GRIM FANDANGO
For many, Tim Schafer’s masterpiece represents the high watermark of story-driven adventure games. The game charts the story of Manny Calavera, an “estate agent” for the Department of Death, who spends his days collecting the souls of the departed for their journey to their final resting place in the Ninth Underworld (sinful souls must make a punishing four year journey on foot to reach their destination, while virtuous spirits are given tickets to board the Number Nine luxury express train which cuts the journey time down to an air-conditioned four minutes). The story is an accessible take on Casablanca-style film noir, but the real draw is the unspeakably beautiful art style, which renders Mexican Day of the Dead and 20s Art Deco iconography in stunning 3D. Surely Pixar could stoop to adapting a pre-existing story if it’s as beautiful and layered as this one? Refine the story, use the game as a design document for art style, and it could just be the first movie to capture the unique spirit of its videogame inspiration. Or the first to not suck massive balls at the very least.
It’s a comic book series that has been described leading the so-called ‘widescreen comics’ movement, so it’s only fair that it should make it to the biggest screen of all. If I was a lazy hack I’d describe it as Justice League on acid, but I’m trying to be good so let’s get a little more in depth here. The Authority is a bells-and-whistles super team saga, complete with world-saving heroics and dimension-hopping antics. The difference is that The Authority are a bunch of badass political radicals, bent on improving global social imbalances by kicking the shit out of governments until they agree to invite the little guys up to the grown ups’ table. Simplistic as it is, it gets points for political idealism, and the characters that make up the team are complex enough to make a film more than mere pyrotechnics. The Midnighter and Apollo are Batman and Superman pastiches, and totally gay-bones for each other. The Doctor is an all-powerful shaman who can’t help but suppress the voices in his head with truckloads of smack. Team Leader Jenny Sparks is the lightning-flinging spirit of the 20th century. If you ask me, cinematic slowpokes DC could save themselves a lot of trouble by ditching the logistical nightmare of a Justice League movie and fast-tracking this super-powered Wild Bunch instead.
A thoroughly enjoyable children’s fantasy book, Brian Jacques’ first novel follows the mice inhabitants of Redwall Abbey as they try to defend their walls from piratical Portuguese searat Cluny The Scourge and his horde of vicious vermin. Anthropomorphic woodland creatures consistently make for engaging animated features, and no one does anthropomorphism quite like Brian Jacques, who virtually built a career out of it. At its heart, Redwall is a siege story, which tends to mean a tight, easily-followable storyline, and all the beats are there (desperate siege, battle scenes, one hero’s epic journey to find the key to salvation etc) to make for a rollocking family movie in the same eccentrically British, adapted-from-a-kids’-novel vein as Watership Down and Fantastic Mr Fox. Given how well stop-motion worked for the latter, it could quite easily be transplanted here, albeit with a slicker finish than Mr Fox’s charmingly dishevelled aesthetic. Potential highlights? Our hero Matthias doing battle with giant adder Asmodeus Poisonteeth; honourable motormouth and all-round irrepressible cad Basil Stag Hare; the thoroughly unfair advantage of the defenders who have a goddamned badger on their side.
A million Rastafarians still worship him as the second incarnation of God. That probably merits a movie, no? Emperor Haile Selassie I’s 43-year reign of Ethiopia is ripe for dramatisation, with coups, war, international intrigue and exile marking an extraordinary life. A film charting the invasion by Mussolini’s Italy, Selassie’s self-imposed exile and Ethiopia’s betrayal by a gutless international community in the 1930s would provide an opportunity to shed some light on a fascinating period of history and explore some of the factors leading to the Lion of Judah becoming such an icon of African history and international diplomacy. It would certainly require a captivating central performance, but cinema owes it to audiences to represent African history beyond famine, genocide and racial conflict.
Transmetropolitan, the story of Spider Jerusalem, a mad investigative journalist in a depraved future in which technology has opened up infinite possibilities but social inequality means that most people can’t afford it, has been a personal favourite graphic novel ever since my mum unwittingly bought me the third book in the series more than ten years ago. Essentially a homage to the renegade journalism of the late great Hunter S. Thompson, Transmet is at once a disturbing vision of a brutal (and hilarious) cybernetic future where one savage writer defends an oppressed population against the machinations of tyrannical presidents and the cruelty of technology gone mad, and a hopeful paean to the unassailable power of the written word when all else fails. It’s porno for disgruntled journalists, essentially. But the colourful world envisioned by Warren Ellis (who also created The Authority) and illustrated by Darick Robertson is inherently cinematic, and as the clusterfuck of technology becomes a more and more intimate part of our lives (did you hear that scientists recently communicated with a vegetative coma patient by monitoring his brain waves?), the story just becomes more relevant. And the rage-fuelled, pill-popping, ranting hysteria of Spider Jerusalem marks a character that deserves to find a larger audience. I’ll finish with some choice words from the man himself:
Ideal director: Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille)
Casting call: Antonio Banderas as Manny Calavera (voice), Bobcat Goldthwait as Glottis the Speed Demon (voice)
THE AUTHORITY
It’s a comic book series that has been described leading the so-called ‘widescreen comics’ movement, so it’s only fair that it should make it to the biggest screen of all. If I was a lazy hack I’d describe it as Justice League on acid, but I’m trying to be good so let’s get a little more in depth here. The Authority is a bells-and-whistles super team saga, complete with world-saving heroics and dimension-hopping antics. The difference is that The Authority are a bunch of badass political radicals, bent on improving global social imbalances by kicking the shit out of governments until they agree to invite the little guys up to the grown ups’ table. Simplistic as it is, it gets points for political idealism, and the characters that make up the team are complex enough to make a film more than mere pyrotechnics. The Midnighter and Apollo are Batman and Superman pastiches, and totally gay-bones for each other. The Doctor is an all-powerful shaman who can’t help but suppress the voices in his head with truckloads of smack. Team Leader Jenny Sparks is the lightning-flinging spirit of the 20th century. If you ask me, cinematic slowpokes DC could save themselves a lot of trouble by ditching the logistical nightmare of a Justice League movie and fast-tracking this super-powered Wild Bunch instead.
