STORYTELLING RANT #5,399 - A Punch in the FACE!!

SHERLOCK HOLMES - THE MOVIE
Visual Crack + Cartoon Characters + Gratuitous Gross Outs = CRAP!!!

What's the deal with what passes for stories these days?

I finally forced myself to watch the movie that purports to be about SHERLOCK HOLMES and it's a piece of crap. I had kept away from it for a long time because the reboot (read: modernization allegedly needed to make this character palatable to modern viewers/readers) revealed to me by the trailers for the movie showed a character called Sherlock Holmes, but one the was not even close to being Sherlock Holmes. Not the real one.

Okay. I admit I'm not the target audience.

I am not a disenfranchised teen or twenty-something suffering through the depression of becoming an adult and realizing that adulthood has a lot of crap attached to it - so life seems like a big bowl of crap.

It's not - but this movie is.

The gritty facade that backs up the visuals only serves to appeal to the depressed target audience. But Holmes and Watson are Shaggy and Scooby in terms of depth of character. Bad dialogue. Bad pacing. No narrative drive (all the drive comes from the visuals and artsy MTV video editing.)

You know, a movie that is classic appeals to all ages and has iconic qualities.

I use GRAN TORINO for my Visual Storytelling 2 classes. I show it to the students and they all love it. I love it. It has good characters, good pacing, good dialogue, good visuals and a real story.

SHERLOCK HOLMES is the exact opposite of this.

Can't we raise the bar (again, I appeal to you all) for what we watch and what we create to a level that tries for mass appeal versus a small, but profitable, niche?

I don't know. Why do you people like this piece of crap? I'd love to hear why.

Keep writing. Keep drawing.

http://heroinitiative.blogspot.com/2010/03/ed-hannigan-tribute-art-auction.html

STUDENTS ARE GONE FROM LACOSTE!!

Today, the remainder of the students here at Lacoste all finally got up and got out of here.

Celebrating is in store!!

Everyone got up early, bright eyed and excited to be on the road again - as evidenced by Billy Evatte's enthusiastic expression.














The sun was rising, leaving a beautiful glow over the Luberon Valley. A bit of snow still glistened off of the mountains and on the streets and trees.














Cary Dube showed his energy level was high. The count down from mission control was started. Everyone decided to board the vehicle for the ensuing blast off to come.














The final bags and provisions were loaded into the space age vehicle that would transport the students to the magical realm of Marseille and the Marignane Airport. No one would be left behind (despite Nick and Josh trying to stay). At 7:15, all was prepared and ready.















The countdown finalized and blast off was commenced with no problems. The first stage was moving forcefully away from the pad. The second stage right behind, soon to return to earth and its origin point.



Thankfully, all went well and the world as we know it will soon be back to normal.

Darn it.

Reality bites. I've enjoyed living in a cocoon for 9 and a half weeks. There's no way that Savannah can compare to this.



Except ... that Sue is there. Thank goodness for that. There's no way that going back would in any way be good without her (and our pets) being there.

Thanks, SCAD for this opportunity. I'm coming home tomorrow.

SUE'S BACK IN THE USA

But not in this photo.

Here my lovely girl is next to a water wheel in the little burg of Fontaine de Vaucluse. It's such a cool town and I was lucky enough to share it with her twice while she was in France.

We kept telling ourselves, we're driving around and exploring the SOUTH OF FRANCE!!

That's so neat. Thanks SCAD!

More soon.

Tom

The TOREADOR

Nimes, France

The Coliseum

There's a statue out in front that is pretty cool.
Upon closer inspection, the French have a high opinion of the masculinity of a Bull Fighter.



You decide.

Tom

The Rest of the ANGOULEME' FESTIVAL

Friday began with the obligatory "action shot" of all the SEQA's as they prepared to save the festival from the hordes of super-villains who were about to descend on the town of Angouleme.

We met some practicing artists in one of the Residences run by Magelis (thanks again to Geraldine Zannier for taking us to and setting up this visit.) Everyone loved all of the artists, but in particular they liked the work of Julien Mauffre. His style of BD illustration was very clean and entertaining with good black placement and texture use. I'd recommend any book by him that you can find. He (and the others) are published by Delcourt.

Saturday began with some BIG, heavy snow flakes descending to the earth in a peaceful and beautiful pattern. The problem is ... many of the female SEQA's were dressed for fun and not for snow. Jolie Menzel took a good butt fall on the wooden bridge over to the festival. She survived, but her Uggs were not the best shoe for the day. She had fun anyway, as did we all.

The problem with Saturday was ...

... EVERYBODY was here that day. It was so hard to get around. It was just about as bad as being at the San Diego Con. It was so much harder to get to anything and with it being spread out over the whole town (unlike San Diego which is all in one building), you would put some mileage on you shoes by the end of the day.

Once the snow stopped, we were left with only wet pavement so that they interesting sights of the festival were able to come out and play. Such as ... costumed people on stilts. I got to high-five this one. She kept twirling around and using the whole volume of her skirt to wrap around people as they walked by.

The final oddity of the con to mention is that ... the French love their American style burgers. So much so that they have a fast food place called QUICK Burger and for their wall decoration they show a scene of Americana ...

... a PHILLIPS 66 Gas Station. Now, that spells A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N!!!

We made it back to Lacoste in time to get some rest and prepare for classes. Our group got back at about 5:30. The group of students who went to Barcelona didn't get back until about 11:00 p.m. so they were all VERY tired on Monday.



One last thing that I saw on the way back ... NUKE PLANT!!!
European nuclear power. Awesome. I wonder how good their regulations are?

PART 1 Angouleme - THE INTERNATIONAL BD (COMICS) FESTIVAL

On Wednesday, January 27th the Sequential Students at SCAD-Lacoste rose early in the morning and enthusiastically gathered at our bus for departure to the town of Angouleme - home of the International Festival of BD, a yearly event. As you can see, everyone was happy (ha!) to be up at 7:00 a.m.

It was icy and there was snow on the ground from the previous evening. Very eerie looking.

Not one of these students had ever been to this festival, so it was a great opportunity for all of them to wet their feet at one of the biggest festivals centered on comic books in the world.




It was still raining when we arrived in Angouleme and everyone still looked really happy. This photo is actually from Thursday, the 28th of January when we were going for our first day of the actual festival. Madame Geraldine Zannier of ECMA met us at the parking area and took us to the museum of BD - Comic Art. It was a very cool experience.


We went to see the French artist FRED in the afternoon of day one. There was no translator and I had hoped that they would show graphics of his art as a way to help the students with their attention. But there were no graphics and we had about an hour and a half of French that no one understood.

My fault.

I appreciate that the Event Organizer for the festival, Marie-Noelle Bas set up the seats for us at this event. I was mistaken about how much we might be able to get from the "encounter" as they call it. He was a very pleasant man. His work (when we could see the books held up) is interesting. I wish that we could have understood more.



We also had an encounter with the animation school of ECMA and were given a copy of their WHITE ALBUM that shows a selection of their best animated shorts. An animator named TIM had two shorts on the album and they were fantastic. The school was very nice to us and very gracious with their time.

All of the events on Wednesday took up most of the day so that we had very little time to go to the actual festival on the first day. We were able to go to a vernissage/opening of an art show for the Maison Auteurs - a building set up for the availability of economical art studio space so that artists can work on their projects in a comfortable environment.

It was a very neat set up and we met an artist who was an animator. She was quite good.



Finally, as a tribute to SCAD-Savannah Faculty member Dove McHargue I took this photo of Corto Maltese, the statue. The moon was so neat right over his head.

Be jealous, DOVE!!!

Love from France-

Tom