Liam Neeson as Darkman

sexta-feira, 26 de abril de 2013

Will Eisner's Spirit Magazine











































































Info About The Spirit:

The Spirit is a fictional masked crimefighter created by cartoonist Will Eisner. He first appeared June 2, 1940 in "The Spirit Section", the colloquial name given to a 16-page Sunday supplement, distributed to 20 newspapers by the Register and Tribune Syndicate and reaching five million readers during the 1940s. From the 1960s to 1980s, a handful of new Eisner Spirit stories appeared in Harvey Comics and elsewhere, and Warren Publishing and Kitchen Sink Press variously reprinted the feature in black-and-white comics magazines and in color comic books. In the 1990s and 2000s, Kitchen Sink[clarification needed] and DC Comics published new Spirit stories by other writers and artists.
The Spirit chronicles the adventures of a masked vigilante who fights crime with the blessing of the city's police commissioner Dolan, an old friend. Despite the Spirit's origin as detective Denny Colt, his real identity was virtually unmentioned again, and for all intents and purposes he was simply "the Spirit". The stories range through a wide variety of styles, from straightforward crime drama and noir to lighthearted adventure, from mystery and horror to comedy and love stories, often with hybrid elements that twisted genre and reader expectations. Eisner said in an interview that he created the strip as a vehicle to explore various genres: "When I created The Spirit, I never had any intention of creating a superhero. I never felt The Spirit would dominate the feature. He served as a sort of an identity for the strip. The stories were what I was interested in."[1]
The feature was the lead item of a 16-page, tabloid-sized, newsprint comic book sold as part of eventually 20 Sunday newspapers with a combined circulation of as many as five million copies. "The Spirit Section", as it was colloquially called, premiered June 2, 1940, and continued until October 5, 1952. It generally included two other, four-page strips (initially Mr. Mystic and Lady Luck), plus filler material. Eisner worked as editor, but also wrote and drew most entries—generally, after the first few months, with such uncredited collaborators as writer Jules Feiffer and artists Jack Cole and Wally Wood, though with Eisner's singular vision for the character as a unifying factor.

Publication history

In late 1939, Everett M. "Busy" Arnold, publisher of the Quality Comics comic-book line, began exploring an expansion into newspaper Sunday supplements, aware that many newspapers felt they had to compete with the suddenly burgeoning new medium of American comic books. Arnold compiled a presentation piece with existing Quality Comics material. An editor of The Washington Star liked George Brenner's The Clock, but not Brenner's art, and was favorably disposed toward a Lou Fine strip. Arnold, concerned over the meticulous Fine's slowness and his ability to meet deadlines, claimed it was the work of Eisner, Fine's boss at the Eisner & Iger studio, from which Arnold bought his outsourced comics work.
In "late '39, just before Christmas time," Eisner recalled in 1979,[2] "Arnold came to me and said that the Sunday newspapers were looking for a way of getting into this comic book boom". In a 2004 interview, Eisner elaborated on that meeting:
"Busy" invited me up for lunch one day and introduced me to [sales manager of the Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate] Henry Martin, who said, "The newspapers in this country, particularly the Sunday papers, are looking to compete with comics books, and they would like to get a comic-book insert into the newspapers"... Martin asked if I could do it... It meant that I'd have to leave Eisner & Iger [which] was making money; we were very profitable at that time and things were going very well. A hard decision. Anyway, I agreed to do the Sunday comic book and we started discussing the deal [which] was that we'd be partners in the "Comic Book Section", as they called it at that time.[3]
Eisner negotiated an agreement with the syndicate in which Arnold would copyright The Spirit, but, "Written down in the contract I had with 'Busy' Arnold — and this contract exists today as the basis for my copyright ownership — Arnold agreed that it was my property. They agreed that if we had a split-up in any way, the property would revert to me on that day that happened. My attorney went to 'Busy' Arnold and his family, and they all signed a release agreeing that they would not pursue the question of ownership."[3] This would include the eventual backup features, "Mr. Mystic" and "Lady Luck."
Selling his share of their firm to Iger, who would continue to package comics as the S. M. Iger Studio and as Phoenix Features through 1955, for $20,000,[4] Eisner left to create The Spirit. "They gave me an adult audience", Eisner said in 1997, "and I wanted to write better things than superheroes. Comic books were a ghetto. I sold my part of the enterprise to my associate and then began The Spirit. They wanted an heroic character, a costumed character. They asked me if he'd have a costume. And I put a mask on him and said, 'Yes, he has a costume!'"[5]
The character and the types of stories Eisner would tell, Eisner said in 1978, derived from his desire
...to do short stories. I always regarded comics as a legitimate medium, my medium. Creating a detective character would... provide me with the most viable vehicle for the kind of stories I could best tell. The syndicate people weren't in full agreement with me... [I]n my first discussion with 'Busy' Arnold, his thinking centered around a superhero kind of character—a costumed character; we didn't use the word 'superhero' in those days... and I argued vehemently against it because I [had] had my bellyful of creating costumed heroes at Eisner and Iger... [S]o actually one evening, around three in the morning, I was still working, trying to find it—I only had about a week-and-a-half or two weeks in which to produce the first issue, the whole deal was done in quite a rush—and I came up with an outlaw hero, suitable, I felt, for an adult audience.[6]
The character's name, he said in that interview, came from Arnold: "When 'Busy' Arnold called, he suggested a kind of ghost or some kind of metaphysical character. He said, 'How about a thing called the Ghost?' and I said, 'Naw, that's not any good,' and he said, 'Well, then, call it the Spirit; there's nothing like that around.' I said, 'Well, I don't know what you mean.,' and he said, 'Well, you can figure that out—I just like the words "the Spirit."' He was calling from a bar somewhere, I think... [A]nd actually, the more I thought about it the more I realized I didn't care about the name."[6]
The Spirit, an initially eight- and later seven-page urban-crimefighter series, ran with the initial backup features "Mr. Mystic" and "Lady Luck" in a 16-page Sunday supplement (colloquially called "The Spirit Section") that was eventually distributed in 20 newspapers with a combined circulation of as many as five million copies.[7] It premiered June 2, 1940, and continued through 1952.[8]

