It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to find out that the guy behind Girls Gone Wild is a jerk. It is surprising to find out just how much of a jerk he is: Joe Francis, the founder of the Girls Gone Wild empire, is humiliating me. He has my face pressed against the hood of a car, my arms twisted hard behind my back. He’s pushing himself against me, shouting: “This is what they did to me in Panama City!” It’s after 3 a.m. and we’re in a parking lot on the outskirts of Chicago. Electronic music is buzzing from the nightclub across the street, mixing easily with the laughter of the guys who are watching this, this me-pinned-and-helpless thing. Francis isn’t laughing. He has turned on me, and I don’t know why. He’s going on and on about Panama City Beach, the spring break spot in northern Florida where Bay County sheriff’s deputies arrested him three years ago on charges of racketeering, drug trafficking and promoting the sexua...
Uber-fantastic is quite right. It's like "Waking Life" but with an actual plot and a damned good one at that. I recommend getting it on DVD just for the fantastic visuals alone.
ReplyDeleteOh, and speaking of great new American Sci-Fi, 'Children of Men' kicks some major booty. Makes Blade Runner seem like a Disney film in parts. I was quite pleasantly surprised.
Glad to hear another confirming opinion. I will probably buy the DVD as you suggest, because I agree that the visuals are just stunning! It took 500 hours to make each minute of animation; I'm assuming they're factoring a lot of man-hours including the live-action shoot to come up with that dramatic number. I mean - golly - that's a lot of rotoscoping.
ReplyDeleteWhat would be neat to see is this animation technique, this visual style performed on the live action performers, and then cel-shaded computer-generated sets. Whoooo.