Ideal director: Katheryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Point Break, Strange Days)
Casting call: Katee Sackhoff as Jenny Sparks (if she can pull off a British accent), Russell Crowe (non-tubby version) as The Midnighter, Matthew McConaughey as Apollo, Ben Whishaw as The Doctor, Lauren Velez as the Engineer, Sam Worthington as Jack Hawksmoor, Maggie Q as Swift (although an unknown East Asian actor could do just as well as the five or so who I'm aware of)
REDWALL
A thoroughly enjoyable children’s fantasy book, Brian Jacques’ first novel follows the mice inhabitants of Redwall Abbey as they try to defend their walls from piratical Portuguese searat Cluny The Scourge and his horde of vicious vermin. Anthropomorphic woodland creatures consistently make for engaging animated features, and no one does anthropomorphism quite like Brian Jacques, who virtually built a career out of it. At its heart, Redwall is a siege story, which tends to mean a tight, easily-followable storyline, and all the beats are there (desperate siege, battle scenes, one hero’s epic journey to find the key to salvation etc) to make for a rollocking family movie in the same eccentrically British, adapted-from-a-kids’-novel vein as Watership Down and Fantastic Mr Fox. Given how well stop-motion worked for the latter, it could quite easily be transplanted here, albeit with a slicker finish than Mr Fox’s charmingly dishevelled aesthetic. Potential highlights? Our hero Matthias doing battle with giant adder Asmodeus Poisonteeth; honourable motormouth and all-round irrepressible cad Basil Stag Hare; the thoroughly unfair advantage of the defenders who have a goddamned badger on their side.Ideal director: Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline)
Casting call: Eric Chase Anderson as Matthias, Powers Boothe as Cluny The Scourge, John Cleese as Basil Stag Hare, Helen Mirren as Constance the Badger
HAILE SELASSIE
A million Rastafarians still worship him as the second incarnation of God. That probably merits a movie, no? Emperor Haile Selassie I’s 43-year reign of Ethiopia is ripe for dramatisation, with coups, war, international intrigue and exile marking an extraordinary life. A film charting the invasion by Mussolini’s Italy, Selassie’s self-imposed exile and Ethiopia’s betrayal by a gutless international community in the 1930s would provide an opportunity to shed some light on a fascinating period of history and explore some of the factors leading to the Lion of Judah becoming such an icon of African history and international diplomacy. It would certainly require a captivating central performance, but cinema owes it to audiences to represent African history beyond famine, genocide and racial conflict.
Ideal director: Steven Soderbergh (Che, The Informant!)
Casting call: Just getting a real Ethiopian cast would be a triumph. Hollywood tends to forget that Africa is a big place and people tend to look different across the continent, so this is a problem that couldn’t be solved by simply throwing Will Smith at it.
TRANSMETROPOLITAN
Transmetropolitan, the story of Spider Jerusalem, a mad investigative journalist in a depraved future in which technology has opened up infinite possibilities but social inequality means that most people can’t afford it, has been a personal favourite graphic novel ever since my mum unwittingly bought me the third book in the series more than ten years ago. Essentially a homage to the renegade journalism of the late great Hunter S. Thompson, Transmet is at once a disturbing vision of a brutal (and hilarious) cybernetic future where one savage writer defends an oppressed population against the machinations of tyrannical presidents and the cruelty of technology gone mad, and a hopeful paean to the unassailable power of the written word when all else fails. It’s porno for disgruntled journalists, essentially. But the colourful world envisioned by Warren Ellis (who also created The Authority) and illustrated by Darick Robertson is inherently cinematic, and as the clusterfuck of technology becomes a more and more intimate part of our lives (did you hear that scientists recently communicated with a vegetative coma patient by monitoring his brain waves?), the story just becomes more relevant. And the rage-fuelled, pill-popping, ranting hysteria of Spider Jerusalem marks a character that deserves to find a larger audience. I’ll finish with some choice words from the man himself:
“This is the future. This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the fucking choice, didn’t we? It is only our money that allows commercial culture to flower. If we didn’t want to live like this, we could have changed it any fucking time, by not fucking paying for it. So let’s celebrate by going out and buying the same burger.”
Ideal director: Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz)
Casting call: This is a toughie, and believe me I’ve spent many an hour thinking about which actor could convey Spider’s unique mental disturbance. Best I’ve come up with so far is shaving Michael Fassbender’s head and giving him a go, with Christina Ricci as Yelena Rossini and a pumped-up Uma Thurman as Channon Yarrow.
Apologies for the lack of pretty pictures on this post; Blogger's being all minimy piminy about adding images so I'm trying to work out how to defy the internet and make pictures work again. Don't hold your breath. The internet is smarter and more evil than you could possibly imagine.
In the meantime, here are some links for more info on these topics, if you're curious. God bless Wikipedia.
UPDATED: Now with pics! Yay! Internet/my own stupidity defeated!
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