Eisner was drafted into the U.S. Army in late 1941, "and then had about another half-year which the government gave me to clean up my affairs before going off" to fight in World War II.[6] In his absence, the newspaper syndicate used ghost writers and artists to continue the strip, including Manly Wade Wellman, William Woolfolk, and Lou Fine.[citation needed]
Eisner's rumpled, masked hero (with his headquarters under the tombstone of his supposedly deceased true identity, Denny Colt) and his gritty, detailed view of big-city life (based on Eisner's Jewish upbringing in New York City) both reflected and influenced the noir outlook of movies and fiction in the 1940s.[citation needed] The strip is notable in that it spun stories of the little people overlooked in the city's maelstrom.[citation needed] In some episodes, the nominal hero makes a brief, almost incidental appearance while the story focuses on a real-life drama played out in streets, dilapidated tenements, and smoke-filled back rooms. Yet along with violence and pathos, The Spirit lived on humor, both subtle and overt. He was machine-gunned, knocked silly, bruised, often amazed into near immobility and constantly confused by beautiful women.[citation needed]
The feature ended with the October 5, 1952, edition.[8] As The Comics Journal editor-publisher Gary Groth wrote, "By the late '40s, Eisner's participation in the strip had dwindled to a largely supervisory role. ... Eisner hired Jerry Grandenetti and Jim Dixon to occasionally ink his pencils. By 1950, [Jules] Feiffer was writing most of the strips, and Grandenetti, Dixon, and Al Wenzel were drawing them."[9] — Grandenetti penciling as a ghost-artist, under Eisner's byline, said in 2005 that before the feature's demise, Eisner had "tried everything. Had me penciling 'The Spirit'. Later on it was Wally Wood", who drew the final installments.[10]

