The Action is the Juice.

Threw this together very quickly, just to exercise a muscle as it were. I've done very little image work recently, I don't want to go rusty. I've been mired in writing for a while now. I did have s hot at designing an album cover for a band I know, but I think I failed the audition. I'll probably share those on Black Dog vs Ice-Cream as they're not quite the flavour I like over here.

So this is my amateurish attempt to reimagine Heat as an early seventies poster. Let's say between 1971 and 1974. I had the idea on the bus, and then took a look at posters that seemed to fit what I was after - Dirty Harry, Cassavette's Husbands, The Getaway - just to get a feel for typefaces, authenticity. I was tempted to recast it with actors of the day (maybe young, subdued and beautiful Pacino in Val Kilmer's shoes...) but I didn't think I had the authority. Plus, I hoped there was a chance the end result would feel Criterion Collection.

It doesn't.



I think if you click it, you can go visit a bigger version on my Flickr (which needs some organising and some Holga photos up, if you ask me.)

I'm about 30% satisfied with it. The main image, layered and enlarged, was the original idea and now it's the part I like least.

Basically I just like the letters.


Would like to introduce you to another blogger: LS Gray. A very good - and opinionated - friend of mine. Have a read of Worthless Chat Monkeys. I hope you enjoy.

Ta ra for now.

I, Lucifer

Peter O'Donnell, creator of Modesty Blaise, died this week aged 90.

I've dipped in and out of the newspaper strip, and admit to not knowing it as well as I should, given my love of cold war pulp and sixties minxes. I've read the first novel, and made a start on the second, 'Sabre-tooth' before the pages started falling out, sabotaging it as a bus-journey or beach-side read. They're pretty tasty; more action-packed than Fleming, less morbid. Compared to Deighton, or Adam Hall, much, much pulpier, but not far-fetched or silly. Not the first novel, at least.



I will resort to jumping on the posthumous bandwagon, I think, and get at least one of the Titan reprints of the newspaper strips.


There was a movie. It doesn't have a great deal to do with O'Donnell's work, but is nevertheless an enjoyable romp. Mix this with Barberella and Danger Diabolik and you've got the movie at the heart of Roman Coppolla's CQ, a movie I'm very much in love with.

Anyway, tragedy aside, it's a good enough reason to end with a picture of Monica Vitti on a swish-looking Japanese Poster, wouldn't you say?

x

' "Allumeuse" is the nice word for it.'

A brief rummage around deviantART at the end of an idle lunch brought my attention to a few of the brand new Croatian oo7 novels and their rather sultry covers.

I do rather like this one for Live and Let Die, and it's reminder of the novel's chilling keel-hauling sequence. Kudos to this Marinshe girl and her talent with a lens.

See more of her work at: http://marinshe.deviantart.com/journal/29098966/

Au revoir. x