Warning: some Nerd Rage ahead. Tonight marks the end of Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse", a series that flew under the radar of nearly anyone who'd like it best. We've had a lot of excellent speculative fiction television series the past few years and this could have easily turned into a classic. Admittedly, the first five episodes or so were slow, slow, slow and it took several months for the show to find it's voice, but once it did (round about Episode ten I'd say), it did what only the ballsiest speculative fiction does: It explored every last disturbing implication of it's fantastic premise. Sadly, Whedon only had a few episodes, mostly in the second season, to fully explore that premise without having to keep the advertisers and network happy. The history of this series has been... interesting to say the least. Executive Meddling (take a shot) plagued the first half of the first season, but then Joss was allowed to do his own thing for the second half. Certainly, all the while the traumatic experience of Fox's treatment of "Firefly" was hanging over his head. So he came up with an episode called "Epitaph 1" that could act as an ending for the series as a whole *or* a good cliffhanger for the first season if the series miraculously didn't get canceled. Sure enough, the series miraculously did not get canceled -- but Fox decided not to air "Epitaph 1", opting to end the season on a comparatively cheerier note. So the second season went ahead business as usual as if that episode never existed. And then Fox decided to cancel "Dollhouse" anyway. That's hubris for you. So in the past month's worth of episodes or so, Joss Whedon has been doing an excellent job of building towards the events portrayed in "Epitaph 1" so that he can use it as the first half of a two-part final episode arc. Which would be awesome, except Fox *still* isn't going to air it, so good luck understanding what's going on in the series finale.
By the way, "Dollhouse" gets canceled and yet Seth MacFarlane is apparently getting a fourthIllustrated Radio series. Oh yeah, I went there. Dammit, is it February 2nd yet?
---- In happier news, it is Draw a Dinosaur Day! I am probably drawing one right now and will post it here when I'm finished! Until then, here's the Singing Tyrannosaurus: EDIT: The Singing Tyrannosaurus stays but here is the link to my entry in the Draw A Dinosaur Day pool. I submitted today's Sketchbook page.
---- Feederwatch Friday! Sharp-shinned Hawk 1 (Just hung out in the neighbor's lilacs. Chickadees were not one bit happy about this.) Rock Pigeon 4 Mourning Dove 2 Downy Woodpecker 1 Black-capped Chickadee 2 White-breasted Nuthatch 2 House Sparrow 25
Another scary storm on Monday, this time of the soggier variety thanks to unseasonable warmth. I could hardly see the birds, much less count them. But count them I did. For the science!
Glad you asked. I'm not feeling so good so this will be a quick post. Basically...
1) It is essentially going to be a "Greatest Hits" kind of thing. I've been going through the Photoshop files I have handily on my desktop, tweaking them and saving them at a 300 dpi resolution on my laptop (once you use Photoshop CS4 on a Mac, you can't voluntarily go back), and posting three at a time. Most of the selected pieces will also be available as prints, and on that note...
2) At least a third of the reason why I joined DeviantArt is to sell prints. There. I was honest.
3) But the other two-thirds of the reason I joined is to communicate with other artists. Artists who may never even have heard of Flickr or the Comic Artist Guild. To that end, I've spent a lot of my recent time at DA favoriting pieces and friending artists. And I have left nice comments with everyone.
4) I have no intention of making my DA Gallery into my main online portfolio. I love the hell out of Flickr. Of the two art-sharing websites, Flickr is ridiculously easier to use both for me as the art-sharer and you as the art-viewer. There have already been times when DA's art submission features have given me psychic nosebleeds. (Has Saphira randomly vanished *again*? WTF?) I could make a drinking game out of the times I've seen art collections fail to load properly, leaving me staring either at a bunch of broken graphics or nothing at all. And above all else, I know you could argue the same for any "anyone can add content" website, but I still maintain that Sturgeon's Law affects DeviantArt like nothing else on God's green Earth.
