Everything about the upcoming Marvel Comics’ superhero movie Deadpool looks brilliant. I have not read any of the comics, but when the first trailer was released a few months ago, the movie seemed interesting. After that, there have been a number of posters and trailers that have come out, and all of them were very creative and well done. I was really inspired by these and so did a drawing, and also made that into a poster, which you can see below.
Deadpool stars Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson, a former soldier who is diagnosed with terminal cancer, but is put through an experimental treatment that leaves him with incredible regenerative powers (but also makes him completely disfigured so he has to wear a mask and a suit). From the trailer, it looks like the people who put him through the experiment also kidnap the love of his life, and he has to go after them.
The character was featured in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (also played in that movie by Ryan Reynolds), though he was just some generic villain there.
This movie though, is proudly Rated R for strong violence and language throughout, sexual content and graphic nudity, and the studio issued multiple Red Band Trailers with violence and offensive jokes.
The first trailer that came out for this movie ended with Deadpool sniffing the smoke coming from his guns, and then saying “Oh, I’m touching myself tonight”, and this drawing depicts that scene (in the trailer though, you only see an extreme close-up of his face). How I came to choose this scene to draw is this – you see, interestingly, the studio seems to be investing quite a bit to promote this movie in India (though Deadpool is not a known character here), and are releasing dubbed versions of the movie in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu apart from the English version. A friend literally translated that line into Telugu and in a later WhatsApp conversation, suggested that the title would also be translated, and he came up with “Chacchina Cheruvu” (a pool or a lake that is dead). I thought I would make a poster out of it.
Here is the Telugu parody poster. This is all done in fun, no offense meant.
In the English version of my poster, the line I used is also from the first trailer, in which Wade Wilson tells the people putting him through the experiment, not to make the super-suit green, or animated. This is a reference to the DC Comics movie Green Lantern, which also starred Ryan Reynolds as the titular superhero, and in that movie, his suit was green and animated. I did not like that movie at all, and apparently neither did too many other people, so a joke on that ended up in Deadpool.
The drawing was done on an A4 size drawing pad, with a 6B pencil, and a red colour pencil. For the belt I used an orange pencil. The drawing was scanned once done, and I added the background and the text in Photoshop. Here are the stages of the drawing –
And this is the rough sketch of the poster concept. There were initially supposed to be blood splats behind Deadpool, but when I tried that it didn’t look good. Since Deadpool’s suit is also red, the red colour of the blood was distracting.
The tagline and the title of the movie in Telugu, I had decided, would be in the Deadpool font but would have an English translation below it, sort of like a movie subtitle.
The below Instagram post shows you the finished drawing and the pencils used to make it.
Here below, are links to all the trailers that inspired this drawing. All of them are YouTube links which will open in a new window / tab.
Red Band Trailer 1 – Released a few months ago, this is the one that has the “I’m touching myself tonight” bit.
Red Band Trailer 2 – This is the second trailer for the movie released on Christmas Day, and is a pretty awesome trailer, the one that made me even more interested in the movie.
Green Band Trailer 2 – The “safe for work” version of the previous trailer, with no swearing and violence. All the Indian language trailers are dubbed versions of this trailer.
Hindi Trailer – The first Indian language trailer, based on the Green Band Trailer linked above. Probably, the one with the most swearing in it. Buzzfeed India featured an article about this trailer, which has captioned screenshots from it. You can see the article here.
Tamil Trailer – Second Indian trailer, nothing much offensive about it.
Telugu Trailer – Third Indian trailer, again, not offensive at all.
These are the three songs used in the trailers (again, YouTube links).
A version of this artwork is available for you to purchase as a print (sans text), on my Postergully store. You can purchase it as a poster, or as a T-Shirt.
Deadpool will be out in theatres on 12-Feb-16 in India. I’ll see it in as many languages as I can theatrically, and then watch an uncut version later (since sadly, I know that our censors would make cuts to the movie inspite of giving it an adults only certificate).
I didn’t have an Items of Interest post last week as I’d been a bit busy with work and other stuff. So this is a double-sized issue again. As usual, I’ll cover interesting links and events and then go on to the collection of tweets over the last few days.
Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Vol 8
For a while now, I have been talking about Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad on my blog here (this post) and also on Facebook and Twitter. Well, Volume 8 of this event happened yesterday (31-Mar-12) and my brother Varun was one of the presenters. His presentation was called “Know Tools, Create Better” and was about how software tools have aided his creative process.
