New Years Resolutions

What a shit year!

Things started out bad and then just went down hill. People I know took ill, some died, my mother amongst them. Others got into trouble, some serious, some even got hurt, badly. Almost every couple I know had either static in their relationships, or broke up. My health went from bad to worse, I'm still pretty messed up and my mental state gradually deteriated as my mother got worse.

2008 has to be a new beginning otherwise I think I'm going to get a lot worse, both physically and mentally. Thus, I have decided, for the first time I can ever remember, to make new years resolutions.

Resolution Nr. 1: Lose weight.
It doesn't really matter how much I lose, just so long as I lose some weight. I'm now some twenty kg over my biometric recommended weight and there is a strong possibility that some of my various health problems are due to this.

Resolution Nr. 2: Go swimming.
I used to go swimming about twice a week, but I haven't been once in over six months now. I have decided then that I will go swimming at least once a week in 2008 and if I miss a week I have to catch it up in the following week.

Resolution Nr. 3: Go to the psychologist.
I need to do something about how I am as a person. I am self destructive and I need to deal with this. The death of my mother has forced me to confront how I've been acting in the last few years and I need help to find a way up and out of the hole I have dug myself into.

Freja: Christmas 2007

Christmas is past at last and we have returned to our small abode. Both Mette and Freja have come down with sore throats and grumpiness but for the most part we've enjoyed ourselves. Freja got lots of presents, including a pink bicycle and several DVD's with Winnie the Pooh (her current favourite) and Tom & Jerry (her other current favourites). I got some stuff too, but it was the underwear and socks that made me happy. My expectations have receded greatly over the years and nothing pleases me more now than warm feet and clean linen!

As expected, things were very different without my mother. Christmas eve (which is the most celebrated day of the festivity in Denmark) was particularly surreal. Mette and Bettina (Freja's auntie) had the job of making the christmas dinner and things went well until the end with smoke billowing from both the microwave and the oven and with the fire alarm chiming in and both girls in hysterics. Poor Bettina burned her hand too but in the end their efforts bore fruit and the meal was excellent.

Freja had a regal time, pouncing about playing at being a 'gullit' (crocodile or monster). She 'ate' every one with much growling and yowling, chasing us about with glee. Mormor's cats, Percy, Carlo and Diesel (whom she called Pursus, Cawlo and Deesus) were also treated to hours of loving inspections and the occaisional tail yank. The cats were very gracious about the whole thing (actually Percy is so lazy you could kick him about the room and I doubt he'd react) so no scratches for the Snoos. Mormor is seen below with Freja who is opening presents. The top image is my Dad's Christmas tree from which Freja quickly removed and ate all the chocolates.

I am Legend vs The Omega Man

I love post apocolypse movies. I should establish that before I go any further. Ever since for ever I've loved to see films and TV serials and read books about life after 'the fall'. Of late I have seen and read several works of post apocolypse fiction, including 'The world in Winter' (book) by John Christopher, 'Reign of Fire' (movie), 'Survivors' (TV) and the two films which this post is about.

Both films are adaptations of 'I am Legend' by Richard Matheson, which I have not (yet) read and have much the same story, though with various minor differences. In both films, Robert Neville is a US military scientist who is the last 'man' alive in New York after having become immune to a lethal virus that has either killed off the worlds population or turned some of them into vampires... so far so good.

Now, as post apocolyptic movies go, these are some of the biggest ever made. 'The Omega Man' in particular often makes the classics lists, and yet... Watching Charlton Heston do his usual routine in a dilapidated New York left me bored. The sets were uninspiring. The acting was poor and the execution was mediocre at best. The vampires had been transformed into some kind of albino cult and they never managed to motivate my hair raising reflex. On the contrary, I found them to be annoying. 'I am Legend's' CGI vampires on the hand were scarier, but equally annoying, since they looked much too unreal. Will Smith appeared to be battling toons from a game of Doom.


