Sunday, September 04, 2005
My rambling 'toon tirade
This article on last spring’s Sin City is exceptionally well-written and timely, considering that many of today’s leading graphic novel writers have or are having their works adapted by a medium most inappropriate for the material.
If I were Alan Moore, I’d give the middle finger to Joel Silver and all of those Warner Brothers bitches (reportedly, he has already disowned most or all of V for Vendetta—a troubled production that recently had its release date pushed back several months into 2006) and would say hello to Film Roman and/or Tokyo Movie Shinsa. Both of the aforementioned are excellent animation houses, and if Curt Geda or Kevin Altieri or Boyd Kirkland were allowed to take a run at the material we undoubtedly would end up with a classic. Take a page (pun intended) from Howl’s Moving Castle.
Howl’s Moving Castle did not start as a graphic novel, although it could most certainly be called that. Had Dianna Wynne-Jones’s work been purchased by the WB and Joel Silver with the intention of making it live-action, the results probably would have been costly and disastrous. Then again, if the rights were purchased by Disney (as it is, Disney represented by Buena Vista owns only the right to distribute the film in North America as opposed to the completed film) for in-house production, that could have been disastrous as well. Because, we all know how Disney treats their properties.
This is why the world is a better place since Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli had their hands on the property. I mean, even now Howl still isn’t a perfect film, but it is heads-and-tails better than nearly every animated film (computer-generated or otherwise) released over the past five years.
More later. . .
If I were Alan Moore, I’d give the middle finger to Joel Silver and all of those Warner Brothers bitches (reportedly, he has already disowned most or all of V for Vendetta—a troubled production that recently had its release date pushed back several months into 2006) and would say hello to Film Roman and/or Tokyo Movie Shinsa. Both of the aforementioned are excellent animation houses, and if Curt Geda or Kevin Altieri or Boyd Kirkland were allowed to take a run at the material we undoubtedly would end up with a classic. Take a page (pun intended) from Howl’s Moving Castle.
Howl’s Moving Castle did not start as a graphic novel, although it could most certainly be called that. Had Dianna Wynne-Jones’s work been purchased by the WB and Joel Silver with the intention of making it live-action, the results probably would have been costly and disastrous. Then again, if the rights were purchased by Disney (as it is, Disney represented by Buena Vista owns only the right to distribute the film in North America as opposed to the completed film) for in-house production, that could have been disastrous as well. Because, we all know how Disney treats their properties.
This is why the world is a better place since Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli had their hands on the property. I mean, even now Howl still isn’t a perfect film, but it is heads-and-tails better than nearly every animated film (computer-generated or otherwise) released over the past five years.
More later. . .
# posted by E.A. @ 11:39 PM 
