49er throwback frank gore

49er running back frank gore is one of the lone bright spots on this year’s team. he’s the kinda player the niners used to have an abundance of… playmakers with class who used to routinely win games and put up big stats too and enjoy lengthy and successful careers with the 49ers. i am talking about quarterbacks like joe montana & steve young & receivers john taylor & jerry rice & defensive players like ronnie lott & charles haley and of course, coaching from the likes of bill walsh & george seifert. i sorta jumped on the 49er bandwagon after they became consistent winners but i was rooting for them during their third, fourth & fifth superbowl titles.

john taylor is my fave niner… hands down a better playmaker/crack blocker who beat the defense’s best corner with slippery moves and a wicked stiff arm and better teammate than terrell owens (owens never did help the niners win anything of significance, but j.t. won them a superbowl and enabled jerry rice to have the big numbers and big games in the prime of his career, since defenses had to account for taylor burning them for a big play, plus he rarely dropped passes or never heard “footsteps” from defenses or called attention to himself… t.o. is just a pain in the ass). just ask any los angeles/st. louis fan what a rams killer john taylor was right up until his final season in 1995.

one of my fave niner games was in the 1989 superbowl season when montana lead the niners to a comeback win on the road against buddy ryan’s eagles with that punishing defense lead by reggie white. montana got sacked like 8 times in that game but in the fourth quarter he threw four touchdown strikes once he figured out the eagles blitzing defense and exploited their lousy secondary and his pass protection improved. also, in that season john taylor had that awesome monday night game against the rams that was for the division title. taylor had two touchdowns for over 90 yards and over 280 yards total receiving. the niners rode his back to the win and began their march toward back-to-back titles.

my fave bill walsh superbowl run was his final season when he knocked out the vikings, mike ditka’s bears in chicago and capped it off with a superbowl title against sam wyche’s bengals. that final drive in superbowl XXlll epitomized walsh’s offense, which went 92 yards (actually 102 yards because of a 10 yard penalty on the drive) with just over three minutes left in the game, using short passes with the receivers gaining yards after the catch and the offense eating up clock by making several first downs and leaving little time remaining for the bengals to score and retake the lead. and guess who caught the game winning touchdown? not jerry rice, who got superbowl mvp honors with his 215 yards receiving, 11 catches and 1 acrobatic touchdown, or league offensive mvp roger craig, but, yes that’s right, john taylor, who didn’t catch a pass all day and wasn’t the primary option on that touchdown play. after he crossed the goal line and scored, he calmly spiked the ball between his legs… no dance, no taunting, no showboating. btw, earlier in that drive taylor was upset with himself because he missed a block that would have sprung rice for the touchdown; the replays showed him on the turf pounding his fist when he saw rice being tackled because of his missed block… t.o. would have just laughed that one off and probably mocked rice for letting himself get tackled because he’s too slow. even funnier was don shula calling him turner instead of taylor during the post game show.

anyways, the current niners probably won’t have the same superbowl success of those past niner champions but frank gore would have fit in nicely with those squads. my fave 49er running back has always been garrison hearst but gore is more physically durable. so, i hope he has a long, successful career and retires a 49er… he’s a humble kid and a marvelous player. congrats to him going to his first pro bowl and starting for the nfc, the lone 49er selected on the first ballot.

frank gore against the broncos in the season finale. for the 2007 season, gore finished first in the nfc in rushing yards and third overall in the league.

