Happy New Year

Wine tasting with Steve Brule...


Full version (not the greatest quality) here

Thanks to halfsquatch for turning me on to this...

Loomis

Found a bunch of good anatomy reference online today at this site:fineart.sk

There is actually some decent stuff and a lot of further links to the actual "pay" sites. What I found of interest was the four complete anatomy books by Andrew Loomis they have on show.

Leatherface

Convention sketch...


NEIL VOKES

Buck Ham Panel

Another drawing on the Cintiq of... well, I hope it's pretty obvious!

The Ghost Train

The Ghost Train is a film I always loved as a kid.

My son was introduced to it a few months back as it was playing on TCM: Sadly it was eight in the morning and he had to get off to school, so he missed the last twenty minutes.

I have finally picked up a copy (well,to more exact as a download from Veoh. God bless em!)So we will be enjoying the movie in full tomorrow.

One thing I did not know was that the original play "The Ghost Train" was actually written by Arnold Ridley who you may know better as Private Godfrey in Dad's Army.

Good piece on the movie and its origins here if your at all interested.

DEAD SET

Dead Set is a five-part horror thriller created by English comic writer Charlie Brooker. The series is set in the Big Brother house, and was first aired on E4 on 27 October 2008. The five episodes, aired over five consecutive nights, chronicle a zombie outbreak that strands housemates and production staff inside the Big Brother house. Although the house is one of the only places left where people can shelter from the zombie attack, the infection soon seeps in.

---

Kelly,Space,Marky,Veronica,Pippa and Joplin are sat around the Big Brother studio trying to figure out why the dead are coming back to life.

Joplin interjects by quoting the book of Revelation:

“The sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead that were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.”

(Pause)Everyone looks at Joplin, slightly perplexed. Joplin continues...

“Judgement day! It’s in the Bible!”

“You can’t wheel out the Bible.”

“Hold on a minute, I thought you were an atheist?”

“Yes.”

“Are you trying to say that God’s punishing us or summit?"

“No, I’m not saying God is…”

Veronica interupts...

“You know that Iraq, yeah? I never agreed to that in the first place, so that wouldn’t be fair anyway! And you know that other place- Palistinia…”

Joplin tries to get back on track:

“I’m not even saying there is a God: but if there is, maybe all this is happening, because he, she or - it, is judging our culture and spiting us accordingly!”

Marky ponders for a second:

"Yeah but, why be such a cunt about it?"



Excerpt from EP:4

Christmas Goodness

Lifted from: satyrblade

*Frozen Wellies

Well, it has been snowing like crazy here in Vancouver on and off for the past three to four days. I even had to buy my first pair of Canadian "Wellies" out of sheer necessity!(Well they are not actually Wellies; more like generic big black boots- I just like the term Wellies!)





Happy holidays folks!
I better do some family stuff....

Laters!

C.


*With apologies to Fluff...


Oh, and before I forget- here's some added Christmas cheer with Henrietta and Merna as they sing "Go Tell It On The Mountain"

(Via Boingboing)

Claude Cahun/Anita Berber

Below are two images that have always fascinated me, the first is of the surrealist artist Claude Cahun and the second is the fantastic painting by Otto Dix of Anita Berber. If was not for this painting, Berber would be largely unknown today...

Two remarkable women, way ahead of their time...



Claude Cahun was the artist pseudonym for Lucy Schwob who lived in Jersey with her stepsister Suzanne Malherbe (artist pseudonym Marcel Moore) from 1937 until her death in 1954. Cahun was a writer and photographer who produced provoking self-portraits often using costumes or masks as a way of exploring her identity. Her images are enigmatic and can be described as rash and subtle, inviting and rejecting, sexual and asexual.


Anita Berber was a notorious actor/dancer/poet/playwright who scandalized sex-obsessed Weimar Berlin during the 1920s. In an era where everything was permitted, Anita Berber's celebrations of "Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy" were condemned and censored. She often haunted Weimar Berlin's hotel lobbies, nightclubs and casinos, radiantly naked except for an elegant sable wrap, a pet monkey hanging from her neck, and a silver brooch packed with cocaine. Multi-talented Anita saw no boundaries between her personal life and her taboo-shattering performances. As such, she was Europe's first postmodern woman.

Books worth picking up:

The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin's Priestess of Decadence.

Glitter and Doom: German portraits from the 1920s

Don't Kiss Me: The Art Of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore



Thanks to e-l-i-s-e for reminding me of the Dix painting-

The Punisher

I was never really a big Punisher fan.

