Of Max Headroom and Kurosawa

Ran

By Akira Kurosawa

Shambhala; 112 pages; $19.95.

Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the future

By Steve Roberts Vintage; $5.95.

THE OLD SAW, "You can't get too much of a good thing," seems to be the axiom behind the scores of cinema novelizations that America's publishing houses have been spewing out with clock-like regularity. Two recent publications epitomize the best and worst in this copycat trend: the eponymous Ran and Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the future.

While Akira Kurosawa was waiting around for international moneymen to cough up the money for his ultimate production--an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear--he sketched and painted scenes, a practice called "storyboarding." Though Kurosawa's eyesight is failing, he still managed to create dramatically posed illustrations that assault the eyes like a rabid ronin.

Perhaps the technicolor brilliance of his work is so that he could see it better, because neither the coloring nor the scenes bears much resemblance to the stark cinematography in the film. If I did not know the creator's name, I might think this book was the work of some mad German Expressionist who overdosed on Van Gogh paintings and samurai movies. A really good mad German Expressionist, I should add.

The slickly produced volume includes the script for the film; the only thing to be said for it is that reading an English translation of a Japanese adaptation of an Elizabethan drama is boring indeed. The script does help to identify the subject of each otherwise untitled picture.

MAX HEADROOM stars the semi-computer-generated talk show host that everyone in America has heard of and nobody has seen--except on Coke commercials. Not many people realize that Headroom was originally a T.V. movie for Britain's weirdo Channel 4.

A bastard son of Network by way of Brazil, the Headroom movie posits a futuristic Britain addicted to television. The evil Network 23 has invented Blipverts, super-effective commercials that have an unfortunate tendency to make couch potatoes explode. Unfortunately for Network 23's plans, their top-rated investigative reporter--played by Matt Frewer, the flesh behind the Headroom fantasy--is trying to uncover the story.

Headroom the movie was a witty techno-fantasy with so-so acting and great special effects. Headroom the book has color film stills and the "novelized" story, but this is a weak substitute for the original movie, particularly when burdened by the tinkertoy style of writer Steve Roberts. Still, the stills are handsome enough, and if you just can't get enough of Headroom's electro-magnetic looks, this book might tide you over until you can hook up to his cable talk-show.