Thoughts on Recently Experienced Media

Other than the Disney Sequels, obviously.

The Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams - I was looking forward to reading this massive tome by the great Richard Williams.  It's very informative, filled with excellent artwork, and a good reference -- if you do not already have one that covers the same subjects.  Because unfortunately, for me, this book didn't really contain any information that was new to me (my copies of Preston Blair's instructional books for Walter Foster have long ago been loved to death.  Don't worry, I have the very nice omnibus edition as well.)  Williams also does not talk much about his experiences in the animation world, and because he has had one of the most interesting careers imaginable as an animation artist, it was a huge letdown to find the book nearly half-filled with walk-cycles instead.

Color and Light, by James Gurney - Some time ago, on his excellent blog, James Gurney wrote a long and extensive series of posts about color theory, lighting effects, and different painting media and their lightfastness and whether "Cadmium Red", for example, will be exactly the same no matter what paint brand you buy.  All of that information, ALL of it and plenty more, is collected in this book.  It is definitely worth a read for all artists, but is probably especially useful for painters.  For the rest of us, at least it is a very nice compilation of Gurney's beautiful art.

Chanticleer and the Fox, illustrated by Marc Davis - Speaking of beautiful art, this picture book is illustrated with the wonderful concept art Marc Davis created for the shelved Disney film based off the tales of Reynard the Fox and Chanticleer the Rooster.  The character designs are wonderful, even if the story is a little mediocre.  As it happens, this little book is more informative and interesting than some of the longer collections of never-produced Disney animation.  Speaking of...

Disney Lost and Found, by Charles Solomon - Full disclosure: I read this a while ago and I don't even remember if I reviewed it here.  It has, as you might expect, a lot of art in it.  It also has very little explanation as to what you are looking at.  Like, one of the particularly strange paintings in the first third of the book will simply have subtext that says, "This was going to be a scene in 'Rescuers Down Under'."  The two chapters that contain art from two features that were never made have *just* a bit more information.  "My Peoples" probably would have been charming, but "Wild Life" would have been fascinating.  Funny thing is, there's more information about one of the lost films in this incredible, and very sad, blog post then there is in the book.

"The Butterfly Ball" -  Three years ago(!?!) I wrote a post about a strange animated music video that turned out to be part of a larger concert film.  That film quickly went into my Netflix "saved" queue and now it's finally here and I have watched it. 
Welp. 
Turns out "Love is All" may be the ultimate case of "Context will not help you in any way at all, sorry."  That animated video is actually the least strange part of the show.  I'm at a loss to describe the concert film, but there's a part of me who wants to rent it again next time I have a party and have it running in the background, just to see how long it takes for guests to wonder WTF they are looking at.

-----

Sketch of the Day!

Hey, finally a current sketch! Here is my incredibly appropriate contribution to a stunningly significant recent historical event:

Thoughts on other Random Movies and Books and Like Such As!

"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:

Artsy (or not) Things I Got for Christmas!

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.
----
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.