Re: RARA-AVIS: hard-boiled movies, animation

From: Rene Ribic ( rribic@optusnet.com.au)
Date: 23 Jan 2002


> The film Heavy Metal is, I believe, based on the glossy North American
> comic which itself was an Americanised version of the French magazine
> Metal Hurlant. I can't say I'm at all familiar with the content of
> either the American or the European version of the magazine (fwiw, I
> haven't seem the film either) so I can't offer any opinion on
> boiledness, hard or otherwise, but I always thought of the title as
> primarily a vehicle for fantasy artwork: a glossy, airbrushed feast of
> enormous breasts and bulging biceps.
>
Indeed this describes a lot of the material published in Heavy Metal, particularly the covers (apparently they sold a lot more copies when they featured naked barbarianesses) there was a lot more variety than you would think, including some stuff that could only be described as noir or hardboiled & rather sophisticated stuff at that. I'm thinking particularly of (& I hope I've got the names right, it's been a long time since I've read any of this stuff & I don't have any of it to hand) a French (?) artist, Loustal - a friend of mine had a couple of English language editions of his work - beautiful noir vignettes, using pastel colours, of all things & it works beautifully.There is also the work of Sampayao (spelling) & Munoz (?) who did/do these stark,black & white hardboiled tales set in New York, where I understand neither had ever been, at least at that time.I think these guys are either Argentinian or Spanish.None of this sort of material made it to the Heavy Metal movie, which I recall as being rather boring & dated. I don't recall anything of a h/b or noir element to any part of the film. Rene

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