Much Ado About Nothing

by on March 12, 2013 at 10:29 am
Posted In: Test

http://youtu.be/rUWlPjXvFZU

At the moment I’m not sure what I think of this. Make no mistake I am not one of those annoying purists who can’t stand any adoption that does not involve Elizabethan costume in fact my favorite version of Julius Ceasar remains a 1989 Trinity Repertory Company production directed by Oskar Eustis that did the whole thing as a metaphor for the Kennedy assassination in 60s dress (you can not know true horror until you’ve seen Mark Antony’s speech televised). So any imaginable angle on a Shakespeare play is okay by me even if it fails terribly.

So I have no problem with Much Ado About Nothing in modern dress involving what appears to be Hollywood yuppies. At the moment what stands out to me is the blatant use of the American dialect. Again I shouldn’t have a problem with this after all the Elizabethan English is a lot closer to American English than it is to British English. But the thing in most American productions, even when they are not affecting a British accent they speak the dialogue so formally you forget that they are not. What I’m seeing in this trailer has them speaking it so naturally that it almost sounds like a foreign language. Which should be fascinating.

Maybe my uncertainty is because Joss Whedon is the last person I would imagine attached to a project like this. Hopefully I’m being unfair. I’ll be looking forward to see what I think of it.

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Hotel Transylvania

by on March 11, 2013 at 10:03 am
Posted In: Test

Well I finally got my copy of Hotel Transylvania from the library which since I’d been getting constant tastes of it from the film section at the local Barnes and Noble I’d been looking forward to quite a bit.

I confess that when it first came out I had very mixed feelings about mainly due to Adam Sandler. Now to make things clear I do not share any of my friends’ extreme dislike to Adam Sandler’s work. In fact I think he’s very good at what he does. What he does I am not in any way shape or for the target audience for.

I am however a huge fan of Genndy Tartakovsky. So despite any misgivings I had about the film I wanted his first feature film to work for him.

And for the most part I think it did.

I don’t think I’ll call Hotel Transylvania any great masterpiece, but it was a lot of fun… For the most part I keep thinking it as a Cary Grant style screwball comedy with Adam Sandler’s Dracula as Cary Grant’s overprotective father figure desperately stumbling over his own dignity as his paradigm starts falling apart around him.

Like I said, fun.

Taratovsky put in some great Tex Avery inspired slapstick bits with the scene with floating ballroom tables and a chase scene involving the hotel’s chef and everyone else being my favorite.

Along with Adam Sandler the voice actors made up a solid ensemble cast with what was a comedy all star cast… my favorite being  Steve Buscemi as a put upon Wolf Man and Fran Drescher as Eunice the Wife of Frankenstein playing up her nails on the blackboard persona up to the nines.

So I think I’ll recommend this as an enjoyable piece of fluff and hopefully a useful springboard to even better projects for Mr. Tartakovsky.

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Friday Museum Sketches

by on March 8, 2013 at 6:21 am
Posted In: Art

LiBai&BacchusFor today’s sketch we have two quickies from the Seattle Art Museum’s Porcelain collection. The first is a figure of Li Bai made in China during the Kangxi period (between 1662 and 1732) in Jingdezhen hard Paste.

The second is German representing an infant Bacchus feeding grapes to a leopard made in Meissen hard paste.

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ECCC 2013 Costume Tally

by on March 7, 2013 at 9:45 am
Posted In: Test

Well as I may have mentioned during my previous reports I spent a lot of my downtime during the con recording all of the costumes that I saw. Having finally processed my notes I thought I would share my findings. A few caveats… This is an extremely inaccurate list. It is based only on the people in costumes who were walking through Artist Alley. (I saw a lot more “professional” costumes when I was walking around but I didn’t have my notebook) I only noted down costumes that I recognized, which discounts half of the people dressed as video game characters and there are probably quite a few characters I didn’t recognize correctly (for example I’m sure one of the people I recorded as Peter Pan were probably Link from Legend of Zelda) There were several relatively generic costumes that I grouped together even if I could tell if I could recognize the franchise so for example I put all of the Alice in Wonderlands together even though I could tell one of them was from the American Mcgee game.  Finally since I was working the table I couldn’t maintain the list. But based on this I noted (that is recognized) 187 different costumes. To save space I’ll only list multiples, that is to say more than one.

So on Friday the most popular costumes were as follows.

Doctor Who (Matt Smith)

7
Finn (Adventure Time)

6
Doctor Who (David Tennant)

6
Star Trek OST

4
Captain America

4
Spiderman

4
Fiona (Adventure Time)

3
Robin

3
Ash Ketchum

3
Loki

3
Riddler

3
Thor

3
Wonder Woman

3
Misty

3
Final Fantasy

3
Stargate SGI

3
Catwoman

2
Kaylee (Firefly)

2
Pinkie Pie (MLP)

2
Twilight Sparkle (MLP)

2
Mandelorian

2
Marceline

2
Rogue

2
Arrow

2
Elf

2
Hawkeye

2
Huntress

2
Nick Fury

2
Pirate

2
Princess Bubblegum (Adventure Time)

2
Applejack (MLP)

2
Fluttershy (MLP)

2
Green Lantern (Other)

2
Hulk

2
Korra

2
Snow White

2
Stormtrooper

2
Superman

2

On the second day the day with the most people and people with the time and willingness to dress up the count went as follows.

