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Monday, January 16, 2006

Flying Solo - Updated in the arvo



My very dear colleague Vanessa has fallen ill and won't be in the office for some time.
This means I am flying solo indefinately.
This is not such a bad thing, in that we aren't that busy, but it does mean that I'll be slightly too busy to spend my days drawing and blogging.
Just like a real job - like the rest of you!
This image was not inspired by any impending doom, but by a film I saw called Constantine, a not too bad comic book adaptation about demons and hell and whatnot.
The devils son was in it and he is called Mammon, a name I find very pleasing because it sounds like a vegetable rather than the son of satan.

Smook and Doodlers - I've just recalled a connection I have with Toronto, albiet a tentative one.
My student film played at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival in 1998 (a million years ago!).
For a lark, I did a search for it's title, "Weisman and the Devil".
I discovered a review someone wrote at the time.
It's way more enthusiastic than it deserves and I am thoroughly embarassed to say that it makes comparisons with Night On Bald Mountain (beyond undeserved I promise).
I will be vain enough to post the short review though.

The animation tip, meanwhile, is equally well-represented. Australian director Elliot Cowan's Weisman and the Devil (1996), for example, is a wonderfully rancorous fable that catapults Weisman, a sad-sack schlemiel convinced that his lack of social success stems from his pudginess rather than his idiocy ("...and only an idiot would think that," the narrator intones), into a highly uneven struggle with the Prince of Darkness. Sketchy, black-and-white visuals and an eerie klezmer score help make this as close to a six-minute version of Night On Bald Mountain as you're ever likely to come across.

If only my lecturers felt the same way about it, although I suspect she may have seen a different movie and confused it.

6 comments:

Girl said...

I saw Constantine. It seemed like it was going to be better than it was (though Rachel Wiesz is 'smart'{bee-u-tea-ful}) but I especially liked it when Keanu said "Hi Lu". I had that second of whaaat? Then laughed my head off.

Happy working like a real person.

Elliot Cowan said...

I would have laughed my head off if I knew what the joke was!

Girl said...

Lu = Lucifer

HA HA HA

See? Oh so funny. Okay maybe you had to be there :)

donnachada said...

Nice sketch. Now I want to see the film to see where the reference comes from. Nice feeling in it. Mass worry. They look screwed.

MikeS said...

I am intrigued by the film now too. By the way, I can see how you would hate to leave Ella behind. The field that you are in, is that part of your property or just a nearby piece of land? It looks really peaceful.

Elliot Cowan said...

Don and Smook - the film contains no such image, it was just inspired by it.
It's a not very good film with some lovely stuff in it.
It's vaguely in the same realm of Hellboy, but with Keanu Reeves, which means it's shit.
And the field is a part of a walking track a few minutes from my home.
It is in fact extremely peaceful - I spend a lot of time there and the dog loves it too as she doens't have to be on the lead.

 
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