Fictional character biography

The Spirit, referred to in one newspaper article cited below as "the only real middle-class crimefighter", was the hero persona of young detective Denny Colt. To be precises Dennis Colt Jr. Presumed killed in the first three pages of the premiere story, Colt later revealed to his friend, Central City Police Commissioner Dolan, that he had in fact gone into suspended animation caused by one of archvillain Dr. Cobra's experiments. When Colt awakened in Wildwood Cemetery, he established a base there and, using his new-found anonymity, began a life of fighting crime wearing only a small domino mask, blue business suit, red necktie, fedora hat, and gloves for a costume. The Spirit dispensed justice with the aide of his assistant, Ebony White, funding his adventures with the rewards for capturing villains.
The Spirit was based originally in New York City which soon changed to Central City, but his adventures took him around the globe. He met up with eccentrics, kooks, and femme fatales, bringing his own form of justice to all of them. The story changed continually, but certain themes remained constant: the love between the Spirit and Dolan's feisty protofeminist daughter Ellen; the annual "Christmas Spirit" stories; and the Octopus (a psychopathic criminal mastermind who was never seen, except for his distinctive gloves).

Ebony White

Eisner is sometimes criticized for his depiction of Ebony White, the Spirit's African-American sidekick. The character's name is a racial pun, and his facial features, including large white eyes and thick pinkish lips, are typical of racial blackface caricatures popular throughout the "Jim Crow" era. Eisner later admitted to consciously stereotyping the character, but said he tried to do so with "responsibility", and argued that "at the time humor consisted in our society of bad English and physical difference in identity".[11] The character, who was consistently treated with respect by the strip's fellow cast-members, developed beyond the stereotype as the series progressed, and Eisner also introduced such African-American characters as the no-nonsense Detective Grey who defied popular stereotypes.
In a 1966 New York Herald Tribune feature by Eisner's former office manager-turned-journalist, Marilyn Mercer wrote, "Ebony never drew criticism from Negro groups (in fact, Eisner was commended by some for using him), perhaps because, although his speech pattern was early Minstrel Show, he himself derived from another literary tradition: he was a combination of Tom Sawyer and Penrod, with a touch of Horatio Alger hero, and color didn't really come into it".[12]
The DC Comics' Spirit comic-book series of the late 2000s portrays White as a street kid, driving a stolen taxi.[citation needed] He is portrayed as putting his street experience and his daring attitude to work at the Spirit's service.[citation needed]

Other characters

  • The Octopus is the archenemy of the Spirit. He is a criminal mastermind and master of disguise who never shows his real face, though he is identified by his distinctive gloves. In the second issue of the 1960s Harvey Comics Spirit comic book, his name is given as Zitzbath Zark. (Vide sitz bath.)
  • P'Gell is a femme fatale who perennially tries to seduce the Spirit to a life of crime at her side. She seduces and marries wealthy men who invariably die in mysterious ways, and uses their money to fund her crime empire in Istanbul and expand her influence and control over the underworld. After moving to Central City to find the Spirit, she continues her modus operandi of selected marriages with the creme of society, even gaining an ally in the form of Saree, the young daughter of one of her deceased husbands. In the 2000s DC Comics version, P'Gell was once a young socialite in love with a doctor, working in Third World countries, and turned to a life of crime when he was killed. P'Gell was ranked 52nd in Comics Buyer's Guide's 100 Sexiest Women in Comics list.[13]
  • Sand Saref is a childhood friend of Denny Colt, and knows he is the Spirit. Working in espionage, she usually ends up on the opposite side of the law from him. She appears several times, always involved in some criminal scheme. (Vide sans serif.) Sand Seref was ranked 73rd in Comics Buyer's Guide's 100 Sexiest Women in Comics list.[14]
  • Silken Floss is a nuclear physicist and a surgeon, who acts as the accomplice to the Octopus.
  • Dr. Cobra is a mad scientist whose chemicals and machinations inadvertently help Denny Colt become the Spirit.
  • Mister Carrion is a morbid con man with a pet vulture, Julia. (Vide carrion.)
  • Darling O' Shea is the richest and most spoiled child in the world.
  • Hazel P. Macbeth is a witch with a Shakespearean motif and apparent magical powers.
  • Lorelei Rox, an apparent siren, appeared in a September 1948 strip and subsequently in 2000s DC Comics Spirit stories.
  • Silk Satin is a tall, statuesque brunette with a white streak in her hair, originally an adventuress who later reformed and worked as an international troubleshooter for the insurance company Croyd's of Glasgow. In later stories, its revealed she has a daughter, Hildie, who motivates her to stay on the straight path. In the 2000s DC Comics revival, she is a smaller, more slender, blond CIA agent. Silk Satin was ranked 72nd in Comics Buyer's Guide's 100 Sexiest Women in Comics list.[15]

