Fire and Ice (1983) [2-Disc Limited Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

FIRE AND ICE
**½/****
DVD – Image A+ Sound A (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway
directed by Ralph Bakshi

FRAZETTA: PAINTING WITH FIRE (2003)
*½/****
directed by Lance Laspina

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's something poignant about the barbarian fantasy that makes it hard to dismiss. Though I long ago abandoned the adolescent nerd's love of sword-handling macho men and their quivering female conquests, I still find the genre's tangled web of sexual denials endlessly fascinating–and highly incriminating to any boy who leafed through his "Dungeons & Dragons" manuals with less than pure thoughts on his mind. Very obviously, the whole thing revolves around sex–the sensual idea of standing nearly naked and pulsing with fury while the object of your desire writhes at your feet. But there's a sense in which it can't admit this–it has to drag in a mythological sturm-und-drang in order to justify itself as drama, when in fact it just wants to touch itself. And the sad phenomenon of talking about something without talking about it is strangely moving.

Which brings us to the Fire and Ice duo of Frank Frazetta and Ralph Bakshi, these self-described "couple of guys from Brooklyn" investing their talents in blatant sexual imagery while trying to keep it clean for the Star Wars set–kids barely cognizant of what's going on but destined to feel it soon enough. They cook up Laura Mulvey's worst nightmare: an evil mother-queen named Juliana and her fey evil sorcerer son Nekron, who force a glacier (cold! un-sexy!) over the countryside in order to conquer the ripped male warriors vainly trying to knock it back. Their diabolical plan to overthrow one such kingdom is to kidnap the sex-kitten princess Teegra and hold her for ransom–but not until she's complained at being deprived of male glory. Bodies, sexually perverse villains, bad excuses… I give you the fantasy film.

Our hero is, of course, one of those ripped male warriors, Narn. The last survivor of the glacier onslaught, he's the male figure of identification, and he's going to stand and deliver by fighting various vagina dentata monsters and teaming up with Teegra upon her escape from grunting subhuman captors. Yet what happens when they hook up is practically aw-shucks. Although the manly Narn never loses his composure, you can see the filmmakers nearly crack under the strain, as if they've never visualized beyond finding a way to get the untouchable girl from high school to talk to them. With the introduction of father figure Darkwolf–actually Narn's own father in earlier drafts–one can also see the yearning for some kind of continuity between the boy's body and someone else's. Hence the horror of the mama's-boy Nekron and hence the horror of the other evil mother, a sorceress who has a moron son-helper and nearly ransoms Teegra.

It's impossible to take a movie like this seriously, of course–to not laugh at its ludicrous sexual politics. But you brush off its motives at your own risk. At the centre of its labyrinth is a real confusion that relates to many of the stunted and timid boys who embraced the D&D/fantasy scenario: a dissatisfaction with one's own body that results in a ten-times-life-size substitute. And the fact that this isn't directly addressed is what tinges the whole thing with melancholy. Despite an increase in frankness that has us downloading porn onto our computer screens, we haven't really hashed out the motives for what we're watching–and the pseudo-brazenness of fantasy narratives capture that hypocrisy more than most. The idea that the fear behind the bluff could be aired and discussed never sees the light of day, filling me with sadness every time I see one of these things face to face.

That discussion–or any discussion–never makes it into Frazetta: Painting with Fire, Fire and Ice's companion piece on DVD. Dealing with the inspiration for Fire and Ice (as well as quite a bit of adolescent wood), it goes out of its way to avoid analyzing Frazetta's paintings and is deluded enough to present the man as a capital-A artist–not just a great commercial painter, but a man to put beside Rembrandt. To this end, it assembles a collection of notable comic and commercial artists, filmmakers like John Milius and rocker/self-parody Glenn Danzig to worship at Frazetta's shrine. To be sure, the man had quite a life: harsh working-class upbringing; emergence as a child prodigy who would have studied in Europe had his mentor not died; suffering a season in comic book hell; and then abject poverty. All before he re-defined not only Conan the Barbarian but fantasy art itself, too.

But the film is as resolute in shirking the themes of his work as the work is itself. One could dwell on Frazetta's obsession with tableaux, his frequent concern with capturing the action before the action, or his dank, fetid interiors (is my past showing?), but then, one would have to adopt a stance alternative to ridiculous fandom. Director Lance Laspina is less interested in getting to the bottom of Frazetta's art than he is in portraying him as a god and a genius–rather like the genre's attempts to lionize its heroes. Though the obtusely-structured background details make you wish you met the supremely generous man, the fact remains that this is a subterfuge for avoiding the real bodily reasons that people like Frazetta.

This may all sound like I've blown off a genre as a failure and an embarrassment. The failure and the embarrassment is all ours, however, and it lies in the fact that by 1983 we hadn't worked out an above-board way for dealing with these feelings. (We still haven't.) The idea isn't to blow off the barbarians; it's to take them to their sources and their logical conclusions. For this reason, Fire and Ice is a fascinating peer into the Pandora's Box that even the boldest among us would like to stay shut.

