Today’s rhyme, A Robin Redbreast in a Cage, was really easy to visualize, though I ended up overthinking it anyway. First I went on line looking for a visual reference for a European Robin, first because these are English nursery rhymes, and second do you really think Heaven would get that worked up over an American Robin? They’re evil little blankety blanks! After that I spent a little too much time looking up period birdcages until I decided it was a waste of time (even though the Dutch ones were nice.)
I really have to redo this one as a watercolor. It’s bad enough I can’t give a Robin a redbreast but it’s downright depressing you can’t do a proper stormy sky with a pencil!
Today’s rhyme, Little Jenny Flinders, was pretty straightforward, other than the problem of going period or not (when a poem involves child abuse, it’s safer to go period) From there it was quickly looking up what children wore in the regency. After that the only problem of doing it in this medium dirt is indistinguishable from shading.
Today’s rhyme “There Was a Man So Wise” was fun to do. While just as silly as the last one at least there was something for me to work with. Really the only thing I needed to check out was if brambles meant something specific or was just a generic term for something prickly. (turns out it’s mostly generic, but generally means blackberries.) also a “quickset hedge” is a hedge made of bushes and trees, especially hawthorne.
I’ll be completely honest that today’s rhyme, The Village of Erith, made no sense at all. I have the sneaking suspicion it started out as a riddle.
To make matters worse, in my confusion I got loom the verb mixed up with loom the noun. For a while, I thought I’d keep my mistake and laugh at why there were looms abandoned on the river bank but I ended up erasing them and spending the next five minutes cleaning up the mess.
So for this weeks selection I went for French Fantastic Mysteries. Movies that questioned reality as we know it and left us scratching our heads.
Eugene Francois Vidocq was one of the first and great pioneers of forensic science inspiring such mystery writers as Edfar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. In the film Vidocq his life is glamorized to epic proportion as he faces his greatest challenge yet.
Played with typical gusto by Gerard Depardieu. Vidocq fights a mysterious individual know only as the Alchemist who traps the souls of his victims in the mirror he wears as a mask.
I really liked this film. While hardly a masterpiece the look of this film was amazing. With wonderfully theatrical sets shot through sepia filters with multiple closeups and the occasional fish eye lens this was remarkably surreal capturing a romanticized France at the brink of revolution.
Mystery, Monsters and Martial Arts what more can you ask for in a film? Brotherhood gives us all of these things nicely rapped up in wonderful period costumes.
The Beast of Gévaudan was an alleged creature that was apparently responsible for the death of over a hundred people in southern france between 1764 and 1767 whatever it was it was never identified; Brotherhood of the Wolf tells a romanticized tale of what it might have been.
Naturalist Grégoire de Fronsac and his Indian companion Manji, are sent to hunt the Beast. On the way they find Gypsies, corrupt aristocrats and ancient conspiracies and kick a whole lot of ass.
This is a fun movie beautiful in it’s vision of 18th century france, the fighting choreography is amazing making it the only savate martial arts film I know and when we finally encounter the beast it is beautifully constructed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
