Pale Blue Eyes

The Baby

Directed by Ted Post. Starring Anjanette Comer, Ruth Roman, Marianna Hill, Suzanne Zenor, David Manzy, Beatrice Manly. 1973.

A 21 yr old man-baby wrapped in a giant diaper, tortured and abused by his mother and two sisters. A social worker called Ann Gentry may be his only hope...

One of my all time favourites. Twisted Brilliance!

The Picture of Dorian Gray and George Sanders.

Warner home Video have finally released Albert Lewin's 1945 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray on DVD.

From DVD Beaver:

Generally underrated version of Oscar Wilde's Faustian tale about a young Victorian gentleman who sells his soul to retain his youth, directed with loving care by the equally underrated Lewin (best known, perhaps, for Pandora and the Flying Dutchman). Hatfield - cool, beautiful, and effortlessly suggesting the corruptibility of Dorian's dark soul - is excellent, though even he is overshadowed by the cynical, epigrammatic brilliance of Sanders as Lord Henry. With elegant fin de siècle sets superbly shot by Harry Stradling, and the ironic Wildean wit understated rather than overplayed, it's that rare thing: a Hollywoodian literary adaptation that both stays faithful and does justice to its source.






The fantastic final painting by Ivan Albright. This is the only time that the movie reverts to colour and it really does have the required impact of offsetting the viewer. Grotesque.

It truly is an amazing movie, but really drew me to the movie was the man pictured below:


I believe my first introduction to Sanders was with the seminal British science fiction movie Village of the Damned and strangely enough this was one of the few movies where he did not play a complete cad. Although even when he was in the role of an acerbic unlikeabe rogue, his mischievous, almost playful delivery always give him a little more substance and depth than other such actors. His upper-class English accent and refined intellectual condescension and bite seemed more like reasonable character based insight rather than assassination; like a school teacher reprimanding his pupil.

Great piece on the man here: A Mitigated Cad.

Apparently Sanders had quite a few personal problems and was not the most agreeable of men in real life, he committed suicide in 1972 at the age of 65. His suicide note read:

“Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”

Whatever his personal problems I will always remember him as one of Britain's finest actors.

Recommended George Sanders viewing:
Rebecca, Foreign correspondent, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, All About Eve, Village of the Damned, The Jungle Book, Psychomania.

Charlie Brown

My anus is bleeding!

It's a long time since I seen this Don Hertzfeld animation. Still makes me laugh.





Thankyou skullofsidon for bringing this to my attention. Your right, this is the best rendition of this song (EVER!)

The Walking Dead.

Me and the family.


I love family portraits, don't you?

With apologies to Charlie Adlard.

P Craig Russell

Joe Bloke has posted some early comic work of P Craig Russell over here. It's a lot less controlled and defined than his later work as he was obviously still in the early stages of developing his signature style. Personally, I love the rawness of it. Wonderful stuff!

Tunes

Fear(s) of the Dark

This looks interesting:

FEAR(S) OF THE DARK is a wildly inventive and visually dazzling collection of fearful tales by six of the worlds most renowned comic and graphic artists - Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, and Richard McGuire. From a besotted student whose girlfriend is weirdly ardent in her affections, to a Japanese schoolgirl menaced by a long-dead samurai, and a pack of hounds on a bloodthirsty rampage, FEAR(S) has a story strand to trouble every sleep - not to mention a stunning range of animation styles. Shot in shimmering black and white, the six intertwined tales create an unprecedented epic where phobias and nightmares come to life and reveal Fear at its most naked and intense.



Although I would have to ask why they couldn't have kept the Charles Burn's stuff traditional 2D rather than the rather crap looking 3D approach which they seem to have gone with? Burn's work would lend itself perfectly to 2D or even flash, just look at Vincent Paronnaud's Persepolis for proof of that.

I'll reserve judgement until I see it.

www.coverbrowser.com

Click on over to coverbrowser. Based on the sheer amount and variety of the content I am sure you'll find something of interest.

The Jon Dore Television Show

I was introduced to this guys stuff through one of my co-workers, a Mr JohnnyD.

Funniest thing I've seen in a while:

The Amazing Adventures of Kid Cole & Klay

The Amazing Adventures of Kid Cole & Klay from Stephane coedel on Vimeo.

Snatched this one from The Galvinator.

Yesterday's Tomorrows.

Finally someone has collected up Rian Hughes comic work and gave it the hardback treatment it so richly deserves. The book is: Yesterday's Tomorrows.



Included in the book is the Dan Dare strip, originally published in Revolver and subsequently, Crisis. It is quite a while since I had read it(early nineties to be precise)and even though I actually remember liking Morrison's take on the character- it was the art that was the true star.

This was pre-photoshop/illustrator and yet Hughes art looks as if it was freshly digitized on a Mac. Rather than trying to emulate the classical style of Hampson, Hughes clean line, retro/fifties style still, quite strangely, sits comfortably within the Dare universe.
This is probably due to the sheer beauty of Hughes art and design, which in itself retains some of the clinical elegance(at least in tone)of the original.

Strongly recommended.

*Looks like this was released in June of last year...but hey it's new to me!

I hate being in front of a camera and I think it shows in this really quite "stilted" interview from over a year ago.


See how I start to drift at the end into a incomprehensible ramble, finally leaving the poor interviewer with a "Please just go!" look of exasperation.

Now my Mug is on bloody YOUTUBE, well that's just dandy!! Can I get an injunction? Please...!!!

As we are on the subject of Storm Hawks I thought I would add this:

Some people have just too much time on their hands!>

War is Hell!

Another quick sketch on the cintiq of Sgt Rock. Not the greatest but I thought I would post anyway.

My son has become a bit of a fan of Easy Company since browsing through my Azzarello/Kubert's Between Hell and a Hard Place. Since then he has picked up
the Showcase edition Sgt Rock, The Unknown Soldier and is also collecting
Wildstorm's Storming Paradise.

He was very interested in War Stories by Garth Ennis, but being only ten years of age - I had to draw the line. So as a compromise I gave him Veitch's Army@Love instead.

I kid, I kid.......!!

At least with Sgt Rock, he is being exposed to some fine comic art with the great Joe Kubert.

Hopefully he'll progress at some point onto Charley's War.

There Will Be Blood.

Finally got to play around with the Cintiq this weekend, so here is one of my first quick sketches.

The Punisher? Or is it just Bill Savage with a Punisher T-Shirt on?

Shark and Gorilla ...

High fiving!

Country Life Butter.

Woe is me!



Snatched from Piley's blog.

Sleeveface

Brilliant...

Halloween

The great thing about North America is the obvious love they have for everything Halloween. I took my son Trick n' Treating last night and the effort that was put into some of the exterior house displays was just fantastic, so much so that my son blatantly refused to enter some of them as he deemed them to be "Way too Scary!"



Tonight I went to Fright Night at Playland here in Vancouver. It wasn't the complete scare fest that I had hoped for (in reality it was just the usual rides re-dressed with a few skeleton heads and cobwebs added for effect) but it did have some really excellent horror displays and a few good haunted house set ups.


















I loved this Diner display...




Eyeballs and fingers - tasty!



I also took The Final Ride, which basically consisted of lying down in a closed coffin as some Hammer House of Horror type dialogue was piped in:

"This one is rather portly, the sooner we get him down the hole the better."

Cheeky bastards!

Then the coffin would wobble and lurch side to side as I was was supposedly lowered( more-so dropped) into the grave. It was kinda crap to be honest, but seemed like a rather fitting end to the night.




Happy Halloween!