Brad Bird “The Spirit” Pencil Animation Test

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Steven Paul Levia recently posted a pencil test created in 1980 by Brad Bird [The Incredibles] and others from Cal Arts and Disney for a proposed movie featuring Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

Here’s what Mr. Levia has to say at his Youtube post:

In 2008 as Frank Miller’s live action feature film based on Will Eisner’s “The Spirit” was being released I wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times on the time, back in 1980, when I became involved with Brad Bird and Gary Kurtz (producer of the first two “Star Wars” movies) in trying to get into production an animated feature based on “The Spirit” In that piece, which you can read here: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncate… I spoke of a pencil test “trailer” for the our proposed film that was made by Bird along with several classmates from Cal Arts, most of whom were working at Disney at the time. Quite a few people who read the article contacted me about seeing the film. I did have it on an old VHS, but it was deep in storage at the time plus as I did not really own the film, I told them they would have to look elsewhere to find a copy. Later, I found the VHS and put it aside. Recently Andrea Fiamma, an Italian journalist writing on the subject for the website Fumettologica,” asked again if the film could be seen. As it is a small piece of animation history, I’ve decided to post it here.

Martin Scorsese’s List Of 85 Must-See Films

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Here we have Martin Scorsese’s List Of 85 Must-See Films.  Of the 85, I’ve seen 23 and tried to watch a few more but couldn’t get into them…

1. Apocalypse Now
2. Arsenic and Old Lace
3. Cape Fear
4. Cat People
5. Citizen Kane
6. Dial M for Murder
7. Do the Right Thing
8. Duel in the Sun
9. The Godfather
10. Gun Crazy
11. House of Wax
12. The Hustler
13. Jason and the Argonauts
14. Kiss Me Deadly
15. The Lady From Shanghai
16. Midnight Cowboy
17. Smith Goes to Washington
18. Night and the City
19. Pickup on South Street
20. The Player
21. Stagecoach
22. The Third Man
23. Touch of Evil

Surely You Can’t Be Serious: An Oral History of “Airplane”

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Will Harris’ Surely You Can’t Be Serious: An Oral History of Airplane takes us behind the scenes of the making of the classic comedy with remembrances from the creators and stars of the film.

Check out the piece to learn about Peter Graves not getting the humor until seeing the film, Leslie Nielsen‘s fart machine, and a whole lot more.

Source: AV Club.

30 Things We Learned from Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects  have posted 30 Things We Learned from Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” Commentary.

Here are three of my favorites…

1. It was Scott’s choice to have the opening credits be simply text against a black screen. “I knew my opening shot would be so spectacular,” he says, “that I didn’t want the titles to upstage them in any form.”

29. He points out a detail during the end sequence with Deckard hanging from a building that I’ve never noticed in my numerous watches of the film. Just as Deckard loses his grip he spits at Roy in a final act of bravado, and it’s that action, that refusal to beg for his life, that leads Roy to save his life.

30. Regarding whether or not Deckard is a replicant, Scott is okay with either interpretation, but he himself believes the answer to be yes. He says the expression on Deckard’s face after noticing the origami unicorn outside his apartment door is confirmation. Gaff was there, the unicorn is from Deckard’s dreams, and Gaff would have had access to Deckard’s file which would probably include mention of the unicorn dream implant. I guess we’ll find out for sure in the sequel…