UPDATE!!! - The perpetrator of A Cannonade of Hogwash has generously advised me of its new location. He continues to accumulate a body of work of a remarkable consistency and I don't feel that my original assessment, "I know this guy is trying to be 'ironic' but I don't think he's quite making it," quite does it justice. I don't think I was really into full swing with this project at the time.
We start this week's bumper assortment of SUNDAY WEBCOMICS with Blunderclod! by Susan Marie, a superhero parody in which instead of being heroic and good at everything the hero is inept and clumsy. Instead. I have selected it primarily because it is an example of the old-timey "ball nose" style of amateur cartooning, which I haven't seen in years. Nowadays budding cartoonists have so many sources from which to copy that they rarely opt for ball-nose, which to my mind lends an especially untainted quality to this strip.
Bearly There is a diverse collection of gag strips and the one to which I have linked is especially outstanding in its SUNDAY WEBCOMICSy qualities. Who among us could have come up with this? Only Rob.
And in conclusion, P.S. is two comic strips in one. Except for the very last one which is the one I linked to, which strangely does not actually contain the "P.S." which is the conceptual basis of the comic, the idea of which seems to me to have a comic and then another comic as a Post Script, hence the title. That makes it extra SUNDAY WEBCOMICSy, the final strip betraying its fundamental concept like that.
Whee.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
MOVIES
Family Movie Night has not seen any huge successes of late, with all the selections being flawed to some strange degree, but a few have provided some satisfaction.
The Cobweb (1955) is an incoherent Mental Clinic soap opera in which the staff seem more neurotic and hysterical than the patients. Richard Widmark, Charles Boyer and Gloria Grahame were miscast, and the best performance was Lillian Gish as a stiff and angry little administrator. The script was a muddle and characters' motivations were not clearly defined. I would not have sat through it on my own, but Donna found it more tolerable. I would give it 4/10.
Tomorrow's Children (1934) is a roadshow exploitation/educational film on the topic of eugenics and compulsory sterilization. Not by nature a very good movie, it still has some good entertainment value in characterization and story line, and it becomes a nailbiter before it is over. Lanky redhead Sterling Holloway provides some peculiar comedy relief. 6/10
The Blonde Captive (1931) Is an anthropological exploitation film made and narrated by Lowell Thomas using footage from his expedition through the South Pacific and around the northern coast of Australia. It is fascinating to see this footage of the indigenous Australians apparently untouched by technological societies. The real anthropological interest here is more in the viewpoint of the filmmakers, as the ostensible purpose of the expedition is the search for evidence of the survival of traits of Neanderthal Man in the modern age, and Neanderthal Man is rung in at every opportunity until they find a fat happy Australian who shows enough visual similarity to a sculpture in the museum that they can claim their thesis is proven. This film was also a good opportunity for the average guy to see lots of women with no shirts on and call it education, and the narration's blatant racism and sexism were perfectly acceptable humor at the time. 6/10
Once a Sinner (1950) is a British melodramatic thriller centering on class conflict. The plot element of marrying above/below one's station is more a 1930s thing in US films but it's still obviously an important issue in 1950 Britain. Fairly entertaining and overall a pretty good movie, but not great. 6/10
The Cobweb (1955) is an incoherent Mental Clinic soap opera in which the staff seem more neurotic and hysterical than the patients. Richard Widmark, Charles Boyer and Gloria Grahame were miscast, and the best performance was Lillian Gish as a stiff and angry little administrator. The script was a muddle and characters' motivations were not clearly defined. I would not have sat through it on my own, but Donna found it more tolerable. I would give it 4/10.
Tomorrow's Children (1934) is a roadshow exploitation/educational film on the topic of eugenics and compulsory sterilization. Not by nature a very good movie, it still has some good entertainment value in characterization and story line, and it becomes a nailbiter before it is over. Lanky redhead Sterling Holloway provides some peculiar comedy relief. 6/10
The Blonde Captive (1931) Is an anthropological exploitation film made and narrated by Lowell Thomas using footage from his expedition through the South Pacific and around the northern coast of Australia. It is fascinating to see this footage of the indigenous Australians apparently untouched by technological societies. The real anthropological interest here is more in the viewpoint of the filmmakers, as the ostensible purpose of the expedition is the search for evidence of the survival of traits of Neanderthal Man in the modern age, and Neanderthal Man is rung in at every opportunity until they find a fat happy Australian who shows enough visual similarity to a sculpture in the museum that they can claim their thesis is proven. This film was also a good opportunity for the average guy to see lots of women with no shirts on and call it education, and the narration's blatant racism and sexism were perfectly acceptable humor at the time. 6/10
Once a Sinner (1950) is a British melodramatic thriller centering on class conflict. The plot element of marrying above/below one's station is more a 1930s thing in US films but it's still obviously an important issue in 1950 Britain. Fairly entertaining and overall a pretty good movie, but not great. 6/10
Friday, October 14, 2011
MOVIES
The Phantom President (1932) In the first of his two sound picture appearances, George M. Cohan plays a dual role as a stuffed-shirt banker with presidential aspirations and the coincidentally identical stranger, a medicine show mountebank with the pep and personality needed to pull off a successful campaign. Claudette Colbert is another of the dead stick banker's aspirations which is also taken over by his double - despite the obvious decades of age difference. Jimmy Durante is the double's eccentric gibberish-spouting factotum and they perform a couple of Rodgers and Hart numbers together with excellent chemistry. There are few opportunities nowadays for us to ascertain what Cohan's appeal was, but his charisma and personality are obvious and his blackface performance lacks the smarmy emotionalism of Jolson's and doesn't even go into dialect. There is some effective political satire here, showing that the only way to win the presidency is to put on an entertaining spectacle. I was also impressed with the sophisticated direction and camerawork, with the double scenes handled very effectively. It's all pretty weird, but entertaining, and Colbert is well-dressed in sleek satin with huge puffy feather collars or fur sleeves. Worth seeing for historical value, 7/10
Sunday, October 9, 2011
SUNDAY WEBCOMIC
I have been getting comments from cartoonists whose work I featured in recent editions of SUNDAY WEBCOMIC. Their confusion as to my intentions is understandable, as I am not always certain of them myself. All I will say is that the purpose of SUNDAY WEBCOMIC is to present works which are uniquely creative in unexpected ways. To the artists, I say - you are doing a webcomic and I am not, so that automatically puts you a cut above me.
