DUNE is a local group of indie cartoonists and illustrators who gather at Cafe Racer every third Tuesday where over the evening everybody does a page of art then you put down three dollars and it gets printed in the group’s monthly zine.
I’d known about it for over a year but due to have very busy Tuesday evenings I’d either continually forgotten about it or wasn’t able to do it but last month I remembered it.
So it was a nice bunch of artists, many of whom I knew. And after a half hour of brainstorming I started work inspired by the Danse Macabre sketch I’d done that day featuring Bonnie Jackson(or at least another little girl who looks a lot like her) I finished it in two hours. It came out pretty well considering I realized after the fact that this was not a 24 hour comics marathon and this wasn’t a race against the clock (much) and the cheap pen I was using started dying halfway through.
Anyway I just got the original back so see what you think. (Sorry that it kind of comes off as a really late Halloween piece.)
I’ve never actually read any of the Hornblower Novels and my only real exposure to them were though the BBC series of miniseries. And indirectly the Honor Harrington series that is essentially Hornblower in space. As for Peck, while I’m certainly aware of his reputation, the only thing I saw him in was John Huston’s Moby Dick as Captain Ahab, which I always thought he was terribly miscast for. Because of that first impression I’m ashamed to admit I never want out of my way to see any other of his films.
The film is a collection of bits from three of the novels starting with a mission to support a deranged revolutionary against the Spanish who were allies of Napoleon only for the Spanish to turn against Napoleon so Hornblower fight the man he was allied with just a day before. From there more missions occur against the french with Hornblower’s forbidden romance with Lady Barbara Wellesey the sister of Lord Wellington. (Their significant others die ,so they are brought together in the end.)
This was a perfectly solid film. Peck’s performance was very good (though the character’s habitual clearing of his throat got old very quickly) The nautical scenes were very well done (and I can’t help wondering it was model work and how much of it was actually filming the actual ships at sea.
Based on the Aubrey-Maturin series of historical novels by Patrick O’Brian. Master and Commander tell’s the story of the crew of the aging HMS Surprise in a deadly cat and mouse game against a superior and advaned French Ship.
It is interesting comparing this with the Hornblower film. While Hornblower portrays a much more romanticized version of the period. While Master and Comander acts like a realistic snapshot. While Hornblower certainly does not deny that naval battles will have casualties Master and Commander shows it as a meat grinder.
If I had any problem with it was that this was primarily Aubrey (Russel Crowe’s ) film with Mautren’s role only coming into his own halfway through the film.
Otherwise this film was amazing and had me gripping my seat in interest all the way through. (The Galapagos Islands make a great cameo, iguanas and all)
The theme for this week’s film selection was jerks. Insufferable self centered, self destructive jerks.
I got the idea for this week’s selection when I heard that comic writer Grant Morrison had based an urban sorcerer he created (because he was not allowed to use DC comic’s main urban John Constantine in Doom Patrol) on one of the main characters in the dark Brittish comedy Whithnail and I. Obviously I had to check this out.
Whithnail and I tells the story of two out of work actors, “I” a relatively normal neurotic and his best friend Whithnail a down on his luck, upper crust, pompous, self centered drunk, who spend their time in their squalid London apartment waiting for their dole checks and going to the local pub to get drunk and stay warm.
In an attempt to get away from it all they go on an impromptu vacation in the lake country, staying in a cottage belonging to Whithnail’s uncle, and failing miserably at it almost starving to death and having to break up most of the house’s furniture for firewood.
I liked the two central characters but despite the outrageousness of the two main characters I’m not sure I’d consider this a comedy despite it’s darkly humorous overlook. After a fashion it felt like what Young Ones would be like if it took place in a more real world and was a little more serious.
Because a few of my friends who had seen it described Whithnail and I as “Fear and Loathing in Britain” I realized I was past due in watching Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.. I confess I only made it about two thirds though the book the one time I tried (though I’m comfortably sure that was because I was listening to it on and audio book and I’ve found that not all books work in the format) For the most part my views of Hunter S Thompson are unfairly based on the caricature of him in Doonesbury (which Thompson hated) and I’m afraid a lot of my viewing of the movie were though the lens of Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke.
Still this story of Thompson’s alter ego Raul Duke, played brilliantly by Johnny Depp with Benicio del Toro as as his sidekick and attorney Dr. Gonzo, rampage through Las vegas in a drug fueled three days.
This has quickly become part of my Terry Gilliam top five list. He turns Las Vegas into a hallucinogenic nightmare fairyland almost as much of a fantasy as many of his other films.
Depp and Del Torro have great chemistry together with Depp virtually channeling Thompson and Del Toro going back and forth between drug addled clown and truly scary monster.
I had to make an emergency milk and cookies run this morning (literally, and yes I was making all of the inevitable jokes to myself all the way up to Trader Joe’s) and to make things even more interesting due to some differences of opinion regarding coffee hour policy I was buying the milk and cookies seperatly.
Anyway, when i got their I found myself with a bit of culture shock looking though the dairy isle (albeit not thinking straight due to sleep deprivation and being in a rush) the fact that couldn’t find any cream. Sure there was heavy cream for whipping and there was half and half but there was nothing I would have called cream growing up for coffee. Even weirder to me, glancing down the isle, it was interesting that the vegan alternatives had become so ubiquitous I found myself consciously looking for dairy cream.
