Recently Watched: Fire & Ice
Apr. 28th, 2006 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellyssianFire and Ice (2-Disc Limited Edition)
Sure, this is probably a storyline that's been done at least once before. Such original elements as a scantily clad barbarian hero and heroine and a power-crazed and rather Elricish
appearing villian locked in a struggle between good (fire) and evil (ice) abound. I would suspect that, if he hadn't offed himself, Robert E. Howard was ghost writer of the script.
Bakshi's rotoscoped animation - drawings made over the top of film of live actors portraying the scene - has been critiqued as both brilliant and sloppy, realistic and awkwardly halting. Frazetta's involvement has been seen as both minimal (something about his efforts reduced to providing ideas for the clothing) to providing the entire vision. And if you look deeper in the credits, you'll find that the scenery was painted by both James "Mr. Dinotopia" Gurney and Thomas "Painter of Light" Kinkade, who have each achieved a certain level of fame and/or infamy in the years following their work on this picture.
There is still something - several somethings - that make this work indispensable to me. I first was introduced to Bakshi in his adaption of The Lord of the Rings
- I have strong associations of this movie with a very good friend from high school (identified as Ryan when he appears in a Pieces of Me, erm, piece,) my brother Dan, and early Judas Priest or Iron Maiden music (not that it's in the film, it's just what I was listening to at that time.) I suppose I should mention the snow storms and late night smoke breaks, too, but those are fodder for a Pieces piece, and not really specific to this movie. In short, the style of animation is familiar, feels like home, friends, and good times. My tastes in art are often towards the more detailed and realistic, and rotoscoping does play with that, even as it reminds you it's animation.
I actually can't explain it much further than that - I could, like some critics, pick apart this movie if I looked deep into every flaw, but I like it in spite of - and at least partially because of - those flaws. Howard often took his writing off on jaunts regarding the nature of civilized society and barbarian culture - this gets both paradoxically ill-represented and accurately portrayed in films of his work, although I think I'm the only one who finds any of the latter. There's no real dealings with more civilized realms in Fire and Ice, but it still seems to evoke those same issues at the core of Conan and Kull et al. It's an evocation of a more primitive age.
So yeah, it reminds me of years gone by... of the confrontations between good and evil... and of slipping silently through the antediluvian jungles of high school... of heroes and damsels... of strength of heart and courage, and all that other cheesy stuff.
Sure, this is probably a storyline that's been done at least once before. Such original elements as a scantily clad barbarian hero and heroine and a power-crazed and rather Elricish
appearing villian locked in a struggle between good (fire) and evil (ice) abound. I would suspect that, if he hadn't offed himself, Robert E. Howard was ghost writer of the script.Bakshi's
rotoscoped animation - drawings made over the top of film of live actors portraying the scene - has been critiqued as both brilliant and sloppy, realistic and awkwardly halting. Frazetta's involvement has been seen as both minimal (something about his efforts reduced to providing ideas for the clothing) to providing the entire vision. And if you look deeper in the credits, you'll find that the scenery was painted by both James "Mr. Dinotopia" Gurney and Thomas "Painter of Light" Kinkade, who have each achieved a certain level of fame and/or infamy in the years following their work on this picture.There is still something - several somethings - that make this work indispensable to me. I first was introduced to Bakshi in his adaption of The Lord of the Rings
- I have strong associations of this movie with a very good friend from high school (identified as Ryan when he appears in a Pieces of Me, erm, piece,) my brother Dan, and early Judas Priest or Iron Maiden music (not that it's in the film, it's just what I was listening to at that time.) I suppose I should mention the snow storms and late night smoke breaks, too, but those are fodder for a Pieces piece, and not really specific to this movie. In short, the style of animation is familiar, feels like home, friends, and good times. My tastes in art are often towards the more detailed and realistic, and rotoscoping does play with that, even as it reminds you it's animation.I actually can't explain it much further than that - I could, like some critics, pick apart this movie if I looked deep into every flaw, but I like it in spite of - and at least partially because of - those flaws. Howard often took his writing off on jaunts regarding the nature of civilized society and barbarian culture - this gets both paradoxically ill-represented and accurately portrayed in films of his work, although I think I'm the only one who finds any of the latter. There's no real dealings with more civilized realms in Fire and Ice, but it still seems to evoke those same issues at the core of Conan
and Kull et al. It's an evocation of a more primitive age.So yeah, it reminds me of years gone by... of the confrontations between good and evil... and of slipping silently through the antediluvian jungles of high school... of heroes and damsels... of strength of heart and courage, and all that other cheesy stuff.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-28 03:15 pm (UTC)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh, i hate rotoscoping. That film (mind just went blank but i have the tape somewhere) Wizards??? something,
would have been a minor masterpiece with full animation.
And *no* rotoscoping.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-28 05:09 pm (UTC)The rotoscoping didn't impress me that much, but it grew on me over the years.
Curious, what don't you like about it?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-28 09:18 pm (UTC)extremely jarring, more so 'cause they looked like stock footage
and totally ruined the delicate atmosphere of the film.
Even the half finished "what looked like pencil sketches" managed to fit in, poorly but they fit.
Full colour animation against some of the "real but tinkered with
richly coloured backgrounds" worked but not the live shots of people.
It turned the film into a kitchen sink-shotgun experiment that never really got it together.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-28 09:20 pm (UTC)