Astroesque
By John Oak Dalton • Oct 25th, 2003 • Category: Action/AdventureI’ve been a fan of Mike Allred’s writing and art since his Madman Comics days, on forward to his offbeat “mutant beatnik” comic series The Atomics and his current work on the oft-controversial X-Statix (recently in the news for a storyline featuring Princess Di coming back from the dead as a superhero). Allred has a retro-cool art style and a post-modern scriptwriting flair.
And all of those skills followed him to his freshman directorial effort, Astroesque, part of a multimedia triple-play tied into his Red Rocket 7 comic for Dark Horse Comics. Allred wrote and drew a comic book, directed and started in a movie, and produced and played on a concept album, all stand-alone projects but with united themes.
Astroesque tells the story of a time-traveling, space-faring “guardian angel” (Allred) who intervenes to help prevent the untimely death of an average joe (Matt Brundage), infuriating a fringe militia group in the process (though there is a convincing argument that if the “guardian angel” didn’t show up, nobody would be shooting at the guy anyway!). Plenty of slow-motion gun battles and some quasi-religious philosophical debates ensue.
The feature is stylistically offbeat, with directorial homages from Sergio Leone to Alejandro Jodorowsky, all set to a mosh-pit Morricone score. An admirable cinematography effort is offset slightly by some ill-timed edits, an occasionally spotty sound mix, and a few lukewarm performances, reportedly by Allred’s family and friends (though it’s hard to believe that it was shot in a “free weekend” as the opening credits seem to suggest).
Allred himself, with his Banderas hairstyle, his Eastwood thousand-yard stare, and his coat borrowed from Laurence Fishburne, is very magnetic, and probably the baddest-looking dude every to draw comic books for a living (though John Romita Jr. is a close second).
Though technically average, Astroesque earns points for dynamic shooting, challenging themes, and trying to push the envelope in storytelling. Worth a look for the discerning viewer wanting a microcinema effort a notch above in use of brainpower.
Four Stars
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John Oak Dalton is a Community Television Station Manager by day, and a DIY acolyte by night. In the 80s he made Super-8 movies and his own basement mix tapes. In the 90s he hosted a cable-access show and made his own zines and minicomics. In the 21st Century he began working with grassroots video and microcinema and writing b-movies, and has more than a dozen projects on the shelf, on screen, in development, or in production.
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