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| The Gallery of Nonexistent Art 20 most recent entries |
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(( Author's note: Yep, I'm continuing to use GoNA in my
( An audiodoc looks at the pirate, ninja, mad-scientist, etc. communities in an average American city. ) post a comment
( A series of short cartoons ) post a comment
(( Author's note: Yep, I'm continuing to use GoNA in my
( A graphic novel based loosely on _Yellow Submarine_ ) post a comment
GoNA TV-2: "The Remake"
(( Author's note: I'm temporarily restarting GoNA, as part of an
Like I'm always saying, there are pluses and minuses to working at the Gallery of Nonexistent Art. One of the pluses is that sometimes you get to see the final results of some auspicious project that fell apart in the real world. One of the minuses is that often you'll sort through piles of stuff at GoNA to find such a thing, but it never shows up anywhere. [1] As yet untitled -- there's a cute sketch-comedy-like thing with writers fielding possible titles. ("Can we use 'Serenity: So Very Nude' if there's no nudity in the script?" "Oh, we can change that, easy.") [2] I keep thinking that in a perfect world, the Sci-Fi channel would buy the TV rights to a second Firefly season, run it after Battlestar Galactica, and thus create the best evening of TV science fiction, ever. :) Not that I mind how things have turned out in reality. 1 comment | post a comment
One thing that's a tiny bit irritating about the Gallery is that often, you can't be entirely sure of when you're dealing with fiction and when you're not. Maybe such-and-such a book is a work of fiction that doesn't exist, or maybe it's straightforward reportage in a world that doesn't exist. Who knows? It's another of those coffee-table books, this one showing creatures that have adapted to living in urban environments. In this case, all the photos are from a dilapidated, largely-abandoned Russian city, full of decaying, heavy-looking buildings and poorly-lit alleyways. The cover shows a fairly ordinary scene -- a dark thoroughfare lit by dim, orange streetlights -- and we see a mailbox sitting on the sidewalk. For some reason, it catches your eye. It somehow doesn't look right. Upon closer examination, you realize that it looks a bit scalier than a normal mailbox. The feet at the bottom seem larger than normal. There are odd creases in the bin. And the mail slot has tiny-but-perceptible teeth. The cover page shows it lunging at a piece of meat (which is shish-kebabed on the end of a very, very long stick) and it all makes a little more sense. It looks vaguely CGI, and it violates most sensible principles of evolution, but I suppose one can never be sure. The book is organized more or less geographically. They start in a relatively well-kept city center, and then proceed southwest. (They show a miniature map above each description to help you sort out where you are.) Buildings get smaller and sparser and cheaper. Everything gets more dilapidated. The creatures get larger and meaner. The last few photo-pages have blurred, hastily-taken pictures of a shantytown that's been overrun by a mishmash of animals seen in earlier sections. By this point, none of them are standing still any more, so the number of sharp, pointy teeth on dismay sort of diminishes the comic impact of seeing a shack overrun by rampaging rubbish bins and parking meters. They follow the main photography section with an "Endnote," which is subtitled "Our Brave Photographers." It has a black-and-white photograph of two guys wearing what looks like body armor and holding expensive, bulky-looking cameras. Then we see various setups, with backgrounds that we've seen before -- only this time, instead of seeing the creatures, we see the photographers setting up their shots. Several frightened heads peep out from behind a bluff to watch a crowd of apparent mailboxes crowd around a small plate of luncheon meat. Two guys drag a colleague back from a bright streetlamp (he is somehow hypnotized by it) that is bending down to investigate him. And so on. The text at this point gets mileage out of laconic understatement -- that last photo is merely captioned "A bit of trouble on Bilyanik Street." Again, I assume that the "Endnote" is all part of the joke, and somehow done with CGI. That's what I keep telling myself. post a comment
Here at the Gallery, the majority of what you see is from the last five years or so. When I stumble across something older than that, it's a welcome surprise. A Wyoming cattle rancher traveled to Spain, and noticed that the countryside was dotted with two-dimensional black bulls, propped up like billboards on distant hillsides. Apparently they were an advertisement for some alcoholic beverage, but the cattleman thought he'd reappropriate it for himself. He put up such a bull on the edge of his ranch, and the figure proudly displayed his brand. Then other ranchers started doing the same, some of them introducing slight variations on the usual bull form. An eccentric chicken farmer, not wanting to miss the trend, erected a giant chicken silhouette on his property. And so they just became part of the western countryside. He quotes a writer originally from Wyoming