I'm Only Funny on Paper

I'm Only Funny on Paper

A comic.

The 50 States Project.

Another installment of my Superhero for every state idea.  This week it's Missouri.

This uncompromising hero gets villains drunk.  'Nuff said.

TGIF!

TGIF

Thank God it's Friday!

The FAT Buddha!

How many times have you met someone from the periphery of your own friends and somehow the conversation allows them to tell you that they are a Buddhist, and somehow you don't by it.  It goes kind of like this:

Them ~ "Oh, I used to be Christian, but now I'd consider myself a Buddhist."

You ~ "Really?"

Them ~ "Yeah, I like the whole thing about peace and understanding and meditation, its cool."

You ~ "How ofter do you meditate, and what tradition do you follow."

Them ~ "I don't really meditate or anything, but I definitely like the religion."

Now its not for me to say that they are not a Buddhist, but... I don't know how to finish that sentence.  Look, I'll admit that I knew about the same amount of info on Buddhism at one time, but when a real Buddhist gave a brief lesson in what its all about, I stopped thinking that I knew anything about it.  I started looking into it, and I saw it as something Much more.
In that research, however, I discovered something troubling...

This jolly fellow is NOT Buddha.
Now when I saw not Buddha, I am talking about the man, not the idea.  If we're talking Buddha the idea, which involves all conscious beings and says that they all have a deeper nature that is greater than the superficial material that makes up our ego, then yes, this is a Buddha. 
BUT, if we are talking the MAN, Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, then no, it most assuredly is not.

This is a representation of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, with a little less flab.

This is Keanu Reeves as Siddhartha Gautama.  Yeah, that's what I said.

The real identity of the Chubby one is that of Hotei, an eccentric Zen monk out of China.  His name literally means "Cloth Sack" but its not supposed to be referring to him, but to the bindle he carries with him everywhere.  He would wander around, shelling out things from his sack for people, even sweets for children.  So that makes 'cloth sack" here a zen Buddhist Santa Claus, only, he doesn't judge you like St Nick.

And I'll bet santa never hid in his sack from dancing mice before.

 To be honest, making this distinction isn't as important as the distinction between the historical Buddha and the living Buddha.  The Living Buddha, that is each on of us, is what is more important than any historical figure.  You are the Buddha.

And once again, this is Keanu Reeves.

Creators: Don Bluth

Creators

A growing list of influential Artists, Writers, Poets, Filmmakers, and Creatives.

Don Bluth

Master of his chosen craft, Don Bluth is the animator responsible for many of my fondest childhood memories of movies.  For all who don't know his work from another's, I'll enlighten you on his signature stuff.

Robin Hood (1973)

His first work for Disney started way back with some assistant work on Sleeping beauty (one of my favorites) and then later he did some major work on two of my favorite disney movies ever.  Robin Hood is up there on my list of great animation, as well as The Rescuers, which he also worked on.  Both were watched a squillion times in my childhood.  

An America Tail (1986)

This one was a frequent watch when i was a kid.  But the part of it that I didn't like is what I think makes it stand out as a great story.  When he loses his family, I always got scared and sad for Fievel, and I think that's strength in a story, when you can make people feel unpleasant emotions for a fictional character.

Fievel Goes West (1991)

The goofy sequel has some heart to it, but is mostly entertaining because Jimmy Stewart plays a burping hound dog.

The Land Before Time (1988)

I watched this movie a zillion times and can occasionally hear ducky saying, "yep yep yep" in the back of my brain.  If you didn't see this one (the first one) I pity your deprived childhood, and if you plan on having kids, be sure to share it (the first one) with them.  Most of Bluth's stories get you involved quickly with the characters and then put them in great peril to up the stakes of your involvement. 

Dragon's Lair (1983)

Without a doubt, the first time I saw this game, it left a big impression on me.  Bluth's Idea for this one was grand: Create an animated videogame that played out like a animated movie, but is based off a player's choices.  I felt so inspired when I played through it, and its an amazing bit of animation anyway, let alone for an arcade game from the 80s. 

