OLD & NEW MOVIE THEATERS: A COMPARISON

Boy, I love to see movies on a big screen in a packed theater!

It must have been great to see them in Technicolor, and in ornate vaudeville-style theaters that were like palaces inside. That's a Lego theater above. Every once in a while Lego knocks themselves out to make a toy that nobody can afford, but is very near a work of art.

How different the Lego building is from minimalist modern theaters (above), which often look like banks or Walmart stores.  Some are amazingly featureless and stealthy. You could be standing next to them and  and never know it. In the case of the theater above, the designer thoughtfully wrote "Box Office" on the ticket vender's window just to let us know what it was.

I wish I could figure out why modern movie houses disposed of the marquee. It was sheltering and fun to look at, and it announced the theater's presence to the world. You could see it from the road and no doubt it seduced lots of drivers and walkers-by into seeing the films. Notice too, the film posters are out on the street where people can see them, and not concealed inside or in a side alley, like the ones in my neighborhood.

When I told this to my kid he rolled his eyes up and said that marquees were unnecessary since people get all the info they need online.  He said nobody goes to a theater on an impulse anymore. Maybe, I thought, but it couldn't hurt to scoop up the few that do.

Actually, some modern theaters do have marquees...sort of. Here's (above) an ugly one on a theater that looks like it was built in the 80s. It's mind-numbing and bland, and looks like a bank, but at least it puts its posters out front where people can see them. 

Here's one current marquee style.  This example looks like it's outside, but a lot of marquees of this type are inside, over interior ticket windows. You have to go inside to see it. 

Like I said, a lot of modern theater owners have dispensed with marquees entirely.  In this theater (above) the titles of the films that are playing are written on bumper stickers  high on the wall behind the ticket sellers.  If you crouch down low enough,  and use your hand to screen out the reflections on the tinted glass, you might discover what's playing and when.

Don't expect to see mirrors in the restroom. If you're lucky the management might provide slightly reflective sheets of steel.  If not, then the walls will be bare.

No more movie palaces. Just bare bones walls and seats.

I wish theaters would bring back usherettes.  They look good and besides, you can use usherettes to sell the outrageously priced candy to people in their seats.

CONTEMPORARY COSTUME DESIGN

Boy, I love old-time theatrical costume sketches (above), the best of them I mean.  I had the impression that nothing good was being done in that medium any more, but I'm glad I took the trouble to check, because there's some interesting stuff out there that deserves to be seen.

Lots of sketch styles are acceptable now.  Amazingly, one of them (above) is caricature.

Another is collage. This artist (above) is pretty good at it.  I like how the dog is walking backwards.

Very nice (above), and it's practical, too. I have no trouble envisioning the real-life costume.

This guy (above) looks like a character out of an Otto Dix painting. 

This picture (above) is pretty abstract but it conveys the important information.  I assume the play is a comedy where the superhero has to look broad and lumpy in his suit. The sagging diaphragm is a nice touch.

This picture (above) is skimpy on the details but the overall concept is solid. Sometimes the designer is limited to suggestion, and the costume maker figures out the details.

Wow! What a prolific artist (above)! Better click to enlarge!

Interesting (above)! A Steinberg-type style combined with 3D collage! It's a very girly treatment but, as with everything here, you can use your imagination to see something more masculine.

Sometimes swatches of fabric are added to the sketch. Designers keep enormous scrapbooks full of samples of the stuff that are pinned or stapled onto the page.

According to an article on the net, the designer usually starts with cut-outs of pre-existing pictures from magazines (above) just to see if her and the director are in sync.

Here's (above) Ann Roth showing off her designs for old Hollywood movies, and here's a link to an interesting interview that she gave. Part 2, the best part, is only a couple of minutes long, and it contains advice that all artists in all trades can use.



http://makingof.com/insiders/media/ann/roth/ann-roth-on-costume-design-pt-2/61/172

W-I-D-E-S-C-R-E-E-N

I don't have time to put up a well-thought out post, but I think I can manage a long post.....I mean a really, really LOOOOOOOOONG post! I imagine the girl's feet (above) are interfering with my sidebar graphics, but I don't think any of my male readers will complain. 

Boy, this new beta Blogger format is liberating! You can stretch across the page with it. I expect to do a lot of articles about impossibly long snakes, trains, sleeping Watusis and Diplodicus-type dinosaurs. 