The ambience in 'The Omega Man' didn't convince me. At no point did I ever get the impression that Heston was really living alone in New York, or that the city had really been deserted. The sense of desolation that is vital for post apocolypse was missing entirely. Sagal should have devoted more expenses to a good matt artist to provide him with some luxurious scenes of the city in decay. Lawrence, for all his faults got that right at least. The first half of 'I am Legend' is rife with ambience, especially in the ambient soundscape. For this alone 'I am Legend' scores highest.

Unfortunately, 'I am Legend' fails in its second half. Things start to unravel when Will Smith begins to fight the horrible CGI vampires and the sense of desolatioon evaporates as the automated Hollywood action film machine kicks in and takes over the film. Next thing you know, there is a car chase, super human vampires doing the Alien thing (crawling up walls, screaching hoarsely and jumping out of shadows with mouth gaping wide) and a happy ending. Yuck! As Lesly recently said, happy endings are over rated. In a film like this one, thats true. The ending, with a some what Christian slant was truly dire but in this respect the film stayed true to 'The Omega Man' whose ending was equally appalling.



I am Legend.
Dir: Francis Lawrence.


The Omega Man.
Dir: Boris Sagal.

Fallen Art

Its been a while since I posted any animated air balloons, so...

Glædelig Jul

For what its worth, its that time of year, the season that these days dare not speak its own name: Christmas.

Fortunately for me in Denmark, Jul is older than Christianity so I need fear no stigma from those back in the good old UK for whom Christmas is become something problematic, when I wish you all a

Merry Christmas from Snoos world!!!




.

Sunshine

Yes, I know, I've been watching too many movies for my own good of late. The thing is, I'm sort of treading water at the moment waiting for my latest hopsital tests and I'm in a bad place after my mother died. Watching movies is helping me keep the bad thoughts at bay, but I know its only a temporary measure. Things will change soon, for better or worse. In the mean time however, on we go...


Dir: Danny Boyle

This film didn't do so well in the box office, but I liked it. Essentially its the story of a manned mission to the Sol to save Earth by 'reigniting the dying sun'. Things have already gone wrong with a previous mission and events begin with the unfortunately named Icurus 2 beginning to meet difficulties when it enters the sun's 'dead zone'. At first the difficulties are merely technical, but soon things take a turn for the worse when the ship encounters an automated distress call from Icurus I (the ship of the first mission). Shortly there after a technical miscalculation cripples Icurus 2 forcing the crew to rendezvous with Icurus I. Dramatics then unfold along a predictable course to the conclusion of the film.


On the face of it, it seems like a load of rubbish. Boyle's camera technique and fetish for blurring images doesn't help much either. What saved the experience, for me, was the technical details. The ships, the EVA suits, the various internal details here and there, as well as the colours, the sense of the suns presence and the acting. That is to say the acting was adequate. I would have liked to see more of Michelle Yeoh and Hiroyuki Sanada (see below), but never mind.

'Sunshine' could easily have fallen into the 'Event Horizon' trap, but it doesn't. Whilst it doesn't quite have the quiet ambience of 'Solaris', or the austerity of '2001', it still manages to retain some of their style whilst remaining a drama.

The design of the Icurus 2 itself is a nod in the right direction, but suffers from a singularly spectacular design fault. Nestled behind a vast mirror, the ship is built in a long line. You can see the design on the top image where the ship appears in profile at the end of the title word. The idea is, the mirror protects the ship from the light of the sun. When the mirror suffers damage however, the ship must turn slightly to bring part of it into shadow, thus enabling the crew to fix the mirror (though why they don't have robotics for this is never explained). Turning the mirror naturally brings part of the ship into the light of the sun, destroying , amongst other parts the ships garden and crippling its ability to manufacture oxygen.

Obviously this disaster was needed for the plot to work, but frankly I thought it was a bit childish. Any ship nestling behind a giant solar mirror should do just that, nestle. I can see no sensible notion as to why the ship should protude out the back as it did, nor even why two crew members should crawl out onto the mirror's surface to fix it. The mirror is made up of thousands of flexible lamellar meaning it should be easily accessable from below.