Varun’s presentation was the first of the evening, and it was very well delivered. He’d done his homework well – and that was apparent as he was presenting. There were 7 other speakers at this volume and the event’s MC was Varun Todi (who was one of the presenters in the previous volume). I was there to cheer my brother, and also took a whole bunch of photos as usual.
You can click the above link to view the album of my photos on Facebook. This time I carried along my flash and used all my lenses, so there’s more variety in these photos compared to what I’d done at the previous volumes. My mom and dad also had come for the event, as did a considerably big bunch of friends. Very nice evening I’d say.
Like last time, the talks were all filmed. So those of you who missed some of the presentations can see them when the videos are uploaded to YouTube.
This is the latest video that the team uploaded on the PKNHyd YouTube Channel: Behind the Scenes. This is a sort of “trailer” for PKN Hyd Vol 8. It’s pretty nice, more so since I appear twice in the video!
A couple of other interesting things about this edition of Pecha Kucha –
All hail Open Source! The computer that was hooked up to the projector was running openSUSE 12.1 and presentation slideshows were run on libreoffice-impress.
The speakers’ presentations (PPT files) were converted into MOV videos, so as to preserve the timing of 20 seconds per slide exactly.
Some Glimpses of Hyderabad
Last Saturday I had to go to office to conduct some interviews. I thought I’d use the opportunity to take some photos – so I took my camera along with me. I took a bunch of photos on the commute to and back from office.
Above is one of the photos from the set. In this, you can see the poster for the movie 3, starring Dhanush and Shruti Haasan. This is the movie featuring the song “Why this Kolaveri Di?” and it was released here in Hyderabad on Friday (30-Mar-12) both in Tamil and Telugu.
Galactica’s Season 2 Premiere
My cousin’s blog Galactica resumed publication of posts on March 27 (he calls it a “Season 2” Premiere). A couple of days before, I made this as a promo –
I had taken a print of one of the posters he made, held it up and asked my brother to take this photo. There’s a bunch of movie reviews you can read.
The budget of the movie was $300 million. For that they might have actually flown the actors to Barsoom.
The above quote is from his review for John Carter. Other notable reviews: Nicolas Refn’s Drive, Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Kahaani (features my Vidya Balan drawing), The Artist, Scorsese’s Hugo (which I am yet to see).
I watched both Agent Vinod and Dookudu in the recent past. The former was seen on opening day in the theatre, whereas the latter was on DVD. I posted a bunch of tweets about them, thought I would summarise them here.
Agent Vinod from director Sriram Raghavan intended to be a globetrotting spy/adventure thriller. I thought it was well shot (the director of photography is C. K. Muraleedharan, who shot the director’s earlier Johnny Gaddaar) and stylish. However, I wasn’t as entertained by it as I’d hoped – the movie was disappointing not because it was incompetent, but I think they tried cramming too much stuff in. The plot was needlessly dragged out (it’s essentially a lot of people following what seems to be a MacGuffin initially, and then the movie turns into a more conventional action-thriller) and I felt they set scenes in various locations (Latvia, Somalia, Russia, etc) just because they had the budget for it. Sometimes felt like 2 movies put together. There was one ‘long take’ sequence which was very nicely done, shaky cam in some action scenes was distracting. If it was trimmed down and if the central character was more interesting, it could have actually become a nice franchise. But I’d say it was an interesting letdown. 6/10
That’s the censorship certificate for the movie. I posted one for Businessman earlier – and like that one, I found the description funny – “Deleted lovemaking sound in the background (replaced with other sound)”.
Dookudu was a huge hit for its star Mahesh Babu, and is a movie that combines action, sentimental drama and comedy all in one package. If you know what you are getting into, and don’t expect anything even remotely resembling reality, you will have a lot of fun with this movie. Somehow, despite being almost 3 hours long, the movie worked, I thought it was very entertaining. The character of “Cool Babu” was… cool, and there were some great one-liners and very funny lines in the movie (“no one can scratch me”). One rooftop fight sequence in the movie was filmed opposite Inorbit mall, near Durgam Cheruvu. 7/10
Two Songs, and a trailer for a Trailer
Apparently, the Indian release of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers is going to have a Hindi song, performed by the band Agnee. This is called “Hello Andheron” and it’s pretty nice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sobFsj0at0I
I have been following Matthew Inman’s site The Oatmeal for quite a while now. The latest entry there is a sing-along video for a song called “The Motherfucking Pterodactyl”, presented by him and Sarah Donner. There’s more info on this page (you can download the MP3 too).
