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Oldboy, Holy Motors, The Killing of a Sacred Deer
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1416
I've been using my time off to catch up on a few movies. I'd like to say "wisely", but the movies, they've been all of them, every one, the stuff of nightmares.
The first, Oldboy, Korean, dark, I mean way-dark, black-dark, pitch-dark...Good, well acted, some great ideas, but - fucking hell, was it ever dark.
The second, Holy Motors, a variety of Tableaux set in and around Paris. Moments of brilliance, and - of course - of bleak and unrelenting darkness. And a curious - Theme? - if that's the word, brilliantly acted, the fuel of nightmares. I'm still not well, coughing, waking up in the night, I don't need this...
And finally The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Brilliant, savage - and - hey, do I gotta say it? Dark. Fucking bloody hell. In this instance, however, I forgive the darkness, the movie - the most linear and understandable of anything I've watched for a while, but still not even a ray of sunshine - that said, admirable in it's cinematography, execution, in the darkest of personal moments, clipped dialogue ...
...but at the moment I need to find something a bit lighter, a bit more cheery, not necessarily mindless - do the two always have to be mutually exclusive? But I'd like something that rather lifts my spirits for a change, I'm open to recommendations...
Yoann Bourgeois "La mécanique de l'histoire"
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1699
The Mechanics of History...
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Suspense...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
- Hits: 1503
Out the window this morning, a warmer morning than most, and I discover the snow's been curling off the roof....
It's a bit surreal this, hanging low, lower than it should, it has to drop soon...
From the outside, a full curl of packed snow dripping off the roof...
hanging, hanging, waiting, taking photos every half-hour as the day warms up, it's gotta fall...
Icicles at 45 degrees, curled over from the roof...
Go out for a walk, return a couple of hours later, the long slow glaciation has fallen, sheared from the roof...
Better but not well
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2201
So it's been almost 10 days, and while I'm substantially better I'm a long way from well. The fever is generally abated, the coughing is a little more fluid, less painful, there's some shortness of breath that suggests panic, but it's disappearing, overall I'm generally feeling exhausted with waking patches, and when asleep I'm never quite resting, and when awake I'm never quite alert, always a bit of a fog over everything, but well enough to get things done.
These things, these are the abundant illustrations I need to try and sell my kids books. 1 at least, the most current project, I seem to have finally overcome my prejudices against my inability to draw with a "good enough" attitude - when, off the cuff, I'm drawing illustrations to clarify text or rhymes it sometimes comes to pass that I get an illustration that I kinda-rather like. But upon attempting to redraw it I'm faced with error after error, crumpled ball of failed paper after crumpled ball...
...So I've come up with new strategy. You're going to laugh, I don't blame you, it's ridiculous enough - not the technique, rather the decades it's taken me to embrace it.
That is, I do a faint outline of the drawing first in pencil. Get the layout, the figures, the background just right, draw, erase, draw, erase, draw ... until finally I'm ready to ink it, wherein I fill in the drawing, retracing the lines, adding crosshatching ...
Every artist in the world probably does this, or something similar, but to me it's all new. I'm thinking that - just like when I'm hastily jotting notes, I should be able to off-the-cuff doodle an ink masterpiece, and while it works for notes it never works for the final illustration. This pencil - drawing first technique, though, it's working fine - I don't need print-ready illustrations, just good enough to convince a publisher to take a chance on it, find someone of talent to illustrate in in the general direction I'm heading, and for the first time in a long time I'm madly off in the right direction. The drawings, like my health, they're not well or good, but they're an awful lot better...
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