who describes the welcoming, homey feeling they always give him when he visits his family. So that's the book's "way in" to the subject -- Wembley gives us one simple (and ridiculously-researched -- trust me, I glossed over a *lot* of detail) example of what he calls "insular art," or art forms that only exist in one small geographic area. The general format of the book is to trace the 'life cycle' of one of these things. So he starts with the origin of an insular art form. He mainly covers what kind of circumstances you need for something to spring up. The first ingredient is what you'd expect -- isolation from the larger community. The other main ingredient Wembley talks about is what he vaguely terms "unique opportunities." As he explains it, this is something that either makes an art form uniquely possible in a location, or makes a more traditional and widespread art form less desirable. The simplest example he gives of this is a very small one. An abandoned gas station in a small town in Kentucky had a sign with adjustable letters on it. Apparently the locals started making use of it, and it would alternately show short, interesting prose poems or really creative profanity. The flip side of this is when your usual art form requires something that isn't available in your new location. One example is a small Lutheran community that adapted the organ repertoire to whatever instruments they had to hand after a church fire -- leading to a new tradition of oddly-orchestrated hymns for brass ensembles. Wembley goes on to cover what it takes for such a fortuitous genesis to expand into a sustainable, community-wide art form. This is where it's even more dependent on the nature of the community itself. Wembley puts particular emphasis on the balance between a 'competitive instinct' -- both among the members in a community, and as an attitude by the community towards the world at large -- and the communication and collaboration that hold a community together. If the locals respect self-expression as a cultural value, that's a plus. Beyond that, it's mainly about money. For example, without an excess of time and funds, the elaborately-ornamented mailboxes of the very rich and very self-contained town of Eagleton, Connecticut would never have come to pass. The writer finishes off by telling us what ends up happening to an insular art form. He catalogs several arts that died completely. He mentions the decorated barns in central Montana; nobody living remembers who did that, what they used for tools, or why it seemed like a good idea to begin with. Other arts quickly become widespread -- he makes a vague, dismissive reference to the origins of jazz (with the claim that New Orleans is "hardly the middle of nowhere") before moving on to other historical references that didn't ring a bell with me. What is most interesting to yr. hmbl. internet-addicted reviewer is the last chapter. It is titled simply, "The Future." This is where the writer speculates on the future of insular art, especially in the face of technological progress. As Wembley puts it: "With photocopying and even 'faxing' coming into vogue, and the world getting smaller all the time, there will perhaps come a time when no one can be 'insular' any more." He goes on to speculate that the insular-arts movement is a quirk of a unique time -- the combination of high educational standards [1] and a few remaining isolate places. He wisely speculates that such communications could connect a 'diaspora' of abstruse enthusiasts -- "but without physical proximity," he concludes, "the sense of community is far, far weaker." He seemed pessimistic. Looking back, I frankly don't know if his pessimism was right or wrong. [1] Ah -- here we see the difference from *our* 1974. post a comment
Y'know, occasionally you find a piece of work that just clarifies something that everybody's been thinking, but nobody was bold enough or clear-headed enough to express it in a work of art. This anime video goes out on such a limb and says: there ought to be a martial art of swing dancing. This video starts innocently enough, with a cheesy high school dance. It is here that we learn that Ranma and partner dancing are not the best combination. He dances with Akane (the youngest of the Tendo daughters) -- she wonders openly how he can study martial arts so long and still be so hopeless on the dance floor. She also reminds him that there's a song playing, and it has a rhythm, and he could maybe try matching it. Ranma innocently marvels that Akane is good at dancing when she's such a tomboy. It is here that we are reminded that Ranma and conversation can also be a bad combination. Akane takes a swing at Ranma, and connects. While Ranma is staggering from that, she says something derisive and makes to toss a drink at him. He dives aside, screaming "Cold water!" The drink hits somebody else -- Dan (rhymes with "gone"), one of several visitors from Kolkhoz High. The results are predictable. What with so much violence in the schools these days, and what with the majority of the kids in Ranma's world being skilled at various kinds of hand-to-hand combat, it quickly turns into a brawl between the Furinkan students and the Kolkhoz students. Then we're in the Principal Kuno's