Today’s museum sketch is another Ghiberti from his Gates of Paradise Series, specifically the Eden sequence with god creating Eve. This was my favorite of the three panels that the Seatlle Art Museum had on display, because to me it almost felt like sequential art in bronze. If you look at the link to the full piece you can see how Ghiberti steers your eye from one scene to another by using things like tree branches and angels.
Since it is the season, today’s Rhapsody is Swedish Rhapsody No. 1 (Midsommarvaka, Midsummer Vigil) by the Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén. More commonly called the Swedish Rhapsody (even though he wrote three of them.) It’s a nice little whimsical one that I enjoyed, even though I generally like them longer.
And we’re back! today’s selection is Duke Ellington’s Creole Rhapsody
I confess I was concerned about Kung Fu Panda 2. I was expecting the good things the trailers showed, and it had the same excellent production values as the first film, but still… I’m usually not big on sequels, and feel principled about it because they’re usually all about cashing in on the first film’s popularity. And more often than not they are sadly inferior to the original film. While I can name many wonderful exceptions to this observation, they are hardly enough to reduce my skepticism.
The other thing that mystified me when I heard about Kung Fu Panda 2 was that, if I assumed that the marketers were trying to appeal to fans of the first film, why did they continue to market the film as a Jack Black comedy? The first movie, even though it was advertised as a Jack Black comedy really wasn’t. In fact a lot of viewers were surprised when they realized the plot and the action was done completely straight, so why should potential viewers of the second film be misdirected the same way?
I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps we should refine our definition of comedy. What makes a comedy in truth? Is it a matter of plot? If a movie is very funny and has lots of jokes, yet has a straight plot, is it a comedy? Because if it is, than a movie like American Werewolf in London is a comedy. We can argue about mixed genres, and what the difference is between a comic action film and an action comedy? I think I would argue that it is all a matter of plot. Therefore the Kung Fu Panda franchise, while indeed very funny, is not an actual comedy because the actual plot is serious and it is part of a real genre, Chinese Wu-Xia, is not actually spoofed.
Having said all that, I enjoyed Kung Fu Panda 2 immensely. I’ve had a problem with animated films lately; I feel that I’ve been letting my professional interest focus my attention on the technical and artistic minutiae. This process seems to prevent me from enjoying the actual film. I definitely did not have this problem this time: the film drew me in completely.
This time the story was even more ambitious than in the first film. A minor spoiler is that this time the threat is not limited to the Valley of Peace setting of the first film. The villain provides a threat to all of China, but – additional spoiler – his introduction of cannons provides a threat to Kung Fu itself.
Once again the franchise does a wonderful job of presenting an idealized fantasy version of medieval China, both technically and artistic. The near-perfect portrayal ranges from beautiful serene shots of sacred glades that rival any in a serious Wu Xia film (such as Yimou Zhang ‘s Hero and House of Flying Daggers) to the hustle and bustle of a capitol city. These scenes are even more impressive when you realize just how much processing power they took to create.
All of this gives the characters a great setting to play in. Like the rest of the look of the film they are very well designed and the animation does them justice. With a variety of choices ranging from incredible subtle moments of tenderness to the incredibly choreographed action scenes one of my favorite scenes is the opening battle between Po the Panda, the Furious Five, and a gang of bandits who have invaded a village of musicians. In the fight a rabbit musician keeps getting in the way of the combatants while simultaneously accompanying the action on his instrument. But this scene is as nothing compared to the climax of the second act when the heroes escape an army of archers by running up a collapsing pagoda.
Along with the excellent animation I have to give compliments to the voice actors. I think that voice acting is vastly underappreciated. I find that a good voice actor is allowed to provide a huge amount of range that they seemingly would not be allowed in normal situations, making voice-acting closer to theater acting than film acting.
As in the first film Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman played their roles to perfection. For me though the best part of this film was Gary Oldman’s performance as the peacock, Lord Shen. Oldman has spent a good portion of his career playing the “Evil Brit” but his Lord Shen is on altogether another level. His Lord Shen is fastidious, neurotic and possibly slightly OCD, he dominates every scene he is in, indeed the whole plot is dominated by his paranoia and ambition.
All in all, I look forward to watching Kung Fu Panda 2 in more detail and I consider it an excellent addition to DreamWorks continuing animation renaissance.
Today’s Sketch is another one from the Seattle Art Museum’s Roman Sculpture exhibit from the Louvre. This one is from a sarcophagus of a poet surrounded by his muses. (regrettably I’m having no luck finding a photo of the original) This was one of my favorites in the exhibit. I think I liked it for it’s simplicity and for the slight abstraction in the figures proportions to fit them into the square shape.
Man, for all my skepticism there are occasional things that are such incredible coincidences that at least makes one want to speculate about the existence of helpful pixies or some such. I’d been looking for a single CD from an audiobook collection. When I’m listening to audiobooks I have a bad tendency to put them into a pile as opposed to putting them back into their container like I should. Because of this several of these audio books can get mixed together or completely mislaid.
Such was the case of disk seven of Terry Pratchett’s “Making Money” read by Stephen Briggs. I had already renewed it to buy myself some time but I was beginning to get the bad feeling I had returned it already in the wrong container. Something, regrettably, I’ve been known to do far too often. I’d been going with my usual strategy i.e. don’t panic and clean, but my options were running out quickly.
While I was organizing my office desk I had just put some books on top of the bookshelf that is right next to a filing cabinet that has my scanner on top of it using my portable office doorbell as a book stand.
Five minutes later I found the doorbell wasn’t quite heavy enough for this task as the books came crashing down into the space between bookshelf and filing cabinet. Swearing to myself I moved the cabinet to retrieve the books and doorbell, preying the fall hadn’t done any damage, and there was the disk.
So the romantic in me is choosing to pretend that mischievous pixies knocked over my books to point me in the right direction. Of course the annoying rationalist is going to just remember to start looking behind the cabinet first.