In a short while, the trailer for the upcoming Total Recall, starring Colin Farrell and directed by Len Wiseman would come online. A couple of days back though, we had the below trailer for the trailer –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JygnlFgcyJ8
Links
I was reading about a “Split Focus Diopter” on this Wikipedia article. This allows one to have a shot with both an area in the foreground as well as one in the background in focus. I’d heard about this in John Carpenter’s audio commentary for his The Thing (1982). It’s used in Brian DePalma’s Blow Out, and in The Divide from Xavier Gens. I think some episodes of the TV show Sherlock also use this.
Interview with the DP of “Like Crazy” – Like Crazy is a movie that was shot on a Canon EOS 7D, there’s an insightful audio interview with the cinematographer of that movie, on lessons learnt in shooting a movie with a DSLR.
In this image, someone has worked out the entire plot of Prometheus from the trailers released so far. I seriously hope this won’t be all there is to the movie!
Randomly visited PlanetQuake after a long time, and came across this link to a very unique looking Quake III Arena Deathmatch Map – Lun3DM5, a Doom-inspired one – Lun3DM3, and this presentation linked from PlanetDoom.
Sickipediabot Tweets
A collection of tweets from @sickipediabot –
April Fool’s Day: The day every newspaper tries to fool readers by sneaking in at least one properly researched, factually correct story.
If I had to describe my mathematical ability in just one word, it would be “fucking awful.”
What a wonderful feeling it is waking up next to a beautiful woman. Oh well, back home to the wife then.
“Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Don’t fuck around, Buzz. Who the hell do you think it is?” “Sorry, Neil.”
I’ve just had a new car horn fitted. It replicates the sound of a gunshot. You should see how fast the fuckers move out the way now.
I committed the perfect crime. I put a mime in an airtight glass box. Nobody suspected a thing.
To cut a long story short, use fewer words.
My grandad asked me what I wanted for my birthday so I told him a ship in a bottle… Shame his hearing is getting bad
I think it would be fantastic to actually see a great white shark before I die. Just not RIGHT before.
My girlfriend just said, “You’re far too vague.” I said, “Well it’s a lot better than being that other thing.”
Collection of Tweets
And finally, we arrive at the collection of tweets over the last couple of weeks.
Tweets 1-Apr-12:
RT @r_nikki #AprilFool :Go into a public toilet cubicle. Melt dark chocolate in your hand. Extend same hand to next cubicle & ask for tissues
RT @AapChutiyeHain waiting for a text from someone you love must feel like the wait for the reply to a leave request email on a sunday evening.
RT @anujgurwara So our financial year begins on #FoolsDay. Think about all the politicians and their scams and it makes so much sense. @roshanabbas
RT @funnyhumour As I sat down next to a bloke he gave me a realy strange look. typical I thought.D bus is empty,yet I still end up sitting next to a nutcase
RT @edgarwright This tweet is not real. April Fools.
RT @zombeaner Who decided that Shriya Saran should be an actress? Can I slap that person?
RT @ManMadeMoon Going to see The Raid tonight. Never been so excited about the prospect of having my arse kicked before!
RT @ManMadeMoon Really enjoyed The Raid. Some bloody marvellous death-dealing!
Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Vol 8 – Great show and I loved Varun’s presentation – very nicely done!
RT @PrashantKV And it all went well! #pknhyd @pknhyd
RT @RGVzoomin On the ocassion of save earth campaign I put all the lights on even the ones I normally don’t put on just to be different
Very well said! RT @vemana Fuck up as much as you want. Its all fun and learning as long as you are alive and kicking
RT @rob_sheridan Holy hell, @trent_reznor was right, The Raid is an INSANE action movie. Like a martial arts Die Hard on steroids. Nicely done @ghuwevans!
RT @ID_AA_Carmack I’m going to turn on every damn light in protest of Earth Hour. Lighting the darkness is fundamental to humanity’s climb.
RT @ajith27 Today’s edition of the Mint is brought to you by Trollo- the mint with the a**ehole #AakarPatel
RT @mihirfadnavis “Critics are C.h.u.t.i.y.a.s, I’m a R.E.S.P.E.C.T.E.D filmmaker” – Sajid Khan http://bit.ly/H2vCet . I look fwd to reviewing your film, sir.
RT @zombeaner THE RAID inspired numerous “Oh, FUCK”s at the midnight show I attended. Job: Done.
