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.
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.
ReplyDeleteHappy working like a real person.
I would have laughed my head off if I knew what the joke was!
ReplyDeleteLu = Lucifer
ReplyDeleteHA HA HA
See? Oh so funny. Okay maybe you had to be there :)
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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteDon and Smook - the film contains no such image, it was just inspired by it.
ReplyDeleteIt'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.