Friday, April 20, 2012

Bonus Content for Daredevil month: Daredevil '83

  As added content this week we take a look at the talented Mr. Notarile's Daredevil '83.  He's made this and an Elektra short, which will go up as bonus next week to compliment the Elektra movie.  I was originally going to do a full review of it but decided that due to it's length I'd just feature it with some comments.

  It's another good outing, the strengths of this include it's soundtrack and the cinematography, those are simply the strongest things about all of the Blinky500 short films that I've seen so far.  The acting is good, Nick Grock is good as Daredevil, Mandy Evans does great as Typhoid Mary (certainly better than the Elektra movie version).  We also get a special guest appearance by my favorite Punisher Shawn Parr who shows up at the beginning to call Daredevil's classic dark red and yellow costume gay.  Which it was.  I'm glad someone had the balls to point it out.  The biggest weakness is the fight choreography but you really can't rail on it too much, the man's not working with a huge budget with experienced stuntmen and the actors are doing all their own fighting, which isn't easy.  It looks easy but I can tell you from experience it's not fucking easy.  What's easy about choreographing a fight is getting hit for realsies and nobody wants that.  So I don't blame them for slowing it down and taking it easy.  Otherwise, it's a strong showing with a great, awkward and unsettling dance number around the middle.  Check it out.  Video repost with Chris' comments cut and pasted from his youtube page as well as a link to said youtube after the jump.

http://www.blinky-productions.com/index2.php

Daredevil '83 IMDB





  A WORD FROM CHRIS This project was actually a pretty big undertaking for me. It was originally scheduled to be completed back at the beginning of 2011, but due to a lot of technical issues, it kept getting put off. The first initial issue, was a location. The church sequences were originally set in an abandoned warehouse. I of course was unable to secure such a location, in spit of all my efforts. Then I tried looking for dance or strip clubs. Music was key element to the script, so I couldn't just have the scene outside. I wanted somewhere private for Typhoid Mary to do her shtick. And while searching for this location, there came another problem- the recast of Mary. As some of you may know, the role was originated by someone else. Long story short, we no longer see eye to eye and I was forced to recast. Call it, "creative differences". If you know what that means, you ought to get a chuckle.

  The inability to find a good location, coupled with the need to recast Typhoid Mary, really became a major setback, and crippled the project for nearly 9 months. Nick Grock and I had shot some footage, but it was barely 2 minutes worth. I was forced to put Dardevil'83 on ice and instead devoted my time to other projects. But in that time, I DID do some pretty creative stuff. I guess everything happens for a reason, because in the end, things just fell into place. Shortly after I finished "CHOICE", with the notoriously awesome Mandy Evans, did I realize that she would make for a stellar (if not better) cast as my psychotic super villain. After a few conversations, she was in. I recontacted, Nick and told him DD'83 was back on schedule, and that's when I was given a real treat.

  Nick had been religiously working out for the last 9 months and was incredibly MORE buff than he was when we didn Punisher'81. His look was more developed, more gritty and overall, it looked like he had been scorned by the Punisher and was trying to compensate (which was an underlying tone to the story). I can only imagine what this movie would've been like if it had been made originally when I wanted to make it. I somehow know it would've lacked in the quality I think I managed to achieve.

  So no, down to the big question on everyone's mind- HOW THE HELL DID I GET THAT CHURCH? Heh, heh, it's simple... I politely asked permission. I was walking down the street, on my way home from Fashion Week, when I passed the cathedral. I had already decided I wanted to film the rest of the movie in a church and still hadn't found a location. I realized I was in Hell's Kitchen and just said, "screw it, I gotta check this place out." The worst thing they could tell me was "no". But fortunately, they didn't. I met with Reverend Gilbert Martinez and told him what I wanted to do and to my surprise, he said "yeah sure". Apparently St. Paul The Apostle's Cathedral gets a lot of filming requests. And I would just like to take this moment to address something important. St. Paul's is a historical landmark in NYC and is actually in desperate need of some maintenance. So please, if you can, visit their website and give them a hand. Even if you're not religious, this place is just an architectural masterpiece and deserves to be preserved.

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