[NO SPOILERS]Justice League (2017)Directed by Zack SnyderRather than waiting for my sketch to be completed, I am posting a review with a WIP shot, because I so much wanted to put up my comments about this movie!I watched this movie on Saturday morning (Prasad's Large Screen). The movie has Batman and Wonder Woman assembling a team of metahumans to face the threat of Steppenwolf, who is after the three Mother Boxes on Earth, which will allow him to take over our world.It's impossible to write about this movie without mentioning the behind-the-scenes drama of the past few months – the studio calling in Joss Whedon to complete the film after a personal tragedy forced Zack Snyder to step back, the reshoots and altered ending, and the sub-2 hour mandated runtime.Despite all of this, I felt the movie turned out very well. The characters, despite not getting enough screen time to be fleshed out (Cyborg and Aquaman particularly affected), turned out great. I loved Flash and the strongest aspect of the film for me was Wonder Woman. The villain being criticised as weak? I didn't think it came off badly. The shorter length probably focused the film on the main threat, which was good. The biggest praise I'd give, is that it was such an enjoyable comic book movie. The tone was spot on, balancing the more fantastic and realistic aspects.However, as @kashyapchandra mentioned, this was not the film that "Man of Steel" and "Batman v Superman" were building up to, not the film the first two trailers promised. I, like many others, would love to see a 30 min longer Zack Snyder cut, reinstating the deleted scenes, which I'm sure will be epic and better than the film we saw. It's sad that the studio isn't allowing Snyder to carry out his vision. Danny Elfman's score suited the movie well, but was very generic, and certainly nothing as epic as the work Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL did with the previous DCEU films.There are two post credit scenes, and to their credit (haha), they are effective. There was a lot to like about "Justice League", I highly recommend it. It's an 8.5/10 for me.
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Deadpool 2 (2018)Directed by David LeitchThe marketing for "Deadpool 2" has started. We had a "No Good Deed" teaser released a few months ago. A few days back, a Thanksgiving themed official poster was released, and now we have a "Wet on Wet" teaser. This teaser shows Deadpool dressed as American painter Bob Ross, in a parody of "The Joy of Painting". They've imitated it perfectly and snuck in a good deal of dirty humour. This teaser has a few seconds of footage from the actual movie, so I guess a real trailer isn't far away. The movie comes out on June 1 next year, and I'm looking forward to seeing what all creative marketing they'll do for this movie, and of course I'm looking forward to the movie itself.This drawing was done with @Prismacolor pencils on Canson paper, I also used my 0.5mm 2B pencil, a 0.3 Pigma Micron pen and a white gel pen. I'm not happy with the rendering of the hair but otherwise I like the drawing. I'll probably change the profile picture to this! #303 / 17-Nov-17
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Mindhunter (2017)Created by Joe PenhallI recently binge watched this Netflix series (10 episodes of Season 1) and enjoyed it very much. The show is based on a true crime book, and is set in 1977, about two agents – Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) at the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit, interviewing killers, hoping to gain insight into their psychology, which would help real world cases. The show was pretty fascinating, the cinematography is wonderful, the acting and story are engaging. David Fincher is a Producer and he directed 4 episodes, and his stamp is all over the show – you'll find moments reminding you of "Se7en", "Fight Club", "Zodiac", and "Gone Girl". One of my favourite sequences is a montage that appears in Episode 2, which is superbly done. It's great to see Anna Torv back on screen, she plays Dr Wendy Carr who is a kind of mentor for Ford and Tench. I was a fan of "Fringe", in which she played a lead, so it was nice to see her again. The killers shown interviewed in the series are based on real life serial murderers (I didn't know how close the actors resemble the real life counterparts until after I finished the show and looked up a reference image for this drawing!). The most fascinating among them was Edmund Kemper, played by Cameron Britton on the show. He is an almost 7 foot tall, very articulate inmate, and the actor manages a mix of likeability and intensity in his portrayal. So I drew him, this is a 0.5mm 2B pencil sketch on paper and this is a scanned version of the drawing. You should check out @sripriyatham's drawing of him as well. #302 / 14-Nov-17
