July 2008

Video black (2)

(Three related posts this week, M-W-F) In 1982, film essayist Chris Marker finished a gorgeous film with ample sections from his travels in Japan. A year earlier, video artist Bill Viola finished his first major video work, also in and of, but not about, Japan. Marker emphasized the black, Viola the light: Video treats light [...]

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Black leader (1)

(Three related posts this week, M-W-F) The opening of Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil: The narrator reads us the letters she receives from Sandor Krasna. She describes his problem with the footage of the girls from Iceland– he could never find another image to cut it to. So he uses black leader: “He wrote me, ‘One [...]

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Persepolises

I had the pleasure of watching Persepolis with an audience the other day. Other than the energy of watching in a room full of people, a couple of things struck me: 1) The animation was delightfully old-fashioned. Yes, economics made them use computers. To my eyes, all computer-aided animation looks like either paper cutout (2D) [...]

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Red-Colored Elegy, the Song

With a deadline writing about Dousei Jidai, the other great 70s shacking-up manga, I discovered a stupid mistake in the final draft of my Red-Colored Elegy article. It’s probably at the printer’s so as to cement my shame. BUT I also found some images from the picture book version (!) of the “Red-Colored Elegy” song [...]

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Watching Movies on Airplanes

…over other people’s shoulders, flying in a cramped multiplex, one of these Airbus flights with personal viewers for the lowly coach folk. Me with no sound, no remote, just lots of choices. Craning my neck, I can’t follow the stories. Characters becomes actors in light and rhythm, cutting patterns, composition. And in movie’s I’d never [...]

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Clown Goes to Hell

Osaka’s greatest landmark, the snare-drumming clown Taro, has left for a warmer clime. He had a steady gig playing in front of Kuidaore, an eating institution. Or so I’m told; the one time I had a decent tempura there, the place was deserted. Of other customers. I guess the perpetual hordes of photogenic tourists posing [...]

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Glomp: Amanda Vahamaki

The best story in Glomp #9 also bridges the gap between the freer art and more traditional storytelling. In “The Trashing Party,” Amanda Vähämäki draws a palpable dread in nervous pencils. Her art recalls Katri Sipilainen’s, but with more particulars. Each of Vähämäki’s characters is an individual, just like their place, a factory town’s school. [...]

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Glomp: Lilli Carre

One of the most traditional stories in Glomp is also one of the best. Lilli Carré, an American artist based in Chicago, turns in “The Thing About Madeline,” a story that recalls the standard entries in mid-90s anthologies. But she takes it further, with fluid art in purple and orange. The story centers on a [...]

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Glomp: Lee Jyung-Houn

The Economist this week on a Vilhelm Hammershoi exhibit: “All his best-known paintings are of household interiors that are drained of colour and tell no stories. …the mood is melancholic and enigmatic, but the paintings are oddly compelling. Quite why, no one seems sure.” Which almost sums up how I feel about Lee Jyung-Houn’s comics. [...]

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Glomp-Style

Much of Glomp‘s art, arresting and experimental, looks more like gallery hangings than comics. That’s nothing new, but it nicely displays certain trends in art comics. In three artists: I. Andrea Bruno In this untitled comic by Bruno, an Italian member of the Canicola collective, its seductive surface recalls painting. But it’s not painting. It’s [...]

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Glomp #9

I used to pretend my poor English, French, and Japanese could cover the comics world pretty well.  Then Stripburger arrived from Slovenia, the Germans came on my radar, and Canicola appeared in Italy.  And the Finns.  At least they subtitled their anthology Glomp for those poor readers not invited to the Finno-Ugric party. Visually, the book’s a [...]

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