joe montana & bill walsh during the waning minutes of a divisional playoff win of 34-9 against the vikings in 1989

john taylor scoring one of the 49ers’ 8 tds in superbowl XXlV against the broncos

montana fearless in the pocket against the eagles pass rush in a regular season come-from-behind win of 38-28, played in philly

jerry rice sporting 49er throwback uniforms during the 1994 superbowl season (coach seifert was superstitous and believed the 49ers winning was linked to the throwback uniforms, so they wore them all the way to a superbowl win over the chargers 49-26)

julie doucet’s ‘elle-humor’

i just received julie doucet’s terrific new book ‘elle-humor’ from picture box inc., which is the general book release of doucet’s ‘sophie punt lovely #11: la création de l'univers (variations), a silk-screened printed and bound edition of 50 offered by alvin buenaventura press. doucet is a superb graphic artist/designer/cartoonist from canada, who appropriates found retro imagery and typography and then collages them just like the russian constructivists did in the 1920s. her best stuff is her line art or a combination of her line art and found images and typography. she has a great color sense and has a knack of using a minimalist canvas for a striking layout. what i really like about her work is the characters or objects in her piece come from the mundane like a stool or luggage or channel lock pliers, which she illustrates with so much beauty and character. and then she can go in another direction and create something abstract and vulgar (by using ordinary magazine tear sheets of retro models); there’s a lot of diversity in her visual style and expression. anyways, here are some images from the buenaventura offering (first set of images) followed by the cover of ‘elle-humor’ and some pages from that book (click image to see a larger version). enjoy.

darwyn cooke: an appreciation of his cartooning

darwyn cooke’s ‘absolute dc: the new frontier’ has just been released in a deluxe hardcover slipcased edition that is a wonder to the eyes because it’s his seminal work. cooke’s rendering style reminds one of the work of comic illustrators frank robbins, jack kirby, alex toth and bruce timm. i also recognize cooke drawing inspiration from charles & roy eames, saul bass’ mid-century modernist graphic designs and typography with some george nelson 1950s’ home furnishing designs thrown in too. but cooke’s synthesis of all his influences is not straight pastiche—it is his own expressive style, which is a passionate and charming homage to the great atomic age cartoonists and graphic & furniture designer’ imagination and aesthetic sensibilities. not only does cooke have great facility rendering illustrations, but also he cut his teeth on animation storyboards. so, he has a knack for pacing and incorporating the precise action into the layout of a comics page. plus, he deftly creates the perfect composition of a comic panel, rendering furthermore, the key dramatic moment required for the image to resonate with the viewer. (below partial line art from the ‘absolute dc: the new frontier’ slipcover box.)

i am not an advocate of superhero comics (other than it offering a colorful visual aesthetic and cooke’s writing is a little too light & literal for my taste to be of profound substance), rather i will always go out of my way to endorse superlative cartooning though. and, cooke makes it a treat to view his pared down iconographically, cartoony, costumed characters. he also tends to lean toward darker, pulpy subject matter and narrative. anyways, cooke’s cartooning is so polished that the attention falls squarely on it rather than on his writing, which is serviceable. (below, cooke created detective slam bradley.)

cooke begins a run as the illustrator & writer of ‘the spirit’ (a 1940-50s newspaper strip created by will eisner), which is an on-going comic series set in central city, a german expressionist/film noir mileau. so, if you’re curious to experience cooke’s work for the first time, ‘the spirit’ rivival should offer a taste of comics’ storytelling dynamics, which is a distinct medium & experience from reading prose, viewing photography or watching film even though comics utilizes devices from all three. (below is the cover to ‘the spirit‘ no. 1.)

recently, the criterion collection commissioned cooke to do five covers for their 4-dvd box set release of ‘monster’s and madmen.’ cooke does a faithful homage to the sensational catch phrases and colorful graphics of late 1950s b-movie posters. (below are two of the five commisions.)


looking at cooke’s line art is a similar to looking at a great photograph, with all the prerequisite elements of lighting, mood, color, texture, shadow, composition and narrative… the difference being that cooke conjures his cartoony imagery (but still conveys a sense of the realistic) from his imagination and inspiration and renders it with a pencil and pen on paper. since cooke has built a nice body of work over the last couple of years and is currently available, one has a wide variety to chose from and enjoy the simple pleasure of gazing at cooke’s cartooning… it’s all there for those who know where to look.