But even so, as I said before, it behooves me (whatever that means*) to join the most popular art-sharing site. You never know where you could make a lucrative connection.
* - "It behooves me" means, "it puts myself at a great advantage". Not, as one would naturally assume, "it turns me into an ungulate, somehow". Let it never be said that American English isn't needlessly confusing. ---- Sketch of the Day!!! Drawn from observation, here's a little squirrel who likes tro live dangerously.
"Star Trek" - I'm not going to get to wordy here. It is an *awesome* odd-numbered "Star Trek" movie. Yeah, I know!"Duel" - Steven Spielberg's first movie is terrific. Definitely worth a look if you've never seen it. Just don't watch it before a road trip...
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" - I was curious as to how this would translate to film as the book is loads and loads of exposition mixed with loads and loads of relationship drama, topped off with a relentless bummer of an ending (and I still keep forgetting how damn sad it is). It doesn't translate well at all, in fact this is one of the weaker Harry Potter movies. It reminded me of "Goblet of Fire" in that it included about a third of what was in the book while also adding in new stuff that was just strange. That and the motives of a certain character are completely unambiguous (quite unlike the book), to the point where you just end up feeling sad for him. This is as good a place as any to mention that I enjoyed "Prisoner of Azkaban" the most out all the "Harry Potter" films. After reading Deathly Hallows, I was sad that we wouldn't get to see Alphonso Cuaron tackle the battle of Hogwarts, especially in light of "Children of Men". That could have been amazing."TimeCrimes" - Interesting indie science fiction thriller. Again, it's better if you don't know what it's about. Too bad the title's a bit of a give-away. NOTE: If you have seen "Primer" and now have a fear of indie time travel stories, know that "TimeCrimes" is far less likely to give you a psychic nosebleed."Inglourious Basterds" - It's the war movie that Quentin Tarantino's been wanting to make for ages and ages. It makes history teachers cry at night, but it gets away with it because it's also crazy awesome. Again, I didn't know much about it going in, just know that the commercials are very misleading.
"Moon" - The SECOND-best thought-provoking, low-budget indie sci-fi movie of the past summer! Seriously, though, Sam Rockwell deserves a Best Actor Oscar nomination and a Best Supporting Actor nomination, and it makes me sad that this film has been completely ignored by almost every award show I am aware of. (I don't want to spoil anything but trust me, the Best Actor and Best Supporting thing will make sense after you watch it.)"It's a Wonderful Life" - Watched this before Christmas, naturally. Every time I watch this movie again, it hits me how blatantly depressing it is. My generation grew up with the impression that this was a merry holiday classic. I think what older people love, what they remember most, is the happy ending. What they forget is that George has to earn the f*** out of that happy ending..."Harvey" - This is the second time I've tried to watch this movie and the second time I fell asleep. I just remember the first time, I was watching it with my grandmother and my younger cousins, and all through the whole thing they were asking, "where is the bunny? I was promised that there was a bunny in this movie!" And if you're wondering why I watched the last two movies..."Donnie Darko" - Ha ha ha. I hadn't seen this movie in a long time and I'd forgotten how good it is. Definitely one of the best of the past decade. The 2000's will probably be most notable for the sheer amount of bad movies we got, but it was also a really good decade for weird and/or cult movies. One of the writers for my local newspaper even voted it his favorite movie of the 2000's! (This was probably not the same person who wrote this wallbanger.) Give it a rent if you haven't seen it yet."The Box" - I should mention that I did not rent the Director's Cut of "Donnie Darko". I have heard that they've changed quite a lot of the music, which is a worthy criticism in this particular film. But the other major criticism of the director's cut is far more interesting: people don't like it because it explains too much. "Donnie Darko" was more interesting when it was more ambiguous. Which brings us to "The Box". I definitely thought this was weird. Very, very weird. But I would have liked it a lot more if it had embraced that weirdness and flatly refused to explain what was really going on. But in light of all the terrible reviews this got, it certainly wasn't the worst movie I saw this year."Surf's Up" - It is at least a lot more fun than the other animated movie with penguins from around the same time. It's not very memorable, but it looks really pretty. Turns out that one of the technologies used to make "Avatar" was also used here. Crazy."Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs" - I watched this? I did? You sure Netflix Rental Activity list? Because I don't remember anything about it. Yet, apparently, this is one of the best-reviewed animated films of the past year (85% on Rotten Tomatoes). What is it about "Meatballs" that I didn't get? Please tell me because I'm starting to worry.
