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Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Random Tuesday Blogging
Working for these nice folks I've been screening educational films of the 1940's and 1950's (and one from the early 1960's). Some from the 1950's are actually of better quality then I thought. "Boy With a Knife" has sort of a Rebel Without a Cause thing going for it, except not as good or as long and with a know-it-all narrator reassuring everybody. I was still interested in the characters, though, and did like the performance of the youth leader. If you had to sit through a film in class while going to school in 1956, this could have been a lot worse.
The ones from the 1940's suck though. Everyone I watched just lectures at the audience at a dirge-like pace. "Know For Sure" fills most of its time with some boring old doctor lecturing at us about syphilis. There is one hilarious bit in the beginning though that makes downloading the film worth it. We get a really broad Italian stereotype waiting for his son, only for events to turn tragic for him and hilarious to us. It's the best gag involving a concertina I've ever seen.
What ever happened to Don Simpson's blog? It was http://comicsaintart.blogspot.com but that link leads to nowhere now.
A lot of bloggers create this personality of a curmudgeon or of being cranky but I think Simpson had everyone beat there. I really liked his essays on the comics form, comparing reading a comic to reading a newspaper, but I also thought his take on comic book culture was a hoot. I don't think I agreed with one iota of it. I just liked reading how the comics fans want can be broken up into two categories: power fantasies where a geeky guy turns into a superhero and de-powered fantasies where the geeky guy stays a geeky guy. I think someone asked where manga fit into that and then Simpson went on to compare that situation to the car manufacturing wars between American and Japanese car companies in the 1980's (the inspiration for this bit of cinematic genius).
I thought that was great, although I hated how Simpson would rationalize himself out of the dichotomy of comic book people by saying he's an artist and pays attention to comics for the artwork. If the comic book world is just a bunch of neurotic men looking for crass escapism then Don Simpson has to be down in the mud with the rest of us.
I believe Alan Moore's best work is "The Bowing Machine" with Mark Beyer. That or A Small Killing with Oscar Zarate, but I prefer Beyer's artwork.
I believe Neil Gaiman's best work is Black Orchid with Dave McKean.
I believe Stan Lee's best work is the two-part Silver Surfer story he did with Moebius.
I believe Geoff Johns's best work is Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. with Lee Moder.
Am I weird like that?
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