On the other hand, the whole premise of a human crew being needed to plant a giant bomb into the sun is a bit dodgy...

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Dir: Shekar Kapur

Returning to the story of Queen Elizabeth I that reaped much attention in the UK in 1998, Shekar Kapur seeks to now expand the story to include the high point of Elizabeth's reign, namely the climax of the conflict with the Spanish King Philip II and the execution of Mary Queen of Scotts. At the same time he must include the story of Sir Walter Raleigh and all the intrigue and drama of the Elizabethan court whilst retaining his focus on Elizabeth herself. No mean undertaking.

Unfortunately, the film fails to deliver any real historical perspective, prefering instead to retain the tight focus on the queen as a character. The Armada (seen below) is relagated to a few minutes of CGI carracks (not a galleass in sight alas) and some photogenic heroic antics by sleepy faced Clive Owen giving the impression that it was Raleigh as practically single handedly defeated the Armada and not the weather... Mary Queen of Scotts doesn't get much attention either, though her execution is dwelt upon at length as a good 'photo op'. Her treason, like the Armada is glossed over to allow more time to the unfolding drama of Elizabeth, Raleigh and Elizabeth's maid, 'Beth' Throckmorton.

So much of this film is devoted to Cate Blanchet's portrayal of Elizabeth that it detracts from the story. Instead of a plot, we are served a series of 'situations' where Blanchet trumpets, wails and cries in despair, at great length, whilst wearing one queenly costume after another. This is not the worst thing possible, but its hardly Elizabeth's 'golden age'. It feels more like grumpy old Elizabeth suffering the pangs of pre menstrual stress. At one point in the film, Kapur crystalizes this vision of Elizabeth with her speaking to her army (see the top image). This scene, features Blanchett resplendent in full armour, on a restless white horse, doing her best to follow the trail blazed by blue faced Mel Gibsen, rallying the troops to the idea that they are fighting for 'freedom'. The problem is, this scene does not preclude any battle, nor does it carry any conviction. The whole thing, like the whole film, appears as an exersize in posing Cate Blanchett to make her look heroic and has nothing what so ever to do with any vague concept of an actual story.

On the whole, this film is a wasted opportunity.

Pans Labyrinth

Dir: Guillermo del Toro

This wasn't at all what I was expecting. I was thinking from what I'd seen on TV that this was something in the vein of Jim Henson, so it was quite a surprise to find it was far darker and actually quite sad. The ending in particular was grusome, despite the 'happy ending' of the girls delusion.

This film is about a young girl who lives wth her mother and her step father in Franco's Spain. Her mother is high pregnant and in poor health and her father in law is a sadistic army captain who has no time for his step daughter at all. In order to escape the bleak reality in which she lives, the girl invents a magical world which intrudes into her life with dire consequences. This is an excellent film, but very dark.

Thank You

Brando recently posted about these thank you video's being barred for being 'too political'.

I don't know whether or not it is considered political to thank the soldiers who maintain and guarantee our freedoms, and in this time when the EU elite is busy dismantling our countries by non democratic means, I wonder at what it is we (Europeans) have to be thankful about, but for my part, I am gateful to all our service men and women, be they Danish our allies of Denmark, and I say thank you to them all.

Would that our politicians had the same integrity.

Upside down

This is the oldest song I can remember loving. I used to dance to this track at Sunday School's Childrens club (every wednesday night). Great times, I must have been about 10 years old. It does my heart good to see Freja dancing to it today.

Ultraviolet

Dir: Joe Ahearne

The pesky vampires are planning to take over again, and as usual a secret government organisation is out to prevent them...