It was not until Garth Ennis took over scripting duties with his excellent 'Welcome Back,Frank' storyline that I sat up and started to pay attention.

His take on N.Ireland and the Troubles sits well with me too; never preachy, bigoted or exploitative but rather a much more honest, even handed, insight... which for the most part is similar to my own views regarding the absolute senseless stupidity of it all.

Anyway, that's for another post.

Punisher War Zone.



Well again- I watched this as a freebie (thank Christ!) Actually don't be expecting a drawn out review- because in reality I scrolled through it, watching in effect about six minutes. Some of you may ask how can I have the -sheer audacity- to post a review based on six minutes of viewing time? I would respond "Quite easily: Sit the f**k down and pin back your ears muppet!"

I really enjoyed Ray Stevenson in the HBO series Rome and felt he could be a good Frank Castle. The brilliant Dominic West also stars as the villain Jigsaw (and well you know my feelings on The Wire)

From what I did watch, Dominic West has this awful heavy Brooklyn accent that made him sound like Al Pacino as Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy- which is fine if your going for a comical take on the subject matter -this certainly wasn't! In fact that seems to be the main problem. It comes across as quite a mixed bag, not really sure of the direction it wanted to take; comic book broad-stroke, serious crime drama or a pastiche of both. This was also the problem of the previous movie.

Stevenson, seemed to play it pretty straight, trying to add some kind of reality to the proceedings, but his performance came across as quite flat.

The violence has your typical slow-mo, balletic over-staged and overplayed visual to it with no real substance or context.

To be honest I just lost interest. It was little more than white noise after a while and that's when I started to scroll.

I know, I know- it's a Punisher movie, it's not Ingmar Bergman. It's a guy that runs around with a giant skull emblazoned across his chest, but that's no reason why they can't give this character and his world a decent plot with a little more depth...and that brings me back to the Ennis Punisher.

Ennis did find the appropriate balance between the more comedic elements,level of violence and heart of the character. He made the world "real" or as real as a character who goes by the name of The Punisher can be. He knew when and how to play the very obvious 'tongue in cheek' humor and when we did have the excessive violence it came from somewhere;there was a reason for it! Yeah, of course at times he was going for the extreme visual or shock impact- but it always had context.

So I picked up his latest take aptly titled: Punisher War Zone. This is under the Marvel Knights Imprint and reteams him with his partner in crime Steve Dillon.



This was a much more satisfactory way to spend six minutes.

Susan George

Yeah I know...



At first I thought it was kinda 'kitschy cool.'

But c'mon Daleks should be dangerous, bad ass metal monsters!
This one looks like it's saying "Take me, I'm all yours you sassy devil!"

I guess this is what happens when you get 'Russell T Davis' to decorate your Xmas tree.

In fact the more I look at it, the more it resembles:



A Clanger (in a skirt and helmet)

Ginger Spice

Hannah Montanna (Garish, loud and obnoxious)

Henry the VIII

Gary Barlow (same shape)

C3Po's Missus!

Donald Trump

Barbie (Russell T. Davis Limited edition)

Russell T Davis

Gary Glitter

Russell Grant (Sorry, I meant to say Russell T Davis)

Rosie O'Dowd (Dressed as Barbarella)

But mostly it reminds of the lovely-








PAT BUTCHER!



Yeah! That is Pat looking right at you!

FFFRRRANNNNNKKKK!!!!!!!

It's almost like the above picture of Pat was digitally manipulated ever so slightly into the Xmas Dalek. Amazing what they can do these days...



What or who does it remind you of dear reader!? Answers on a postcard to ....

He's a Belfast boy, born and bred.

Today Friday the 19th is my old man's birthday.

Seventy years of age.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!



You miserable old git!

Gimmie a break, it's a father, son thing!

Here's some Johnny Cash:

Crime series does pay... huge emotional dividends

This was released today...



$200

...

I'm not going to buy it.

I already have season 2 to 5 as box sets.

No, seriously- I'm not, no way- forget it! That would just be, well... "Spendthrift."




God! It's lovely though isn't it? All those shiny discs; 23 in total.
It also has three previously unreleased prequel episodes made especially for the box set.

Come to think of it, you'll probably get the prequel episodes on 'Youtube'

I'll just check...

...

Just a sec.

...

Well yeah, you can and they are only one to two minutes apiece. Not exactly a selling point is it?






That "When Bunk met McNulty" one is great though!

Funny!

Yes indeed.... funny stuff-

...

I could sell the the four individual box sets, but even if I do - I can only sell them for about twenty bucks apiece. On top of that the average punter would probably want all five series. Anyway I hate selling things cheap like that -feels like somebody else is getting a bargain at my expense.

