Archive for October, 2010

Vampire Puppets, two great tastes that go great together!

October 21st, 2010 by Susie

I have loved puppets since I was a little kid.  I blame Sesame Street. (Jim Henson, the Muppets, and Sesame Street were a huge influence on me.  I have fur and felt coming out my ears).  One of my cherished childhood toys was a very authentic Grover puppet.  I’m still a little sad that it disappeared around the time my family moved.

I haven’t loved vampires quite as long.  However considering I have spent a little over a year writing a very silly series of novels about vampires, it’s fair to say that I love them now.  I do not love every book, move, or tv show that feature vampires, there are just far too many.  I do love an awful lot of them though, including Buffy, the Dresden Files, True Blood, and the Vampire Diaries.

So it should come as little surprise that I love love love, vampire puppets!  It’s just a perfect intersection of my interests, (much like space circuses are for Marty).

There has surprisingly been a lot of bloodsucking puppets over the years.

The most famous, and earliest occurrence of the phenomena that I can think of, is of course, the Count von Count, from Sesame Street. (I think I also had a Count puppet around the same time I had the Grover, but it wasn’t quite as treasured, or as true to life).  The Count has all the trappings of the classic vampire lifestyle, the gothic castle, the snazzy duds, and excellent grooming habits, but without the bloodlust.  He just thirsts for numbers.

There was also Count Blah a character on the short lived Greg the Bunny TV show.  The conceit of the show was that puppets were another race, that lived alongside humans.  If they were lucky they could get work on kids shows.  Blah was clearly inspired by the Count.  He wore a similar costume, and used a Bela Lugosi style accent.  He was called Blah, because he said “blah” at every pause in his sentences.

Most recently another short lived comedy gave us a Vampire Puppet episode.  ABCfamily’s surprisingly clever scifi/action spoof the Middle Man, did an episode where the spirit of Vlad the Impaler, was awoken in a ventriloquist’s dummy version of him.

Perhaps my favorite vampire puppet incident, is the Smile Time episode of Angel.  It was written by Ben Edlund, the creator of the Tick, who had some experience with bizarre humor.  In it, our vampire detective hero, gets magically turned into a muppet style puppet, and hijinks ensue.  It is a fabulous episode, that really had fun with the premise.  He had a removable nose!  It became a big favorite among the show’s fans.

It even inspired IDW to do a follow up comics in miniseries.  In which Angel’s rival Spike, also got puppetized. (Hey look!  This post does have something to do with comics after all!  Go me!)

It wasn’t just tv that has embraced the vampire puppet movement.  In the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the main character (played by Jason Segel who also wrote the screenplay) writes and performs a Dracula opera starring puppets.  The puppets were made for him by the Henson workshop!  It’s a hilarious sequence in an already extremely funny movie.

There is even an webshop called Dopplefangers that will make a custom vampire puppet version of yourself!

And a few years ago, a friend of mine performed in a play inspired by Nosferatu, featuring many great puppets.

(My pal Emily and Lil Orlock)

It may not the biggest sub-trend in the vampire fad, but I think it’s my favorite.

Dream Casting, Sandman Casting Call Part 15: Animal and Vegetable Edition.

October 5th, 2010 by Susie

Sandman ran for 75 issues, and in them featured hundreds of memorable characters.  All with names and interesting back stories.  I could keep going for months trying to cast them all, but I think I have covered nearly all the major players.  Today I will get through the last, that I expect to do. Unless I realize I have left out anyone important, or come up with a particularly inspired choice for one of the minor characters.

These last characters all have in common that they will need to be portrayed by either, puppets, CGI, or an actor in major prosthetics, or a combination of all of the above.  I will pick a voice actor for each.

Morpheus had a series of pet ravens.  They are usually the spirit of a dead man that has been reincarnated as a raven.  He retains his human personality and ability to speak, but in every other way, such as taste and behavior, he is a raven.  The one that he has for most of the series, except flashbacks to earlier eras, is named Matthew.  He is the spirit of Matt Cable, a supporting character from DC’s earlier horror/fantasy epic Swamp Thing.

Matthew is loyal, rough around the edges, and a little sardonic.  Before he died Matt Cable made some mistakes, and hurt people he cared about.  It was interesting to see Matthew the Raven striving to atone for those mistakes, and become a little more sensitive.  He often served as the audience’s surrogate.  One that could openly ask questions like, what is going on? And, why did you do that?  As well as being a sympathetic ear for Dream.

Though if memory serves Matt Cable was an American character, I always heard Matthew speaking with an English accent. Which is probably why I went with a British actor for the his voice.  Clive Owen

Owen has a deep, rich, but slightly gritty voice.  Just what I hear when I read Matthew’s dialogue.  He often plays characters with some darkness in their past, while still be able to deliver a biting one liner.