"Point Break" - I made this the Swayze-est Christmas of them aaaaaaaaaaaaaaall!!! Seriously, this was a lot better than I expected. You are going to say, "LOL what?!" at least once reading the opening credits.
"The Hurt Locker" - The best and also the most relentlessly stressful war movie I've seen since the criminally underrated "Jarhead"."Fanboys" - An abject lesson in the horrors of executive meddling. The movie itself is okay, but it is also terribly obvious what scenes were demanded by the studio, who wanted to make a sweet story about friendship and fandom edgy and hip. You can listen to the director, Kyle Newman, describe the entire spectacular debacle in this episode of the wonderful /Film Podcast. ----Imaginative Realism - James Gurney's art instruction book is, naturally, gorgeous. Better yet, like his excellent blog (see links list at right), it's also warm and very informative. My favorite art instruction books gave me ideas I never would have thought of myself, and having read this one I may need to build myself a Taboret. I only have one small nitpick: this books serves as a great collection of Gurney's artwork, so it is well worth purchasing even if you're just a fan and you hate oil painting. Unfortunately, some of the artwork included practically begs for longer explanations. (TV Tropes, of all places, has a good list of all the Dinotopia spinoffs. According to Imaginative Realism, there were originally meant to be more. Many more. Imagine an animated Dinotopia film that was made by people who actually bothered to stick to the books...) ---- Trailers I saw at the Movies: "Percy Jackson: The Olympians: The Lightning Thief: Colons!" - Nothing is funnier -NOTHING- than one of those "making of" trailers where the Newbie teenaged stars are asked to describe the plot of the book-based elaborate-backstory-heavy fantastic film that they have found themselves starring in. "Tooth Fairy" - Jeepers creepers, this thing's real?!? YouTube has sadly failed me here, but when Arnold Schwarzenegger was on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" ages and ages ago (possibly right around when "Terminator 2" was out), he described how he was going to be in this movie. Now here it is, more than a decade later, with The Rock. As a Tooth Fairy. With pretty sparkly Fairy wings. So this movie somehow survived being in development limbo for, let's guesstimate, fifteen years, and I already knew as a teen that the concept was hopelessly stupid. "Shrek 4: Let's Just Get This Over With*" - So wait, we're not getting seven Shrek sequels after all? This is really the last one ever? Yaaaaay!!! * - It was funny for the "Star Wars" prequels, it's funny here."Alice in Wonderland" - M'eh. Well, you see, I'd already seen the trailer for "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus", and that is the only upcoming crazy-ass fantasy film for me. Now if only there was some assurance that my part of the world was ever going to get to see it! (Dammit, high-paid executives, some people like weird movies. Plus, this one has a built-in audience!) "Cats and Dogs 2" - I may never get to see Heath Ledger's final performance in the theater, but I'm going to be able to watch a "Cats and Dogs" sequel. This also means that we live in a world where "Cats and Dogs" can have a sequel. Also, "Tooth Fairy" exists now. This means that all bets are officially off. "Inception" - This OWNS! Thus far, this is the only movie I am 100% on board for this coming year and I want to stay totally clean. Don't tell me what it's about!!! ---- Sketch Finished Piece of the Day Remember that long-necked dragon from a few days ago? Well here he is in shiny finished form:
Once upon a time, Peter Jackson was hoping his friend Neill Blomkamp would direct the long in development limbo movie based upon "Halo". Sadly, that project was scrapped when the budget reached $145 million. Sorely disappointed, but not wanting to waste the creative energy that had been sparked by the project, Jackson went to Blomkamp and essentially said, "Here's 30 million dollars. Go have fun." The result was "District 9", an expansion on one of Blomkamp's own short films, and it is outstanding. It might just be my favorite movie of the past year.* I could go on and on and on, but you need to get "District 9" in your queue immediately. This is the first fantastic fiction film in a long time where, upon putting the DVD in my player, I honestly had no idea where it was going to go. No idea at all. Fellow sci-fi fans know what a big deal this is. I will try very hard to express how much this movie knocked me on my ass without spoiling anything (spoilers will be after the review itself). Remember when the first teaser for "Avatar" came out and the general reaction was, surprisingly, a resounding "Well, okay, that's nice"? Yeah. Well, looking back, it turns out that his movie (that is to say, some guys in South Africa who were told they could go make whatever they wanted with thirty million dollars) stole James Cameron's thunder. That may be all that need be said. I will say, however, that the character animation is incredible -- especially because I didn't know that it was animation I was looking at the first time I watched the movie. IMO, the best special effects are the ones you have to have pointed out to you because you did not notice them. Two fun facts: there is not a single "guy in a suit" alien (though there is literally one guy in a suit playing all the alien characters - the DVD special features are a trip in their own right), nor is the animation done by WETA. They happened to be busy with "Avatar" and the character animation duties were given to another studio in Canada. But the visuals are not the main reason why I was blown away by "District 9". What won me over was the story and the characters. Good science fiction can take you to a new world, take you on an emotional journey, and it can make you think. I should say that this isn't a cheerful story (it is essentially "What Measure is a Nonhuman: the Movie" and that last shot is one hell of a tearjerker), but it's one that will stay with you for a long time. This is up there with "Duel" as far as exciting director debuts. Let me spell it out for you: "District 9" is to "Avatar" what "The Matrix" was to "The Phantom Menace". Yeah. ---- And on that note, here comes the spoilervision: So what we have here is a science fiction action film about a man who had worked for an evil corporation composed of humans antagonizing an alien race. This man somehow becomes one of those aliens, and he naturally begins to sympathize with them. After much character development, the man turns against the humans. By the end of the film the protagonist is permanently transformed into an alien. Interesting coincidence, isn't it? I liked "District 9" a lot more than "Avatar" (not that I didn't enjoy "Avatar" but... well, see the above Miller analogy) because, while the plots are remarkably similar in the broadest brushstrokes, it actually gave this scenario more thought. I'm wondering if it is a coincidence. My theory is that "District 9" is the preemptive deconstruction of "Avatar". Consider: 1) In "Avatar", the Na'Vi are essentially an entire species of Mary Sues (Mary Sue is that super-duper little miss perfect awesome at everything character type everyone hates.) They're tall, they're beautiful, they ride on dragons doin' barrel-rolls and s**t, and they are, like, one with Pandora and stuff. Meanwhile, nearly all the humans in the Not-Weyland/Yutani Corporation are bastards. We do have a couple of nice humans (Dr. Grace, ect.), but we don't see any mean Na'Vi. You'd want to turn into a Na'Vi. In "D9", some humans are bastards, and indeed so are many of the prawns. This comes across better in the film than I can articulate here, but that little bit of depth adds so much. 2) The single most crucial difference: both films deal with a character who becomes a nonhuman Other. In "Avatar", turning into the Other means you get to ride a dragon, be the baddest-a**ed Other there ever was, and make out with a cute Cat Girl. In "District 9", it means almost getting vivisected by your former colleagues. It is a pretty chilling reality check on James Cameron's pretty neon fantasy as this is what losing one's humanity would actually entail. You're no longer human, and you haven't turned into a pretty alien, so who cares about you? More has been written about this, and better as it's by a better writer, here and a follow-up here. And it's something to think about. Especially at the next lobster supper...