office, with the three people who started the trouble, a bit worse for wear. Ranma is worried about whether this will go on his permanent record. Dan is amused. Akane is pretty much a seething, fiery ball of hatred. [1] Principal Kuno is one of those petty tyrants who is often a bit disconnected from reality. He blames the trouble on the rivalry between Furinkan and Kolkhoz, and that the best way to settle it is with a proper competition. As it happens, the interscholastic swing-dance martial-arts contest is scheduled for the following week, and he has gone ahead and entered Akane and Ranma in the contest. After the meeting, Akane wonders, "But what about Dan?" Then they find out that Dan is a national champion at this style of dance/combat. He's already entered. This they find alarming. Ranma storms off, grumbling about having to learn to dance, oblivious to the rainstorm outside, and even oblivious to the fact that he changes gender. Then Dan meets Ranma as a female (which we'll call "Ranma-onna," because it sort of means female-Ranma and sounds vaguely like "Ramona"), still complaining about not knowing how to dance. Dan, with a dopey expression and little hearts in his eyes, gallantly offers to teach her. Ranma-onna refuses flatly and goes home. After a hot bath, he tells his father about it, and his father (after de-panda-ing) sensibly explains that it's a tactical advantage. Ranma grudgingly goes along with it. So there are dance lessons. But things get worse. The principal's son, Tatewaki Kuno, who has long been mooning over Ranma-onna -- without knowing that it's Ranma -- eavesdrops on one of these lessons. Not only that, but it's a lesson that quickly turns into Dan attempting to grope Ranma, which leads to a kick to the solar plexus from Ranma-onna, which leads to an apology and effusive admiration from Dan. But now Tatewaki is convinced he has a rival for his affections *and* that this Dan guy is just skeezy. Tatewaki then enters the dance competition, with the express purpose of kicking Dan's ass and making him look bad in front of Ranma-onna. Complicating matters further, Tatewaki manages to enter the competition paired up with Shampoo [2]. Shampoo was first an assassin intent on killing Ranma, but she then fell hopelessly in love with him. Also, Tatewaki's sister, Kodachi, has entered the competition as well -- mainly just because she thinks she has a good chance of winning. She ends up paired with Ryoga, a talented fighter who is, alas, afflicted with yet another curse. When doused with cold water, he turns into a little black pig. So, those are all the characters going into the competition. They open with an "all-skate" round, which is more or less a free-for-all of gratuitous violence. A live band plays up-tempo jazz standards (who knew Dr. Tofu played the trumpet?), Ranma's father comes along to chaperone, and sports commentators sit in a little booth providing color commentary on the ensuing violence. "Oh, that Twirling Thousand-Footed Aerial has gone very, very wrong -- " "Yep, you know that'll leave a mark." And so on. Meanwhile -- ah, let me see if I can get this right -- Ranma finds himself again pursued by Shampoo. He finds it politic to switch to female for a bit and shake her off. Then Dan loses his partner to a mis-timed dip/battering-ram maneuver. Dan sees Ranma-onna, scoops her up, and the commentators announce that "Dan has a new partner!" Fighting breaks out between Tatewaki and Dan -- in time with the music, of course, and (as the commentators put it) "very aesthetically." Ranma-onna is just trying to wriggle out of the situation. Akane is looking for Ranma. Shampoo is looking for Ranma. Shampoo and Akane bump into each other; Shampoo sees Akane as a rival (she is actually engaged to Ranma); Shampoo picks a fight; Akane takes her up on it. They fight in time to the music. The commentators assume that they are dancing, as a couple, leading to loud protestations from both. Ranma's father (now in "panda mode") separates them easily. While everyone is distracted by these shenanigans, a spilled drink turns Ryoga into a pig. The pig runs loose, causing widespread panic. Ranma-onna, figuring that Shampoo is a far lesser evil than Dan, uses this distraction to disappear from the dance floor and re-emerge in masculine form. The fighting gets fiestier, with more huge leaps into the air. (The band casually beats down anybody who gets too near them, though.) Finally, the judges declare "time" and end the round. Couples are announced for the finals. Needless to say, Ranma makes it in twice. Kodachi finds herself suddenly partnerless... except the little black pig (actually Ryoga) eagerly returns to the room and jumps up into her arms. Everyone laughs. The pig seems to suddenly remember it's a pig, much to its chagrin. Kodachi turns a cold eye on everyone, and announces that, if her partner can't be found, she will dance with the pig, just to prove that she can shine even when paired with the most incompetent lead. (Upon hearing this, the pig squeals angrily.) Ranma rejoins Akane. Dan nervously assures the judges that Ranma-onna (referred to as 'the un-named dancing girl') has "just stepped out for a moment." Then we realize that Tatewaki and Shampoo didn't make the