noir city 5 film festival

anita monga has programmed noir city 5, and it returns to san francisco’s castro theater from friday, jan. 26 to sunday, feb. 4. the 20 films in the program are mostly rarities (some i’ve heard of but none i’ve seen before) with tributes to glenn ford, burt lancaster, cinematographer john alton and screenwriter william bowers to name a few.

i am looking forward to catching anthony mann’s ‘raw deal,’ ‘cry danger’ starring dick powell & rhonda fleming, ‘affair in trinidad’ reuniting glenn ford & rita hayworth, ‘the big combo’ with cornell wilde, richard conte and jean wallace, ‘kiss the blood off my hands’ starring burt lancaster & joan fontaine, ‘i love trouble’ (get a load of its poster below… what’s not to like?) and fred zinneman’s directorial debut in ’glove killer.’ special personal appearances by marsha hunt & richard erdman, hosted by eddie muller.

click the title of this post to view the complete program lineup.

revisiting hiroshi teshigahara’s brilliant ‘woman in the dunes’

it’s been roughly six years since i first saw hiroshi teshigahara’s ‘woman in the dunes’ (1964). and it was probably the 123 minute u.s. version at the pacific film archive’s underwhelmingly dinky screen. recently, san francisco’s castro theatre screened teshigahara’s most acclaimed feature film in a 147 minute new print circulated by janus films. ‘woman’ looked magnificent on the castro’s screen, which is easily 45 ft. high. seeing cinematographer hirosi segawa’s beautifully composed close-ups and long-shots, which were designed for graphic impact by being shot as a square film frame, was truly heightened to maximum effect on that huge screen. a good comparison between the pfa and castro’s screens would be the size differences of the photos in this analysis (click any six of the images to see the startling size differences). holy moley, was i elated revisting ‘woman’ and coming away with a more nuanced viewing experience and deeper understanding and interpretation. happy to say the film did not drag at all with the additional footage, unlike the superflulous ‘apocalyspe now redux’ with the original resonating strongest because it’s a leaner cut. anyways, i will not write a plot summary—interested readers can refer to wikipedia or imdb for more details and background—plus, i will inadvertently describe key developments in the story to preface my observations and insights. so, if you prefer to see the film cold to arrive at your own take, it’s probably best not to read my analysis first.


eiji okada, who is ‘lui’ in alain resnais and marguerite duras’ terrific ‘hiroshima mon amour’ (1959), plays entomological hobbyist niki jumpei, hoping to capture a rarely found variant insect species in order to fulfill the mundanely proud ambition of being cited in a travel log. also, jumpei’s vain nature is to seek recognition from anyone. the reason he was captured in the first place is due to him seeking out that rare insect so he would get his name published, and it is also his motive to escape; notice his initial attempts to escape, he always carried the insects he collected and never left them behind. by the end of the film, he decides to return to the sand pit in order to reveal his invention of the pump to the village captors who will appreciate the practical use of it. i idolize okada’s antecedental dignified asian lead performance in ‘hiroshima’ and liken it to tony leung’s chow mo-wan from ‘in the mood for love.’ although in ‘woman,’ okada portrays a pathetically self-centered character and okada’s performance is prone to occassional overexpressive acting. nonetheless, i was drawn to jumpei’s compulsive determination to escape the sand pit, despite the futility of his repeated attempts and modern civilization not offering a better option of life if his escape was finally successful. for american audiences, lucas jackson in ‘cool hand luke’ echoes the same drive and challenge to break free of imprisonment as jumpei.

intro

the past few months, my friend stan from st. louis has been cajoling me to publish a blog, which will cover (for starters) cinema, graphic design, mid-century modern furniture/interior design, cartooning/comics, fashion, sports, photography, and anything else that would be an entertaining read. the hard and fast rules are my blog is funny, insightful, informative, wonderful to view photograph-wise and kicks off reader discussion and feedback. so, that’s my ambition when i publish here. hopefully, readers who encounter my blog come away with that vibe. welcome aboard everyone.

sincerely,

chris diaz