Bastards...

You know, that's a good point: I don't have season one! So that right there could be reason enough...

Right?

On top of that there is apparently quite a few extras: Various documentaries,commentaries and those prequel episodes(that you could argue, I have already seen, but... not with the best quality of picture -so, yeah - still a good enough reason to purchase!)

And hey...

Son doesn't really need that PSP anyway.

...

The Táin

I was lucky enough to be invited to a Louis le Brocquy gallery opening back in Dublin in 96. My wife who was a lot more knowledgeable of his work than I was at that time had a brief conversation with him and found him to be a very pleasant, affable old gent.

I always had a great love for his work on The Táin. His spot illustrations were completely suited to the subject matter and captured the story perfectly. Just beautiful work.

More of the illustrations can be found here:www.anne-madden.com

I should note what brought this post to mind was Rob Davis's recent post on the late great Michael Charlton.

"Mike once told me that his vision - his idea of the perfect illustration - would be a single line that looked so natural, so unforced, that it could just as easily be a spill from an ink bottle or a stream of smoke. But within that line he imagined an entire army laying siege to a craggy castle. It would be an image so unassuming that it concealed its beauty by appearing to be an accidental blemish. And yet when the viewer chose to focus on it they could discern all the information: the battered helmets, chipped swords, split shields, rocks, crumbling walls and all the emotion: the bleakness of the day, the striving of the army, the bucking of scared horses and the shouts of the men. It's a wonderful idea and it will remain stuck in my head forever."

Bring Back Star Wars

A UK Channel 4 documentary from a couple of months ago. The interviews by Justin Lee Collins make it essential viewing.

Find out why R2D2 and C3P0 hated each other.
See C3PO's infamous golden rod.
Why was Darth Vader kicked off set?
Meet the Chewie fan club...

Find the rest of it yourself ya lazy bastards...
It's all available on Youtube.


Yeah and Anthony Daniels does come across as a right "James Blunt!"

Gort

Revealed...




From the (in my opinion, completely unnecessary) remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Then again aren't most remakes unnecessary? Well apart from Dawn of the Dead- I quite enjoyed that.

Gort this time around is three hundred foot tall- or thereabouts...

Update:
Having got to the end of my -thankfully- free copy, my review would be as follows:

Crap. Utterly and totally *carp -so crap I even took the time to purposely misspell the word "crap."

*Carp is also a common name for a freshwater fish of the family Cyprinidae. I was certainly not in any way trying to analogous a big fat bloated, vacuous, glass eyed bottom feeding type creature to the movie itself.

Suicide is painless

If your not checking out whokilledbambi on a regular basis you are missing out on some great art finds such as www.parkeharrison.com

Rainbow

The post from yesterday brought to mind another kids show I used to watch. Obviously not anywhere near the level of the Postgate stuff but as I child I never missed an episode.

One of my many attempts to get the morning off school so I could stay at home and watch this type of crap was mixing bits of toast in with my morning weetabix and then pouring the gooey mess into the bathroom sink in a very elaborately staged puke splatter effect, a forced retching sound added for believability and extra sympathy.

The one where I held the thermometer really close to the two bar electric fire before placing it under my tongue was always a winner.

This clip has been floating around for a while...

Oliver Postgate.

Oliver Postgate the creator of The Clangers, Ivor the Engine and
Bagpuss has died at the age of 83.

Some of my most deeply ingrained childhood memories are wrapped up within those shows.

R.I.P. Sir-

Bagpuss gave a big yawn, and settled down to sleep.
And of course when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too.
The mice were ornaments on the mouse-organ.
Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls.
And Professor Yaffle was a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.
Even Bagpuss himself once he was asleep was just an old, saggy cloth cat.
Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams.
But Emily loved him.

Thanks to Burning wellies for alerting me to this.

Barbie of the Dead.

Originally sourced from boingboing, available here: www.paranaiv

Kevin O'Neill Interview

Available here: Goshlondon

Thanks Anton-

Childhood Fears 1

"There's a monster in the closet."



I received this issue of Creepy at a very young age. I don't know exactly know how it fell into my possession -I can only speculate that it was bought by my parents as they were always buying me the odd comic here and there, never truly checking the content as they were under the impression that comics were quite simply "comics" aimed solely at young children:Marvel UK, Beano the like.