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Stranger Things 2 (2017)Created by The Duffer BrothersI wrote about "Stranger Things 2" in the previous post, so, not repeating it here, except to say that it was awesome and if you haven't watched it, you should! @varunabhiram made a video of me working on the previous sketch, which can be seen on his YouTube channel, and also on my personal account @karthikabhiram. Apart from that video he is also making a digital artwork incorporating my pencil drawing.This drawing of the Shadow Monster / Mind Flayer from the show was done for that. It was drawn with 0.5mm mechanical pencil on @cansonpaper, and this is a scan.#301 / 12-Nov-17
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[300TH #DAILYMOVIESKETCH DRAWING – THANK YOU ALL FOR THE SUPPORT!] Stranger Things 2 (2017)Created by The Duffer Brothers [NO SPOILERS]Last year, "Stranger Things" became a huge hit on Netflix, and I loved it for its superb characters, acting, music, and the engaging combination of science fiction, horror, and the kids movie. It was a love letter to all things 1980s. When Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) goes missing, his friends realise he is trapped in an alternate dimension called the Upside Down, with a monster that sometimes steps into our realm. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is a girl with psi powers who helps the boys, after having escaped from a shady government agency that experimented on her and used her powers to open a rift between our world and the Upside Down.Last week, the second season, titled "Stranger Things 2" (indicating that it's crafted as a sequel to the first) was released. A year after the events of the first season, a mysterious shadow monster, far more dangerous than the "demogorgon" seen earlier threatens Hawkins, Indiana, and it's up to the kids and a couple of new characters to stop it from invading our world. It's terrific entertainment – the character development (everyone gets their chance to shine) and story is great, the young actors give amazing performances, the horror elements are amped up, the visuals and music are all fantastic, the drama and action are perfectly executed.I watched the 9 episodes in one day, and loved it. Some people didn't like Episode 7 as it deviated from the main storyline to deal with a subplot. I felt the momentum slowed there, and it was my least favourite episode, but didn't take away from the show overall. Can't wait for the next season now!I'm very happy to reach the milestone of 300 drawings on @dailymoviesketch! I drew Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, what an amazing actress she is – huge respect to the poise, nuance and intensity that she brings to her role.This sketch was done with a mechanical pencil with 0.5mm 2B lead, and @prismacolor pencils on Canson paper. This is a scan.@varunabhiram made a video of me drawing this, you can see it on his YouTube channel.#300 / 5-Nov-17
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[#Inktober2017]Stranger Things 2 (2017)Happy Halloween, to those who are celebrating! Today's sketch is a triple homage. It's a drawing of Sadie Sink as Max from "Stranger Things 2", who is dressed as Michael Myers / The Shape from John Carpenter's "Halloween", and it's also based on the #Inktober prompt word, "mask". So I binge watched the 9 episodes of "Stranger Things 2" on 28th October, and loved it. I thought it was a terrific sequel to the first season, the horror elements were amped up, the acting and the writing were amazing, all characters got the chance to shine and it was brilliantly done. Only Episode 7 felt out of place in the overall narrative as it focused on a subplot other than the main story. But overall, this is a fantastic show and I loved it. Once again this is a love letter to the 1980s so it's packed with nostalgia.This is the 299th sketch here, so for sketch 300 I'm planning to do another one on "Stranger Things 2". The 1978 "Halloween" is a classic in its own right, credited for introducing the slasher movie genre. It's a very well made movie and the killer wears a William Shatner mask, spray painted white by the movie's costume designer. That became iconic.This sketch was done with a Bic ballpoint pen and scanned. #299 / 31-Oct-17