The Spirit and John Law

Several Spirit stories, such as the first appearance of Sand Saref, were retooled from a failed publishing venture featuring an eyepatched, pipe-smoking detective named John Law. Law and his shoeshine-boy sidekick, Nubbin, starred in several adventures planned for a new comics series. These completed adventures were eventually adapted into Spirit stories, with John Law's eyepatch being changed to the Spirit's mask, and Nubbin redrawn as Willum Waif or other Spirit supporting characters.
The original John Law stories were restored and published in Will Eisner's John Law: Dead Man Walking (IDW Publishing, 2004), a collection of stories that also features new adventures by writer-artist Gary Chaloner, starring John Law, Nubbin, and other Eisner creations, including Lady Luck and Mr. Mystic.

Assistants and collaborators

Like most artists working in newspaper comic strips, Eisner after a time employed a studio of assistants who, on any given week's story, might draw or simply ink backgrounds, ink parts of Eisner's main characters (such as clothing or shoes), or as eventually occurred, ghost-draw the strip entirely. Eisner also eventually used ghostwriters, generally in collaboration with him.
Jules Feiffer, who began as an art assistant circa 1946 and later became the primary writer through the strip's end in 1952, recalled, "When I first worked for Will there was John Spranger, who was his penciler and a wonderful draftsman; better than Will. There was Sam Rosen, the lettering man. Jerry Grandenetti came a little after me and did backgrounds, and Jerry had some architectural background. His drawing was stiff but loosened up after a while, but he drew backgrounds and inked them beautifully. And Abe Kanegson, who was my best friend in the office, was a jack-of-all-trades but mostly did lettering and backgrounds after Jerry left. Abe was a mentor to me."[16]
Eisner's studio also included:[8][17]
  • Art assistants: Bob Powell (1940), Dave Berg (backgrounds, 1940–41), Tex Blaisdell (1940–41), Fred Kida (1941), Alexander Kostuk a.k.a. Alex Koster (1941–43), Jack Cole (1942–43), Jack Keller (backgrounds, 1943), Jules Feiffer (1946–47), Manny Stallman (1947–49), Andre LeBlanc (1950), Al Wenzel (1952)
  • Ghost artists (pencilers): Lou Fine and Jack Cole (variously, during Eisner's World War II service, 1942–45), Jerry Grandenetti (1951), Wally Wood (1952)




Cover detail, The Spirit #6 (Feb. 1975), Warren Publishing.

The Spirit (2008 Film)







































Info About The Spirit (film directed by Frank Miller):

The Spirit is a 2008 American superhero noir film, written and directed by Frank Miller and starring Gabriel Macht, Eva Mendes, Sarah Paulson, Dan Lauria, Paz Vega, Jaime King, Scarlett Johansson, and Samuel L. Jackson. The film is based on the newspaper comic strip The Spirit by Will Eisner. OddLot and Lionsgate produced the film.[4]
The Spirit was released in the United States on December 25, 2008, and on DVD and Blu-ray on April 14, 2009. Despite being a commercial and critical failure in theaters, the film found more success on DVD and Blu-ray.[5]