Next we have Barnabas.  Barnabas is Destruction’s pet/companion.  He appears to be a large grey dog.  He too can speak, and has a human like personality.  Though he does show that he likes dog things like chewing on stuff, and getting scratched behind the ears.  It is unclear if he is simply a talking dog, or a reincarnated spirit like Matthew.  He is very down to earth, and sarcastic.  If he wasn’t a dog, he would constantly be rolling his eyes. I’m going with Michael Palin for his voice.

Palin is of course a member of Monty Python.  He would be able to play the sarcasm, and the intelligence, along side the warm, nurturing side of the character.  And of course he would nail the utter goofiness of him going dog-giddy over a stick.

Last but hardly least, is Mervin Pumpkinhead.  One of the few characters that is there purely for comic relief.  His body is made of twigs, and his head is a jack o’lantern.  He usually wears overalls or coveralls, and has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  He is the janitor/handyman of the Dreaming.  He is a smart aleck, with a wise crack for everything.  He has a somewhat inflated ego, and likes to hear himself talk.  I am choosing another Python, for him.  Eric Idle

Idle knows how to play a smart-ass.  Since Merv’s face so simplistic his personality is really going to have to come through his voice.  Idle has plenty of voice over experience, and is really versatile.

I also think the character should have a real person in a suit, perform his movement.  As again, he is such a minimal design, he could come across as very artificial if he was purely CGI or animatronic.  For that I suggest Doug Jones.

Jones has made a career of bringing to life extraordinary, fantasy characters. He played one of the Gentleman, a terrifyingly creepy monster, on a particularly memorable episode of Buffy.  More significantly he has worked with Guillermo del Torro, playing Abe Sapien in both Hellboy films, and the Faun and the Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth.  He is impossibly tall and thin, and is incredibly expressive with his body.

Okay, that it is it for this series of posts.  I can’t believe I made it to fifteen posts.  It has been fun.  I may try another fantasy casting project for another comic series, but I haven’t thought of one yet (maybe Fables).  As I said in the very first post, I really don’t want to see Sandman made into a film. I think it exists in its ideal form already.  I do think it probably will get adapted someday, and if even one of my casting choices made it to the screen, I would be super excited.

Dream Casting, Sandman Casting Call Part 14: Maiden, Mother, Crone, and Crazed Agent of Vengeance. Yay!

October 4th, 2010 by Susie

The three woman who repeatedly appear in Sandman went by many names: the kindly ones, the fates, the furies, the weird sisters.  They were consistently shown as a trio of woman that seemed to function as one being.  They always appear as one young woman, one middle aged women and one very old woman, aka the maiden, the mother, and the crone.

They served many purposes in the series.  They were used as prophets, that occasionally commented on the action, and less frequently propelled it.  They were also the furies, the means through which justice for a primal crime, was acted out.

Typically they looked different every time they appeared, so to remain true to the comic they should be played by several different actresses.  However for the purposes of keeping this post relatively short, I will only cast one actress each.

Lisa Backwell as the maiden.

She played the lovable, loopy, and naive, Pandora on the third and fourth series of Skins.  She has a round, child like face, that would make for a good contrast with the other two.  The maiden was sometimes drawn as older and more voluptuous than Backwell, but she also sometimes looked like little more than child.

Brenda Blethyn as the mother.

While she is a very versitile actor, she has played quite a few mothers.  In such films as Pride and Prejudice, Lovely and Amazing, and Little Voice.  All very different mums, but maternal nonetheless.

Jackie Burroughs as the crone.

Burroughs has been working steadily since the mid sixties, and is still going strong.  She has looked nearly exactly the same for the past twenty years.

Finally for today’s post is Hippolyta Hall.  She was not created for the Sandman, but was a DC Comics heroine that went by the name of the Fury.  A title she inherited from her mother, (though in a bit of confusing crisis muddled continuity, she was also Earth Two Wonder Woman’s daughter).

Poor Lyta did not have an easy time of things in the series.  She was married to the second DC hero to carry the title of the Sandman.  Both she and her husband Hector, were unknowingly tricked by a pair of renegade dreams, into being trapped inside a child’s dreams.  To make matters worse, her husband Hector was dead, but being stuck in the Dreaming, neither of them knew this.  And on top of that Lyta was heavily pregnant when she was trapped, and remained so for the whole two years, that she was stuck there.  When Morpheus discovered what had been done by the misbehaving dreams, he put end to it, setting the Halls free.  This however effectively killed Hector.  He was already dead, but freed from the dreaming, his spirit was allowed to move on.  Lyta of course had no idea what had happened, she just saw her husband disappear, and her world dissolve.  Morpheus, not being very sensitive to other being’s distress, didn’t bother to explain any of it to her.  Which left her with a mighty grudge against Morpheus.  One that was easily exploited by those who wished him ill.

I would cast her with Amber Benson.

She was excellent as the lovely Tara on Buffy.  She is also a talented writer and director, who has made several independent films, and published quite a few fantasy books.  She would be able to sympathetically play Lyta’s rage at the powerlessness she has over her life, even while becoming more of a pawn.

