Thoughts on Recently Experienced Media

It feels like it's been a while...

Movies

"Ink" - Interesting, sometimes very clever independent dark fantasy film.  I found a lot to like in it except for the twist at the end, which prompted less of a "woah" and more of a "what?"

"Mirrormask" - Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, there is a collaboration between Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, and the Jim Henson Workshop.  And it is, sadly, not as awesome as that combination promises.  It is worth a look since the film does at least have a very unusual look and the story is almost a test-run for ideas that would be refined and far better implemented in "Coraline".  (Let's see here, girl who has some issues with her family finds her way into an alternate universe ruled over by a scary doppelganger of her mom and everything is kind of whimsical but also weird and off-putting?  Yeah.)

"Madagascar 3" - The first and certainly less mortifying of two "Why the hell was this in my queue; somebody out there in Internet-land must have convinced me it was worth watching" movies I'll be reviewing today.  I thought it was pretty bad, and there were even a few moments that were downright disturbing.  On top of that, whoever came up with the seal character hates me.  They don't even know me, yet they hate me.  ME, personally.  Ye gods...

"Sucker Punch" - The second of my two "Why the hell was this in my queue; somebody out there in Internet-land must have convinced me it was worth watching" movies and hooooooooly sh*t.  This movie.  It sure was a movie.  Still images were projected at a rate that gave the illusion of movement, and there was a soundtrack. 
Seriously, though.  When "Sucker Punch" wasn't looking exactly like an adaptation of Kate Beaton's "Strong Female Characters" made by somebody who didn't get the joke at all, it reminded me uncomfortably of "Cool World" of all things, probably because it's another awkward glimpse into the creator's subconscious.  You can very definitely count me on Team "If you honestly think that this film is somehow 'empowering for women', please, just, STFU."

"Upstream Color" - Then again, neither "Sucker Punch" nor "Madagascar 3" made me literally scream and swear at the TV.  Your mileage, as they say, may vary, but you may count me on Team "This wasn't so much 'confusing' as it was 'straight-up antagonistic towards the audience'".

"A Monster in Paris" - Underrated CGI feature made in France by a former Dreamworks director.  It's slight, but very nice.  I only wish the DVD wasn't so bare-bones.  The voices picked for the dub are fine enough but shouldn't this at least have a French soundtrack?

"Peter and the Wolf" (1996) - I wanted to check this out because it's a gap in my Chuck Jones education(?), and I'm sad to report that it's entirely skippable.  You need to sit through nearly ten minutes of live-action footage of a grandpa trying to impress his very 90's grandson with the titular tale to get to the animation.  When you finally do, you learn that it's not Chuck Jones' animation at all.  It's his very Jonesy late-period character designs animated by a different team of animators who were, there is no polite way to put this, not skilled enough to handle them.  The result just looks wrong and kind of depressing.

Books

Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell - So... I recently acquired a Kindle Paperwhite and I have been consuming books like crazy.  One of the first places I descended upon was my local library's E-Library, where I found this gem from my assigned reading in high school.  I'm happy to say it still holds up.


Ready Player One, Earnest Cline - Hey, do you remember this thing that happened in the 80's?  Cause that sure was a thing that happened back in the 80's!
Okay to be perfectly fair, this book is pretty good when, you know, it's not doing that.  But the thing is, it does that a lot.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot - Haunting is the word for this true story of bizarre biology, class and racial politics, and a family's heartbreaking quest to know the truth. If you only follow one of my recommendations in this post, make it this one.

3500, Ron Miles -  The deeply strange, utterly fascinating, and ultimately incredibly heartwarming story of Ron Miles and his son, Ben is now available in its entirety in book form and is well worth a read.  You'll want to hug your children afterwards, but you'll also feel a little better about humanity.

My Beloved Brontosaurus, Brian Switek -  I would guess that anyone reading my websites already owns a copy of this book (or perhaps even two: one for yourself and one to pass around to friends so they can finally be on the same page as us when it comes to dinosaurs), so you already know how awesome it is and that it's well worth purchasing the hardcover edition for the terrific artwork.

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Sketch of the Day! Man, Pokefusion is way too much fun to play with.

"There Goes My Hero..." Let's Watch "Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens"!

This is an awesome documentary that ran back in 2000 as part of the PBS series "Great Performances".  It's a very nice, heartwarming overview of Chuck Jones' experience at Warner Bros. animation and of some of the current filmmakers he has influenced.  It's also a nice little crash-course in character animation. I only wish I'd fund and shared it sooner.  Enjoy:



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Sketch of the Day!  Some random mythology ladies.

Let's Read _Prehistoric World: Ceratosaurus_!

This is going to be a weird one.

Then again, Ceratosauria is a weird Infraorder of dinosaurs if you think about it. So let's start reading 2006's Ceratosaurus and Other Horned Dinosaurs.



By Bakker's beard, introducing Ceratosaurus as a "horned dinosaur" will never not be disconcerting as hell. It isn't *untrue*, technically, and that's essentially the translation of "Ceratosaurus" after all. But I'm conditioned to think "Horned Dinosaur" = Ceratopsians, so it's unshakably weird.

Anyway, did anyone in here order a shameless Greg Paul rip-off?



Oof. But at least this isn't as bad as this next picture, which, from the little thumbnail on my desktop, I would have sworn was from the Pachycephalosaurus book.

It's... not a pachycephalosaurus...



Hoo boy. Okay, so this is a rather fanciful restoration of "Majungatholus", who is now known as Majungasaurus. Giving the beast a full-on pachycephalosaurus-style dome is... an interesting choice. And we all know how big a "pumper truck" is, right?