* - There are several important 2009 films I still have not yet seen, but I'm willing to bet that "D9" is pretty safe at the top of my list for the year.
---- Sketch of the day! I have started in on a new Sketchbook and here I was testing to see if it liked watercolors. Click for big: ---- Feederwatch Friday! Had a scary, scary storm on Monday, which greatly affected my backyard's population. That said, I've never seen so many Juncos.
Rock Pigeon
5
Black-capped Chickadee
1
Tufted Titmouse
2
American Robin
2
Dark-eyed Junco
7
House Sparrow
15
---- Guess what happens a week from tomorrow? Apparently, it is Draw a Dinosaur Day! No real rules, just draw a dinosaur and share it on the website, I guess.
Movie #61: "The Princess and the Frog"
"Princess and the Frog" is truly, truly wonderful. Easily the best Disney animated movie since "The Little Mermaid". Go see it already! Quick, before Disney decides that what we all want is more movies about talking rodents who make poop jokes.
I think I understand why I wasn't so jazzed about "Enchanted" when I saw it: it's too "Shrek"-like. (If I ever were to write a list of Movies That Are Good, Don't Get Me Wrong, But They Also Kind Of Ruined Movies Because Studios Like To Follow The Leader, I would (a) come up with a snappier title and (b) have "Shrek" very near the top.) It has that ironic detachment that the "Shrek" series popularized and flatly refuses to give in to the fact that, well, it's a fairy tale. It's corny by it's very nature. Why not embrace the corniness?
So my inner ten-year-old and I are both very happy to report that there is not one iota of snark or insincerity in "The Princess and the Frog". You cannot imagine how refreshing this is.
Now the trailers and commercials looked awful. They were cut to make the movie look like something it isn't. (Trust me, the butt jokes make sense in context. No I am not kidding.) That firefly who looked like he'd be another Jar-Jar type annoyance? Turns out he's a fun character, and he even has a couple of genuinely touching moments.
Now I don't want to spoil too much but there's a scene some ways into the movie that made me sad... and then, when I heard the rest of the audience reacting the same way, it made me smile through the tears. Because this* is what great animation can do. This is what we've been missing from Disney all these years.
You could easily slip this movie in with the Bronze Age Disney Animated Films and it would not look out of place at all. The character animation is amazing, the backgrounds are gorgeous, and the songs are terrific. There's a great villain with an awesome song, and a musical number that uses stylized animation very similar to Tex Avery's "Page Miss Glory". This is Disney forgetting it's mistakes from the past and going back to the kinds of things it does best. Is it a little old-fashioned? Well, yes it is. But it is a damn good Disney movie. I had forgotten how much I'd missed their classic style. Disney has won me back and I actually want to give this big scary corporation a hug.
Go and see it already, so their executives get the message! This merry throwback to Disney's classic style will stay with me for a long time. Not sure I can say the same thing about "Avatar"...
* - The following is a major spoiler so here comes the hard-to-read text. Look, this is a movie that got our whole theater to feel bad that a beetle got squished. By the way, killing off the little sidekick critter for real is about the only truly daring thing in this movie. It's a pretty big deal if you're a Disney fan, but if that's not extreeeeeeeem enough for you, "Alvin and The Chipmunks 2: Ow My Childhood!" is just the next theater over.
For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.