Plot

In a cat-filled mausoleum in Central City, Denny Colt, also known as The Spirit, receives a call from Detective Sussman about a major case that could involve the Spirit's arch-nemesis, The Octopus. The Spirit dons his costume and travels across rooftops while delivering a voice-over soliloquy about the city being his one true love. A woman (Kimberly Cox) is being mugged in an alley below. He manages to save her, receiving a knife wound that he barely seems to notice. The woman asks, "What are you?" The Spirit runs away, catching a ride from Officer Liebowitz and heading toward the flats.
At the swampland, femme fatale Sand Saref rises from the water and appears to shoot Sussman multiple times. The Spirit and Liebowitz find the wounded Sussman, but a flashback reveals that it was really the Octopus who shot him in an effort to recover two identical chests underwater. Sand and her husband Mahmoud tried to flee with both chests, but the Octopus wounded Mahmoud and snapped a line connecting the two chests. Sand escaped, leaving one chest behind, which the Octopus retrieved from the murky depths.
After the Octopus kills Liebowitz by ripping his head off, he sends away his cloned henchmen, Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, to take on the Spirit alone. His accomplice Silken Floss drives up, running over Pathos in the process. She departs with the cargo, taking the view that the Spirit and the Octopus will "be at it all night" as the two enemies share a connection in their ability to resist physical injury.
The Spirit is awakened by his lover Dr. Ellen Dolan, daughter of Police Commissioner Dolan. Appearing to be in perfect health despite his gunshot wounds (something which has occurred seemingly many times before), the Spirit is shocked to notice a gold locket in Sussman's hand; a piece torn from Sand Saref's neck earlier.
Saref's locket contains pictures of a much-younger Denny Colt and Sand; the two grew up together in Central City where Denny bought Sand the locket as a gift to satisfy her love of "shiny things", including the Golden Fleece of Jason and the Argonauts. They lived happily until Sand's father was shot dead. Sand, who now hated cops, fled to Europe and has not been heard from for fifteen years. In a secret lair, the Octopus and Silken Floss open the chest, but discover that it does not contain the mysterious Blood of Heracles as expected and decide a trade is in order.
Sand and Mahmoud visit the office of a high-class fence named Donenfeld, whom Sand paid to locate the underwater treasure. It is implied that Donenfeld gave up the treasure's location to the Octopus to ensure his family's safety. At Alice's Hospital, the Spirit has fully regenerated and is as good as new; Commissioner Dolan angrily enters with young rookie cop Morgenstern and calls the Spirit away to a case.
Sand's history as one of the world's great jewel thieves is relayed to the Spirit. As the Spirit is about to arrest her, he is caught off-guard by her standing before him fully nude. Sand doesn't recognize the Spirit as the presumed-dead Denny. She is stunned when he reveals his knowledge of her looking for the Golden Fleece as she shoves the Spirit through a window only to see him survive the fall. Octopus and Floss's experimentation have led to the creation of a serum (something of a scientific equivalent to the Elixir of Life) that could grant immortality with which the Octopus injected himself and arch-enemies were born.
After surviving the fall, the Spirit receives a tip on the location of the Octopus's lair. Unable to break in unnoticed, he is captured and tied to a dentist's chair. The Octopus reveals his own origin as well as how he and the Spirit became arch-enemies. Eventually the Spirit manages to escape, but not without sustaining a critical blow.
The Spirit stumbles to the city docks and collapses into the water where he confronts the ethereal Angel of Death, Lorelei Rox, who has haunted his sleep. He becomes the only man to have ever wrongfully escaped death when he manages to gather his senses by remembering Ellen, Sand, and the city all needing him. As the Spirit swims to the surface, Lorelei vows vengeance.
At the projects, Sand and her latest henchman fly in with the Blood of Heracles to meet Floss and a clone carrying the Golden Fleece. After a four-way Mexican standoff, Sand attempts to convince Floss to get out of serving the Octopus before she is killed by the Octopus himself. He asks Floss for the vase. Unable to take a side, Floss drives off as the Spirit suddenly materializes. The Octopus unloads with progressively bigger guns on the Spirit, apparently killing him off, but Dolan's SWAT team storms the area and opens fire right after. Morgenstern blows the Octopus' arm up with a hand-cannon; to recover from the damage, the Octopus gets to the Blood of Heracles and prepares to drink it, but Sand shoots the vase just in time as the Spirit comes back from the dead, having used a bulletproof vest, and attach a grenade to the Octopus' chest, blowing him up into pieces, with Sand protecting the two of them with the Golden Fleece.
Showdown over, the Spirit gives Sand her locket back. They kiss as Ellen looks on, feeling betrayed. The old flames bid each other goodbye and the Spirit convinces Dolan to let Sand go in gratitude for saving the world. Elsewhere, Floss discovers the Octopus's severed finger crawling toward her. She picks it up and departs saying, "we'll start from scratch". At dawn, the Spirit stands triumphant on a rooftop with his cat.