cut. Tatewaki immediately uses this as an excuse to start a fight with Ranma. But Shampoo (who, as we'll recall, is madly in love with Ranma) has different plans. The two start fighting with/over Ranma and finally hurl him outside. Where it's raining. Ranma-onna comes back, sneaks through the crowd to her father, and hisses the line "Hot! Water! Now!" before getting dragged to the floor by a newly-cheered up Dan. Now Dan has a partner and Akane is without. And not happy. The violence persists, with more complicated moves. We start to see a few Dragonball-Z-style balls'o'energy get thrown about. The "Flying Charleston of Doom" makes its first appearance. Genma returns with a teapot of hot water, but sees no way of dousing Ranma-onna without revealing the curse to the whole crowd. Ranma-onna, for her part, sees herself in a perfect position to take down Dan from close by. But all that results is very musical sparring that the judges rate very highly. Finally, Ranma-onna aims the "Airborne Attack Arr-Jay" at her partner, who ducks. She laughs as she crashes through the wall behind him -- and gets out of the room. Genma runs outside with the hot water. A short time later, a slightly-injured Ranma appears behind Akane. This leads to "WHERE WERE YOU!" and a swing with a mallet at Ranma. (It's evidently something Akane is wont to do, the mallet attack.) The mallet is removed as an unsanctioned object; points are deducted. Akane spends most of the dance trying to attack Ranma in various ways, which (again) impresses the judges favorably. But finally, the judges decree that the only couple that really worked well together was Shampoo... and the pig. They close the episode with another awkward high school dance. Both schools are again in attendance. Only this time, everyone is so frustrated with each other that there isn't a big brawl between two schools, just a lot of small, petty, internecine bickering. And the principal looks out on it and declares it to be good. There were a lot of things to like about this OAV. Even on the cheap, they have a blast animating the choreography. They must have done their homework, because Ranma as a bad dancer -- tense, disconnected, and confused -- just feels accurate. Akane shouted "Stop having spaghetti arms!" a split-second after I shouted the same thing at the screen. And the plot really moves once the farcical dance sequence gets going. Having it all set to good jazz music only heightens it. I wish they had done a better job of creating a real character arc from the beginning to the end; then again, a story in which nobody anywhere learns a valuable lesson is just fine by me. They had some great running jokes that were ancillary to the plot. For example, they play up the Martial Art of Swing Dancing tradition's reverence for all things vintage. We first see this as vintage clothes, then as vintage cars. Then vintage instruments and vintage training equipment. By the time they get to vintage dental surgery and the vintage hamburger lovingly preserved in a bell jar, the whole thing has gotten quite silly. There's also a quiet background joke in which we see that Genma has no dancing ability as a human being -- but whenever he's in panda form and there is music, there is elite panda-dancing. They really put in enough material to make the movie reward repeat viewing. So I certainly had fun watching this one -- recommended to all fans of swing dancing and/or gender-switching farce. [1] As this is animé, I must clarify: not literally. [2] All the Chinese characters are named after drug-store products. I don't know why. post a comment
Some days you have no idea *what* to review -- you just look at the stacks and stacks of stuff and you feel a bit overwhelmed. At times like that, I'll thumb through the books and see if anything catches my eye. The book is titled Inappropriate Knitting. I suppose you'd call it a coffeetable book, though one does wonder who exactly would want it on their coffeetables. It's certainly a conversation piece I suppose. It's mainly a book of photography -- in this case, photographs of knitted pieces that seem somehow inappropriate to the form. The foreward demonstrates the meaning of 'inappropriate' with a few simple side-by-side examples: on the left a neatly-knitted puppy, on the right a neatly-knitted puppy vomiting into a neatly-knitted food dish; on the left a sweater, on the right a straitjacket; on the left a happy & smiling fellow, on the right the severed head of a happy & smiling fellow; and so on. Then they get started on the book proper. The book is organized around several broad topics. The first one, "Anatomy," I was immediately tempted to skip past, but I figured I should at least have a look. At first this seemed like a bad idea, as I saw various internal organs rendered very precisely in yarn. They were made appropriately damp-looking and set on a clean, clinical-looking metallic tray for the photographs. After a while, I found it kind of interesting. On the enlarged cutaway of the human eye, for example, they labeled all the parts appropriately; I can only imagine a staggering amount of painstaking work went into it. Not everything was up to that caliber though; the liver, for example, just looked phoned-in. They