I started studying animation anatomy and technique after seeing it.

The sequel was even better.

Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp

Love the piano scene.

Thumbelina (1994)

Thumbelina was watched in my house often thanks to my sister.  This song always hit me where it dances. 

Anastasia (1997)

Anastasia was by far his biggest success, and I have to agree with that, since it is absolutely gorgeous to look at.

And that is Don Bluth in a nutshell.  He did many other great animated movies like The Secret of Nimh and All Dogs go to Heaven, but I stuck to the ones that left an impression on me.  Check out his stuff, you really can't go wrong.

I'm Only Funny On Paper

I'm Only Funny On Paper

A comic.

In the future, don't get caught wearing red.

TGIF!

TGIF!

Thank God It's Friday!

CLOUD ATLAS!

It's out!  The best movie that I saw all of last year is out on DVD n'such this week and I wanted to commemorate it with a extra special post.  For those of you who still haven't seen it, you should for 2 reasons:
1. It's a great film.
2. You can't read this blog post without seeing it.

Seriously, you can't.  If you need further reason to see it, here is the trailer that will give you goosebumps. 

 

So, now are you going to see it?

Well go on then, I'll wait here.  Seriously, don't read any further...

I was hoping to avoid saying it, but...

Spoiler Warning!

Ok, you've seen it.  Good, so for everyone who has seen it, lets begin.

What does it all mean?  With a movie this massive, its not always easy to tie everything together.  Cloud Atlas' particular goal as a movie is to show how everything's tied together, from one person to another, and across time and space.  There is a certain level of vagueness to how they string everything together that one could draw any conclusion that one wished to.  That, I believe, is the strength of the film.  After seeing it once, I developed two possible ways of seeing the film, and upon talking to my girlfriend, I  saw another.  For this TGIF, I wanted to share with you three ways that I see that Cloud Atlas shows that "Everything's connected."

The Atheist View

This view, I must admit, was given to me from an outside influence.  Prior to seeing the movie myself, there were several things I had read and interviews I had seen that talked about this perspective on the movie.  This perspective is that the film portrays life interfered with by any metaphysical influence, and that our actions in life have a ripple effect across the planet that reaches beyond our time.  This logic sees each actor's portrayal of an individual character as being unrelated to any other role they played.  So Hugo Weaving's hitman character has nothing to do with the evil nurse character, and so on.  Watching the movie this way, you see quite plainly how the writings of the hopeful abolitionist inspired a composer, whose love affair led a journalist onto the truth, whose novelization of her work motivated a publisher to make some mistakes, whose film portrayal gave confidence to a clone, whose insight formed a faith that gave solidarity to a fractured people.  Now that I think of it, this version is saying, "The only way to achieve  immortality is to get published."  Now I know I'm over-simplifying the story, and there are many other influences on these events, but this is the basic connectivity of the stories.  What one can take away from this interpretation, as in the following two, is what you do matters.  Beyond ourselves as individuals, what we do, and what we are inside and out, has an effect on everything around us.  So, without the need for any deity, we can see our relationship to the past, present, and future.

This view of the story is quite possibly the simplest, but it is still profound.  While it works, there were other factors at play as I watched the film that made me see the stories in a more complex way.

The Hindu Veiw

I'm good with faces, so following the actor through their many roles wasn't too hard.  As I was watching,  I noticed a pattern within the characters, that I thought, was trying to show me something.  To sum up this view of the story, I have chosen to refer to the Hindu belief in Reincarnation: Specifically, that each individual carries the deeds and misdeeds from their previous lives until they either become aware, and become one with Brahman, or not.  What I saw in the film, was that each character played by a certain actor was a reincarnated form of the previous character that actor played.  The characters themselves have some trait that sets them either on a path to awareness and harmony, or spiraling down to hell.  You may not exactly see what I mean, so I'll give you an example.  I'll use Tom Hanks' characters since the narrative thread is easiest to see.