Alright, just got back from the Gandalf Google-plex. Bad immediate thoughts first: 1) The 3D can get very overwhelming. In particular, I'm thinking of the scenes where there were leaves or bubbles or dust particles floating around, where the camera was looking at a transparent surface with smudges or marks on it, and where there were two characters fighting or chasing each other and the camera follows them around. They messed with my visual cortex badly. It couldn't keep track of what to focus on during these scenes. ("That's just the illusion of a window. But it looks like a real scratched-up window and I have to adjust my focus to look at the thing behind that window... but neither the window or the thing behind it is real and - woah... woaaah... woaaaaahhh.") 2) With that in mind, walking out of the theater was very like coming down from a weird high. I was a little disoriented and had a bit of a headache. So the 3D technology still needs some work. It could also be partially because, so help me, Pandora still looks like everything on DeviantArt ever. (On that note, it took a remarkably short time for the "Avatar" fandom to grow a scary-obsessed branch, didn't it?) 3) And while this isn't the most unusual thing to b*tch about in a review of "Avatar", it does bear repeating: I've seen this story before. You've seen this story before. Heck, if you like animation and fantastic fiction, you've seen many, many different versions of this story multiple times. So yeah, the story is pretty boring and the initial "Ferngully: Dances With Thundercats" assessment from the early trailers was pretty spot-on. As for the good things: 1) The overall impact of the movie, my knee-jerk reaction coming out of the theater was, and I quote, "Holy sh*t!!!" "Avatar" is awesome. Really, really awesome. Aside from the nagging things I already mentioned, the 3D is crap-your-pants amazing. It sounds like a broken record by now but you really have no idea how amazing this movie looks until you see it in the theater. With that said, I'm not sure what I'd have thought of "Avatar", or if I'd enjoyed it as much, if I'd seen it in a conventional theater or in an IMAX 3D theater. The IMAX 3D, as you know, was very uncomfortable for me after a little while, and based on subsequent comments I've read/heard online, I would have greatly disliked the IMAX version. 2) If there is an Art of Avatar book out there, I want it. Because I want to pore over those crazy awesome Wayne Barlowe and Neville (happy "Cloverfield" day!) Page creature designs. Tapejarid-wyverns! Hammerhead Lairons! Hoverchameleons! This may be as close as we ever get to an honest-to-goodness Expedition movie. (Yeah, I know, but "Alien Planet" sucked.) (Turns out that such a book exists, but does not include much in terms of concept art. Still, might be worth a thumb-through.) 3) It's James Cameron! I like him! Hell, I've got "Terminator 2" in the background as I write this! 4) I cannot. Effing. WAIT. To see what WETA does with this technology next. As you may have heard, Cameron was inventing new technology as he was making this movie. Future animated and live-action/animation films will benefit greatly from what he learned. You realize what this means? It means "The Hobbit" is going to be unreal. In short, you should go see "Avatar". This movie is an experience. I went with three other friends and not one of us had a bad time watching it. We went on a weekday and joined a very diverse crowd - there was every imaginable "target audience" present - and the whole theater was enthralled (and very quiet, which is darned refreshing). You don't want to wait until this hits DVD and I don't care how good your theater system is at home. "Avatar" is on a different level, and it demands to be seen in a theater. That said, be prepared for a pretty lackluster story (with a puzzling subtext, but more about that in another review.) After a few days, I realized that the things that really stayed with me about the movie were the amazing setting and creatures and trippy visuals. But this isn't "Disney's Dinosaur"; "Avatar" does not qualify as an epic fail by any stretch of the imagination. It is, in case I haven't stated it before, really awesome. The right attitude here is to go in expecting the best "scenery porn" ever. ---- Sketch of the day! I like this dragon! I may have to bring him to finish later. ---- BIG DAMN NEWS!!! It's funny I mentioned DeviantArt above, isn't it? You may notice a new link under "My Other Websites" at the right. Yes, I have joined the DVA party. I figured, even though Flickr is ridiculously easier to use and looks much nicer, and even though DeviantArt has a case of Sturgeon's Law like nothing else in this world and is far harder to navigate, it behooves me (whatever that means) to join the most popular art-sharing site and make more contacts. Plus, I am on good authority that their print service is very good. It was certainly easy to set my store up. And to that end, you know you want a Liopleurodon coffee mug. I will make a little less than a dollar if you buy one! For now, I've got three pieces on DVA (not counting my ID). I may roll out three more every... as-yet undetermined length of time. I'll see how these first three go over.