'Ultraviolet' is a British TV miniseries from 1998 starring Jack Davenport and Susanne Harker. It has a few negative aspects but on the whole its well acted and fairly credible. It only spans six episodes which is a shame, but may probably be why it works so well since this brevity keeps the story crisp. Unfortunately it also stops with a few loose ends that were never tied up. In many ways this is similar to BBC's 'Torchwood', but I think this one works better. 'Torchwood' always struck me as having a social agenda where as this is just story telling for its own sake. (Bare in mind I haven't actually seen all that much of 'Torchowood' though).

I'm not really much a fan of Jack Davenport, he strikes me as being a guy with a pretty face who more or less plays the same character in everything I've seen him in. In 'Ultraviolet' however, he makes sense as his jaded attitude works quite well with the character. I think this is the first time I've ever seen him in anything where I didn't think he was a dead weight.

A fanfare to fanfare's

So, I was pondering on fanfare's and trying to decide which was the better between Strauss's 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' and Coplands 'Fanfare for the common man'. I like them both, but some how, the more I tried to decide between them, the more I realised the two represented more than just simple music. The latter in particular has to be one of the most political pieces of classical music I know if. Its almost impossible to see it played simply for its self, mostly because it is by definition a political statement of sorts, defining the stated goals of the United States and forever being linked to those goals.

In the end I decided I prefer 'Also Sprach Zarathustra', but then I'm a European classical music snob. Alas, it has also become symbolic in the common perception thanks largely to Stanley Kubrick, but I can't hold that against Stanley since I love his film. Both fanfare's are part of larger works, and its in this context that Strauss wins I think. Copland was a genuine composer, but Strauss is up there with Beethoven and Mozart and it tells. Coplands other work recalls awful music hall dance routines and 1940's style musicals like 'Annie get your gun' or what ever they are called.

The first video is longer than just the fanfare, and the entire piece is in two parts. I'm only really concerned with the actual fanfare but I added the second half as a link in case any one gets into the mood of the thing.


Part 2.

Freja the pirate

Piracy is the flavour of the month here in casa moif. Piracy and snot and the Snoos is in full swing. She has taken to watching Tom & Jerry or Winnie the pooh when ever possible but Mette is concerned that she may be watching too much TV. I'm not sure what the limit is on TV for kids or for how long they stay addicted to warm milk from a 'teet bottle', but we seem to have found a kind of status quo which is both comforting in its predictability yet annoying in the unchanging details of Freja's wayward behaviour. She does not seem to be able to sleep through the night and I'm not sure why but I think it has something to do with hunger. She often refuses to eat her afternoon meal and wakes up during the night demanding a bottle of warm milk. I'm not sure why she has this dislike of eating her dinner and it certainly doesn't happen every evening, but its frustrating to be met with her stubborn crying when ever we press her, how ever gently or firmly, to eat her food. I'm thinking maybe we should cease giving her milk at night and see if the pangs of hunger make any difference or whether I'm just being silly and things will sort themselves out naturally as she gets older. She can talk now, but its a strange hodge-podge of real words and made up words and I often find myself fumbling along in her proto syntax in order to make myself understood.

She is a wily little thing though. She understands well enough those phrases and words she wishes to understand and modifies her behaviour accordingly. She kicks up a fuss when ever something is not to her liking and although I can happily ignore her temper tantrums, Mette cannot and often the battle of female wills requires some prudent masculine intervention.

Too bad I'm as bad at prudence as I am undiplomatic.

Captain Kidd

Dir: Rowland V. Lee

Filmed in 1945, this is a black and white swashbuckling adventure starring Randolph Scott (he plays the hero Adam Mercy) and Charles Laughton who plays the captain (see above image). Its a fairly run of the mill film, typical of the genre and the time in which it was made, which is to say, its a piss poor movie with few redeeming special effects, a nauseatingly predictable plot and not really worth the effort of straining one's attention long enough to view. Of particular annoyance is the ease with which the sanctimonious hero Adam Mercy, out wits Captain Kidd by deux ex machina and has the female role (played with mind numbing ineptitude by Barbara Britton) fawning over him for no other reason than his 'noble bearing'. No sooner does Lady Anne Dunstan meet Adam Mercy than she 'recognises him as a gentleman' leaving all Captain Kidd's nefarious plans void. Mercy is in fact the son of one of Kidd's victims seeking revenge by pretending to be a pirate, and despite his upper class accent and 'noble bearing', none of the pirates he is hiding amongst ever realize this. A suspension of the laws of disbelief so blatent that the character becomes an immediete thorn in one's side.