I think the next post will be the last in this series.

New Wonder Woman TV show.

October 4th, 2010 by Susie

According to this article Warner Brothers is developing a Wonder Woman series for television.

http://livefeed.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/10/wonder-woman-tv-show.html

It does not say how far into development they have gotten, or which network will likely air it.  It does say that they have chosen David E. Kelley to be showrunner.  This seems like a bad fit to me.  Kelley has had success in the past, creating such shows as, Ally McBeal, Chicago Hope, The Practice, and Picket Fences, none of which have much in common with Wonder Woman.  I don’t know what the plans they have in store for the show, but I would think it would have to be an action drama to some extent, and Kelley doesn’t have much experience with action.  I am not much of a Kelley fan, I have not been able to stick with one of his shows for much more than a season or two.  In my experience, he tends run out of character driven stories pretty quickly, and then relies on increasingly  absurd plot twists, and controversial stunts, just for the sake of controversy.  His characters are usually very quirky, and as the series progress they seem to lose any humanity that makes them relatable, devolving into a walking mass of unusual ticks.  This does not bode well for his Wonder Woman, as though she has gone through many different characterizations over the course of her sixty plus years of being published, she has never come across to me as either quirky, or neurotic (another Kelley main stay).  I guess we will have to wait and see what comes of it.

Dream Casting, Sandman Casting Call Part 13: Gods both Tricky, and Catty. Plus a bonus Faerie.

October 1st, 2010 by Susie

Like I said before, all types of gods were welcome in Sandman.  One of the most memorable was Bast.  The Egyptian goddess with a human body and a cat’s head.  She was a major goddess in her time, but as her following dwindled, so did her power.  Her personality is as catlike her appearance.  She is at times: flirtatious, self interested, aloof, affectionate, and playful.  There also times when the sadness of her loss comes through.

My pick to play her is Virginia Hey.

She played a regal, enigmatic, goddess-like character as Zhaan on Farscape.  As such she has loads of experience acting through large amounts of makeup, that the role would require.

Next up we have one of the ultimate trickster gods, Loki.  He is portrayed just as he is in Norse mythology.  The untrustworthy adopted son of Odin.  He loves a dirty joke.  He can’t pass up any opportunity to mess with anyone, and he doesn’t like being shown up in any way.

My pick is Iggy Pop.

He looks a lot like the character as drawn, and he is a pretty good actor.  He played a sweet, softy of a suburban dad on the Adventures of Pete and Pete, in the nineties.  Think of what he could do with an anarchist god.

Finally we have Puck, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream fame.  In Sandman he is depicted as a malicious imp.  More likely to slip strychnine in your coffee, as give you donkey ears for a night.  In his true form he looks like a tiny hairy devil creature, but he can also look human.

And my pick for him is David Tennant.

Obviously Tennant is very capable of being lovable, which is the antithesis of the role, but I really want to see him play a malignant character.  I am sure he can pull off the right mix of hyper, and viscious.  It would be fun to see him play the human form, and also a motion captured CGI version.

Next up the furies!

Tony DiTerlizzi at the Wild Rumpus

October 1st, 2010 by Martin

I’m sad to say that I missed Tony DiTerlizzi yesterday at our local kid’s bookstore, The Wild Rumpus. However, my co-worker Tony (who did actually tell me about the event a few hours before it happened), was in attendance, and his son, Odin, and had these questions for DiTerlizzi:

“How much do you like drawing?”
“Oh I really like drawing.”

“Do you like to draw comics?”
“You mean like Batman and Iron Man? I used to draw them all the time when I was about your age. I really liked Iron Man.”

Apparently DiTerlizzi is also the artist for some of his books, and he was giving away sketch books filled with art from his new novel The Search for WondLa. Here is a picture of the stack of books Tony brought in to work with him today:

Click to see full-size

You might have to see the image full-size to make it out, but I love the dragon sketch on the inside cover of Kenny & The Dragon, which I have added to my reading list. Tony also had this to say about the event:

He was great. Told stories about being a “highly imaginative” kid and did drawings like he did back then. (Dinosaurs vs. Aliens: The T-Rex & Triceratops team up. “Not on our watch!”) He spoke about wanting to create a heroine, like Alice Little, Dorthy Gale and Wendy Darling, for a long time and that is where The Search for WondLa came from. He also mentioned his little daughter when he was engaging Isla during the signing.

“Well hello Isla. What a pretty name. What do you like to do?”
“I like to play.”
“Oh, isn’t playing fun! My daughter is about your age too. She loves to play. And collect bugs!”
“Yeah I like bugs and aluadsr hasde hasd areaagdre bbfeard…” (That last part was unintelligible tired 2.3 year old speak for yeah, but they are a little icky too.)

I think it’s great that fathers my age are writing books for their daughters with strong female characters.

I also think it’s great. And I can’t wait to read The Search for WondLa to Colleen.