Yeah, why not? Some of you are probably wondering what to do with all those lovely Christmas greens you've accumulated over this jolly time of year. Specifically, what do you do with that tree? Ah, the Christmas Tree. We got our lovely Silver Blue Balsam the weekend after Thanksgiving (unusually early) and she was still looking okay... Until the week of Christmas when almost a month of heavy ornaments, moisture-sapping lights, and "hey, did you remember to water the tree" caught up with her and she started shedding needles like a fiend. So, naturally, the weekend after Christmas we stripped her of ornaments and lights, cut off all her branches, and used those branches as "free" mulch: You may have heard this suggestion before in gardening literature. I'm posting about it now because this is only the second time I thought to do this and it's the first time it actually worked. Our city has a tree-mulching program but why let some random person keep our Christmas Tree forever? Plus, we needed the mulch sooner than I thought. We were in for a hell of a snowstorm. Which is good, at least on an aesthetic level. Hopefully, those branches will protect the new bulbs. Remember them from October? ---- FEEDERWATCH FRIDAY!!! Red-Tailed Hawk - 1 (OMG!!!)
Rock Pigeon - 4
Mourning Dove - 1
Blue Jay - 2
Black-capped Chickadee - 3
White-breasted Nuthatch - 2
House Sparrow - 15
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Sketch of the Day! This one has a reoccurring character in it!
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Next week is Movie Week, where I'll be posting long reviews of the three most memorable movies I saw over the holidays. On that note, I might have to suck it up and invest in a Blu-Ray player. Because...
As you'll see, this also serves as kind of a "2009 wrap-up" post. Some of these will demand longer posts later on after I've watched/read/played with them: I got the collection of Chuck Jones' "Tom and Jerry" cartoons on DVD. I know these shorts have their detractors, but I like them. I haven't watched this yet but it looks like it may be similar to the excellent "Droopy" collection they put out last year (well, LAST last year). I also got the four-disk Blu-ray edition of "Up". "But Trish, you don't have a Blu-ray player!" You're right but Disney has decided to do something neat to wean people onto the new format: regular DVDs come packaged with the movie and not a whole lot else but the Blu-ray DVDs come with the movie (both on Blu-ray and unleaded DVD format) and a whole lot of goodies.
Wait, did I say neat? What I meant was unnecessarily confusing.
Anyway, as you know I enjoyed "Up" and the disk is very nice. Man, I can NOT wait to plow through these! I've thumbed through these books and they all look to be amazing. The two-volume Drawn To Life books are about as daunting as the Greg S. Paul textbook I unwittingly got a while back, but I think I can take my medicine. The Goldberg and the Gurney (I have started in on the latter and it may be the best "how to paint" book I've ever read) are shorter but very nice and packed with rare artwork. These are a little more personal/in-jokey, but I had to share how awesome my sister is. She made a lovely photo album of our family reunion. My godfather gave me the cookbook, knowing I've started getting serious about expanding beyond my "heat up a can of Cream of Mushroom soup, cook frozen spinach, mix and dump in some spaghetti" repertoire. The random loose photographs are from my participation in LAST last year's Comicazi.con. I also got a copy of Inventory (not pictured but very nice and funny as to be expected from The Onion), and Obligatory (but useful) Gift Cards to GameStop - destined to take a chunk off the cost of "Soul Silver" (if it has the more interesting version exclusives) - and to the Apple store. Hmmm... why would I need that? For my new toy badass art-making machine, of course. I am... REALLY excited to start playing with this. I shall gush when she's fully set up. Here's today's Sketch of the Day (or Whatever)!
Not sure what part of the creative process this gives insight into but that rabiescorn may need to be colored in soon.
