Wednesday Double Feature – Cyberpunk

by on April 26, 2017 at 8:17 am
Posted In: Test

This weekI decided to go for some comfort viewing with one of my favorite subgeneras of science fiction, cyberpunk. Regrettably due to the rules of my dipping into Scarecrow’s collection, most of the examples of the genre on film (english language anyway) I’ve seen… as well as many of the mediocre ones. So this week I found myself watching what was left.

Wednesday Double Feature Other Cyberpunk Films - Strange DaysI confess that this description was a little unfair since the first film on my list, Strange Days was actually pretty good. It’s December 31st 1999 and the millennium is upon us and the city of Las Angeles is a burning pit of civil unrest.  Ex-cop and black marketer Lenny Nero, (Ralph Finnes),is spending it hustling, d buying and selling memories. That is to say complete immersion recordings of first person memories. Apparently they’re illegal.. Nero is a pathetic human being barely making ends meet an only respected by his two remaining friends, bodyguard and limousine driver Lornette “Mace” Mason (Angela Bassett)  and private investigator Max Peltier (Tom Sizemore).When he finds a recording of a murder left in his car he finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy… Or is he?

I enjoyed this movie, My only problem with it was the problem I had with Inception. Where the near future setting is virtually identical to the present except for one piece of magical technology that should be reveioutionalry with tons of different applications but instead in little more than illegal contraband…. But Angela Basset kicked ass, literally and figuratively, so all is good.

Wednesday Double Feature Other Cyberpunk Films - Cherry 2000The next film in my list Cherry 2000 takes place in what appears to be a post apocalyptic future. Most of the world are anarchic wastelands, everything is being recycled, and sexual encounters require complex contracts… because of the last one sex droids are popular.  When a young business man  breaks his vintage Cherry 2000 he has to go out into the wasteland with the help of a beautiful tracker to find another one. Will he survive long enough to get a replacement? Or will he discover the love of a real girl?

I don’t think I’m exaggerating much when I say this is one of the worst films I’ve seen in a long while. There were a few times where they might have been trying to be satirical, for example the villains  being caricature of california yuppies, but just couldn’t pull it off. That’s probably the best thing I can say about it.

 

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Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge Day Twenty Five – The Little Mermaid

by on April 25, 2017 at 9:32 am
Posted In: Art

For Day Twenty Five of My April Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge I drew The Little MermaidIt looks like I drew a Hans Christien Andersen story twice in a row for two days. So for today, I got what is probably his best-known story, The Little Mermaid. This is another tough one. The first rule is to ignore the Disney version. For me this is easy. It’s not that I dislike the Disney version (I watched it three times the first week it came out.) It’s just so different that, other than her species, dear sweet little Ariel has absolutely nothing to do with Andersen’s tragic heroine.

Sources that are harder for me to ignore are the illustrations of Kay Nielsen and an obscure Ranken-Bass film called the Daydreamer. It’s mostly silly but the animated Andersen stories are done completely straight. Because of this hearing Burl Ives as the sea king telling his daughters, in a whispery deadpan, how humans are mortal and will die… but unlike immortal mermaids, they have souls, sticks in my mind.

Ultimately, I think I was mostly inspired by the statue in Copenhagen harbor. I decided to ignore most of the story and present the little Mermaid with her back to us, alone dreaming of something she can never be part of.

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Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge Day Twenty Four – The Steadfast Tin Soldier

by on April 24, 2017 at 9:21 am
Posted In: Art

For Day 24 of My April Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge I drew The Steadfast Tin Soldier.Today’s fairy tale Hans Christian Andersen’s Steadfast Tin Soldier, (it’s usually called the Brave Tin Soldier but frankly I like steadfast better) was another one that I really didn’t want to do. Regrettably, that’s the whole point of this exercise. I need a better excuse than “I don’t like this story” isn’t a good enough excuse. It has to be something like “I can’t find an English-language version of this”, as in getting The Grimm Brothers’ the Raven yesterday, or when I was doing my Nursery Rhyme challenge last year, “This is a saying about predicting whether from the colors of the sky. There’s nothing I can do with it in this monochrome medium”. So, Yeah… I had to draw The Steadfast Tin Soldier.

Because I didn’t like the story, I never did more than scan the original and only knew the cliff notes version of it. In fact, most of what I knew about it came from the Fantasia version of it (which I also considered one of the weakest of the entire collection.) So I admit I didn’t know the fine points. For example, for some reason, I had it in my head that the climactic scene of the story, which I’m using for this sketch, was a house fire. After quickly reading it I found it was some kids throwing the toys in the stove.

Finally, this was a strain to my 40ish aesthetic. Most of the toy soldiers boys would be playing with at the time would still look like soldiers from the Napoleonic war. So this scene would be deliberately anachronistic. Even more frustrating when I did a quick Pinterest search for pictures of toy soldiers, all I got were detailed models soldiers from world war one and two made by and for history buffs and wargamers, and illustrations of this story. (and I couldn’t look at those because that would be cheating.)

All in all, I guess it came out okay… I think I botched the ballerina. Though I can use the excuse that she’s a paper doll and I can claim she was badly drawn.

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Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge Day 23 – The Frog Prince

by on April 23, 2017 at 8:27 am
Posted In: Art

For Day 23 of My April Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge I drew the frog prince.Well For today’s sketch the magic Tupperware told me to draw… The Raven! But since it was one I never heard of and I couldn’t find an English version of it, leaving me wondering why I put it on the list in the first place, I drew again. So today I’m drawing one of the best-known ones, the Frog Prince.

This one was a bit of a challenge. Mostly in how I could stick to my nineteen forties theme and have something that said princess. Other that that it was choosing which of the two scenes to go with, and since I wasn’t crazy about showing cruelty to frogs, I went with the Frog retrieving the princess’s golden ball. (honestly, I don’t know where the whole kissing thing came from.)

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Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge Day 22 – The Little Match Girl

by on April 22, 2017 at 1:01 pm
Posted In: Art

For Day 22 of My April Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge I drew the Little Match GirlOkay, For today’s sketch challenge the magic Tupper ware told me to draw Hans Christian Andersen’s most depressing story ever, The Little Match Girl. A story about an ignored little girl who holds onto hope as she slowly dies of exposure. (But don’t worry she goes to heaven in the end… apparently)

I was mostly happy with the basic idea I had for this, but I’m afraid that I mostly botched the execution.

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Fairy Tale Sketch Channel Day Twenty One – The Goose Girl

by on April 21, 2017 at 9:43 am
Posted In: Art

For Day Twenty One of my April Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge I drew The Goose GirlThe Goose Girl is another one of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales I somehow missed during my childhood only reading it later on when I had access to the adult unabridged version I was reading as a folklore reference. Growing up the storybook version I was familiar was a similar Zulu story called Little Hen Eagle I later saw another version of it in a series of shorts on PBS, retelling them in historical (mostly Appalachian) settings.

Of course, I can understand why it’s one of the stories that doesn’t make it in most of the picture books since it’s a story about identity theft which begins with the princess being mugged and having her loyal animal friend getting murdered.

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