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[#Inktober2017]Death Note: Light Up The New World / PPAP (2016)The prompt word for #inktober for 23rd October was "juicy", and I thought of Ryuk from "Death Note" and his fondness for apples from the human realm, since they are juicy, compared to the apples that a Shinigami / Death God gets in the Shingami realm. @tiny.sharma10 also had the same idea for her Inktober sketch on 23rd (BTW you should check out her work, it's terrific, each day is an anime related drawing). I thought I'd put a slightly different spin on it though. Rather than draw Ryuk from the anime series, I drew him from a video that was produced by the makers of "Death Note: Light Up the New World". This is a video showing Ryuk dancing to the PPAP (Pen Pineapple Apple Pen) song by Piko-Taro. You can find the video on YouTube. This sketch was done with a Bic ballpoint pen and white gel pen, and the apple was drawn with a red ballpoint pen. This is a scan of the drawing.Tagging @inktober as well. #298 / 26-Oct-17
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[#Inktober2017]Attack Force (2006)Directed by Michael KeuschSteven Seagal rose to popularity in the early 1990s as an action movie star, and some of his earlier movies are really good. However, in the 2000s, much of his output has been direct-to-video movies, that have less action and less production value. There is a whole bunch of these on Amazon Prime Video, and I watched one of them, "Attack Force", yesterday. It was quite an experience watching it – the movie is quite bad, but it's interesting to analyse why this is so.The movie was filmed as "Harvester", a story involving Seagal battling vampiric aliens. However, before the movie was released, the production company decided to change the story. They got some of the secondary actors to come in, reshot footage, re-dubbed some of the dialogue, and re-edited the film to remove all trace of aliens. This was done without the involvement of the movie's co-writer, Joe Halpin, and Seagal.What we do get, is a story about Marshall Lawson (Seagal), whose team is killed off, and this sets him on a trail of a drug called CTX that gives people superhuman powers. There's also a military conspiracy surrounding CTX and the people who developed it.An apt description for the movie would be a mess – it's very difficult to understand, plot threads are picked up and abandoned, there is no sense of place or continuity, many times you don't see Seagal as there's a stand-in playing his character, about half of his dialogue is dubbed over by a voice actor who sounds nothing like him, and the movie ends abruptly. It's as if they put the minimum amount of effort into making something resembling a finished movie, so that they could release it. All this of course, is not counting the non-acting or bad acting, no development for most of the characters, bad dialogue, and lack of actual fighting. The cinematography by itself is mostly OK and the movie isn't boring. So it's worth a watch, especially if you are into filmmaking!This is a sketch of Seagal as Marshall and was drawn with a Bic ballpoint and white gel pen, this is a scan. It was drawn for the #inktober @inktober prompt word "trail". #297 / 22-Oct-17
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Entry for @instagram's Weekend Hashtag Project, #WHPperfectpair. A sketchbook and pen. What more could you ask for? I also posted this same picture on my main account @karthikabhiram. #canon #5dmarkiii #50mm
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[#Inktober2017]Justice League (2017)Directed by Zack SnyderThe prompt word for #Inktober a couple of days back was "graceful", and the first thing that came to my mind was to draw Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, as she was so beautiful and graceful in the role. This is an image of her smiling from the latest trailer for "Justice League". One could call this the "Heroes" trailer since it uses a cover of the song by David Bowie. I liked how they showed Superman in this latest trailer (showing but not showing at the same time), and that little bit of Hans Zimmer music was great. The footage in the trailer looks brighter and more saturated than the earlier trailers. I don't know whether this was the intended colour grading always or if they've changed it now. It's not long now for the movie to be released (less than a month). After a personal tragedy, the movie's director Zack Snyder has stepped back from the project, and "Avengers" director Joss Whedon is handling reshoots and is taking care of actually finishing the movie. Zack Snyder is still the only director credited (as the majority of the movie is still his), and I believe Whedon is getting a Story or Screenwriting credit. I'm optimistic about the movie. Hope it would exceed expectations.This drawing was some with Bic ballpoint and white gel pen. This is a scan. I'm actually not that happy with the drawing, I don't think I did justice (an attempt at a pun?) to it. Anyway, posting it. Tagging @inktober as well. #296 / 19-Oct-17
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