Elaphrosaurus, who was considered a strange-looking ornithomimid in at least one other book, is here correctly included in Team Ceratosauria.



And finally, good old Syntarsus, this time with a fleshy or bony snout-Mohawk. In a book about ceratosaurids, even though he's a coelophysoid (E: Thanks to Albertonychus for the likely reasoning in the comments below.) And still being referred to as Syntarsus, even though this was apparently corrected to Megapnosaurus five years before this book was published. Yeah.

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Sketch of the Day! My go-to response to the "T. rex Trying" meme.

Let's Read More of the _Prehistoric World_ Series!

Last autumn, I shared a few of the books from the oftentimes very odd Prehistoric World series of dinosaur books. I mentioned my local library had more of this series, so here come a few of the rest. As with the first batch of books, these books were all written by Virginia Schomp and published between 2003-2006 by the Marshall Cavendish Corporation. Once again, and unfortunately, the individual artists are not credited. The Ceratosaurus book is meaty enough to have a whole post of it's own, so let's start with this amusing illustration from 2003's Triceratops and Other Horned Plant-Eaters, along with the very obvious joke:



Why the long face, Pentaceratops?



Moving on to Stegosaurus and Other Plate-Backed Plant-Eaters from 2004, we have a disconcertingly old-fashioned illustration of Stegosaurus.



Perhaps that Stego feels down because he isn't part of the "Awesome Shoulder-Spikes" club.



And finally from Stegosaurus, the almost-obligatory plate function theories collection. This one seems oddly sparse. Just once I'd like one of these children's books to acknowledge that gliding stegosaurs were once a thing.



On to 2004's Pachycephalosaurus and Other Bone-Headed Plant-Eaters. Go home, Dracorex. You drunk. Also, possibly an invalid taxon. Maybe.



We'll end with this odd image of a mother Stegoceras charging at another bizarre-looking ceratopsian. The eye-watering perspective aside, this is a pretty neat depiction of speculative behavior.

Next time, we meet up with an old friend yet again...

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Sketch of the Day! Have yet another study of my very favorite model.

"The Secret Life of Deer" Sketches

Well.  I guess it's obvious by now that I had to take an unscheduled hiatus.  Nothing terrible or depressing prompted it, I just got bogged down with work in real life that turned out to be more involved than initially anticipated.

The worst thing, really, is how quickly I lost the "I HAVE to have a new blog post up each week" feeling.  I'm going to try and get back on track as soon as possible.  There's quite a bit to write about now.  I'll start writing a couple of posts about the vintage paleoart pictures I found lying around on my hard drive right after posting this one.  I got this year's Victory Garden started so I'll hopefully be able to talk about that once it stops raining.  I haven't had a chance to watch "Dinotasia" or any number of documentaries on YouTube yet, and I really ought to have some kind of Ray Harryhausen tribute.

Oh, and at some point, just to warn you, I am very definitely going to need to address the suddenly-sparkly, suddenly-cheekless Scottish Princess in the room.  That last item might actually prompt this summer's Themed Animated Film Marathon, one that hopefully won't make me lose my male readership...

But in the meantime, have some sketches I drew while watching the "Nature" episode, "The Secret Life of Deer".  (Turns out deer are a lot easier to draw when you have a live model standing in front of you.  See the wonky leg anatomy in the first sketch?  Oof.)  And a happy Towel Day to all! 

Links Of Interest - What Am I Even Doing Anymore Edition!

Right. 

* - First off, the Savannah College of Art and Design has a stunning collection of Don Bluth animation art, including art from never-made films, some of which they have recently posted online.

* - Jim Hill wrote this touching article about Boston.

* - Tom Bancroft wrote an evenhanded reaction to the Disney animation studio layoffs.

* - Filmspotting SVU watched Don Hertzfeldt's "It's Such a Beautiful Day" and discussed it and other unusual animated features.

* - "Futurama" has been re-cancelled.  I'm surprisingly not too upset about this.  They had a good run.

* - Everything is Terrible just wrapped up Puppet Week and it is incredible.

* - Tim Brayton of Antagony and Ecstasy wrote a guest post for The Film Experience reflecting on "Jurassic Park".

* - Mark Witton basically wondered if the word "reptile" even means anything anymore.

* - Mark also wrote the blog post I've always wanted to.

* - If any one movie begged for a muckraking, nobody involved in the making of the damned thing is spared, everyone is called-out on their WTFery, "How the hell did this even happen" Final Cut/Devil's Candy/Monster-style "Behind the Scenes" book, it's..... Well, it's "Radio Flyer" (1992). If we're talking about any ONE movie, I mean.  But until that happens, here's a long article that helps explain why the "Super Mario Bros" movie is the way it is.

* - We're getting a movie based on the Bone Wars!

* - Start using these obsolete words!  The owls demand it!

Sketches from Nature Documentaries

But not from "Nature", as is my usual tradition.  Instead, here are pages of sketches from two other animal documentaries available on Netflix Instant.

The first is "The Lizard Kings", a "NOVA" documentary about the Monitor Lizards.  It's pretty good, especially since it shows a different side of a group of animals I didn't know much about.



The next page was filled while I watched "The Natural History of the Chicken".  And I must warn you that it is... not about that.  The actual natural history of the chicken, I mean.  Instead, it's one of the strangest and most borderline uncomfortable documentaries I have seen since "The Rock-Afire Explosion".  (Quick review: You know that one moment with the lady in the cat sweater during "Best Worst Movie"?  "The Rock-Afire Explosion" is like that for the entire movie.)  Man, the story of Miracle Mike is gonna haunt me...