As my long time readers may have noticed Ariane Elder lead actress at the Theater of the Bloody Tongue has been makingfrequentcameos in the strip starting last year.
In her last appearance she seemed to have taken an interest in Brian. Now, not wanting to judge anyone’s taste in men, she seems to have made quite a bit of progress in her own comic. Whether or not this carries over to the Rhapsodies verse and Brian takes a break from his Kate based myopia with a woman who’s a little less…. shy remains to be seen. otherwise enjoy.
(Quick Note. While the links from these images are safe for work, the rest of the strip is… iffy. Tread carefully.)
Ariane & Brian Meet
Brian is taken on a Date with Ariane
Brian Plays sugar daddy providing instruments and Hsin and Gage for Ariane’s Performance.
The Seattle Art Museum has recently announced that it was going to remove it’s iconic (some would say notorious) display of exploding cars from the museum lobby.
So the obvious question is what will take it’s place. It occurs to me that something more suited for the Seattle psyche would be more appropriate.
This week;s selection was World War II Comedies. Doing their best to mix humor with the horrors of war.
The first film of my selection, Kelly’s Heroes, Is a brilliant mixture of comedy, action and caper as a platoon of soldiers go awol into enemy lines to steal 16 million dollars worth of gold bullion.
This was a fantastic film with a tight script with some of the best character actors at the top of their games… oh yes and Clint Eastwood was in it too.
I have a hard time telling what I liked about this film best.. Despite it’s great humor it’s hard to call this a comedy since they do all of the war bits dead straight. But the balance is done wonderfully done and any time things get too serious we switch over to clueless jingoistic officers led by Carroll O’Connor who have no idea what is going on in the field sincerely believing that any setbacks are due to soldiers lacking team spirit.
This film is definitely my favorite Telly Savalas performance as he plays the curmudgeonly Seargent Big Joe who is against the whole thing but came along to keep everyone else from getting killed. Donald Sutherland comes in a close second as the spaced out but brilliant tank commander Oddball.
The second film on my list Operation Petticoat by Blake Edwards starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis tells the story of the crew of the Sea Tiger and it’s maiden voyage. Things start badly when it is sunk before even leaving port by a surprise raid. Now it has to limp to the closest ship yard for proper repairs. On it’s way it picks up five nurses who were stranded on an island and from there things get interesting.
While perfectly entertaining this film really didn’t do it for me that much. The battle of the sexes bits which the film focussed on were predictable and for the most part it was mostly a bunch of silly scenes linked together with a shoestring plot.
Not to say the silly bits were bad. I especially like the scenes whenever Tony Curtis’s character used some less than legal methods to get the necessary supplies to keep the Sea Tiger afloat… and the comedy of errors that lead to it being painted a bright pink are definitely worth the price of admission.
Thought I’d share my Dune entry for January (on a side note there’s a great article about it in this month’s Art of America (unfortunately it’s print only))
This is called Junkyard Buddha. I kind of based it on the story of Buddha’s sermon in the Deer Park.
I’m not sure if I’m implying this is a post apocalyptic setting or not.
This week was a bit of a bust. My idea for a topic was Western Musicals. I think the reason for this was it seemed to be too genres that clash in an amusing way but seriously, I’d heard of several, Oklahoma of course and what sounded like an amusing one called Go West Young Lady. But I had two in mind. Unfortunately the reliable classic, that was half of my selection, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers turned out to be unplayable so I was left with watching the one that had piqued my curiosity to do this selection in the first place Paint Your Wagon.
I’d heard all of the stories about it of course but I decided to give it a chance mainly because I liked it’s best known song “They Call The Wind Maria”
To put it mildly I set myself up for disappointment.
Paint Your Wagon features Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood as the drunken prospector Ben Ransom and his partner er… Pardner. It takes place in a boom town during the California gold rush that was built so quickly there are no woman. Naturally the men get.. Frustraed. All of this changes when a Mormon with two wives stops in the town and puts up one of the wives, Elizabeth, for auction. From there hilarity ensues.
The biggest problem with this film Is while they both look like they’re having fun, Marvin and Eastwood can’t sing and even Ig they could the playlist really isn’t that good to begin with. Marvin as Ransom is really the best thing about this as a wonderfully comic character. Regrettably Eastwood’s only there to be pretty.
The other thing that got to me was all of the values dissonance. I’m sure if I bothered to look I’d find a number examples of women as commodities and Polyamory in the history of the old west but personally it kept getting to me.
It has it’s moments but not enough to save it. In the end it’s a relief watching the town collapse into the earth when a bull gets loose in the honeycomb of tunnels Marvin and Eastwood and several others ugh to steal gold dust from all of the casinos, bars and brothels in the town.