Its hard to believe that people in 1945 were so numb to the limits of cinema that they watched this sort of rubbish as entertainment. I guess when you've just won the worst war in history you don't care about such details and you want the good guys to be easy to spot and always winning, but I'll never understand why, if the criminal elements in this type of film are not allowed to win, then why bother making a pirate film!? Whats the bleeding point? Who cares about pirates who are bound by convention to lose? Its a mockery for any one entertaining the notion that Kidd's convoluted schemes can ever hope to thwart a brainless hero who wins simply because he is the hero. When conventional morality dictates nobility equals good and good equals winner, then whats the deal with making a film about a pirate captain?

Naturally I was rooting for the pirates the whole film through and gnashing my teeth at the sickening sight of ill deserved victory being handed down by the oh so noble king to his sycophantic subjects who manage to defeat the pirate captain with out even trying. Kidd strands the nepotistic bastards in Madagascar, sails back to England after having utterly out witted them and yet they still manage to reach the king and tell their tale first by no means satisfactorily explained. What? They have an aeroplane?

Intolerable!



edited to add:


The Scarlet Pirate

Dir: Robert Siodmak

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

If 'Captain Kidd' was bad, then this is worse, only here its in technicolour! In this swashbuckling tale, Burt Lancaster lives up to his gay icon status playing the ever bare chested Captain Vallo (a.k.a. the Crimson Pirate) who spends almost the entire film performing the sort of acrobatics one might usually associate with a circus. This film was made in 1952 and it shows. The tedious sermonizing is similar to that proudly displayed in Captain Kidd, but we have now progressed to the point where a film about a pirate captain, actually has the pirate as hero. The bad guy being an authority figure with no morals. Alas, Captain Vallo must still tread the righteous path of honesty and goodness to get the girl so he's a peculiar sort of buccaneer if you ask me, especially so when you consider the hysterically conservative females these films offer up as choice morsals for pirate appetites.

The film is pretty horrendous and despite its ambitious nature fails to deliver in the special effects department. Amazingly the effects and props in this film are no where near as good as in 'Captain Kidd'. Captain Vallo's ship in particular is a most bizzare spectacle appearing to be a rebuilt fishing boat of some kind.




Long John Silver

Dir: Byron Haskin

Made a mere two years after 'The Scarlet Pirate', this film is about as far from the swashbuckling extravaganza as its possible to get since the main character has lost a leg and doesn't seem to fancy the mass produced heroines of other pirate films. No indeed, Long John's fancy turns to a woman who's rear end is as big as a golf course and naturally when the prospect of treasure comes his way, he quickly discards any notions of romance and sails his way as a good pirate should! For this alone I grant this film three stars. The fact that I just happen to approve of well endowed females with acres of cotton stretched across their curvacious physical attributes is neither here nor there! The fact of the matter is Robert Newton is the best pirate captain in this particular trio of films. He plays his role almost as easily as Walther Matthau plays Captain Red and Johnny Depp plays Captain Jack Sparrow

This film is meant to be a sequel to Treasure Island and see's the worthy captain returning to find the rest of Flint's treasure. Whether or not he finds it is up to you to discover. You'll not pry the answer from me matey, d'ya see the course I lay!?