Cast

  • Gabriel Macht as Denny Colt / The Spirit: An ambitious and formerly eager young cop killed on the job, who under mysterious circumstances is reborn as a masked crime-fighter with an eye for the ladies.[6] Determined to still keep his beloved city safe, he works with Central City's police force from the shadows. Miller had required actors who wanted the starring role to audition, and Macht was able to attain the role in August 2007.[7]
  • Samuel L. Jackson as The Octopus: A former coroner turned psychotic super-villain who plans to bring all of Central City to its knees and will kill without discretion anyone unlucky enough to stand in his way. Jackson was Miller's first choice for the role and was cast in May 2007.[8] Jackson, Miller, and the costume designer went through the various scenes of the film to design elaborate costumes for the Octopus to wear—to the point that in every scene he appears in his look is different than the one before. They include a samurai robe complete with a wig, a full Nazi SS uniform, a Western duster influenced outfit with a ludicrously out-of-proportion cowboy hat, and a costume consisting of a Russian-esque hat and a fur-lined coat influenced by 1970s blaxploitation pimps. When asked about the change from the Octopus just being recognized by a pair of gloves in the comics to the various costumes, Jackson stated "It's just an opportunity to be larger than life to take the Octopus's theme of dressing the way he feels everyday, or having a theme to his day to day life and making some sense with it. And hopefully the audience will take the ride with us."[9]
  • Scarlett Johansson as Silken Floss: A femme fatale scientist and perversely innocent accomplice to the Octopus, only slightly more sane than he is.[10]
  • Eva Mendes as Sand Saref:[11] The Spirit's childhood sweetheart, who perennially seduces and marries wealthy men, has them killed, and uses their money to fund criminal exploits in a constant pursuit of a life of the highest luxury and influence over the criminal underworld. She is also a tragic anti-heroine, with her policeman father accidentally murdered, causing her to have a hatred of police and Central City, and break up with aspiring cop Denny Colt. In the movie her character shares characteristics with P'Gell from The Spirit comics. The actress told director Frank Miller that she wanted to work with him on The Spirit before she had seen a script for the film.[12]
  • Sarah Paulson as Ellen Dolan: The police commissioner's daughter and a top surgeon who considers it her duty as the Spirit's current flame to keep him healthy and alive (much to her father's chagrin).[6]
  • Dan Lauria as Commissioner Eustace Dolan: The hard-boiled and commanding police commissioner of Central City and the Spirit's father figure.[6]
  • Stana Katic as Morgenstern: A spunky rookie officer and skilled sharpshooter who idolizes the Spirit.[6]
  • Louis Lombardi as Phobos, Logos, Pathos, Ethos, Bulbos, Huevos and Rancheros, Mangos, Adios and Amigos, etc.: The Octopus's thuggish and moronic, yet highly resilient cloned henchmen.[6]
  • Jaime King as Lorelei: A phantasmic siren and the Angel of Death waiting to take the Spirit, who must continually force himself to resist her.[13]
  • Paz Vega as Plaster of Paris: A sexy French belly dancer and assassin in the employ of the Octopus, she wields tri-pronged throwing knives and a sword.[13]
  • Eric Balfour as Mahmoud
Frank Miller and DC Comics president Paul Levitz also have cameo roles in the film.[5]