RT @kevinshahinian Great tutorial RT @vincentlaforet: Get your GREEN SCREEN skills on w/ Epic & 5DMKII – free 34 min tutorial http://bit.ly/HnzNCF
RT @zombeaner WATCH THIS & HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN!! RT @twitchfilm First Trailer For Akshay Kumar’s ROWDY RATHORE Blows The Roof Off! http://bit.ly/H1J5WK
RT @mihirfadnavis Goddamn it. Watched ‘London Paris NY’ last night. MY FACE NOW SPORTS RED BLISTERS THANKS TO ALL THE FACEPALMS.
RT @zombeaner This crazy ass nutball of a movie is now on DVD. Ghost (Hindi): http://bit.ly/HvVFZr via @AddThis
RT @the_moonface I need to invest in whatever company prints those little “Made In China” stickers.
RT @omgthatspunny Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine. #punny
RT @thevirdas Some day…hopefully soon. A whole day will go by, where no one tweets me asking if I actually drink orange juice, and on that day..I shall.
Awesome 🙂 RT @achettup @psam WHERE DO YOU BUY YOUR RAHUL DRAVID MEMORABILIA FROM??? WALLMART
Tweets 28-Mar-12:
Can’t wait! RT @m_shinoda First single from new Linkin Park album: “Burn It Down” Coming April 16. #LinkinPark2012 http://viddy.it/HhMIYf
RT @funnyoneliners My neighbor’s dog is so popular that every time he barks, the neighborhood dogs RT him. RT @Thedudish
RT @m_shinoda Who wants some official news on the new single? Stay tuned TOMORROW. #LinkinPark2012
RT @Oatmeal Been catching up on the latest episodes of “People standing outside a farmhouse and arguing”– er, I mean Walking Dead. LITTLE TYPO
Reservoir Dogs is awesome as it always has been… give Tarantino his standing ovation!
RT @27bslash6 “They have an army of lawyers & you don’t even own a suit. Just change it to a cat or something. Everyone likes cats.” http://bit.ly/GRkb7D
Inspired by @Galactica_gk I am #NowWatching “Reservoir Dogs”. Awesome movie no matter how many times you see it…
RT @trent_reznor If you’re in the mood for an ACTION film, immediately go see The Raid: Redemption. God DAMN.
Fringe S04E12 had a creepy setup, 13 was good, 14 was great… starting 15 now. @Galactica_gk tells me that it’s even more awesome…
Tweets 25-Mar-12:
RT @Galactica_gk Reservoir Dogs is the first masterpiece by Quentin Tarantino. Also has an awesome background score. Loved the song- ‘Stuck in the middle’
RT @Galactica_gk Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, Stuck in the middle with you -from Reservoir Dogs..
Yesterday caught up with “The Walking Dead”, today it’s “Fringe”. Now on S04E12, will see till S04E15 today.
RT @vemana Indian translation of “Mad Men returns(airs) tonight! ” is “Mad Men will be available on torrents tomorrow morning” 🙂
RT @Veronica OK, that was pretty good. RT @kenyatta: What do they call The Hunger Games in France? Battle Royale with Cheese. #PulpFiction
“Shiitake Happens” – from Fringe S04E11 🙂
RT @This_Is_Hari Agar aap @tatadocomo par vishwas karte hain.. toh kasam USB driver ki – @AapChutiyeHain
Done with “The Walking Dead”, few more months to go for S03 to begin. Should be awesome, and the prison arc begins.
RT @IIFAUpdates Hitman responsible for death of J Bachchan evaluated as schizophrenic; cannot credibly be traced back to A Bachchan
If you ask me, TV Release Groups did the right thing by switching to the x264 codec for encoding their rips. Quality is superior to Xvid.
I liked South Park S16E02, much better than the first episode of the season. #NowWatching The Walking Dead S02E11
Tweets 24-Mar-12:
RT @Galactica_gk #Drive is a lovely movie with awesome background score.
RT @JonMwords Please keep tweeting the stats from your runs and workouts. I enjoy learning about new and interesting apps to mute and block forever.
RT @headius I learned today that @flipkart, the “Amazon of India”, is MRI+Rails frontend with JRuby+Padrino for the backend. #awesome #rubyconfindia
RT @DanaDanger HTTP response codes for dummies. 50x: we fucked up. 40x: you fucked up. 30x: ask that dude over there. 20x: cool.