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Oh gosh I just learned -like, literally just learned- that Arisia is this weekend! I don't know much beyond the fact that this is a huge sci-fi/fantasy convention in Cambridge, MA, they will be showing "Zombieland" and "Moon" among other films, and I missed the registration deadline. Wah. (To be fair, spring tends to be the start of convention season around here. Oh well.) Still, this may be a fun time for those of you in the general MIT vicinity.
On today's episode of Stuff That Demands Elaboration:
While hunting around for "Banjo the Woodpile Cat" clips, I came upon this piece (embedding wasn't allowed; it's definitely and almost aggressively weird in a distinctly Don Bluthy way, but it's also safe for work and for kids): Don Bluth's "Jawbreaker"
I need to know more about this right freakin' now. Anyone out there have any idea what the story is behind this? Bluth himself posted the video and he was pretty cryptic in his description. I got a definite "Rock and Rule" / good parts of "The Pagemaster" feel from it.
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The animation world lost a very unique person this past weekend. Art Clokey, best known for "Gumby" and "Davey and Goliath", will be sorely missed. Here is "Gumbasia", the short film that helped him sell the "Gumby" concept to television producers. Enjoy the three and a half minutes of pure 😵:
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As I said last week, it is technically still Christmastime (according to some calendars; see Wikipedia). That means it's not too late to enjoy the South Fla. Sun-Sentinel's annual Bad Santa Photo gallery. They're up to 350 snapshots of little kids having their minimal but still pretty reliable understanding of reality ripped out from under them. Now there's gotta be something like this for costumed characters at Disney World, ect.
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One of my New Year's Resolutions is to (a) try to fill one Sketchbook page per day and (b) share more of my own art, good bad and indifferent, on this blog. To that end, here is the first Sketch of the Day Whatever Length of Time! This one actually is a scan of an entire Sketchbook page, so click for the larger version: Now while I am adding a background color for clarity, these sketches are as-scanned and pretty much exactly how they look on the page, warts and coffee stains and all. I'll still be sharing more polished pieces, but I like giving a little insight into the smudgy, brain-farty part of the creative process. Not sure what kind of insight this particular sketch gives but...
This is my version of the Obligatory End-Of-The-Decade List, mostly cobbled together from a semi-yearly version I posted at LaGremlin Land. Here is a no-particular-order list of things I would put in a time capsule to represent the lovely decade that has just ended. I am sure the people of the future will understand the significance of each and every one of these items without question, as they will have passed into history:
* - A sun-shaped nipple ring * - "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water" CD * - An "Edward can BUST my headboard, BITE my pillows, and BRUISE my body any day!" t-shirt * - A magnetic yellow ribbon * - "Some Kind of Monster" DVD * - A bottle of Bling2O * - A "Free Katie" t-shirt * - A TMX Elmo doll * - Spenser and Heidi's How to be Famous * - A Snuggie for dogs * - "Hung for Christmas" CD * - The O'Reilly Factor: For Kids! * - A "Vote or DIE!" t-shirt * - A huge "Mission Accomplished" banner * - A pair of Crocs * - The MySpace servers * - A bottle of Pimp Juice * - An Anduril letter opener * - "The Swan" DVD * - The Kazakhstan Tourism brochure * - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies * - The Mtv All-Stars "What's Goin' On (2001)" music video * - "Crazy Frog" CD * - Of Pandas and People * - "Bratz Babies" DVD * - The International Astronomical Union definition of the word "Planet" * - Green "Shrek" ketchup * - Going Rogue * - "Chinese Democracy" CD
What would you add to this time capsule?
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Before you answer that, read this excellent Total Media Bridge essay about "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (It's still timely. In the olden days, Christmas hype started immediately before Christmas Eve and lasted for several weeks after Christmas Day until Epiphany/Three Kings Day [there's the real significance of "The Twelve Days of Christmas"], instead of starting as early as August, leaving you burnt out by Thanksgiving, and leaving you with a deep disillusioned "now what" feeling that doesn't get resolved until New Years if even then.) I could not have written this better myself. OK, real updates will start the second full week of January.
