Sunday, March 18, 2007

A Season on the Edge :: The Dark Side of Tennis

asaf :: Tennis Magazine ran a story about the "dark" side of amateur league tennis. the author describes a lot of the conflict, nasty behavior and poor sportsmanship he witnessed in league play.



luckily, the better sketch was chosen. I enjoyed rendering the cavemen in the background with pencil on paper, it's been a while since I used "real" tools for drawing.




on a different note - AfterDark Films has acquired North American rights to Goran Dukic’s dark romantic comedy “Wristcutters: A Love Story,” starring Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, Will Arnett and Tom Waits.
the film is an adaptation of the same short story (Etgar Keret's "Kneller's Happy Campers") as Pizzeria Kamikaze. apparently it takes more liberties in interpreting the story-line. watch the trailer here.



there is a striking similarity between the graphic novel and the film in the opening scene...



lastly, the lost images on my last post are now back on the blog.

10 comments:

  1. Your work is incredible!!!

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  2. Anonymous10:16 PM

    I think they totally missed the tone of the story. Karet's story was absurd, but not wacky. there was an aimless feeling of ennui that ran through the entire story that the movie doesn't capture at all, at least from the look of these clips. It looks like a sweet romantic comedy. The bullet hole in his buddy's head alone would have done a lot to change the tone of the film. The very obvious wounds on most of the people in the story served as a constant reminder of the absurd futility of what brought them all there in the first place. Instead most of the people we see in these clips look pretty healthy.

    The second round of suicides in the end is probably the most important scene, one I can't see as being sympathetic to the tone of this movie. It suggests this profound sense of existential boredom. There's this subtle implication that no matter how many time they try to kill themselves, there's no way to transcend the ultimate monotony of their lives.

    How much do you want to bet that that's the scene they leave out?

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  3. I haven't seen the movie yet so it would be hard to say, but the original story had all kinds of flavors and it's only natural each artist interpretation is different. there is also a thing to be said about films and money, and maybe they chose to soften a few angels in order to get finance/distribution deal. in comics its pretty much a dude and his pencil so everything is more simple.

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  4. Anonymous2:24 AM

    Veering wildly from the original intention of the source material is cool, if you do it in an interesting way, but these clips make the whole "I just comitted suicide" thing look like too much fun. I haven't seen the film either, so it's really not fair to condemn it on the basis of these clips alone, but I do think it's fair to say that the story they're telling seems to be coming from a very different place than the story Karet was telling.

    I can think of at least two instances where I felt the film maker actually improved on the source material: Sleisinger's Midnight Cowboy, and more recently, Cronenburg's Spider. Not only did the film makers demonstrate a deep understanding of the books on which the films were based, but they ellaborated on the tone and theme of these books in a way that only film can do.

    Similarly, I feel that your comics treatment was a nice compliment to the Karet short story. As a cartoonist your images serve as actors, and in the case of the Kneller's story, You really brought the character of the protagonist's buddy to life. He became more than what the short story suggested, and I felt you maintained the tone of the story well.

    One image in particular that stands out for me is the haunted look of the icecream scooper who couldn't blink.

    Another of my favorite scenes was the one with the Arab suicide bomber in the bar. The Israeli/Arab tension addressed here is probably another thing that's going to be dropped in the American version.

    And you're right, movies are big collaborative enterprises with a lot of money on the line and compromise is unfortunately the name of the game. But it doesn't always have to be. With a cast of unknowns and a lower budget, maybe they could've done Karet's story properly afterall. From what I hear, Karet's directed a couple of his own films. Maybe it would be better to watch Karet's films instead.

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  5. Anonymous3:20 PM

    Great illustration. You mentioned that you used "real tools" on this piece. Am i to understand that you are doing most of the drawing directly into the computer with the Wacom for your illustration work?

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  6. Anonymous6:30 PM

    I'll never look at the game of tennis the same way again :)
    Matt

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