Been meaning to start to do some more cast pictures and side art. So here’s my first one with Kate and her cousin (and newest employee) Erika.
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The theme for this week’s selection is immortality be it the quest for eternal life and or what happens if you get it.
So this all started when I first heard about Darren Aronofsky‘s The Fountain (okay I know I’ve heard about it before but I’m pretty sure most of the time I got it mixed up with either The Cell or the Prestige)
The Fountain tells several stories, the primary one is about a neuroscientist played by Hugh Jackman who obsessively is trying to use his findings to treat dying wife (played by Rachel Weisz) He makes some progress based on a mysterious sap from a South American tree that shows some incredible healing properties.
In the mean time we go back and fourth from here into the past in a story being written by the wife about a Spanish conquistador (played by Jackman) sent by the queen, (played by Weisz), the tree, and then forward into the future where a space traveler (Jackman again) is seeking a nebula in a ship powered by the tree.
All in the name of eternal life.
I’m honestly not sure what I think about this one. Aronofsky’s certainly good at his craft with some great visuals but I’m not sure if I’ve ever been his target audience. To be blunt, he’s a little too weird for me. Still it was solid performances from Jackman and Weisz.
From the quest of immortality we move on to one who has had immortality thrust upon them. Tilda Swinton plays Orlando in the film of the same name by Sally Potter.
Orlando is a rich courtier in Queen Elizabeth I’s court. Elizabeth, entranced by the young man’s beauty tells him to never grow old… and so he does not. From here we of through Orlando’s life as he falls in love, tries to be a writer, travels to Constantinople, and, oh yes changes sex.
This was an interesting small film. It has a surreal quality about it, frequently with the years passing by as if like a dream. But it’s Swinton’s calm understated performance what really makes it work. She treats everything in stride from the passage of years to the sex change. (And with Swinton’s naturally striking androgynous appearance all it takes is a change of clothes to make this work.)
But what makes it all the more interesting is that no-one seems to notice anything strange either. As the narrator says… The English just don’t talk about these things.
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I haven’t had done one of these Tuesday Rhapsodies for ages! But having sat down and figured out some ways to catalog the rhapsodies that I’d already used making my search for new ones relatively easier. (by relative I mean the longer I do this the more obscure the remaining ones become) So anyway, let’s start out from “Behind the Wheel” by Maxence Cyrin from his Modern Rhapsodies album.
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The real Ariane decided to provide us with her point of what exactly happened between her running into Brian, taking him to the Yuggoth Ice cream Parlor (the only metal ice cream parlor in Homestead and possibly the world.) and Brian telling Rowan and Tara all about it.
The original versions can be seen here, and here over at Ariane’s Deviantart page, Steampunk Gorgon. (Use caution though, like Ariane herself a lot of it’s not safe for work.)
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I’m really torn about showing this… I stumbled over it on Arby’s Twitter feed.
Now, I’m not much of a fan of Arby’s in general and I’m hardly the one who would want to endorse them…
But, but, but…
Really cool Discworld art!
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I mostly based this week’s selection on my first pic, which I thought would be an interesting indie piece, and based on what I had heard about was an indie companion to films like Cool World and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Regrettably, I had seen both of those films and I had to match my first pic, Who Wants to Kill Jesse? With something… So I went with Czech Comedies
Who Wants to Kill Jessie, directed by Jesse tells the story of Rose, a researcher who is perfecting a way to cure people of bad dreams (so they can be better workers) What she doesn’t realize is while her process removes dreams from people’s minds, it manifests them in the real world. Meanwhile her husband, Harry is working on “anti-gravitational gloves” inspired by a comic called Who Wants to Kill Jessie? Starring a gorgeous mad scientist who is chased by a cowboy and a super hero who is trying to steal her gloves.
Rose injects Harry with her formula, to stop him from dreaming about women who are not her bringing Jessie and her two pursuers into the real world… Hilarity ensues.
This was not what I expected. Because most of the Czech films I had seen in the past I was expecting something avant-garde with animated figures done in an underground style interacting with the real world.
Instead, this was mostly silly though not in a bad way. It was mostly slapstick with usual cliches like henpecked husbands. The “cartoon characters’ were real actors who speak in word balloons, which actually worked well in a surreal kind of way.
The second film on my list, Up and Down, tells about two criminals smuggling illegal immigrants into the country. When dropping off their last batch, during some confusion a baby is left behind. They sell the child to an illegal adoption center, eventually falling into the hands of a desperate couple.
Meanwhile, a college professor finds he has a brain tumor that must be operated on. He wants to make amends with his estranged son who is living in Australia.
They said this movie was a comedy and while I didn’t have a problem with it but beyond the fanaticism of two football hooligans, I failed to find any humor in it. Perhaps it was a cultural thing. The multiple stories didn’t really have much to do with each other. Still, all the bits were interesting even if they didn’t seem to connect.
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