Jason's Blog, page 71

Nancy Kahlo

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

The third film in the triology by Roy Andersson, APSOABROE is maybe the darkest and most enigmatic. What is it about? Uhm.. The broken dream of Scandinavia? There's less of a story here than in Songs from the Second Floor, which is still his masterpiece. The closest we get to main characters is a pair of novelty salesmen who keep turning up. As usual with Andersson each scene is one long take filmed with a static camera. There is one particulary long and complicated scene that involves horses and soldiers marching. You almost wish there would be a number in the corner of the screen at the end of each scene, showing how many takes it took to get it right.

Signings / Dédicace

Azimuts, Montpellier                     May 30, 3 PM
Super Heros, Paris                        June 9, 6 PM
Oslo Comics Expo                         June 11-13

Diploma sketches

Diploma CCS

James Sturm asked me if I wanted to draw a diploma for the graduating students at The Center for Cartoon Studies, and I said sure, why not. Good luck out in the real world! Be careful out among the English!

Mad Margo

Mad Max: Fury Road
The pre-title sequence gave me a bad feeling. I found the MTV style fast editing unappealing. The saturated colour made everything look unreal, and the flashbacks of the dead daughter were annoying. It's hard not to compare this film to the second one, which was pretty much perfect. That film was better structured, and Max was a more interesting character. In this one I enjoyed the insanity of the last chase sequence, but you could see a lot of it was filmed against a greenscreen, and it takes you out of the film a bit. In the second one, it was all filmed on camera, and how all the stuntmen survived that film is a miracle. That authenticity and feeling of real speed is hard to beat. Also, there weren't any memorable small moments, like the kid getting the musicbox in the second film. 

Fargo season 1
Aw Jeez, I didn't have any expectations for this series. Maybe that's why it delivered, and then some. I enjoyed the show more than True Detective, especially the strangeness of the eight episode, and then, that ninth episode was just incredible. If you look up "tension" in the dictionary, there must be a photo from this episode, I betcha, yah.

Mad Max: Fargo Road

Mad Max: Fury Road
The pre-title sequence gave me a bad feeling. I found the MTV style fast editing unappealing. The saturated colour made everything look unreal, and the flashbacks of the dead daughter were annoying. It's hard not to compare this film to the second one, which was pretty much perfect. That film was better structured, and Max was a more interesting character. In this one I enjoyed the insanity of the last chase sequence, but you could see a lot of it was filmed against a greenscreen, and it takes you out of the film a bit. In the second one, it was all filmed on camera, and how all the stuntmen survived that film is a miracle. That authenticity and feeling of real speed is hard to beat. Also, there weren't any memorable small moments, like the kid getting the musicbox in the second film. 

Fargo season 1
I didn't have any expectations for this series. Maybe that's why it delivered, and then some. I enjoyed the show more than True Detective. The strangeness of the eight episode, and that ninth episode was just incredible. If you look up "tension" in the dictionary, there must be a photo from this episode, I betcha, yah.

Happy Birthday to my Dad!

Some books I've read 21

L'étranger by Albert Camus
Okay, I can cross off Camus on the list of people I have never read! Woo-hoo! And the book is written in a quite simple language so I could read it in French. Actually, it still feels fresh, and makes me want to check out his other books.

Ceux de la Nuit by David Goodis
This is the French version of Night Squad. The book is kind of slow, and doesn't have the kind of desperation or bleakness about it that I've enjoyed in his best books. Actually, it has quite a hopeful ending, and of course, we don't really approve of that sort of thing on this blog.

Face à face by Gunnar Staalesen
Not one of his best books. The  story takes place mostly in Bergen, but with short stops in Oslo and Möre. The plot seems to be almost a variation of Chandler's The Lady in The Lake, and the whodunnit part of the book is maybe not the most convincing. His language is pretty straight forward, so it's good practice to read it in French.

La nuit, tous les loups sont gris by Gunnar Staalesen
An all Bergen story set in the early eighties, the plot going back to the second World War. It's another book that works pretty well, and then the credibility goes out the window a bit at the end, with the killer, holding a gun in his hand, explaining why he did it instead of just shooting the detective. There are 11 Varg Veum books in French, and I've gotten it in my head to read all of them.

Autant en emporte la femme by Erlend Loe
The debut novel, I believe, by Loe who later wrote Naive. Super. I read it in Norwegian when it came out over twenty years ago, representing this completely new voice in Norwegian litterature - the voice of generation X, in some way, but you can't really hold that against him. It holds up pretty well.

Palookaville 22 by Seth
Beautifully designed, as always. Apparently the penultimate chapter of Clyde Fans. I look forward to the next book so I finally can reread the whole thing. Possibly, Seth's cartoony drawing style fits better in It's A Good Life than in the darker, more Chris Ware influenced recent chapters of this story. There's also another chapter of Nothing Lasts, his childhood memoir, drawn in a looser style.

Shoplifter by Michael Cho
I like his Mazzucchelli inflenced drawings and the use of colour, but I felt no connection to the story, maybe because it's about a girl in her twenties and I'm not.

Le jour le plus long du futur by Lucas Varela
Moebius meets Chris Ware? A comic without text that also seems influenced by video games.

Doodlefinger