Spider Kitten

From all of the work I have taken on in the past this image was from my first Band shoot of the band Spider Kitten.

Uni days ya ya yas!!

Having looked through my hard drive recently for old pieces to put into my portfolio I came across this image. Taken on a trip in uni man alive was it cold my camera battery was dying on me and I was looking for images to fill up my card before it died it worked pretty well.

Vampire project

Ahhhhh not vampires i bloody hate vampires I hear you say. This is from my 1st shoot ever for all of its technical faults I like how this photo came out. It was originally influenced by The Principals of Evil made flesh album cover by Cradle of Filth.

Sally

Having hired local model Sally to help me with an illustration project but it fell through. Having looked through the whole set of photos from the studio session I found that this image was the best of the lot. I liked working on this image alot more than most as I did not need to use photoshop for much only a few layers for levels and hue and saturation.

Thriller a cruel Picture

When I first got started watching exploitation films I looked through the inter net and picked up the usual movies you should see like The Exterminator, Death Wish and such I found my tastes getting more and more extreme. Having chatted to friends about what to watch I came across Thriller: A cruel picture with the adult model and actress Christina Lindburg.
Released in America under the title 'They call her one eye' the story is about a mute farm girl Frigga who on her way to her doctor when a suave individual named Tony pulls up and dupes her into spending an evening with him. He asks her back to his place Frigga is then kidnapped and drugged by the individual and is forced into a drug habit and to pay for her habit she is made into a prostitute and renamed Madeleine.

At first she tries to escape and as punishment she has her eye cut out. The special effect here is meant to have been done a real corpse of a suicide victim which was confirmed by the lead star later on in an interview. After this she seems to calm down to take the clients as she has them. One is a photographer who likes to take nude photos of her one a lesbian who likes to beat her up ect.

To exact her revenge revenge on the people who made her this way the heroine learns to fire guns accurately, hand to hand combat and to drive using her cut of her pay to pay for it all.

The revenge aspect of the movie is powerful if a little over done with it's constant use of slow-mo shots. The controversial use of the xxx inserts (mind the pun)I feel helps show how captors make her feel disgusting adding to the viewers feeling of wanting her to get revenge in a way like Meir Zachis I spit on your grave and Abel Ferrara's MS 45 which this movie share similarities with.

The final scene where madaline burys her captor up to his neck and is tied to a horse is disturbing as we know this will be the end for her captor and set her free.
But at what price as her life is now changed forever!!
This is a classic slice of exploitation cinema that will equally thrill audiences as well as shocking them.

Alien 3

When I was younger I was excited when I heard about Alien 3 as I loved both Alien and Aliens. I imagined this would be a continuation of the story where Ripley and the soldier hicks would come to earth to find the aliens had taken over and she fought them there. What did we get Ripley vs the Alien on a prison planet. This was a very bad idea a step back if you look at it. As I recently found out the original story as it were was a group of Monks on a wooden planet that is infiltrated by the Alien. This would have still been a step back in most peoples eyes as we were expecting more as mentioned.
What was presented is a disjointed mish mash of both Alien and Aliens with a religious sub-text slapped on which looks like it was left over from the original script.
Having read up on Alien 3 you can see there were many fights with 20th century fox and David Fincher with sets being destroyed in fires budget cuts and changes to the script behind the directors back.
I felt it was ill fitting when compared to the earlier themes presented of the male rape myth of the original and the maternal theme from Aliens. There is so much not like in this movie it would take me forever to write about it.
One thing I did like about it is the fact that it was the debut feature of David Fincher who went on to make Seven, Fight club and Zodiac. With hindsight you can bet your bottom dollar that if there was a remake by David Fincher you would see a completely different movie from what we do have here.

Predators

Just came back from seeing Predators and my first reaction is Wow! Having seen so many new movies recently I felt things were merging into one another and could not see the difference with with them.

Till this afternoon having read positive reviews about this and was in good spirits about taking my seat in the cinema what I had not expected was how good an action movie it really was.

Adrien Brody had a tough act to follow after the 2 earlier Predator movies with Arnie and Danny Glover, I dont count the AVP movies as proper Predator movies due to the fact that they strayed too for from both the Alien and Predator movie worlds. His performance here seemed believable and a character you could root for unlike some of the other characters who felt like fodder for the predators. His inclusion here brought weight in my to the movie. In the past he has worked with directors of the high calibre of Terrence Milack, Roman Polanski and Wes Anderson in the fantastic Mr Fox and The Darjeeling Limited.

Story wise the movie is about a group of dangerous individuals including a sniper, a criminal on death row, a yakuza et all that the Predators have chosen to become their prey in a deadly hunt. There is not much in the way of exposition the movie as throws you in to the action from the off it disorientates the viewer for a while as you wish you could have seen what happened before that point. As the movie progresses we find out the background of each individual for a few odd moments.

The move then steps up a pace when you see the first action set piece with the Predator dogs at first it reminded me of the Hulk dogs from Ang Lee's 'The Hulk' this kinda sucked and I wished it had not happened as it seemed like the writers had thought what would be cool and the answer was this.

When the characters find out what they are up against it's here the movie takes flight and starts to get a whole lot better as plot is thrown out of the window and the action starts. The pacing here is spot on and as the movie races to its conclusion you find yourself caring what happens to the characters . Its one of the many strengths of the movie along with the action set pieces and the over all tone of the movie.

As for the down side to the movie Laurence Fishburnes character was pretty much non essential as well as topher grace's character he seemed to be there just to get killed off or act as bait for Adrian Brodies Royce character.

The Predators looked too stylised for their own good and I would have rather'd them to look gritty and battle worn. The CGI loooked bit iffy in places but you cant have everything all the time so its only a minor flaw.

Over all Predators acts as a great reboot of the Predator series with great action set pieces believeable characters and a great story with a lot of scope for further Predator movies.

8/10.

The Weekend is here!!!!

As its the end of the week I have one thing to say. Whatchoo Talkin about Willis????