Today’s Rhapsody is “Rhapsody” “Rhapsody” on the theme of the Azerbaijani mug Chargyakh, by Azerbaijani composer Gasan Rzaev (sorry I couldn’t find any english language references besides a Library of Congress catalogue number) performed a chamber orchestra consisting of Uzbek folk instruments and led by solo accordionist Ayder Mamutov.
This piece is wonderfully badass and serves as yet another rebuttal to the belief that the accordion is a nerd’s instrument.
As an ecologist one of my father’s pet peeves is the effect of invasive species on an environment. (If you really want to set him off just bring up the subject of goats in the Mediterranean.) So for this week’s theme I decided to go with that, albeit some of the more… fantastic examples, one from fantasy and another from science fiction.
For my fantasy example I went with D-Wars directed by Shim Hyung-rae. D-Wars tells a tale of destiny, reincarnation, eternal love and, of course Dragons.
The film opens with the tale of Yuh Yi Joo a girl born with the power to transform an Imoogi (kind of a good serpentine dragon) into a celestial dragon. Unfortunately the cycle is messed with when an evil imoogi appears. Accompanied by an evil army dragons. Fortunately it is thwarted when the Yoo Ji Joo and her guardian throw themselves off a cliff.
500 years later the two are reborn and the evil imoogi and it’s entourage come after them wreaking havoc in the process.
I’d been curious about this film for years and frankly I was disappointed. Sure all of the animation and the dragon porn was well done and entertaining that was all it had going for it with a weak plot just barely holding the fun bits together.
For the science fiction side I picked Monsters directed by Gareth Edwards. I’d first heard of this film when I was reading up on Edwards’ career while waiting for his big budget remake of Godzilla. What I had heard about it reminded me of David Gerrold’sWar Against the Chtorr series but I wasn’t quite curious enough to check it out.
Like the Chtorr earth is infected by an alien biome when an alien sample crashes into Mexico within six hears half of Mexico has become an infected zone inhabited by the Monsters of the title, creatures that look like a giant bioluminescent octopi walking on long flea like legs.
In the middle of this are our heroes a photojournalist and his bosses daughter are trying to get back to the United States with the walled boarder that Trump dreams of.
I’m not sure if I was completely this film’s target audience but this was a very impressive film and a textbook example of how to do something impressive on a shoestring budget. Nearly everyone in the film are amateurs with a lot of the performances being improv with lots of the sets and the monsters added with Adobe After Affects.
It’s quite amazing how well this works, with the only problem being it’s too difficult to sympathize with our two main characters, but this doesntt matter too much since all we need is there point of view. The best part of this film is a wonderful human element with people making due in what is essentially a war zone with the monsters being large megafauna which while very dangerous won’t really bother you if you keep out of their way.
Well the rest of Emerald City Comicon went okay I guess. Regrettably I got called to help a friend moving a whole lot of stuff to a Boating swap market on Friday afternoon and having to be at the swap market starting at 5:00 Saturday morning and then took everything we couldn’t sell over to Goodwill.
I finally arrived back at the Convention Center at four o’clock and frankly I was running on fumes and really wasn’t doing any of my best work. Sunday afternoon was a little bit better.
All in all I can’t say this went quite as well as other conventions I’ve done the park scene with. None of the Cosplayers were really “hanging out” the way they did in Sakuracon so I was only able to get a “bead” on a small handful of them, and even when I did most of them left before I could flesh out any of the gesture sketches I had begun.
Still the people watching was enjoyable making for an entertaining weekend.
A grownup Aang, A Unicorn wearing a Gasmask and the Skeksis Chamberlin.
An adorable Spartan Warrior from Halo and a unicorn.
Some Harley Quinns
More Harley Quinss
Another Harley Quinn, some Fauns and the Queen of Hearts
Poison Ivy, Deathstroke the Terminator and the Joker hangout.
As many of my friends may know, I kind of got priced out of the Emerald City Comic Convention three years ago… and while I’ve been able to kind of attend by helping friends I kind of came to the conclusion that it wasn’t a good professional investment for me due to the focus being superheroes and not slice of life webcomics with a tiny fanbase. Besides, the place has become such an overcrowded madhouse you can’t even network properly because all of the people you want to contact have to focus on the people and are wiped out after hours.
But one thing I learned from the last couple of years of Sakuracon, that doesn’t stop me from hanging around the convention center with a sketch book. Anyway for the con’s first Thursday opening and, while the pickings were slim, I think I did okay. There weren’t that many people so I just spent about two and a half hours before going to the Pioneer Square Art Walk.
A good start I think.
Pikichu and some Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Raven texts and has coffee, a girl with an amazing smile and some cosplayers checking out their picture.
