the Jupiter Project

Delicatessen – Marc Bruckert

Jean-Pierre Jeunet has had a fairly spotty directorial career in my estimation, but this flick is surely a near perfect gem. The title sequence is equally as inventive and fun as the film itself, yet I almost wish there was a rollicking Tom Waits-ian junkyard tune playing over it, but I can live with the French cafe approach. I just think it could’ve been a little weirder since the film is so decidedly wacky and otherworldly.

The Incredibly Crappy World of Fletcher Hanks

Any self-respecting artist owes it to themselves to discover the zany world of this long-forgotten artist, now resurrected in collected book form by the fine fiends at Fantagraphics.

There’s a page here with various news bits and informative factoids about the artist, who, just to make things all the more perfectly, hilariously rancid, was also apparently a huge prick, hated and resented by all who knew him including his family. If he had worn an eye patch and had a loaded revolver and a flask tucked into his high-waisted pants, I think we’d have the ultimate old-timey cartoonist – even his name is too perfect.

More info here.

“You shall become a part of your wild moon.”

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Danny Yount

A more state-of-the-art digital take on the cool old caper/spy titles of yore, nonetheless still effective and suitably noir. Clever flourishes abound, tightly connected to the jazzy score. I really like the brief sequence panning past silhouetted freeway ramps – it says Los Angeles even more than the California-Mod house at the beginning.

Despite the fact that it’s based on an ancient Brett Halliday pulper – and he’s one of my favourite grade-C hardboiled scribes – the film doesn’t live up to the fun promised in the title sequence. It’s just another tepid effort at reviving a dead genre, filmed entirely in that wearisome modern style of greys and blues and toilet stall greens. I think that whenever these 26-year old directors get the urge to start tinting and desaturizing everything they should just go back and watch something in black and white. Maybe one of these days it’ll give them an idea.