 

Robin

7
Fiona (Adventure Time)

5
Finn (Adventure Time)

4
Loki

4
Harley Quinn

4
Super Girl

4
Doctor Who (Matt Smith)

3
Doctor Who (David Tennant)

3
Star Trek OST

3
Ash Ketchum

3
Riddler

3
Mandelorian

3
Marceline (Adventure Time)

3
Assasin’s Creed

3
Captain America

2
Thor

2
Catwoman

2
Kaylee (Firefly)

2
Batgirl

2
Link

2
Judge Dredd

2
POKEMON

2
Rocky Horror

2
Zombies

2

 

Sunday generally has the least costumes but there was a pretty good spread.

Star Trek TNG

7
Doctor Who (Matt Smith)

6
Star Trek OST

6
Twilight Sparkle (MLP)

4
Deadpool

4
Captain America

3
Pinkie Pie (MLP)

3
Ramona (Scott Pilgrim)

3
Spiderman

3
Fiona (Adventure Time)

2
Finn (Adventure Time)

2
Ash Ketchum

2
Catwoman

2
Kaylee (Firefly)

2
Batgirl

2
Wonder Woman

2
Rogue

2
Jedi

2
Alice

2
Rorshach

2
R2D2 (Dress)

2
Chobbits

2
hobbit

2

 

For our final tally the list get’s a little long so I’ll limit it to a minimum of three costumes. Based on that when we add up all of the costumes for the entire weekend the final tally for costumes is…

Doctor Who (Matt Smith)

16
Star Trek OST

13
Finn (Adventure Time)

12
Fiona (Adventure Time)

10
Doctor Who (David Tennant)

10
Robin

10
Captain America

9
Ash Ketchum

8
Star Trek TNG

7
Spiderman

7
Loki

7
Twilight Sparkle (MLP)

6
Pinkie Pie (MLP)

6
Catwoman

6
Kaylee (Firefly)

6
Wonder Woman

6
Harley Quinn

6
Super Girl

6
Thor

6
Riddler

6
Deadpool

5
Ramona (Scott Pilgrim)

5
Batgirl

5
Rogue

5
Mandelorian

5
Marceline (Adventure Time)

5
Jedi

4
Assasin’s Creed

4
Link

4
Arrow

4
Misty

4
Alice

3
Rorshach (Watchmen)

3
R2D2 (Dress)

3
Dalek (dress)

3
Doctor Who (Tom Baker)

3
Elf

3
Huntress

3
Nick Fury

3
Hawkeye

3
Pirate

3
Princess Bubblegum (Adventure Time)

3
Final Fantasy

3
Stargate SGI

3

All in all It was some pretty good variety. The one thing that struck me was there really wasn’t any real theme this year. Usually there are costumes that are so popular I wouldn’t have to do this tally to tell you what it was this year it was all over the place. Actually I take it back just a little bit. As I said the only costumes that I recognized. What looked like the most popular costume were these demon like people with gray skin, orange horns and a zodiac symbol on their shirts. Anyone know who or what they are?

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Mormons

by on March 6, 2013 at 8:55 am
Posted In: Test

Seemingly to follow up on yesterday’s religious theme, I got my first pair of Mormon missionaries for the first time in nearly a year. For a while I was getting evangelists all the time one time I had a three denominations in one week. It was probably because a lot of them assumed that since they kept catching me during working hours I had free time to listen to them as opposed to say… working in my home office. It was like I had a some sort of spiritual hobo mark on my door. There were a few who were so regular that they became an incentive to treat my weekends as weekends and go out to get some exercise on Saturdays. Sometimes I could recognize them out the window and not bother answer the door. (Is it racist to assume a black man in a cheap suit at your door is a Jehovah’s Witness?)

Anyway thankfully they went down to a slow trickle when I put a no solicitors sign on my door. But there were still a fair share who would still come and rationalize at me how evangelism is not soliciting. But for the most part they got the message and I’ve been mostly free from unsolicited words of god.

So when a pair of earnest and scrubbed elders (I always wonder about the elder schtick. My immediate reaction whenever some 18 year old introduces them as such my immediate response is “Yeah. Sure you are.” I’ve heard a few that has something to do with out of the mouths of babes or something like that but for the most part it sounds so stupid I can’t help wondering if it’s just part of the hazing ritual that is these poor kids two year ministry.) They took me so much by surprise that I completely forgot to point out the “No solicitors” sign.

I’ll give them credit they were  a little better than the last batch I had… (THAT kid was a dogmatic tool.) They offered me a song and a prayer. I politely begged off the song , but got the prayer anyway…. It shows at least one of the downsides of being a Quaker. The possibility that they might pray out loud didn’t even occur to me until it was too late.

Afterwords came the usual spiel. God is good, God finally brought us his true church (it was amusing to get them to clarify that they did in deed mean the Church of Latter Day Saints when they said that) and God looks out for you and God answers all of their prayers (The kid didn’t look amused when I pointed out that is not what the Book of Job says) I finally managed to politely end the conversation. They tried to give me a copy of the book of Mormon but I told them I already had one (well… I have a religious shelf in my library) When they asked me what I thought of it I told them I liked Robert E. Howard better.

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