Showing posts with label 2014. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2014. Show all posts

11 December 2019

Moving Pictures

Still thoroughly degumptionated around here. I need to do some cleaning, clearing, rewiring and furnituring before i can put the alternate system into service.

Maybe today - we'll see.

Meanwhile, since there's nothing doing in these parts, let's step out and look somewhere else on the net.

Are you familiar with comic artist Kerry (or even Terry) Callen? We've seen his Super Antics here once previously, but have yet to get back to him. Every now and again, he likes to play with old covers. The results can be entertaining...




If you like those, you can find more of them, and some animated interiors as well, available on Kerry's blog - along with a variety of other things, including unpublished artwork. He doesn't post often, but it can be entertaining.

And i like those covers.

Oddly enough, there's also a strong connection between Kerry and the artwork seen in the Maintainance Report <sic> a couple posts back. Maybe the ol' peripatetic brain will wander over that way...

cover art animated by Kerry Callen for Kerry Callen Does Stuff (2014, 2016)

24 December 2018

Xmas Eve(n)? Xmas Odd!

7
The holiday is upon us...






...and hopefully my brain will be back with more words later.

page art by Bernie Mireault, Ty Templeton, Steve Rude & Al Williamson, and Matt Smigiel for Comico Christmas Special, DCU Holiday Bash and Boo! Holiday Special (1988, 1998, 1999, 2014)

09 July 2018

Bad Weekend, Continued

Still feeling down and uptight about the news of losing two favorite creators... Harlan Ellison and Steve Ditko.


Those mixed feelings of sadness and anger at the loss. Harlan was better at letting that stuff out...


I think i'm going to spend the day meandering through some of their works to say goodbye, though of course, they'll never truly leave us. Not with all they left behind. I'll be back later in the day to share. In the meantime...

Sergio Ponchione offers us this view of Steve Ditko from his book, DKW, on the Holy Trinity of comic creators - Ditko/Kirby/Wood -


art by Neal Adams from Weird Heroes #2 (1975) and Sergio Ponchione from DKW (2014)

27 January 2018

Saturday Solutions - Вий

There is seemingly no hurry to provide the solution to yesterday's question, so let's go back several days to Monday's mystery movie. Because i'm going to spoil an aspect of the movie to talk about why i like it, part of this post will be continued on a separate page for easy avoidance.

Here's a scaled down compilation of the 10 screen shots presented in the previous post:


This movie is the 5th film version of Nikolai Gogol's book (the 4th Russian/Soviet film, there's also a Korean movie adaptation) The book was first published back in 1835, and the first film version was a 1909 silent adaptation, now lost. The book has also influenced other movies (such as Mario Bava's Black Sunday), music, and even video games.
So, what is it called?


Viy (2014) is more often found as Forbidden Empire internationally.

Parts of the book, including the titular demon, Viy, are taken from Gogol's tale, with a new narrative intersecting the old tale. To bring us outsiders into the fantasy world of the novel, we travel with Johnathan Green, a mapmaker with a dream - to establish his hometown of Greenwich as the baseline by which the world is measured. Even our 'normal' person isn't quite from our world, however.
Note that he drives his carriage from the inside, via his own semi-steampunk technology...


...he has a distance mapping wheel of his own design mounted behind the carriage...


...and his own special tech developed for his mapping work -


The patently ridiculous notion of Johnathan Green's goal of mapping the globe to establish the Greenwich Meridian via a carriage with a distance tracking wheel is likely a product of the transliteration process, adapting the story to the western audience while translating to English. It makes much more sense when you realize that our protagonist is based on Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan, a French cartographer who first mapped and recorded the culture of the Ukrainian territories. The whole notion works a lot better when no oceans are involved.

I enjoyed the movie's visuals and rich atmospherics quite a bit. The story was both simple to follow and tangled enough to be interesting. Apparently, enough people agreed with me to put a sequel into production.
But, to talk about what i liked best will spoil part of the plot, at least on a general basis. So, if you don't want that to happen, don't follow the link to the rest of this post. Just go find the movie and enjoy. You can always come back here later, eh?


22 January 2018

What You Watchin'?

Still no sign of brain.
Come home - all is forgiven!

While i wait, the question above - what have you been watching lately?
Did you see -











Did you know they're making a sequel?

that would be telling, wouldn't it? (2014)