THE DVD
People, it's Blue Underground. Because of this, I hardly have to tell you that Fire and Ice's 1.78:1, 16×9-enhanced image is gorgeous, with lustrous colours that are vivid without over-saturating and impressive fine detail that lets you see every pen stroke; generally speaking, it's a shining example for animation transfers. Nor can I surprise you with the fact that the two remixes on board are equally fine–though while the Dolby Digital 5.1 EX track gives about as much articulation as the format can offer, the DTS-ES 6.1 audio is mind-blowing, harmoniously synthesizing the impressive array of sound effects into a full surround experience that's the reason the platform exists.

Painting with Fire does just as well, relatively speaking. The full-frame image looks ideal for digital filmmaking, with excellent colours, bright but controlled luminosity, and crisp rendering of fine detail characterizing the presentation. The Dolby 2.0 stereo sound is similarly expert, lacking blemishes or diffuseness. Supplementary material is as follows:

Director's Commentary
Painting with Fire director Lance Laspina prods Ralph Bakshi on technical matters. For his part, Bakshi is humorously gruff, no-bullshit, and unstinting in his praise for his various collaborators. Animation buffs will get the most out of this, as it details exactly how rotoscoping works while comparing it to very similar computer animation techniques.

The Making of Fire and Ice (14 mins.)
A contemporary featurette apparently sourced from Bakshi's VHS copy. In any event, the picture and sound deficiencies only enhance the antique value of this making-of, which goes through the entire process of rotoscoping in greater detail than any current DVD extra would provide. Fascinating both on its own terms and as a museum piece.

Bakshi on Frazetta (8 mins.)
In a clip salvaged from Painting with Fire's B-roll, Bakshi waxes poetic on the experience of working with Frazetta, calling it "as easy as going to the corner candy store"–although he likens his terrified animation team to the time Mick Jagger visited the set of The Lord of the Rings. Alas, the creep factor sets in when Bakshi enthuses having to audition half-naked women, uttering that immortal line "not bad for a couple of kids from Brooklyn!"

Sean Hannon's Diary Notes (13 mins.)
Sean Hannon was one of the actors who played Nekron, and he reveals his thoughts on running around in a loincloth on scaffolds and pavement. While his "Up with People" mentality and delivery grates intensely, there's prime juice here on what often seemed like "a cheap porno movie" and a couple of proposed plot changes that should prove irresistible to the otaku nation.

Behind the Scenes Photo Gallery (13 mins.)
A reel of the entirely unromantic bare-bones shoot, with an option for descriptive text detailing cast members and why the hell Bakshi's staring into a monitor.

Rounding out the first platter: the trailer.

Commentary
Director Lance Laspina and producer Jeremy J. DiFiore go through the process of the intense digital imaging they brought to their documentary. Though they prove entirely too credulous of their subject, they're very thorough in their commentary, revealing the motives behind some of their impressive digital embellishments as well as that the majority of their peer interviews were culled from four consecutive San Francisco ComiCons. Nothing here will blow your mind, but it's a nice nuts-and-bolts take on how to produce a documentary. There are no other extras on this disc. Originally published: November 9, 2005.

THE BLU-RAY DISC
by Bill Chambers Blue Underground's Blu-ray release of Fire and Ice brings out all the brushstrokes and grit trapped between the cels–and I wouldn't have it any other way: this is that "infernal method" Walter's always talking about, and that Disney sometimes overzealously buffs away. (Already I see some reviewers have mistaken the paint schmutz for "print damage.") Furthermore, the 1.78:1, 1080p transfer is free of any obstructions inorganic to the image, such as excessive film grain (rarely welcome or deliberate in animation*) or assorted celluloid/digital artifacts; and the colours are just fucking brilliant, without the slight smear that befell the more intense hues on DVD. Similarly impressive is the D-BOX-enhanced 7.1 audio, configured for DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD playback. The difference between these two listening options seems academic, though a DD 5.1 EX alternative to both is a definite step down, sounding flatter and considerably less transparent. It should be said that while the dialogue track is dated by a certain hollowness, in DTS especially it's so clear that you can feel the old-biddy narrator's spittle hitting you in the face. Extras are identical to the first platter of the 2-Disc LE, although Fire and Ice's theatrical trailer has been upgraded to 1080p; the bonus feature Frazetta: Painting with Fire was dropped for this edition.

DVD – FIRE AND ICE: 81 minutes|FRAZETTA… 93 minutes; PG; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced)|1.33:1; English DD 5.1 EX, English DTS-ES 6.1, English Dolby Surround, English DD 2.0 (Stereo)|English DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; DVD-9 + DVD-5; Region-free; Blue Underground

BD – 81 minutes; PG; 1.78:1 (1080p/MPEG-4); English 7.1 DTS-HD MA, English 7.1 Dolby TrueHD, English DD 5.1 EX; English subtitles; BD-50; Region-free; Blue Underground

*See, in animation, film isn't the medium, it's the conduit by which the medium–animation–is shared with the audience.