When we first meet him, he is digging up corpses to steal their teeth.  And later in the same story, he poisons a man to steel his chest of gold.  The Trait that Tom Hank's soul has attached to it is greed.  The end of this life, sees little to no progress.

The next life, he is still hung up on his greed, taking everything the broke composer has left, even his clothes.  We see a little remorse from this life, but not much.

In the next life he is working for a corrupt businessman with very little scruples, but, once he meets the journalist, he starts to come around.  But his chance for redemption is cut short by a bomb on a plane.

In 2012, he has regressed to his greediness in the form of a criminal turned author who kills in cold blood to sell more books.  At this point there is little hope for redemption.

But, in this final life, we see his redemption.  Note the green jewel on his neck.  That's the same kind of stone that he stole in the form of the button when we first saw him, the same color of vest that he stole from the composer, etc... The pivotal point where the cannibal has a knife to his throat and he literally breaks away from it's hold to save himself and another is his moment of release from Samsara, and he has lost his attachment to greed.

I know what you're saying.  "Dan, does it work for other characters?"  Why yes it does.

Hugo Weaving's characters make a beeline descent.  He starts as an upholder of the slave system, then he persecutes the composer, then he becomes a killer, then a cold overbearing nurse, then a callous bureaucrat, and finally, after his soul has become so corrupt and deformed, he had become a demonic spirit of temptation.

Hugh Grant's characters all live off of people.  He goes from living off their slave labor to literally eating them.  

It works for other characters too, but I won't spoil the fun of it.  Try and find what the narrative curve is for other characters.

This was my broad vision of the movie, but even though it's more complex than the first view of it, it still has the same idea at heart: What you do matters.  Who you are inside and out and what you do has an effect on everything around you and far beyond.  

The Soul Mates View

In the third view of Cloud Atlas, we have my girlfriend to thank.  It is more complicated than the first but not as complicated as the second.  This theory also holds to reincarnation, but unlike the Hindu version I saw, this is not about a group of people but only two: The lover in trouble and the one who saves them.  In this vision, you just need to follow the birthmark.

The one with the Birthmark in the story is the the Lover in Peril.  They are the protagonist, and the one in need of rescue.  And in every case, their true love, in various forms, attempts to save them through force, affection, or inspiration.  And the two lovers are not always together romantically in each story, sometimes they can't be together, or don't need to be.  It begins with the young man saving the slave and in turn the slave saving the man.  Then we have the composer needing the love of a man he s forced not to be with.  The story of love goes on from each life, just follow the birthmark.  And in each and every case, they are the same pair of souls, just in different bodies.  In the end, they save each other, and they get to be together.  And, as always: What you do matters.  Who you are inside and out and what you do has an effect on everything around you and far beyond. 

These are not the only ways to see the film.  A infographic breakdown on the themes and archetypes at play in the film has shown a more literary breakdown of the story.  You can also have no particular view of it I suppose, but I think a movie like this makes you think more than others do.

Because the sound of it is so joyous and uplifting, here's the song that played out the trailer.

What you do matters.

Creators: Bob Kane

Creators

A growing list of influential artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, and creatives.

Bob Kane

I've already covered the creators of Superman, the original superhero, now I'll show my respect for part of the Dynamic Duo that created that weird creature of the night... Batman!  Kane was another Jewish kid with bold ideas and a pen in his hand.  He was high school friends with Will Eisner, and spent much of his earlier career freelancing his skills as an artist (kinda like me).  After Superman bounced onto the scene, Bob along with so many others rushed to create their own costumed superheroes.  Bob's idea came from 3 specific sources:

Douglas Fairbanks as Zorro (from "The Mark of Zorro")

Da Vinci's Ornithopter design

and "The Bat Whispers" from 1930, which gave Kane this...

and this...

and whatever the HELL that is.

So, when Kane put it all together he got...

...this.

Needless to say, we're all glad that his writer pal Bill Finger gave him a few suggestions to improve the look of it.  So by May of 1939, kids would get to look on the stand and see something from their nightmares swinging off the page.