move on to "Weapons & Other Dangerous Things," which evidently includes the H. R. Giger alien. It mostly comprised guns, swords, maces and the like -- menacing objects that all look inappropriately soft and cuddly when made of yarn. The oversized Glock had a row of little knitted bullets off to the side. It was cute. The ball-gag, on the other hand, was all kinds of disturbing. They close it out with a "Fashion" section, which has the straightjacket on its title page. The contents of this one were something of a relief -- I was worried that I'd see various forms of knitted fetish-wear (and have to obliterate the memory with sweet, sweet rubbing alcohol), but instead it looked like the sartorial equivalent of the 'unfortunate plush toys' site. Each item was egregiously designed somehow -- a sweater with no arms and no neck-hole; a glove with a half-dozen fingers; a scarf that is, somehow, and against all expectations, rendered unwearable via poor design; and so on. Often they would include small photos of some unfortunate person trying to wear the garment (the "help help I'm trapped in the unwearable sweater" photo was especially amusing). All in all it was a bit of harmless (if occasionally unsettling) fun. post a comment
Today's lesson is this: you know enough people of a creative and anarchic bent, your life is going to be strange. Just accept it.
Sometimes you *can* tell a lot from the record cover.
Okay, okay, one more radio serial. I know, my job is more properly to cover a wide variety of media. But this is fun, and I'm allowed a certain latitude here. Nyah. There once was a man who came to Ligazza, a thriving town along the Adriatic coast. The quiet, genial visitor made his way through Ligazza's bustling marketplaces, admired its statues and paintings, and found lodgings for the night. His name was Fiorello, and Fiorello had arrived in the city-state with one very lucrative and difficult job: to assassinate its prince. This serial takes its sweet time imparting that information. For most of the first episode, not much of anything happens (beyond Fiorello temporarily losing his satchel). By the end, I was a bit bored with the local color. But when Fiorello brutally garroted a palace guard and shoved the corpse into an alleyway, my interest was piqued anew. Several more episodes cover the cat-and-mouse game that occurs within the palace walls. We experience much of the story from the point of view the (lamentably disposable) prince's retinue, who look around for the *something* that seems to creep out of the darkness to pick them off. They quickly suspect one other of some kind of double-cross. Fiorello picks up on this, and even frames the most able guard as his collaborator (he's quickly picked off by his colleagues). You could argue that these scenes tell us how the rest of the series will go -- lots of schemes within murderous schemes among people who don't trust anybody. Fiorello makes his way past this crew, and that sets us up for the serial's first big reversal: the prince not only wrangles his way out of the price on his head... the assassin winds up with a job in the local government. The conversation between the prince and the assassin lasts an entire episode. No changes of scene, no other characters, nothing at all -- just a wise-beyond-his-years politician smoothly talking his way out of his own murder, and a perspicacious mercenary who's looking for the best angle the situation has to offer him. What I like best about it is how smart the characters are allowed to be -- the prince makes some compelling arguments, and every time I thought to myself "Hey wait a minute, what about...?" then Fiorello would bring up the same point. The tactical 'landscape' kept shifting, and I had no idea what it was leading to. A long stretch of episodes after that introduce the politics of Ligazza and the major players in the power game. At the same time, the series subtly ratchets up the tension, puttings us in Fiorello's shoes as he senses something is going horribly wrong, but just can't for the life of him sort out what. And even though I could feel that something bad was coming on, the explosion at the end of episode 20 took me entirely by surprise. (I also appreciated the historical fidelity here, as the residents, none of whom had seen a black-powder explosion, tried to piece together what exactly they'd seen.) The blast kills the prince. (I honestly wasn't expecting them to kill off their title character like that, but there you go.) Fiorello works out that it was supposed to kill both of them. This makes the next stretch of episodes that are rather frenetic, for a couple of reasons: first, there's a mad power struggle (or perhaps 'power scrabble' or 'power cats-clawing-each-other-to-bits-in-a-bag' This is the first time we see our unflappable anti-hero off-guard -- he knows so many ways to kill a man that he sees threats absolutely everywhere. (There are several running jokes about how he doesn't trust any of his food.) This plot arc culminates in a lengthy verbal game of cat and mouse during an official soirée where a foreign dignitary (a recurring character up to then) slips up and reveals his guilt. His subsequent escape was breathtaking, the kind of hair's-breadth adventures