And so begins the next thrilling chapter in the Adventures of Superchum and the Mighty Befrienders! This is where we'll get to meet some of Superchum's greatest foes. I feel a little torn on this page. It might seem a bit like filler, but I like to start each chapter off with a classic kind of splash page. In any event, the tone gets a tad darker (as evidenced by my color scheme), and my pop culture references are terribly oblique. Yes, I was a film student in college. So the Von Stroheim gag was pretty funny … to me at least.
Yeah I knew the references were going to be really stretching it. I'll explain them though so I don't leave people confused ...
Andrei Rublev is a russian movie made by Tarkovsky, one of Eisenstein's pupils (Eisenstein made Battleship Potemkin, one of the most famous silent films ever made). I liked Andrei Rublev a lot. But it's a pretty strange film. It's in color in some parts, black and white in others. It moves pretty slow. It had multiple plots that sometimes don't seem connected (the beginning flying scene for instance). But the bell-casting plot late in the movie totally fascinated me.
The Von Stroheim gag is a bit more straightforward. Erich von Stroheim's 1924 movie Greed, was MGM's first full length feature film. And it was a doozy. He made it 42 reels. That was 9 hours long. That wasn't going to work for the studio so it got cut. To 5 hours. Then got cut again. And again. And again. It finally came in at 140 minutes long. And the other 7 HOURS of footage was destroyed. No copies of the earlier versions were made, and the entirety of the 32 reels that did not make the final release version were destroyed - along with all of the outtakes - so that the silver could be extracted from the film celluloid. It is in this way, that most of the movie was lost forever. The original 42 reel version is one of the top ten "lost films" of the American Film Institute.
So the movie theater couldn't possibly be showing the entire 9 hour film. But I can dream can't I?
:)
Oh yeah, I initially was going to have the theater showing Charles Burnett's 1977 movie Killer of Sheep. A film that I got to see back in college for a film class, which is another one of them rare, almost lost movies that the American Film Institute and the Library of Congress laud as one of the best ever made. But it's even more obscure than Greed and Andrei Rublev.
Anyways, sorry to ramble on so long about movies. But as always thanks so much for reading the comic and commenting!
authorfly at 1:38AM, Oct. 5, 2007
I'm too young to get the reference, but on a random note a dark figure with a monocle has got to be evil.
RabbitMaster at 7:54AM, Sept. 15, 2007
I pride myself on my knowledge of obscure references, but I have been bested out of hand.
TheMidge28 at 6:49AM, Sept. 7, 2007
yeah...that is an obscure reference...I like the splash page though
SteveMyers22 at 12:04PM, Aug. 3, 2007
Yeah I knew the references were going to be really stretching it. I'll explain them though so I don't leave people confused ... Andrei Rublev is a russian movie made by Tarkovsky, one of Eisenstein's pupils (Eisenstein made Battleship Potemkin, one of the most famous silent films ever made). I liked Andrei Rublev a lot. But it's a pretty strange film. It's in color in some parts, black and white in others. It moves pretty slow. It had multiple plots that sometimes don't seem connected (the beginning flying scene for instance). But the bell-casting plot late in the movie totally fascinated me. The Von Stroheim gag is a bit more straightforward. Erich von Stroheim's 1924 movie Greed, was MGM's first full length feature film. And it was a doozy. He made it 42 reels. That was 9 hours long. That wasn't going to work for the studio so it got cut. To 5 hours. Then got cut again. And again. And again. It finally came in at 140 minutes long. And the other 7 HOURS of footage was destroyed. No copies of the earlier versions were made, and the entirety of the 32 reels that did not make the final release version were destroyed - along with all of the outtakes - so that the silver could be extracted from the film celluloid. It is in this way, that most of the movie was lost forever. The original 42 reel version is one of the top ten "lost films" of the American Film Institute. So the movie theater couldn't possibly be showing the entire 9 hour film. But I can dream can't I? :) Oh yeah, I initially was going to have the theater showing Charles Burnett's 1977 movie Killer of Sheep. A film that I got to see back in college for a film class, which is another one of them rare, almost lost movies that the American Film Institute and the Library of Congress laud as one of the best ever made. But it's even more obscure than Greed and Andrei Rublev. Anyways, sorry to ramble on so long about movies. But as always thanks so much for reading the comic and commenting!
bongotezz at 6:42AM, Aug. 3, 2007
yay bad guys! the movie refrences went over my head though.