A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
In addition to being the Comics Reporter, a smart cultural critic, and official VM Bestest Pal, Tom Spurgeon also knows a little something about horse-racing. Here’s his guide to the Kentucky Derby (and the other Triple Crown races), which I guess is being run in a few minutes.
Imagine how much better this blog would be if I had time to write about all these stories!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: May 4, 2007”
It’s a quiet Sunday here at Chez VM. Well, it was louder earlier in the day, when I was shredding bills and records as part of the process of rearranging my home office. The process started when I bought a new desk on Wednesday, replacing the two tables that occupied a wall of my room. The process continued yesterday, when I picked up a leaning bookcase from C&B, a desk organizer from Pottery Barn (they don’t list it on their site), and a couple of bulletin boards and paper drawers from the Container Store. Today involved figuring out where to put everything (hence the bill-shredding). If there’s good light tomorrow morning, I’ll take some pix and post them for those of you who are obsessed interested in such things.
Before buying up this stuff, Amy & I finally got to the local (within 30 miles) Imax to catch 300. It was
I enjoyed it a bunch, even if it did overplay the “we’re fighting to defend reason and logic” angle. Gerard Butler was fascinating to look at, and this hearkens back to my original post about this flick: I’m more interested in the stylization of the movie, and the filmmakers managed to get the lead to resemble classical Greek art. I’m not talking about the chiseled abs phenomenon, which are major contributors to the “gayest movie ever” trophy, but the angles of his face, his beard, and his hair somehow gestalted into this living representation of a Greek bust, to me.
We had a laugh later in the day, when we noted that Gerard Butler’s filmography includes Beowulf (where I thought he looked a little like Paul Rodgers) and Attila the Hun. Looks like he can’t get away from historic slaughter flicks. Still, he did a great job in this one, making the Spartan king a, um, raging Scot. It’s not a movie to be taken seriously as history, but it was a thrill ride. My biggest problem with it is that it’s success means that the director is going to get the greenlight to make a movie of The Watchmen, which will be a disaster.
This morning, I realized that I’ve had a pretty strange run of Easter-weekend trips to the movies. I don’t tend to go to the movies often, but I guess there’s something about Easter: Hellboy in 2004, Sin City in 2005 and 300 in 2007. Can’t remember if I saw anything last year, and I’m not finding any references in the blog, which as we know is a backup drive for my brain.
Anyway, I hope all my Christian readers have a good Easter today.
After the jump, a bunch of links I didn’t have time to expound upon this week!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Apr. 6, 2007”
Intrepid Comics Reporter and VM pal Tom Spurgeon just posted a list of the Top 50 Comics from 2006. I’m nowhere near as devoted a comics reader as I used to be, but it’s pretty gratifying to see so many worthy projects out there.
If you haven’t read the comics of Jim Woodring, your consciousness has probably not been adjusted into a position that will enable you to appreciate the spring tour of Pupshaw & Pupshaw.
Please read The Frank Book
Even though it’s been a hectic week, I’ve managed to farm up more interesting links that I just didn’t have time to write about!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Mar. 23, 2007”
Sorry, dear readers: no Monday Morning Montaigne for you this week. I’m way too busy with the April ish, this afternoon’s DCAT event in NYC, and tonight’s anniversary-plus-1-week dinner at Cafe Matisse.
But my wife has a couple of weekend wrapup posts for you to check out: Harissa Explains It All, and It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Till, then, take some Insomnalin and get back to work!
It’s all a bit of a blur after I invented wine.
–Bacchus
Doing the Islands with Bacchus, a collection of comics by Eddie Campbell, is one of my all-time faves. Consisting of a travelogue of Bacchus and friends around the Greek islands, the comics relate the “real” stories behind some of the Greek myths, along with digressions on the history of fashion, the art of vinoculture, the discovery of champagne, and the nature of the afterlife (or afterdeath, as it turns out). Importantly, Campbell achieves this while keeping his characters as characters. That is, they don’t simply recite facts, but rather bring different perspectives and styles.
The Last of the Summer Wine, a 24-pager narrated by Bacchus’ companion Simpson as he, Bacchus and Hermes travel to Naxos by boat, is a marvel. The story manages to convey the glory of ancient Greek culture, make wry observations (verbal and visual) about the power of myth, and lead to a wonderfully poignant conclusion about the essence of love. Maybe it’s that inner classics-geek I’ve been referring to lately, but the final page of that comic always chokes me up.
I bring all this up because Campbell recently wrote about one of his major influences on those comic strips: the books of Walter James. I’d never heard of James before this, and with good reason. Sez Campbell, “He was an Australian wine maker who wrote several volumes of diaristic thoughts on just about everything, but mostly about winemaking and his enthusiasm for reading. They were published between 1949 (Barrel and Book,) and 1957 (Antipasto) and amounted to six volumes, of which I’ve managed to find four.”
Give Eddie’s post a read, take some delight in the excerpts of James’ writing, and tip a little libation to Bacchus, wouldja?
A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was going to mark-out for 300, and that Amy & I would likely go catch it this weekend at the local IMAX, so as to get the full theme-park experience of Thermopylae on a giant screen.
This morning, I went online and discovered that every single IMAX screening this weekend is sold out.
I have to admit, my powers of prognostication aren’t the greatest, when it comes to movies and other pop phenomena. I mean, Ghost Rider looks like a godawful movie, and it’s based on a godawful character from Marvel’s nadir. So of course it ran away with the box office and is going to pass $100 million in sales this weekend. Did I underestimate how bored and/or stupid teenagers can be in February? I guess so.
But 300? Projected to pull in $60 million in its opening weekend? I’m happy that it’s getting so much exposure, but I’m just afraid that it’ll give Frank Miller so much Hollywood cachet that he’ll pursue a bigscreen version of Give Me Liberty.