However why they would buy me something such as this with such an obvious graphic and rather disturbing cover image is beyond me. There is a possibility that I bought it myself from one of the local newsagents with my very limited pocket money, as even then I was always leaning towards these type of magazines and as long as it wasn't porn I'm sure the newsagent wouldn't have had any moral objection in selling it to me (Things in the seventies were a little more relaxed after all, come to think of it if I had said "A *Razzle please mister, it's for me da" He probably would have winked and passed it over "Okay son, but no peaking under those covers alright?")

Now there is also the possibility that it was bought second-hand and I received it a little later than the cover date of April 1975 suggests. If not I was five years of age when perusing this wondrous delight of horrifying horror.

Bad parenting? I think not- but it is strange how this must have looked beside my Beanos and Dandies!

Anyhow, however it may have fell into my grubby little mitts it turned out to be one of those prepubescent shock moments, enlightening and inflaming a curious young mind whilst opening a door into a much darker corridor of the human condition.

But I digress:

I can only imagine in hindsight, how I must have reacted to that cover image and let me say for the record that it -was- more than anything else, mainly the cover that struck me - like a hammer to the front of my freckled little forehead. The interior comics held some interest, but it was that cover- that strange almost hypnotic cover that had me completely captivated.

The red eyed ape man staring straight at me, the bloody knife, the gaping wound on the chest of the victim and that strange smile on the woman's face! I am sure I did not pick up on the obvious eroticism of the piece at the time: the red bedsheets, the open window and the almost welcoming arms and seemingly "orgasmic" expression of the lady in question. She seemed to be quite utterly relishing the moment of her own death. So many questions?

But as I said that perspective came a little later,as when I viewed it through a child's eyes, my main thoughts on the art were, "Big monkey man with massive knife, coming into bedroom and killing woman!"

It had gotten to the point whereby I was so scared of the image that I had to remove it from sight, my childlike rationale being that the more distance I could put between it and me the safer I would be. So I put it in my comic/toy cupboard situated at the end of my bed and closed the door. You see I couldn't throw it out, as even at that age I had the collector mentality. I mean the cover was fantastic, it was a work of art and as with most things that we fear- it brought along with it a terrible sense of excitement and danger.

However even though I had placed it behind a wooden door, completely out of sight,the fear of the image did not lessen in its intensity. It just meant that the big monkey-man was just sat behind the door even more pissed off at me for locking him up in a dank dark closet. He was probably in some magical way pealing himself off the cover at that very moment, as his body like some kind of fleshy balloon was being pumped up to a monstrous life size version of its comic book self, his red eyes glowing hotter and hotter somehow penetrating the confines of the wooden door and just watching and waiting for the moment to strike.

So after a few torturous nights of spinning out prayers to the Lord God above to keep me safe whilst wide-eyed and listening for any sound that may be emanating from the closet area, I decided to rethink my plan of action; so I opened the wooden doors half expecting "Old red eyes" to jump out at me. I then grabbed hold of the "devilish scripture of evil" and ran to the garden shed, flung open the door and placed the magazine on the highest shelf that I could reach while also moving an old tool box and a few gardening tools firmly on top to hold the bastard in place. I closed the door firmly behind me and returned home quite satisfied with solving my monkey problem.

At night I would still lie awake and ponder over the red eyed monster in the shed, but days turned to weeks and I slowly moved on (probably on to The Savage Sword of Conan or Evil Knievel or some other seventies distraction -God, those were the days !)

Until one night while rolling the skin back and forth on my Six Million Dollar Man's arm (again the erotic significance of this pastime didn't hit me until much later-)
I heard a strange shuffling noise from downstairs. As a child I always made sure the bathroom light was left on as I had an almost psychotic fear of the dark and its warmth helped reassure me that as with most children, everything was alright. However this night it held no such respite, but only helped to exaggerate the shadow figure that was slowly moving up the stairs directly to the open door of my bedroom.



....... No wonder I get Carpal Tunnel, talk about a bloody ramble. You bored yet?
I just downloaded a Xmas episode of Porridge, that's what I should be doing, watching that. Who reads this crap anyway?

...


Okay, I'll continue....


So there I am wide eyed, panicked, sweating like a little sweaty thing with blankets pulled high resting softly against the bridge of my nose. The light from the bathroom flickered as the shadow passed by to come to a halt outside my bedroom door. The door itself was only slightly ajar but I could sense whatever it was just standing there waiting. I could almost smell its fetid breath and hear what sounded like a soft grunt or growl -was this thing human? I lost the use of my tongue, I was frozen unable to move or to cry out for help. I knew my mother and father were downstairs, but why weren't they coming to ... "Oh God! What if this thing had hurt or worse still -killed them and now it was coming for me."