one associates with the Good Old Days of the form. This leads to the last big tilt among the episodes I saw, wherein the minister of war conspires to involve Ligazza in massive war with a neighboring principality. It's a war he absolutely knows Ligazza would lose. (The War Minister has his own personal reasons.) Things get pretty desperate pretty fast as the city prepares for battle, and Fiorello tries to find some way to save his own neck. ... and that's where the serial left off. Exciting stuff, IMHO. The sound design is excellent, easily the best production values of any of these nonexistent radio serials so far. We hear completely different soundscapes for the oppressive palace halls, the vibrant and rambunctous city, and the peaceful coastline outside of town. It feels like the voice actors really savor their lines, particularly in the thorny political conversations where every line seems to conceal an ulterior motive -- which may, in turn, be a deliberate artifice. I also appreciated that nobody in this series learns what we'd call a 'moral lesson.' There are no heartwarming messages about doing right by your friends or learning what really matters in life or any of the other themes that get rammed down your throat in more edifying (and patronizing) works. If anything, Fiorello learns about how to survive. Maybe sometimes survival is the best you can do. 2 comments | post a comment
One thing the Gallery job teaches you is that anything you can possibly imagine exists somewhere. The conceit behind the series is the same as the conceit behind the LJ community -- God is running a phone line for people to call in and complain about things in the world that aren't working right. It's all more or less an extension of the "Rwanda doesn't work!" joke from Eddie Izzard's Glorious. Evidently, the phone line employs a few rotating support-staff types -- Sumit, Rose, and Corporal Finn. ("Corporal Finn" is actually named "Mike." Several episodes in, Management finds out that Mike was ex-military, and requires him to identify himself as "Corporal Finn" to all the callers.) As the episodes go on, you get familiar with Sumit's breezy Californian attitude, and Rose's spiky Goth pose, and Mike's stand-up sense of right and wrong (which seems almost uniquely ill-suited for a corporate environment). Frankly, I wish they had let slip more about their own soap-opera-like antics at the call center; occasionally that seemed more interesting than the calls they were handling. I guess one can't make too extravagant demands of the writers. I was surprised to find that that the entries get theological and wacky as the series goes on. The one guy complaining that he was supposed to be dead was something of a turning point. ("I mean, what... am I a ghost?" "No, sir. If you were a ghost, you wouldn't be able to use the phone." "Good point.") From there on, it moved from snarky commentary about pop culture and the annoyances of everyday life to snarky commentary about the nature of evil and other such Big Philosophical Questions. Less funny, but it certainly staked out its own unique niche there. Production-wise, everything works fine, but there's not a lot production value to it. I think their sound effects library consists of a few phone sounds, a bland 'ambient noises of the office' loop, and occasionally some vaguely-angelic hold music. (One hilariously-stupid customer assumed that the choral music was the Archangel Gabriel, talking to him incomprehensibly.) Plus they use some sort of bass-cutoff vocal filter to make the callers sound like they're on the other end of a phone line. As for the script, it *sounds* improvised, but I suspect they're sticking to something written for them. Generally the calls follow tightly-structured plots, whereas improv tends to produce stories that are loose and very random. After another dozen or two episodes like that, the podcast ran a little thin on ideas. However, that quickly forced them to set up calls that were further and further 'out there' -- the conference call about the time machine ("Does this defy the Laws of God?") was absolutely loopy and required a half-dozen listens to (kind of) sort out. On the less creative side, the celebrity voiceovers they tried felt very jump-the-shark-like. Generally, the celebs seemed out of sorts in these entries, kind of trying to put themselves at an ironic distance from the material -- which is just stupid & wrong. There were a few wonderful exceptions; the call that ends with Billy Bragg getting hung up on is priceless. So, yes, stumbling upon this was a creepy reminder of the side-effects your ideas can have. Still, it provided an afternoon of extensive amusement, and I'm glad I found it. post a comment