There are a number of features I look for in a SUNDAY WEBCOMIC which can't be found in any other medium. I love apology pages, where they write a long explanation for why there is no strip. I love it when there is an explanation of the strip which takes longer to read than it does to read the actual comic. When browsing webcomic lists I check out the ones that are discontinued or on hiatus because they often end with an apology, an explanation, or a promise that the strip positively will continue, that they will absolutely be back better than ever before you know it, and then I see it's dated May 2008.
The cartoonist who created Unlimited Evil integrated the abrupt end of the strip in a very pleasing way, and the artistic technique of the entire production is a great combination of scratchy original artwork and flashy digital processing that unites opposite ends of the quality scale.
The perpetrator of Childproof Epsilon also stays "in character" in the final strip, presenting it in exactly the same way as all the preceding work. This strip is an exceptionally impressive solution to the problem of being unable to draw a comic strip, by having absolutely no artwork at all, ever. I enjoy the tautological echo effect of having the same text repeated as a list under each strip, and the self-referential beginning strips which are about doing a comic with no artwork. The only thing it doesn't do is come out and say it is an Online Webcomic in the title.
So there you have it. Another one done.
There are a number of features I look for in a SUNDAY WEBCOMIC which can't be found in any other medium. I love apology pages, where they write a long explanation for why there is no strip. I love it when there is an explanation of the strip which takes longer to read than it does to read the actual comic. When browsing webcomic lists I check out the ones that are discontinued or on hiatus because they often end with an apology, an explanation, or a promise that the strip positively will continue, that they will absolutely be back better than ever before you know it, and then I see it's dated May 2008.
The cartoonist who created Unlimited Evil integrated the abrupt end of the strip in a very pleasing way, and the artistic technique of the entire production is a great combination of scratchy original artwork and flashy digital processing that unites opposite ends of the quality scale.
The perpetrator of Childproof Epsilon also stays "in character" in the final strip, presenting it in exactly the same way as all the preceding work. This strip is an exceptionally impressive solution to the problem of being unable to draw a comic strip, by having absolutely no artwork at all, ever. I enjoy the tautological echo effect of having the same text repeated as a list under each strip, and the self-referential beginning strips which are about doing a comic with no artwork. The only thing it doesn't do is come out and say it is an Online Webcomic in the title.
So there you have it. Another one done.
Friday, October 7, 2011
MOVIES
I have been watching nothing but dispiriting crap for the past couple of weeks. Sometimes intentionally, mostly by accident. Sorry.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
SUNDAY WEBCOMIC
This week, SUNDAY WEBCOMIC proudly presents SUNDAY WEBCOMIC, an online webcomic about SUNDAY WEBCOMIC. I even joined an online webcomic site so as to present it in its appropriate context with the appended apology and explanation requisite for such an endeavor.
Perhaps you, unaccustomed as you are to the total immersion experience of online webcomics necessary for me to bring you such quality selections each week, did not know that Stick Man is an actual genre of online webcomics. An entire semi-ironic genre of comics consisting of crudely scribbled stick figures, more often than not making jokes appropriate to the college dormitory environment in which they are most frequently created. Who would have thought of such a thing? And yet, Sticktown seems to take it another unexpected step beyond mere irony to... something else.
Then, to show exactly what really makes my brain go DOING, please enjoy the noteworthy Old Hickory Blog, whatever it is.
Perhaps you, unaccustomed as you are to the total immersion experience of online webcomics necessary for me to bring you such quality selections each week, did not know that Stick Man is an actual genre of online webcomics. An entire semi-ironic genre of comics consisting of crudely scribbled stick figures, more often than not making jokes appropriate to the college dormitory environment in which they are most frequently created. Who would have thought of such a thing? And yet, Sticktown seems to take it another unexpected step beyond mere irony to... something else.
Then, to show exactly what really makes my brain go DOING, please enjoy the noteworthy Old Hickory Blog, whatever it is.
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