Above, one of my favorite widescreen movie posters.  Now I get to display it in a format that supports it.
 

Ah, these are heady days! Thank-you Blogger! I can't believe that all this is free!

SIDEBAR FUNNIES

Just scroll down. You'll see it!

Sorry if downloads have been slow lately. I didn't know I had a problem with that til John told me about it a few days ago.  The blog downloads quickly enough on my computer, but maybe being the host gives me an advantage. Can I ask you guys: is everybody here experiencing slow downloads?  Maybe John's the only one. Maybe a moth crawled into his machine and bit a transistor. Aaargh! I'll have to check the file sizes on the sidebar pictures.

A question for Photoshoppers: when I resize and resample a picture down on Photoshop, and save it at a low kb (including "for web devices"), how come the same picture appears on Blogger at a much higher kb? Am I doing something wrong?

AT MIKE PATAKI'S MEMORIAL SEVICE

Mike Pataki, as most people reading this will know, was the voice for John K's George Liquor, and was famous for playing Klingons (above) on the original Star Trek series.  Mike recently passed away and last Saturday I went to Mike's  memorial service at Valhalla Park in North Hollywood.  Valhalla is sort of "The Other Forest Lawn," A lot of early film actors are buried there,  including Oliver Hardy.  Lots of gangsters, too.


 A number of show business friends of Mike spoke, including his buddy Ed Asner, who called him "Wacky Pataki." The speeches were so funny that the service sometimes felt more like a roast.

I was a little disappointed to see that few of the speakers talked much about Mike's voice work for George Liquor (above).  It really is one of the all-time great cartoon voices.  George even looks a little like Mike Pataki. He's tightly packed just like Mike, a size five body in a size three skin.


Somewhere after middle age Mike's voice became gravelly. It probably hurt his ability to get work.  Amazingly Mike turned a liability into an asset by developing an absolutely unique delivery style to fit his new voice.  John K picked up on it, worked with Mike to refine it,  and the rest is history...or would have been had TV executives had the sense to give George his own animated show.

I guess I'm surprised to see that his peers failed to realize the magnitude of what Mike accomplished with George Liquor. It's a layered voice full of nuance and music and Mike's own experience of life.  Lots of actors can do Irish policemen, snooty upper-class Englishmen and all that. George-s voice was  unique...one of a kind.  

But I don't want to dump on actors.  One of the delights of being at the memorial was being surrounded by show people. They really are a breed apart.  No matter what the occasion, they're always on, always looking for ways to entertain.


A couple of them of struck me as being a little crazy,  maybe a consequence of devoting themselves so singlemindedly to hope, and to things intuitive.  They're like the salesmen famously described by Willie Lohman's wife at the end of "Death of a Salesman." I'm beginning to wonder if that play was really about actors.

AN EXPERIMENT (SORRY FOR THE SLOW DOWNLOAD)

ORANGE TREE FORESTS (PART 1)

Here's (above) part of the cover of a recent kids book, "Where is the Cake?" by T. T. Khing. Cartoonists who read this are going to think I'm nuts for posting about it because the color and cartooning in the book are pretty weak. Believe me, I'm aware of that, but I'm going to ask you to ignore that and concentrate instead on what the artist does well, which is imaginative topography.

Take a look at that forest.  Look at how small and densely-packed the trees are.  Notice how it's simultaneously attractive and frightening. There really are forests like this; in fact, I live near an orange grove that's like that. This whole book is a celebration of the concept of miniature forests.

BTW, note the size of the house, which is perfectly in sync with the size of the forest. It's hardly bigger than a tool shed. The artist rightly perceives that this is the correct size for houses in tiny forests. Extra rooms should be underground where they don't get in the way. The outdoor table and chair are great additions.

Here's another view of the tiny forest.  The trees are made to snake along the ground in undulating ribbons separated by grass and narrow pathways. The artist had a great landscaping idea here, and someone should make it happen for real, right away. 

It looks like the artist means to depict hedges here, but I prefer to imagine that the plants are more of the same small trees that we saw in the pictures above.  It's fun to think of irregular rows of orange trees punctuated by quiet little meadows.  The foreground boulders are a nice contrast, and so are the tall cucumber-like trees.  So is the little creek.


Creeks are naturally much more common than we suppose. Almost every big city used to be criss-crossed with them, but nowadays they're paved over, diverted, and pumped out. Maybe we should bring some of them back.