I watched the door praying that the shadow would just move on and... I dunno- go to my sisters room and kill her.

Then it happened...........

A hand reached around the door, but this was no human hand it was covered in brown fur almost like - THE RED EYED MONKEY MAN.

I stifled a scream.

Slowly the hand pulled the door closed and then the bathroom light went out.

....

Who is this strange monkey man? Is it the comic book primate come to life to reek revenge for being discarded like a dirty old shoe, or is it something else- something so horrifying that you dear reader will go completely insane, possibly even BLIND from learning the truth.

Find out Thursday...








*Saucy old Brit porn mag,which I may have accidentally browsed through in my early teens........ for three years.

Astronautalis

Forrest J. Ackerman

Very sad to hear that Forest J. Ackerman has died.
Let's hope someone has the good sense to create a museum in his name to house his incredible collection of memorabilia.

John Rogers, The Associated Press - Via: The Vault of Buncheness
LOS ANGELES - Forrest J Ackerman, the sometime actor, literary agent, magazine editor and full-time bon vivant who discovered author Ray Bradbury and was widely credited with coining the term "sci-fi," has died. He was 92.

Ackerman died Thursday of heart failure at his Los Angeles home, said Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman's estate.

Although only marginally known to readers of mainstream literature, Ackerman was legendary in science-fiction circles as the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland.

He was also the owner of a huge private collection of science-fiction movie and literary memorabilia that for years filled every nook and cranny of a hillside mansion overlooking Los Angeles.

"He became the Pied Piper, the spiritual leader, of everything science fiction, fantasy and horror," Burns said Friday.

Every Saturday morning that he was home, Ackerman would open up the house to anyone who wanted to view his treasures. He sold some pieces and gave others away when he moved to a smaller house in 2002, but he continued to let people visit him every Saturday for as long as his health permitted.

"My wife used to say, 'How can you let strangers into our home?' But what's the point of having a collection like this if you can't let people enjoy it?" an exuberant Ackerman told The Associated Press as he conducted a spirited tour of the mansion on his 85th birthday.

His collection once included more than 50,000 books, thousands of science-fiction magazines and such items as Bela Lugosi's cape from the 1931 film "Dracula."

His greatest achievement, however, was likely discovering Bradbury, author of the literary classics "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles." Ackerman had placed a flyer in a Los Angeles bookstore for a science-fiction club he was founding and a teenage Bradbury showed up.

Later, Ackerman gave Bradbury the money to start his own science-fiction magazine, Futuria Fantasia, and paid the author's way to New York for an authors meeting that Bradbury said helped launch his career.

"I hadn't published yet, and I met a lot of these people who encouraged me and helped me get my career started, and that was all because of Forry Ackerman," the author said in 2005.

Later, as a literary agent, Ackerman represented Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and numerous other science-fiction writers.

He said the term "sci-fi" came to him in 1954 when he was listening to a car radio and heard an announcer mention the word "hi-fi."

"My dear wife said, 'Forget it, Forry, it will never catch on,' " he recalled.

Soon he was using it in Famous Monsters of Filmland, the magazine he helped found in 1958 and edited for 25 years.

Ackerman himself appeared in numerous films over the years, usually in bit parts. His credits include "Queen of Blood," "Dracula vs. Frankenstein," "Amazon Women on the Moon," "Vampirella," "Transylvania Twist," "The Howling" and the Michael Jackson "Thriller" video. More recently, he appeared in 2007's "The Dead Undead" and 2006's "The Boneyard Collection."

Ackerman returned briefly to Famous Monsters of Filmland in the 1990s, but he quickly fell out with the publisher over creative differences. He sued and was awarded a judgment of more than US$375,000.

Forrest James Ackerman was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 24, 1916. He fell in love with science-fiction, he once said, when he was 9 years old and saw a magazine called Amazing Stories. He would hold onto that publication for the rest of his life.

Ackerman, who had no children, was preceded in death by his wife, Wendayne.

Village of the Damned.

Rob Cullen's pic of one of my all time favourite movies Village of the Damned. I just posted a few days ago in regards to one of the films actors: George Sanders.

I used to work with Rob back in the day in Fred wolf Films/Dublin. Brilliant artist-has his own company now bouldermedia.tv

Rob always reminded me a bit of Matt Lucas (but with hair- and an added ciggie dangling out the side of his mouth) >by saying that I have obviously just ruled out any chance of working with him ever again...

Rob always said I looked like Hugh Jackman -but slightly better looking, with more defined calf muscles-and not such a shit accent!

O Lucky Man!