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest

Dir: Gore Verbinksi

There's one thing really bugs me about the 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest'. It isn't the curse of Davy Jones or the power of the goddess Calypso with her maelstrom or the half fish half men crew of the Flying Dutchman or the whole pirate court thing. All that fits nicely into the internal logic of the tale. No, what bothers me is this:


The ship in the middle, named Endeavour, is a triple decker (which actually means four gun decks). I count 45 gun ports in the top image, that makes it, without counting bow and stern chasers, or the upper deck cannons, at least 90 guns and thus a second rate ship-of-the-line ( a first rate would have 100+ guns). This is the bad guy's ship and the bad guy is the leader of the East India Company. Now, its a known fact that the EIC were not shy about using military methods to get what they wanted, but to go from hired armies in India where man power was easy to be had, to building and maintaining a second rate ship-of-the-line stretches my incredulity to the point of indignation.

That that warship is then dispatched by two pirate ships is unforgivable. Pirate ships were usually sloops, brigantines or captured traders fitted with a gun deck. Pirates seldom if ever got into battles because the whole purpose of piracy was to avoid the authorities whilst preying on fat merchants who couldn't defend themselves. In the film, the Flying Dutchman and the Black Pearl appear to be over decorated frigates, that is to say they are war ships which have a single gun deck with smaller guns on the upper deck (thats a 28 gun frigate in the title image for my blog). Expanding our magnanimous nature to allow the script writer the benefit of the doubt, this would give them perhaps 28 guns each, only half of which they can bring to bear given the nature of the broadside battery.

Thus, the pirates can bring some 28 guns and perhaps as many carronades to bear on a ship that towers above them, has a crew of 750 trained men and marines (you don't operate a second rate without a full crew) and can bring 90 guns and probably 40 carronades and swivel guns to bear. The conclusion in the film flies in the face of logic. In reality, the ship-of-the-line would cripple both pirates on its first pass, yet the ship-of-the-line is not only destroyed instantly, its crew flee's in panic and its magazine then explodes, yet miraculously failing to generate an explosion big enough to destroy the two pirate ships. Pedantic perhaps you might say, "the audience knows no better. Who cares?"

Well I do! In reality the Flying Dutchman was not a warship. No private company ever had the means to maintain a ship-of-the-line, and certainly not a second rate. Pirates never had frigates and seldom even a crew big enough to fight a frigate (to fight a frigate you needed at least 200 men), and worst of all two frigates could never hope to tackle a second rate ship-of-the-line and if by some miracle they did manage to ignite the powder magazine on such a war ship the resulting explosion would instantly obliterate all three ships.

Apart from that the film was great. Cap'n Jack FTW!!!



Incidently and sligtly related. Oleg and I ran some Napoleonic naval skirmish battles on thursday and both were interesting. The first battle saw the British win by firing one volley. Thats all it took to defeat the French admiral and cause the rest of the French fleet to flee. Our fastest war game ever.

The second battle was a more prolonged event which featured multiple ships-of-the-line, including a French first rate. Both sides had 2 sloops, 5 frigates and then a line of battle. The British had four ships and the French had three. The French first rate however proved to be an absolute combat monster. With three superior batteries and two flanking ships-of-the-line each adding a battery, the French despite being one ship down, out gunned the British by 5 batteries to 4. If anything this game helped to increase my outrage at the miserable sight of two pirate ships tackling a ship-of-the-line.

Angels and Demons

By Dan Brown.

Yep, that Dan Brown. According to the blurb on the cover, this is the first Robert Langdon novel, which is quite funny as I could hardly tell the difference between this book and the film 'The Da Vinci code' (I haven't actually read the book yet). In 'Angles & Demons' Langdon is brought in to solve the mystery of a murdered scientist, apparently killed by a secret society. The plot takes him into a chase across Rome to find a series of clues finally culminating in a show down at the Vatican.

Actually it wasn't so bad. Although there were some strange assumptions made in the beginning (CERN having an X33 for example, what?) I soon found it hard to put down the book as I got towards the end. I'd already guessed the twist which was pretty obvious in my opinon, but still managed to enjoy the finale. I couldn't quite decide if this book was for or against religion, and I didn't really care by the time it was over. I can't understand why any one would get offended by a novel of this kind. Its entertaining but its just fluff.
3/5

Beowulf

I'd heard nothing good of this film so I wasn't expecting much, but I was taken entirely by surprise to see it was animated. That little detail had escaped my attention.

