March 30th, 2009
Back in 1938, artist Henry Major provided the caricatures for a book called HOLLYWOOD that featured text by humorist Arthur “Bugs” Baer. There were only 800 copies printed, but thankfully one of them wound up in the hands of Rick Saunders, who shares them on his Henry Major-focused blog, The Gay Philosopher. Here are a few of my favorites…
Fred MacMurray (long before MY THREE SONS)
Mickey Rooney
Spencer Tracy
Do yourself a favor and check out the rest of them here. It’s amazing what a talented caricaturist can do with a few well-placed lines.
Special thanks to my pal (and fellow old movie fan) Wayne Harold for the link to this site.
February 10th, 2009
Over at his Web site, artist Lebbeus Woods posts some drawings he made back in 1990 for a never-filmed version of ALIEN 3. That movie eventually became notorious as (Oscar nominee) David Fincher’s debut film, which was taken from him by the studio and re-edited, then released to a largely appathetic audience. The version Woods worked on would’ve shared some similarities — the plot still involved a religious colony, for one thing — but according to Woods, “the story of the (director Vincent) Ward movie was radically different.”
 If you’re a fan of ALIEN 3, ALIEN movies in general or just fascinating conceptual art, check out Woods’ work here.
And, as Woods stresses (to avoid any legal hassles), “The drawings made by me that I reproduce with this post, and their copyrights, are the property of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; I reproduce them here under my rights of fair use, for educational purposes only; copying or reproducing the images of these drawings for any commercial purposes, without the explicit permission of Twentieth Century Fox is strictly forbidden by law.”
