El Eternauta
by Leandro Lucarella on 2010- 01- 10 19:05 (updated on 2010- 01- 10 19:05)- with 0 comment(s)
If you are Argentine and like comics and science fiction, you read El Eternauta, but if you are not around here, it's most likely that you didn't (specially because, sadly, I couldn't find any English translation of the comic).
Since I'm lazy, I'll quote Wikipedia to summarize what is it about:
El Eternauta is a science fiction comics series created by Argentine comic strip writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld initially with artwork by Francisco Solano López. It was first published in Hora Cero Semanal from 1957 to 1959.
[...]
The story begins with an extraterrestrial invasion to Earth. A deadly snowfall produced by the invaders covers Buenos Aires wiping out most life in a few hours. Juan Salvo, along with a couple of friends [...] soon find out the true nature of the strange phenomenon and join an improvised resistance army to fight the invaders back. [...]
For us porteños it has a little more magic than other science fiction stories, because we are not used to stories taking place in our city, but I think it's a great story besides that.
Well, the story will hit the big screen soon, so I guess non-Spanish speaking people will be able to see a version of it after all (I'm sure the movie will be subtitled to English). Surprisingly, the director will be Lucrecia Martel, who is characterized by making slow, intensive, dramatic movies, with really dense atmospheres. I think she is an excellent director, with an extremely particular style, which is not usually associated with science fiction movies, which make me even more intrigued about this movie.
Here is an interview with Lucrecia talking about the movie (sorry, Spanish only):
And here is a proof-of-concept of the visual effects (I don't really know if this is really something done for the movie or if it is a fake, so be warned):
The risk is high, I think it could turn up being a complete disaster, or a beauty peace of art. I hope it will turn up to be the latter :)
There is another fan film project on the works theses days called Nevada (in Spanish), which is worth mentioning. You can see a small article about it in English.