 

For 10 cents back in 1939 you could buy the first issue of Batman.  Kane and Finger went on to establish the look, feel, and prowess of their new detective, and quickly found that their character struck a chord with its readership.

Though fairly crude, his artwork became a standard of comic work, and like all artists got better with time.

I love Bob's Joker.  There's no silliness here, he's just downright scary.

and he'll kill you!

Robin was apparently supposed to be the Watson to Batman's Sherlock.  but why didn't he wear pants?

Besides, Batman works better alone.

To make a long story short (too late) Bob the humble artist left a pretty enormous impact on the world with his funnybook idea.  That's my plan too.

 Long live the Bat-Man!

I'm Only Funny on Paper

I'm Only Funny On Paper

A comic.

Monday Edition!

The 50 States Project!

So its not Monday, who cares!  I had a lot of stuff to do.  Anyway, I'm going to pop off 2 posts today to make up for my laziness.  Ya dig?

New Hampshire

From the Granite state comes what would appear to be a mild-mannered Mountaineer, but the truth is when this hero clicks his L.L. Bean duck boots together, he turns into Old Man Mountain, a being of solid stone. The only problem is that once he turns into the mountain, he's stuck in that position until he changes back. His greatest foes: Father Time & Erosion... definitely Erosion.

Creators: Ray Harryhausen

Creators

A growing list of influential artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, and creatives.

Ray Harryhausen

This week, I've come back to the blogging game, and I couldn't think of doing a creators post about anyone other than Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013), the father of special effects and stop motion animation.  The man is responsible for the state of digital effects we have today due to his own innovation and implementation of stop motion effects.  Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and so many others wouldn't have been inspired to create bigger without the movies the Harryhausen added his magic to.

But enough talk, lets get to showing off why Ray will never be forgotten.

Mighty Joe Young (1949)

Now lets be clear, he didn't invent the process of stop motion animation.  Willis H. O'Brien invented the process for the film The Lost World (1925) and made famous in King Kong (1933).  Harryhausen was inspired by what he saw, and decided to get into animating.  What Ray did with stop-motion that set him apart was his ability to integrate complex creatures and actions into equally complex live-action sequences.  Mighty Joe Young was just the beginning.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms  (1953)

 

This one has one of my favorite Harryhausen creatures.  Who doesn't love a giant rampaging lizard.

It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955)

You don't really need a plot for this one.  Giant octopus attacks San Francisco: GO.  Here we see Harryhausen's love of tentacled monsters first come out.  We'll see more of this later.

The Animal World (1956)

 Now here is a gem.  This sequence is full of old science and illogical anatomy, but Ray makes you believe those movements.  its in the details, the moving while remaining still that trick you into thinking its alive.

This brief clip was a test for one of his dream jobs, animating effects for a War of the Worlds rendition.  Sadly it never happened, but its still neat to see an animators fan art.  So lets move on from giant raidioactive monsters and get fantastic.

Earth Vs the Flying Saucers (1956)

No tentacles here, just spinning saucers.  Highly influential on Tim Burton, I must say.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

This is all kinds of Harryhausen awesome.  I love the movement of the cyclops the most.  Take a moment to realize that he had to think of these movements one frame at a time, at 30 frames per second. 

Mysterious Island  (1961)

Watch for the bee, its amazing.

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

 Dynarama!

Now here is the most jaw dropping scene Ray ever did, in my opinion.  just enjoy it.

One Million Years BC(1966)

Dinosaurs and Raquel Welch: what more could anyone ask?

The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

 Gotta love Cowboys and dinosaurs. Watch that tail swish!

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)

Six armed sword fighting goddess... Take that General Grievous!

Clash of the Titans (1981)

Here we have arguably the most famous of his works.  Here we see Harryhausen, going out in style, by pulling out every trick he learned in his career: undulating snakes, flapping birds, jittery insects, graceful men, and twitching tentacles.  Here is the last example of his patented Dynarama, being put to good use.  I think his mind always existed in myth and fantasy; in the distant past or far into the future.  He lived through his imagination so we could expand our own.

Lets send him off right.  We'll miss you Ray.