Production

Development

In the 1970s, director William Friedkin obtained the rights to The Spirit and contacted Will Eisner to write a script for him. Eisner declined but recommended Harlan Ellison, who wrote a two-hour live-action script for the filmmaker. Friedkin and Ellison afterward had an unrelated argument, and the project was abandoned.[14] During the 1980s, Brad Bird, Jerry Rees, and producer Gary Kurtz attempted to get an animated adaptation off the ground, though studio executives praised the screenplay, they thought the film would be unmarketable, and this version was scrapped.[15]
In the early 1990s, producer Michael Uslan and executive producers Benjamin Melniker and Steven Maier subsequently obtained the rights for a live-action film adaptation. The producer promised Eisner that he would not permit anyone who "didn't get it" to work on the project. Two ideas pitched to Uslan were to put the Spirit in a costume and to have the Spirit be a resurrected dead man who possessed supernatural powers.[16] Screenwriter John Turman, a comic book fan, expressed interest in writing the script.[17]
In July 2004, financier OddLot Entertainment acquired the rights to the film. OddLot's producers Gigi Pritzker and Deborah Del Pete began a collaboration with Uslan, Melniker and Maier working at Batfilm Productions, to adapt the story. Eisner, who was protective of the rights to his creations, said that he believed in the producers to faithfully adapt The Spirit.[18] In April 2005, comic book writer Jeph Loeb was hired to adapt The Spirit for the big screen,[19] but the writer eventually left the project. Later in April, Uslan approached Frank Miller at Will Eisner's memorial service in New York City several weeks after Miller's Sin City was released in theaters, interested in initiating the adaptation technique with Miller's film for The Spirit.[20] Miller had initially hesitated, doubting his skill in adapting The Spirit, but ultimately embraced his first solo project as writer-director.[16] As Miller described his decision-making, "The only thought in my mind was, 'It's too big—I can't possibly do it.' And I refused. And about three minutes later as I was at the doorway, I turned around and said, 'Nobody else can touch this,' and I agreed to the job on the spot".[5]
In July 2006, the film trade press reported Miller would write and direct the film adaptation for The Spirit ; Miller and the producers publicly announced this at the 2006 Comic-Con International in San Diego, California.[21] Miller said that he was putting together a film treatment that included large parts of The Spirit strip panels. As Miller described the project, "I intend to be extremely faithful to the heart and soul of the material, but it won't be nostalgic. It will be much scarier than people expect".[21] Miller plans to film The Spirit using the same digital background technology that was used for Sin City and 300.[22] The film would also copy specific shots from the comic, similar to Sin City.[23]
In February 2007, Miller completed the first draft of the screenplay, and began work on a second draft.[24] Principal photography was initially slated to begin in late spring 2007.[21] Miller also planned to begin filming Sin City 2 in spring 2009,[25] but Uslan indicated that filming for The Spirit would begin before Miller started Sin City 2.[20] Following the casting of Gabriel Macht as the Spirit in August 2007, filming was re-slated for the following October.[7]

Filming

Filming began in October 2007. Filming took place in Albuquerque Studios in New Mexico.[6] The Spirit was shot using Panavision's Genesis digital camera.[26] The films release was originally scheduled for January 16, 2009, but on May 6, 2008, it was announced that the release date would be moved up to December 25, 2008.[20]
The film contains a number of references to Eisner collaborators and other comics personae. These include "Feiffer Industrial Salt", alluding to Spirit ghost writer Jules Feiffer; "Iger Avenue", named for Eisner & Iger partner S.M. "Jerry" Iger; "Ditko's Speedy Delivery", named for Steve Ditko, a comic book artist and writer; and the characters Donenfeld and Liebowitz, played by Richard Portnow and Frank Miller, respectively, who are named for two of DC Comics' founders, Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz.[27]

Music

The Spirit's mysterious Henry Mancini-like soundtrack is by David Newman. Producer Deborah Del Prete said in the movie's production and press notes, "We were very fortunate to have a wealth of choices. After seeing samples of the footage literally everyone we wanted to meet with was very excited about taking on the film. The hardest part was having to say no to so many really great music makers. After consideration, the highly accomplished multiple Academy Award nominee David Newman joined the team. Frank wanted elements of the '40s jazz sound married with iconic heroic music and even a touch of the spaghetti western. David was able to bring it all home for us."[28] Newman explained, "It's Sand Saref (Eva Mendes) who has the most elaborate of all the themes, because it's based on her relationship with Denny Colt when they were in their teens, well before he became the Spirit. Saref's music ultimately becomes the love theme of the movie. It's very romantic, almost old fashioned, especially when they finally kiss. Frank Miller and I talked about that scene quite a bit. He really wanted me to 'go for it' – to make their music as romantic as possible. In the end, the Spirit is like a modern day Don Juan, without the psychological ambivalence towards women. He truly loves every woman he meets. It's part of his makeup. He has a certain naiveté in this respect."[29]
There is an eerie, wordless soprano for Lorelei (Jaime King) that is performed by Newman's 19-year-old daughter Diana, a vocal major at USC.[30]
Christina Aguilera sings a cover of the classic "Falling in Love Again" in the closing credits of The Spirit. The song dates to 1930, written by Frederick Hollander, with lyrics written by Sammy Lerner. The song was originally sung, and popularized, by Marlene Dietrich in the film The Blue Angel (1930). The song was covered by Billie Holiday (1940), Doris Day (1961), Sammy Davis Jr. (1962), and many others.
The trailers for the film feature music from the I Choose Noise album by Hybrid.
  1. "Spirit / Main Title"
  2. "Lorelei 'Angel Of Death'"
  3. "Enter Silken Floss - Octopus Kicks"
  4. "Just a Fight"
  5. "You're An Accident"
  6. "Spirit Reflects"
  7. "Egg On My Face"
  8. "Sand / Octopus Lair"
  9. "I Am Soreley Disappointed"
  10. "Spirit Finds Sand / Falling / Hung Up"
  11. "Plaster Of Paris Dance"
  12. "Spirit And Plaster Run"
  13. "Lorelei 'You Are Mine' / Spirit Wants"
  14. "Stand Off / Spirit Just Keeps Coming"
  15. "Shootout"
  16. "Octopus Buys It"
  17. "Spirit Kisses Sand"
  18. "It's You I Love / She Is My City"
Marketing

