I adapted William Shakespeare's Hamlet into a graphic novel last year, and now it's available. You can find preview images, information on how to get the book, and an explanation of how it was created, right here.
For several years, I've been trying to persuade friends who care about movies to watch Carl Th. Dreyer's Ordet, surely one of my top-5 favorites. However, I've also had to warn them to be careful to read nothing online about it, which doesn't help the case to check out an obscure foreign film from 1954. Finally, Roger Ebert has written a review this movie truly deserves--he interestingly avoids criticism or any discussion of where the plot heads (which ruins it, in so many books and articles) and simply describes the experience of watching it, only up to the point that's necessary to convince you that it's worth seeing. They ought to give him another Pulitzer for casting some more attention on this film.
As much as I enjoy reading Ebert (if not for his actual recommendations all the time), I'm sad to learn that my favorite film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has retired. If you're unfamiliar, there's a nice list of selected reviews and a YouTube interview with him here, courtesy of the Chicago Reader. I credit him with greatly influencing my taste and will miss his film writing very much--though hopefully this will pave the way for new great works from him.
A new page of "Li'l Mell and Sergio" is up on Girlamatic.com today, as normally scheduled. It was fun to play with lighting in a dark environment here within a straight black-and-white comic. I hope my skills are improving with this style.
But Shaenon's story seems to be hitting a nerve regardless--look at the comments on this page from a couple weeks ago!
Okay, I've started using the ol' website again (sorry). It's not totally complete, but let me know what you think of the design. I haven't tested it on different browsers and operating systems, so please speak up if things look out of place or misaligned! And hopefully the unfinished invisible things will stay invisible to everyone, but I know CSS is a liar.
The theme of the collection is a Jamaican myth that inspired the Bob Marley song "Who is Mister Brown." This myth, like many others in modern Jamaican lore, was the result of what could be characterized as mass hysteria. Our concept was that even if one denies supernaturalism, the messages of these stories have a truth of their own, resulting from the way they are forged through collective imagination in a specific political climate.
I'm still technically on hiatus, unable to post comics here (everything I'm working on now must be saved for later, alas), and not willing to clean up the site design just yet; I know that if I get back to it, I'll be distracted by it for several days! However, Flight Volume 4 has now been officially released, and it looks great in print. The reception has been positive, and the book seems to be coming across as intended. In my opinion, the sexiest review so far, to borrow a phrase, is this one from the Onion A.V. Club (you need to scroll down a bit to find it).
Anyhow, I wanted to get back in the habit of blogging about movies and books and other things that interest me. I like to take notes on this sort of thing, so I figure I may as well share them for filler around here. Right now, for instance, I'm consumed with anticipation for this movie:
Although I have to admit that part of me buys into the romantic notion of movies as lost treasures (like the last original print of The Passion of Joan of Arc found in near-pristine quality in a mental hospital, or the original version of John Cassavettes' Shadows, lost in a Subway car and found in an attic decades later, or the long lost extended cut of Greed), it's really the sincerity of these clips that moves me. I'll get a couple chances to see it in San Francisco next month, and I'm counting the days. On the other hand, I'm kind of dreading an approaching deadline around that time as well. Hopefully, trekking up to the city to watch this movie will be a nice reward after a hard month.
Back in February I posted about how I wanted to find the font that Chip Kidd uses for his Osamu Tezuka book designs. Recently, I finally got a comp copy of "Ode to Kirihito" (it holds up on re-reading very well!), and I wondered about the font again. Here's the solution:
I used a very nifty website called What the Font (on myfont.com), which reads images of text, then allows you to correct its guesses as to which letters/glyphs it has scanned, and finally offers suggestions as to the font. I don't know if it always works this well, but it's certainly a promising initial course of action.
Binh (mentioned earlier) is featured in the March issue of Giant Robot magazine, with lots of big glossy photos of his California Biennial exhibit, and some other pieces. The interview by Martin Wong is practical and humorous; I wish mainstream fine art journalism would sway a bit more like this. And in fact, Martin's simply articulated impression of the work is among the more eloquent that I've come across:
"...The effect is haunting, as if humanity's violent history has been witnessed, processed, and archived by nature itself."
I found this book in the "teen" section of the library, and it is amazing! I've never seen a "late-period" Tezuka book before--it's like if Sam Fuller (wiki) were Japanese and drew comics. I'm trying to hold off on finishing it.
But anyhow, does anybody know what font that is for the title? It's the perfect blocky font I've been looking for. Or, if Chip Kidd made it himself, do you know of anything similar?
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
rumrug's journal