RT @IIFAUpdates BREAKING: Private Investigator hired by J Bachchan earlier this month to follow husband A Bachchan killed by sniper in gorilla costume
RT @IIFAUpdates: @ankash1009 Sorry about this, this is just for a committee for Model UN at our university – we didn’t mean to have you killed or anything
RT @omgthatspunny A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’ #punny
Btw: the last tweet about “Slumdog” director Anurag Kashyap being killed was retweeted by @ankash1009 himself 🙂 now following @IIFAUpdates
RT @IIFAUpdates BREAKING: “Slumdog Mil.” director Anurag Kashyap killed! Deep connection between Bollywood/mafia puts all in danger.
RT @omgthatspunny How do you get holy water? Boil the hell out of it. #punny
Tweets 23-Mar-12:
RT @Galactica_gk Agent Vinod is one of the worst Hindi movies ever made!! It’s the interval. :((
RT @poonamkhatri: @PunsNProses If he’s a washer, he’d be called Detergent Vinod.
RT @PunsNProses If he is in a hurry, he’ll be called Urgent Vinod. #Sorry
RT @Galactica_gk Going for 2 movies back2back: The Hunger games at 5:50 (Finally) and Agent Vinod at 9:45.
RT @josephradhik Photo tip: Stop looking at EXIF Info. It teaches almost nothing but lusting after more gear or making excuses for why you can’t take a shot.
RT @josephradhik RT @mehrzee: RT @tyrantasorus: Whats common between tight jeans and cheap hotels? No ballroom. @mehrzee
RT @reiinamoto The genius of Saul Bass. Proves adding shadow and 3D to a logo ALWAYS makes it worse. http://goo.gl/pSdoD
RT @rj_white From James Ellroy’s recent television program: Johnny Stompanato, Lana Turner and a guy on his cell phone in a mirror. http://is.gd/Xg4xaC
RT @RGVzoomin You can be on the right track nd still get hit by a train!
RT @omgthatspunny What does a mermaid wear to math class? An Algae-bra! #punny
Tweets 19-Mar-12:
RT @omgthatspunny What did the buffalo say to his son when he left for college? Bison #punny
RT @rj_white Yesterday, I walked past someone explaining the phrase “Epic fail” to a child who had asked about why it was on the person’s Smurfs t-shirt.
RT @thedavesherrill I’ve noticed girls like to wear shirts that say “I Love Nerds” but never want to hear all 45 ways I would have improved the Watchmen movie.
RT @simonpegg Paul was NOT the third film in the so called ‘Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy’. World’s End will be the final part.
Tweets 18-Mar-12:
RT @planet5D #cinema5D Zeiss 15mm T2.8 – an impressive new lens, but it ’s unaffordable #HDSLRnews http://t.co/oPsiWpig
RT @clientsfh “I understand that you don’t work on weekends, but I have a very special circumstance. I spoke with my…” http://t.co/kwRaAcZc
RT @ilovetypography My next tweet will be profoundly typographic.
RT @ilovetypography The secret to RTs: ‘cats’, ‘sex’, & ‘free fonts’ — working on a free font called Sex Cat.
RT @planet5D #planet5D The Canon EOS 5D Mark II mates with a 93 year old view camera #HDSLRnews http://t.co/zPjOELHt
RT @funnyoneliners Looking up “obsolescence” in the Encyclopedia Britannica. RT @davio1962
RT @ravi_mohan A journey of a thousand miles starts with an Amazon order.
RT @PrashantKV The best part of what I do, is what I do!
RT @funnyoneliners The Cop: “How do you explain all the cannabis in your loft?” The Suspect: “Someone must have planted it there.”
RT @predominant “My mom called it Mozzarella Firefox”
And that wraps up this update for now, see you next time.
Deadpool stars Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson, a former soldier who is diagnosed with terminal cancer, but is put through an experimental treatment that leaves him with incredible regenerative powers (but also makes him completely disfigured so he has to wear a mask and a suit). From the trailer, it looks like the people who put him through the experiment also kidnap the love of his life, and he has to go after them.
In the English version of my poster, the line I used is also from the first trailer, in which Wade Wilson tells the people putting him through the experiment, not to make the super-suit green, or animated. This is a reference to the DC Comics movie Green Lantern, which also starred Ryan Reynolds as the titular superhero, and in that movie, his suit was green and animated. I did not like that movie at all, and apparently neither did too many other people, so a joke on that ended up in Deadpool.
And this is the rough sketch of the poster concept. There were initially supposed to be blood splats behind Deadpool, but when I tried that it didn’t look good. Since Deadpool’s suit is also red, the red colour of the blood was distracting.
The below Instagram post shows you the finished drawing and the pencils used to make it.