I look back over what I've done so far for the Gallery, and I see a lot of positive reviews. Honestly it makes me feel like some kind of shill, a quote-whore on the payroll of various alternate realities. So that's how I feel about The Woodburn Murders. Yes, there ain't nothin' wrong with more podcasted radio serials. And yes, it artfully blends elements of all sorts of horror sub-genres, from Lovecraft's elder-god stories through the classic 50's mad-scientist B-movies all the way up to the Blair Witch Project. And yes, the people behind it have obviously read volumes and volumes of Faulkner, which is a compliment I rarely get to give anybody, let people in the pulp-horror genre. But still the 'meh.' Why? It's not for weak production values or voice acting. This is obviously no doujinshi production; from the opening music on, you know this is a real show. And the storyline certainly has potential from the get-go -- four teenagers exploring an old house in the dead of night. What could go wrong? Heh. (Just in the first four episodes, a dead body, the mysterious disappearance of same, and an abduction by forces unknown -- among other mishaps.) They nail the four characters -- the main protagonist, her little brother, and a couple of her friends -- as they approach the old plantation home. Janice is full of snark, probably a goth type. Her brother (Zak) is kind of sweet and slow-witted. And the two friends (Blake, Daisy) are bland rich kids, at least at this point. (I think they setting us up to think of them as bad-guy fodder, so that they can pull something else instead.) And they do a good job of gradually filling out a backstory filled with ghosts, possession, elaborate mechanical devices with paranormal powers, curses, and a family history with rather too many mad scientists who had a penchant for Faustian bargains. They parcel out the information artfully, holding back on the things we want to know -- we don't get the explanation about why the teenagers are even *at* the creepy old house until we're *all* thinking (to paraphrase Eddie Murphy) "why don't they just get the hell out of the house?" And the things that happen in the house that night are pretty damn creepy. (The sound design is a real delight [if that's the word] for people with good headphones -- things sound very spacious and not-quite-natural.) When they find the recording Daisy leaves behind -- ugh. Scared the crap out of me. In fact, it scared me a good bit more than it scared the people in the story, and I think that's one of the major problems: events happen, and often they're events of importance, but nothing really seems to land. The horrors don't exact an emotional toll. And yes, the relationships are nicely defined , but they're very static. I know if *I* found out I was cursed because of the rash actions of my crazy grandfather... well, I'd start having family issues. Hell, I'd have humanity issues. I wouldn't keep lumbering along. Maybe it was a stylistic choice or something -- to me it just seems like the writers dropped the ball. That and, while they're good about pacing the exposition, eventually they just introduce too much crap to keep track of. If I have to know the siblings' entire family tree to follow the story, something's wrong -- and no matter how seamlessly-presented it is, it drags me away from the 'here and now' of the story. <sigh> I gave up on the series about ten episodes in -- shortly after they all make it out of the house (or do they? -- I think there are some veiled hints to the contrary at the end of episode #8) and the story opens out to the funeral in town the next day. I felt like most of the tension was gone -- the various forms of creepy-danger established in the first episodes seem to go on holiday. That's a real shame, because they had a solid first section to build on. Maybe it was some sort of pacing decision -- I just know it didn't work for me. In the end, maybe I'm just the wrong guy to review The Woodburn Murders. Frankly, I don't really go for horror stories in the first place. (My thoughts after listening to the first few episodes: "What was I thinking? Now I'm going to have trouble sleeping. Or looking at mirrors. <shudder>") So I move on. There's far too many other things to hear and see and read for me to get too bogged down in something that doesn't quite work. post a comment
Yet again, something moderately successful in reality has become something of a juggernaut elsewhere. The Uncyclopedia is basically a take-off on Wikipedia -- it's a wiki-based encyclopedia in which all of the facts are wonderfully wrong. "RTFM" is defined as an acronym that stands for "repeat the first message" (preferably in all caps). Oscar Wilde is credited as the 37th president of the United States. And so on. Like the Uncyclopedia itself, their books are not overburdened with accurate facts. Still, the Uncyclopedia Guide to Austin is internally consistent; for example, Stephen F. Austin is conflated with Doc Brown from the Back to the Future films on page 1 of the book, and also on pages 25, 77, 78, 79, and 112. They only suspend their internal consistency for one running joke: about twenty different locations are all confidently identified as "the highest point in Austin." In spite of the silliness, the Guide follows the usual conventions of a travel guide. It opens with a brief history of the city (starting in the Cretacious-Tertiary boundary, and moving forward to the year 2525). The brief history is funny in and of itself, but it also serves to introduce many of the running jokes they'll reference throughout the book. For example, on page 250 when they describe the giant puppets that guard the capitol, they can also mention that they were drawn forth from the earth and animated by the wizard Merlin during