“Sandman” Adaptation for TV
Warner Bros. TV is adapting The Sandman graphic novel series into a show [article]. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, but I’m kind of looking forward to it nonetheless, whenever it airs. I can’t help thinking it might turn out better if it was being made by HBO or something, though.
I was super obsessed with Sandman in high school. It was kind of an epiphany for me. It was and still is the most profound, intellectually and visually interesting, artistic, and endearing thing in the comic book world that I’ve ever found. My favorites members of the Endless are Dream, Death, and Delirium; I see myself in each of them. I hope that they find actors who somewhat fit the roles for the Endless. I particularly think it’s important that they find an actress who suits my idea of what Death should look like, for some reason.
Tags: graphic novels, neil gaiman, tee-vee, the endless, the sandman
Poetry: Obsolete Angel
“Obsolete Angel”
by Renee Ashley
from The Various Reasons of Light“ This one can’t fly: he’s got
stubby wings, he’s old
as space or time; he’s gone
to fat. And now he even
disregards the omens that he never
should have learned to read
at all: blistered skies,
the sticky secrets
in the bowels of toads.
He’s used up his store
of magic, he’s half-blind,
but he’s crusty
as good bread and willing:
in the moonlight,
he struggles up the shadows
towards god, hears
the wheezing orchestration
of embodied lives
– he always sings low
his one hoarse note,
always tumbles down to where
we save him again
and again he falls
like a hailstone
from some heaven
and we will save him.”I’m in an odd mood tonight.
The Lunatics Are Taking Over the Asylum
I just like this image.
Photograph by Gregory Brown
Tags: art nudes, black and white, dilapidated structures, insane asylum aesthetic, medical-themed, wheelchair
Mechanical Angel
These are a couple of shots I like from Kate O’Brien.
Tags: art nudes, biomechanical, steampunk
Prosthetic Doll Leg
I blogged earlier about Marina Bychkova‘s doll creations. She sometimes tattoos her porcelain dolls with the most intricate and interesting designs. I’m just posting this, a doll leg painted as a vintage prosthetic, because it’s so cool.
This doll is based on the tragic literary figure Anna Karenina (if she had survived her ultimate suicide attempt with major damages to her body, consequently having to wear an orthopedic corset, arm brace, and prosthetic left leg). Images of the rest of the doll after the cut.
Tags: dolls, marina bychkova, medical-themed, porcelain, prosthetic
Just another beautiful outfit from Dita Von Teese
Tags: 1950s, dita von teese, leather, opera length gloves, retro
Film Review: Martyrs
Martyrs is one of those movies that are considered so controversial and I don’t quite understand why. Maybe that’s because I’m not fazed by anything. After watching 2008′s Deadgirl, I think I’ve plumbed the depths of exploitation that a film can indulge in (and I liked the movie). Lots of people emphasize the “gore” aspect of Martyrs for some reason, but I really don’t think the movie is that bloody, the gore isn’t even as extreme as in many mainstream movies.
This movie is a little tricky. It takes huge, drastic, nearly schizophrenic turns in plot; what’s kind of odd is that it’s sort of about three entirely different things, and sectioned into different parts. It tells the story of Lucie, the main character (during the first part of the film), who as a young girl was kidnapped and horribly abused and tortured by this married couple and escaped, permanently traumatized. She carries a sort of “ghost” around, a vicious feral woman that Lucie perceives as physically attacking her in rage, and for a while it’s hard to tell what this ghost really is, to figure out the reality. (Initially I thought that she might be the grown-up “ghost” of the little girl who was locked up and abused in that basement, that it was who Lucie would have been if she hadn’t in reality escaped; I don’t know if that makes any sense, though).
Tags: film reviews, horror movies, martyrs, surreal horror, torture
Fairy Tales, Fables, and Ghost Stories [001]
Fox spirit stories are really common in East Asian mythology, and I’m sure this story exists elsewhere in another form, but this particular version of the story I took from the novel Fox Girl by Nora Okja Keller.
“…a big fox visits a country school. It is late at night and the students have decided to sleep in the schoolroom because it is too dark to walk home. All but one of the hundred students have fallen asleep when the one awake hears a soft guttural voice counting pairs of shoes outside…all the way to one hundred.
Through the window, the boy sees the snout of a fox, but as it crawls through the window, it takes the shape of a beautiful young woman. The boy thinks he must be dreaming and rubs his eyes. He strains to see in the darkness and notices: the dirt from a newly dug grave lodged under her nails; the blood like lipstick staining her mouth; the glittering of a hunter’s eyes in the night.
The boy crawls away, hiding in a far corner of the room. He watches the fox girl count the students with a kiss that steals their breaths. With each kiss, a boy stops breathing and dies in middream.
When she approaches the corner where the youngest boy is hiding, he creeps back to his sleeping place. Sick with fear, he lies down among the dead bodies of his friends. When the girls reaches the end of the row of students, she growls. ‘Only ninety-nine! There is one missing. How can that be?’
She rushes outside to recount the pairs of shoes. One hundred. She counts again, to be absolutely certain, and all the while the boy inside tries not to move, tries not to breathe. After again finding exactly one hundred pairs of shoes, the fox girl turns toward the door to recount the boys. Just then, a cock crows. The demon drops to all fours and scampers into the nearby woods. The clever boy is saved, the only one out of a hundred to live.”
Tags: fairy tales, fox stories
Lovers: The Wood-Panel Paintings of Audrey Kawasaki
With influences from manga and Art Nouveau, Audrey Kawasaki paints delicate portraits of seductive females and languid lovers against the background of the always highly-visible grain of the wooden panels she uses. Nature and animals surround these surreal figures with splayed hair, expressive hands, often truncated/cut-off bodies, and yearning expressions. The contrast is between innocence and eroticism, the beauty and morbidity that these figures represent.
Tags: audrey kawasaki, erotic, innocence, pop surrealism, sweet/melancholy, truncated forms
