man, what gruelling training Van Damme goes through, to learn Muay Thai… one should take this stuff as inspiration when exercising!
Btw… the music in “Kickboxer” is by Paul Hertzog, and if I am not mistaken, he did the music for the Van Damme movie “Bloodsport” also.
And I have not seen “Kickboxer” before (if I have, I don’t remember the movie), but I remember liking “Kickboxer 2”.
I should watch Kickboxer 2 again, and one bit of interesting info about that movie, is that it’s written by David Goyer (The Dark Knight).
Wow, they’ve included a dance number in “Kickboxer”! Van Damme dances!
RT @Galactica_gk Post-Midnight Feature #3 From Dusk Till Dawn is slapstick comedy and horror. The perfect combo. + writer is Quentin Tarantino. @karthik82
RT @omgthatspunny If the movie hero of the Matrix was a woman, would she have been called Ingrid? #punny
RT @funnyoneliners “Doctor! Doctor! How long do I have left to live?” “Ten.” “Ten what? Months? Years?” “Nine, Eight, Seven..”
#NowWatching “From Dusk Till Dawn” – Midnight… er… 2 AM Feature with @Galactica_gk
Tweets 7-Apr-12:
3 – Liked it. Felt like 2 movies separated by an interval, a bit overlong and second half had exaggerated drama. I loved the music. 7/10
I didn’t understand why the movie is called “3” though…
RT @edgarwright My 10,000 tweet better be something really amazing… oh fuck-
RT @SimpooSir To see Anil Kapoor in Mission Impossible 4, plz wear Red glassez. Just did. Mr. India Protocol. #Yuss
RT @arocks Titanic wasn’t a tragedy for everyone apparently. Just look at James Cameron 🙂
Just realised that @Galactica_gk and I watched “Grindhouse” on April 6, 2012 – exactly five years after the movie’s US Release date!
Midnight Double Feature 2- Grindhouse was very good. Planet Terror is intentionally like a Hindi movie. @karthik82
RT @scottEweinberg With respect to (virtually) everyone, WHY REVIEW SCREENPLAYS? Fucking hell! Food critics don’t review the recipe. Assholes!
RT @rajith_23 “Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.” – Lao Tzu
It’s a great feeling to wake up in the morning and find that your downloads are completed.
#NowWatching “Grindhouse” Theatrical Cut with @Galactica_gk – “Planet Terror” & “Death Proof” back-to-back as they were meant to be seen.
Tweets 6-Apr-12:
RT @rajith_23 Watched Housefull 2. Liked it. Keep brain at home . Don’t have any expectation. Full fun. Little long but fun..
RT @zombeaner Now you can watch this nutso trailer! “@TwitchFilm: First Trailer For Akshay Kumar’s ROWDY RATHORE Blows The Roof Off! http://goo.gl/fb/V7Md5“
RT @josephradhik I predict 2012-13 to be a crazy war between Canon and Sony for the HDSLR and indie large sensor market.
RT @vemana: @karthik82 Its awesome the way you digitally chronicle your life. It seems like you arent missing anything and not overdoing it either!
@vemana Thank you! I guess it’s more for myself that I am doing it, but if it’s interesting to others too, that’s great 🙂
RT @stupidusmaximus Happy birthday, Ajay Devgn. Here, have a vowel.
RT @YaavanoObba Gangarams closing. | Oh, that’s sad man. I’ll miss their bhujia and khatta meetha. | Dude. That’s Haldirams. | Oh then what’s Gangarams?
RT @dharmeshG Ashton Kutcher will play Steve Jobs in an upcoming biopic. #facepalmtree
RT @justkalpana this is quote is soo for me. “@kritzeln: Respect your first thought. Don’t worry abt length, grammer, tense. Vomit! #IndiaSocial12”
RT @AapChutiyeHain Whenever you feel you’re a failure in life, think of Tusshhaar Kapoor #feelbetter?
RT @mihirfadnavis Also, I would not watch a Total Recall movie that doesn’t have the three boobed lady.
RT @gurpreet_bhatia: @karthik82 cngrts. U wl never frgt d date of two reasons. #worldcupwin #poonampandey
#LinesNOTinTotalRecall2012 “See you at da party, Richter!”
#LinesNOTinTotalRecall2012 “Give dis people AAIR!”
#LinesNOTinTotalRecall2012 “Get your ass to Mars”
My Canon EOS 550D camera is one year old today! 1 year and 15,825 photos – it’s been a wonderful ride!
This was done using a few apps – the basic drawing itself was done on Sketch Guru (the app seems to have been renamed to Paint Joy now), I then got it into Snapseed and added the textures, grunge look and the frame, and then finally took it into Pixlr Express to add the text.
Many months after I did that early fan art for Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead 2013, I finally got to see the movie. Sadly, the movie was not theatrically released in India, due to the graphic violence and blood, so I had to wait till it was released on disc. The movie is very well done, I will write a detailed review of it in another post.
