Comics

Indie Intros: Tim Miller’s ‘Rockfish’

Before the recent success of Fox’s Deadpool, Tim Miller had only directed two animated short films. His debut ‘Aunt Luisa’ won him and co director Paul Taylor a Jury Award at the Ojai Film Festival. His second film, ‘Rockfish,’ won an honorable mention also at the Ojai Film Festival for Best Animation and came in second for Best Animation at the Palm Springs International Shortfest.

Since then, Miller worked his way into Hollywood, namely for visual effects, as an Assistant Director for Thor: The Dark World’s opening sequence and as a Creative Supervisor for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Miller’s career proves that just because you specialize in other areas of entertainment, such as animation, doesn’t mean you can’t transition those skills into live action film as well.

In ‘Rockfish,’ we follow what appears to a miner and the first incarnation of Puppy Monkey Baby from this year’s incredibly disturbing Super Bowl commercials. All of this takes place on Tatooine or maybe whatever world the video game Borderlands is set on.

Miner and Monkey-Alien are blue collar guys doing their blue collar thing, digging a large hole and running a long metal wire down it as space miners do. Everything seems to be going according to plan until the wire hits a snag and the entire crane contraption attached to it goes for an incredibly destructive ride.

‘Rockfish’ attracts audiences with this vagueness; luring audiences by their curiosity and slowly answering their questions through visuals rather than exposition. As we hope for our heroes to survive this dangerous predicament, we are also hoping the outcome will reveal a little more about their characters. In this case, we find that the miners aren’t actually miners at all, but hunters of a different sort. I won’t give away the ending, but all is made clear in the end.

Although the animation probably looks dated by today’s standards, the low-res shouldn’t undermine the way the story is revealed. For any of you that have seen Deadpool, this might have actually worked out in his favor, as the kind of bare bones animation used to make Colossus kind of works to reinforce the tongue in cheek feel the movie manages to create so well.

Spotlight on Shorts: Punisher: Dirty Laundry


It’s been a kind of good last few weeks for comic book fans. Last week marked the release of Daredevil on Netflix along with, what I’m sure was, a spike in people taking sick days and pizza delivery sales. Then of course there was some extra Hulkbuster footage from Avengers: Age of Ultron and the long-awaited teaser for Superman vs. Batman (along with a leaked trailer, but you didn’t hear that from me).

Going with the trend, I’ve decided that for the rest of the month I will be devoting the Spotlight on Shorts section to comic book based fan films.

We start with “Punisher: Dirty Laundry”.

This film first screened at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con and wowed audiences with the return of the best Frank Castle (sorry Dolph Lundgren fans), Thomas Jane. The film was produced by Adi Shankar who’s made a name for himself producing such films as the survival thriller The Grey and most recently the much talked about “Power/Rangers” fan film.

The film has what I assume all Punisher fans are looking for, a large dose of violence as the cure for criminality. Witnessing a gang of thugs terrorize a city block, Castle begins the film hesitant to don the skull again (for whatever reason), simply looking to hit up the local Laundromat, grab a Yoo-Hoo, and get back to watching the final season of Dawson’s Creek. But we all know it would be a pretty disappointing Punisher film if Frank didn’t reach his breaking point, and I mean “breaking” literally.

As a non-profit fan film, “Punisher: Dirty Laundry” can take a few liberties. The most obvious one is this film didn’t appear to have to be ok’d with Marvel as their name is nowhere on it. Secondly, the entire soundtrack was brought to you by Hans Zimmer and his work on The Dark Knight, which means Shankar managed to steal from Marvel and DC in one fell swoop.

I’m sure all you Punisher fans out there have already seen this and probably chimed in on whether or not this is a fitting film adaptation to the comic. I’ll leave that for you to discuss since the only experience I have reading The Punisher is when he shows up in Spiderman comics and when he steamrolled over Wolverine. From a film lover’s perspective I think I speak for most when I say that 2004’s The Punisher starring Thomas Jane is probably the franchise’s best and “Dirty Laundry” does a good job feeling like a sequel to that film.

Comics and Film

So in the never-ending battle to clear up space on my DVR, I began watching The Director’s Chair on the El Rey network. For those of you not familiar, The Director’s Chair is a sort of interview/master class program where Robert Rodriguez sits down with an established director and the two talk shop (sort of what I plan to do with this blog).

In one episode, Rodriguez was talking to Guillermo Del Toro about actor choices and how they both have that go-to actor that has come to represent their work.   Rodriguez mentioned how he keeps using Danny Trejo just like Del Toro uses Ron Perlman. He likened it to Scorsese’s early work with Robert Deniro. The two directors agreed the reason they keep going back to Trejo and Perlman is because the two actors have such a unique look and that it’s impossible to interchange them with any other actor. I couldn’t help but agree. Their are no Danny Trejo types you can use if you can’t get that trademarked grizzled look that Trejo is so known for. The same goes for Perlman. I mean seriously, can you imagine anyone else playing a live action, sewer dwelling version of The Beast?

Glamour Shots were so popular in the 80's.

Glamour Shots were so popular in the 80’s.

This got me started on my own little theory (really just a hypothesis).

Both Rodriguez and Del Toro have both said in the past that they’re highly influenced by comic books. Both draw and Del Toro has even published his own series. As the two of them discussed the type of presence Trejo and Perlman brought to the screen due to their unique looks, I couldn’t help but wonder if comics played a large role in their casting choices.

I have always respected the amount of detail that comic book artists put into their characters, specifically facial features. They say all you need to play Batman is a good chin, but this is only the case because comic book artists over the years have correlated square jaws with strength. One could also look at the casting of Schwarzenegger in Conan and how it relates to the artistry of Frank Frazetta as an example. Arnold was probably the only one Hollywood could think of that could capture the look Frazetta had attributed to Ron E Howard’s literary series. Frazetta’s scant usage of clothing combined with rippling, inhuman muscles and dark features gave Conan an almost primal look.

Before Electric Muscle Stimulators were invented, all you needed was a bolt of lightning and an epic hawk

Before Electric Muscle Stimulators were invented, all you needed was a bolt of lightning and an epic hawk

As the two directors went into detail about Trejo and Perlman, I realized how the attention to detail found in comics could truly enrich a film production. Del Toro noted that the studio didn’t want to make Hellboy unless he cast a bigger name than Ron Perlman. Del Toro refused to cast anyone else, demanding that only Perlman had the look to pull off the role and it’s a good thing he did. Really, is there any another actor alive that could play that character?

I’ve always kind of looked at comics as a good starting point for anyone interested in making film. By analyzing comics, you can get a good feel for things such as camera angles and what to capture within a frame. Attention to details, specifically when talking about facial features seem to me to be yet another example of how comics can further enrich a film.