blood Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Pixar's much-ballyhooed feature Up opens this weekend, and the theaters will be chock full of families with little ones ready for some colorful eye-candy and delightful storytelling. But how are those little ones going to act when they see not one, but two separate instances of bright, red blood on the screen? I'm sure no one is going to need therapy after seeing this, but it's interesting that Pixar is breaking down the blood / screen barrier.

Disney films have long been sanitized, and although we've seen death in Disney's animated movies before (Bambi's mother, Simba's dad, Nemo's mother, countless goons in The Incredibles and so on), they really never feature blood, despite the violent nature of many of the plots. Usually the characters die off-screen, and the audience is spared any actual shots of the red stuff.

In The Lion King there's a brief spray of blood in the battle between Mufasa and Scar, but otherwise you get red scratches on the characters, which look cartoonish (well, it's a cartoon) and not very realistic. They did the same "scratches for wounds" thing in Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, and even with Sleeping Beauty there's only a tiny trickle of blood as Phillip slays Maleficent. A bit surprising given the fact that she has a huge sword buried through her massive heart.

Movie marketing is out of control these days with folks constantly searching for ways to up the ante and get their advertisements in front of as many eyes as possible. Not for nothing, but I'm just waiting for the day where someone gets seriously injured or even killed promoting a film. While it would definitely be a traumatic event for all involved, I'm sure some evil studio exec would love the publicity.

When it comes to Saw III, Lionsgate is looking to go above and beyond with their latest poster campaign. Instead of simply placing actor Tobin Bell (who plays the serial killer Jigsaw) in a red cloak, they've decided to go ahead and use Bell's own blood to enhance the color. I'm not joking, a vial of blood was drawn from Bell, then mixed with red ink and printed on a poster. (I take it Bell wasn't down for having one of his body parts ripped off instead -- they've saving that for the Saw IV marketing campaign.)

On the bight side, as they've done with previous Saw installments, Lionsgate will hold a blood drive in conjunction with the film's release on October 27. And, if you're interested in one of the posters, 1,000 from the first print will be sold for $20, save for the original which will be auctioned off with all proceeds going to the Red Cross. Seeing as the Saw franchise is known for causing controversy with their bizarre advertisements, the word is still out on who will have a beef with this latest edition. I take it vampires will be first in line with a complaint.

With the ever persistent and popular comic book-to-film craze American cinema has been experiencing the past several years, anyone with half a brain has been expecting an eventually slide over into manga and anime titles for motion picture adaptation. A few properties have been purchased, and a few rumors have circulated; no doubt the first few stones in a very possible avalanche; and today another stone joins the slowly increasing trickle. The word on the block is Billy Kong (of Crouching Tiger fame among others) has signed on to produce a live-action version of the popular anime film Blood: The Last Vampire. He plans to shoot the movie in a mix of languages, with English likely featuring preeminent. This will dovetail with a recently announced anime TV series based on the same film.

Typically, I'm really hesitant of any suggestion to turn an anime into live-action cinema. They frequently ultra-stylish animation just doesn't tend to translate well into reality, and we here in America have a pretty terrible understanding of the general storytelling and cinematography stylings of the East. However, given that Kong is attached to this film and not a proto-typical American producer*, I think it has a pretty decent chance of translating to live action. To be honest, though, I'm not really a big Blood fan to begin with -- but I'm sure I'll give it a watch just to see how it turns out.

*Don't get me wrong, I love American action as well.