At the New York Comic Con on February 24, 2007, director-screenwriter Frank Miller and producer Michael Uslan were scheduled to present a panel for The Spirit,[31] though Miller was unable to attend due to recuperation from hip and leg injuries.[24] Instead, Uslan, fellow producer F.J. DeSanto, and former The Spirit publisher Denis Kitchen presented a panel at which they described the history of the film and the film's progress.[20]
Titan Books produced a making-of book, The Spirit: The Movie Visual Companion by Mark Cotta Vaz, featuring interviews with the cast and crew, photos, storyboards, and production art. It was released November 25, 2008.
The film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA for "intense sequences of stylized violence and action, some sexual content, and brief nudity".[32]
The film was released on Christmas Day 2008.

Reception

Box office

The Spirit fared poorly in the box office. Released in 2,509 theaters,[3] The Spirit grossed $10.3 million in its opening four days, placing 9th in the box-office ranking for the weekend.[33] As of May 2009, the film had grossed $19,806,188 domestically and $18,588,842 internationally for a worldwide total of $38,395,030.[3] It was rumored that the movie's poor performance at the box office cost Odd Lot Entertainment tens of millions of dollars in losses as well as causing the demise of the Frank Miller "Buck Rogers" movie, although Odd Lot Entertainment's CEO Gigi Pritzker denied such rumors.[34]

Critical reception

The Spirit was almost universally panned by critics. It received a 14% rating at the movie-review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes,[35] and a Metacritic aggregate rating of 30 out of 100, denoting "generally negative reviews", from 24 reviewers.[36]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said, "There is not a trace of human emotion in it. To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material".[37] Ricky Bentley of The Miami Herald said, "Macht manages to meld macho with melodrama to make the Spirit come to life."[38]
Frank Lovece of Newsday, a one-time comic book writer, found that "gorgeous cinematography and design can't mask the hollow core and bizarre ugliness of this mishandled comics adaptation", and noted that while Eisner's own Spirit was "an average-Joe [...] in a rumpled suit—a vulnerable but insouciant everyman in humanist fables", Miller's Spirit "now has a superpower—a healing factor. Eisner's own spirit must be spinning in its grave".[39]
Chris Barsanti of Filmcritic.com stated, "It's a frankly gorgeous effect, liberated by the fact that Miller adapted freely from Eisner's panels—the two were longtime friends—to create an organic story instead of slavishly following the master's work", and calling it "one of the year's most refreshingly fun films."[40]
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, found the movie a "ludicrously knowing and mannered noir pastiche, full of burnt-end romance and 'style', but robotic at its core".[41]
Ken Hanke of Mountain Xpress observed, "The film may not move smoothly—Miller's too fond of 'just damn weird' digressions for that—but it does move and isn't hard to follow. Its screwiness is deliberate and it's all a matter of taste."[42]
A.O. Scott in The New York Times summed up, "To ask why anything happens in Frank Miller's sludgy, hyper-stylized adaptation of a fabled comic book series by Will Eisner may be an exercise in futility. The only halfway interesting question is why the thing exists at all."[43]
Empire Magazine listed the film as #32 on their Top 50 Worst Movies Of All Time list.


All Extracts Taken From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_(film)

More Info: http://www.mycityscreams.com/ - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831887/


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