his aforementioned "Wïzzzzzards World Tour 550AD" visit to the city. That first chapter provides a frame of reference, bizarre though it may be, for the rest of the book. With the first chapter out of the way, things get pretty episodic. They put in the restaurant listings pretty early on. Their first restaurant reviews include star ratings (e. g., "three stars"). Then they start to rate it by other, more questionable icons (e. g., "five hyperbolic nuclear-reactor cooling towers). Finally, the ratings become pretty mystifying (e. g., "picture of a goose, followed by an upside-down exclamation point"). In the dead center of the book is a section for colorful fold-out maps. None of these maps are in any way useful. Instead, there are maps like "Places You Can Get Killed Really Easily in Austin" (which would be useful if only it were accurate), a schematic of the all-purpose Bond-villain lair (located in the roof of Austin's newest giant office building), and a buried-treasure map of Auditorium Shores (again, unuseful because it's inaccurate). After this, the book stays pretty random; the strongest chapter is "Austin Facts and Traditions." This includes the "Austin Holidays" calendar. Granted, a problem with this part is that the holidays they invent ("Thanatopsis Day," etc.) are perhaps no stranger than real Austin traditions ("Eeyore's Birthday," etc.), but in many cases it's fun to imagine Austin celebrating these traditions. In particular, the annual "Coronation of the Town Emperor" sounds like it is not to be missed. They move on from there to "Things to See and Do." Of particular interest were the field-anthropologist guide to hippie-watching, and the thorough information about "Bessie," the legendary prehistoric sea creature of Barton Creek. Their afterword opens with this: "We hope that this guide has helped you understand our city." I couldn't help thinking that maybe they really *meant* that. In describing all of these patently untrue things, they had captured the city a little better than any travel book that recited the tedious facts -- or worse, some travel book that affects a breezy and hip prose style as it tries to present 'the exciting flavor of the city.' (Trying to *make* something sound cool is so often counterproductive.) So all in all, I'd say it's a good book for Austin natives or for unsuspecting visitors from out of town. :) post a comment
I always get a little embarrassed when I've had something kicking around the Gallery for weeks (or in this case, months) without realizing that it doesn't exist. Such was the case for this Erasure CD -- it's been here among the Gallery clutter since at least April. I assumed that it was a CD of mine that I brought to work and absently left here. The end result will probably live in my CD player here at work for a good long while, but I can understand it isn't for everybody. I mean, I was worried that it would be awful. Typically, an effort to set a pop song for orchestra will surgically remove everything that was good about the song, and leave you with a syrupy mess. Every instrument plays major chord after major chord after major chord, and one fairly cries out for a jarring dissonance, a flubbed note, *something* to give the song some traction. At least the arrangements (credited to both Clarke and Poppy) don't go the syrup route. Instead, they start with Clarke's already-meticulous pop soundscapes and in some cases flesh them out even further. (I did a lot of switching back and forth between CDs to convince myself that certain harmonies hadn't been there before.) In a couple of places, short solos are expanded into more substantive melodies. (In one song, we get a full-blown cadenza, where *everyone* stops and lets the violin do its elaborate thing.) The individual songs work well, and you can tell they're making sure it adds up to a good *sequence* of songs. They create variety from track to track -- opening with the massive-sounding choral forces at play in "Drama" and focussing down to the spare, intimate string quartet of "You Surround Me." It lends the disc an emotional variety that, frankly, Erasure isn't always known for. Technically, the disc doesn't open with "Drama," but with a track labeled "Small Suite" that cycles through the themes of all five songs. I found it a little too precious, but it did have a dreamy, aimless quality that reminds me (in an oblique way) of Impressionist composers. Still, to a large extent I'm praising this EP by saying "it doesn't sound like Muzak," and maybe that means something is wrong. After all, Erasure made their name on the sort of catchy pop melodies that don't necessarily reward extensive musical reinterpretation. Somebody who is more mean-spirited than me could argue that this whole EP is pretty much superfluous -- do you really need to hear a full brass section present one of the riffs from "Drama"? Does it do that much for you if you do? Even for me, this was something I could hang on to for a good long while without really noticing it. Your mileage may vary. post a comment
Another perk of this job at the Gallery is when you receive new work from artists who, for one reason or another, fell off the face of the earth. |
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