The film is okay, in a D&D style retelling of the story of Beowulf, but there were times when it got a bit too 'Shrek like'. The little animated soldiers being tossed about as if they weighed nothing and the unusual horses put me off a bit and the whole 'Denmark in the Viking ages' with huge stone castles, men in plate armour and ballistae batteries left me wildly unimpressed.

The voice acting was fairly well done, though I'd never in a million years consider Ray Winstone for the part of Beowulf and the animation varied between stiff and flat, to fluid and textured. All in all a half way to decent attempt but certainly nothing worth watching twice.

moif world update

Its that time of year again. From December to March, its one long sore throat for moif and this season to be jolly looks set to be no different. The last ten days have seen both Freja and I coughing, wheezing and dribbling to our hearts content. I'm certain this is actually a string of infections, each brought home from the 'virus factory' by the intrepid Snoos. Fortunately I'm used to it so I'll try to keep my virtual moaning to the minimum.

Happily there is some good news amidst this winter darkness. Mette has started her new job as a childrens clothing designer with a recently started company called Milk. I'm looking forwards to seeing how that develops and I'll post updates as time goes by. Hopefully they'll have a web shop up and running just as our good friend Malene has done (thats her shop in my friends online list).
In the mean time, normal blogging will commence here as I get more energy. I've been quietly painting figures for Takshendal and hope to add some images soon.

...thats strange.

Since December 1st, I've notice that opening images on Blogger now requires me to accept the image as a down load (see below image) into a seperate window or directly on to my drive. When ever I try to open an older image I don't get this, and I don't seem to get it any where else but blogger (though its sometimes hard to know when images have been uploaded else where) so I assume its a new feature by Blogger. Has any one else noticed this? I'm assuming this is some kind of new security feature since it happens to me regardless of which browser I'm using.

Artist of the Month: Bernie Wrightson

It doesn't get any better than 'Frankenstein' by Bernie Wrightson. When your talking about ink line illustration as I usually am when I'm talking about 'image making', then this is the definitive work. You don't need to look any further. If you can find a decent copy on e-bay then its worth buying and studying because Wrightson is a brilliant draughtsman whose figurative work is second to none and this is without doubt his master piece. Its easily been the greatest influence on my own imagery, as you can see on my sister blog, JRC-1135. I learned more about image making from a handful of Bernie Wrightson's images than I did from three years at the Kent Institute of Art and Design.


There are several reasons why the pictures in this book are just so amazingly good. First of all there is the feel to them. Wrightson is one of those American 'superhero artists' who usually fall into the trap of monotony, churning out the same muscular figures day after day, but in this instance, Wrightson manages to pull himself up and beyond the stereotypical 'Marvelesque style' and prodces something (in my experince) unique. He does this in three ways: first he does away with the outline and instead works up textures using lines to dscribe tones. This is not all that unique, as old copperplate etchings were often done this way (look at the faces on paper money for example) but Wrightson manages to weld this old fashioned technique to his more modern 'comic book line' producing images which are a hybrid of both styles and yet resemble neither.


Then there is his composition, and here he really excels himself. Unusual compositional formats are two-a-penny in comic books, and thats essentially where Wrightson has learned his art, but here he goes one step further again by combining older styles (the sort of thing one might see in 18th century oils) with modern comic book styles to recreate the sense of an 18th century story seen with modern 'cinematic' vision. His use of silent space for example is sublime and far beyond anything I've seen in comparative works of illustration.

The irony of Wrightsons epic is, he did it all on his own volition. There was no commision, thus he had a free hand. Its too bad for me there isn't a market for high class illustration like this because then this style wouldn't be so obscure (and I'd make more money doing illustrations).

Bernie Wrightson at Wikipedia