Monday, March 31, 2008
Bloo Toof
If any of you have ventured over to another little blog to which I contribute, Friday Drawing, then you've already seen a few toothy sketches of mine. Here's a continuation on that theme. A few more to come. Enjoy.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Walkin' Bolex
You can tell this bolex is having a great time from the fact that I omitted the "g" from the end of "walking" in the title.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Machturtle
Still finding older sketches I had forgotten about. Like this sporty little turtle which was part of a concept for a kid friendly show idea. Enjoy.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Brad Bird
So...
This year surprised me a bit at the Oscars. I really thought Persepolis was going to take home the highly marginalized award for best animated feature. I didn't think this because I believed it was an incredible film. On the contrary, I thought it was a great looking film which moved a bit too quickly for the weight of its subject matter to settle in. However, I just thought Hollywood would really want to champion this true story of one woman's life in oppressive war torn Iran. Not so...
Oh well. I haven't seen Ratatouille yet, but I'm sure it's good. Brad Bird is an excellent director and the folks at Pixar do some fine work. Here's a little article with the Bird-meister for you.
Enjoy.
This year surprised me a bit at the Oscars. I really thought Persepolis was going to take home the highly marginalized award for best animated feature. I didn't think this because I believed it was an incredible film. On the contrary, I thought it was a great looking film which moved a bit too quickly for the weight of its subject matter to settle in. However, I just thought Hollywood would really want to champion this true story of one woman's life in oppressive war torn Iran. Not so...
Oh well. I haven't seen Ratatouille yet, but I'm sure it's good. Brad Bird is an excellent director and the folks at Pixar do some fine work. Here's a little article with the Bird-meister for you.
Enjoy.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Chavez and Co.
Columbia Takes More Heat From Latin America LeftBy the way...
This is the photo Wikipedia has to illustrate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC).
Uh...
Viva la revolución?
This is the photo Wikipedia has to illustrate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC).
Uh...
Viva la revolución?
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Favorite Voice Overs
The movie voice over is an interesting thing. It is a device which can either lend insight into a character's motivations, ideals, and needs or it can be superfluous, trite, and just plain bad.
Since the general rule for motion pictures is, "Show, don't tell," voice overs often get overlooked by filmmakers. Sometimes they are created in last minute efforts
by producers who think the movie-going population is not sophisticated enough to visually parse the information given it.
Some writers are masters of voice over. Here are a few films which, I feel, use voice over in the most beneficial way. Originally, I was going to title this Top 10 Voice Overs, but I couldn't narrow it down, and I know there probably are a host of films I haven't seen which have great VO in them.
Raising Arizona - Quite possibly one of my favorite voice overs of all time. This movie, made by Joel and Ethan Cohen, proves that they're not just masters of visual suspense (Blood Simple), but really good writers of goofy and complex characters. They give a surprisingly believable articulate eloquence to a character who most writers would have written off as a blundering buffoon. Another Nicolas Cage voice over performance to check out is Bringing out the dead-- written by voice over badass Paul Schrader.
A Christmas Story
This is a great use of voice not only as a narration tool, but as commentary. The clip that follows isn't the greatest one, but it shows how the voice over was also used as set up and punctuation various jokes in the film. Other versions of this can be seen in Stand By Me and, of course, The Wonder Years television series (which I never really got into).
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
What need I say? Boris Karloff reading the words of Dr. Seuss. Narration at its finest.
Amelie
Great use of a narrator here to not only set the tone but to introduce characters quickly.
Alphaville
Godard's classic blending of sci-fi and noir. Though the film is full of Lemmy Caution's thoughts and narration, this scene shows how Godard uses VO to capture the inner thoughts of a character over a montage.
Sin City
Voice over and noir films were made for each other-- don't ask me why. This was a movie I was not initially excited to see since most films based on comics tend to fall short. I was surprised by how they didn't shy away from the Frank Miller narrative style. After seeing this, I almost wanted to see a film adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns-- almost. See, I'm not one of those guys who thinks that the final destination for any significant piece of work is film. But that's another post altogether.
These are neither in any specific order nor are they a final list of any means. There are many good movies that utilize voice over that I have either not seen, or from which I couldn't find any good clips.
La Jetee
Hannah and Her Sisters
Badlands
Goodfellas
The Royal Tenenbaums
... and the list continues...
Since the general rule for motion pictures is, "Show, don't tell," voice overs often get overlooked by filmmakers. Sometimes they are created in last minute efforts
by producers who think the movie-going population is not sophisticated enough to visually parse the information given it.
Some writers are masters of voice over. Here are a few films which, I feel, use voice over in the most beneficial way. Originally, I was going to title this Top 10 Voice Overs, but I couldn't narrow it down, and I know there probably are a host of films I haven't seen which have great VO in them.
Raising Arizona - Quite possibly one of my favorite voice overs of all time. This movie, made by Joel and Ethan Cohen, proves that they're not just masters of visual suspense (Blood Simple), but really good writers of goofy and complex characters. They give a surprisingly believable articulate eloquence to a character who most writers would have written off as a blundering buffoon. Another Nicolas Cage voice over performance to check out is Bringing out the dead-- written by voice over badass Paul Schrader.
A Christmas Story
This is a great use of voice not only as a narration tool, but as commentary. The clip that follows isn't the greatest one, but it shows how the voice over was also used as set up and punctuation various jokes in the film. Other versions of this can be seen in Stand By Me and, of course, The Wonder Years television series (which I never really got into).
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
What need I say? Boris Karloff reading the words of Dr. Seuss. Narration at its finest.
Amelie
Great use of a narrator here to not only set the tone but to introduce characters quickly.
Alphaville
Godard's classic blending of sci-fi and noir. Though the film is full of Lemmy Caution's thoughts and narration, this scene shows how Godard uses VO to capture the inner thoughts of a character over a montage.
Sin City
Voice over and noir films were made for each other-- don't ask me why. This was a movie I was not initially excited to see since most films based on comics tend to fall short. I was surprised by how they didn't shy away from the Frank Miller narrative style. After seeing this, I almost wanted to see a film adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns-- almost. See, I'm not one of those guys who thinks that the final destination for any significant piece of work is film. But that's another post altogether.
These are neither in any specific order nor are they a final list of any means. There are many good movies that utilize voice over that I have either not seen, or from which I couldn't find any good clips.
La Jetee
Hannah and Her Sisters
Badlands
Goodfellas
The Royal Tenenbaums
... and the list continues...
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