Catching Up My Movies, and a Little Anouncement

I had to play catchup with my movie list, so it's gonna be a little long. I got a new page of Golden Brown up, so when you're done here, go there. I'm still counting down to that last page. It's been crazy that I started the comic just ovr 2 years ago. Even crazy is that when I counted up my pages so far, I still haven't hit 100 yet! Oh well. After Golden Brown is finished, I have another story in mind to get started on. I'm still making notes here and there--I wanted to be a little better prepared than I was the first go-round.
I have an anouncement to make, which is bittersweet. I haven't talked about it much on here, but I've been having some issues with my artistic education. Mainly I've taken issue with the concept that something which is supposed to broaden my mind artistically and encourage creativity is actually laden with rules and wrong ways of doing things. I had a couple good teachers (Mark Badger, for one)I do feel that there are some basic guidelines in art, but I was, in truth beginning to turn in assignments I had done the year before, only to get slightly different critiques, and be told to work on things I didn't think were that flawed. Some of these guys would love Bill Wray, but if he were a student, they'd tell him he has to push his values more, or work on his detail bcause he didn't put enough time into his painting, or something to that effect. With Mike Mignola, they'd rail on his proportions, or with Frank Miller they'd tell him his portrayal of fingers were too square and boxy. All these things are signatures of the artists I just mentioned, reasons why their stuff is so appealing to me, things that I don't see as flaws at all. So, after a lot of thought, discussion with Karissa, and even a little with my dad, I quit art school. Going in, I wanted potential empoyers to see the degree and giv m a chance. Now, I'm not really sure I ever want to be employed by someone who would need to see a degree. Fuck rules. I'll get my stuff published, and I'll probably do it the hard way, but at least I can still be god of my own little comic. So that's that. I am an art school dropout. And despite the bitching, I've been feeling better about my decision as each day passes (I actually decided about 2 weeks ago).

What Am I Watching?
13 Ghosts- Not the 2001 version with Tony Shalhoub, Matthew Lillard, et al.--This one is the original starring Charles Herbert and Rosemary d Camp. A down-and-out teacher/researcher inherits his uncle's haunted mansion, complete with 13 ghosts and special goggles to see them with. Some stuff happens, everybody screams, it's not too bad a movie for 1960. It would have been cooler to see in the theater when they did the whole seat buzzer thing. The story comes together okay, but is wrapped up way too neatly by the dad in a Scooby Doo-ish happy ending.

The Tingler- A pathologist discovers a supernatural bug in the vertebrae that feeds on human fear. Vincent Price stars in this one, and I realize his earlier roles have virtually nothing of the type-cast creepiness of his later roles. The 'tingler' in question closely resembles a mutant centipede. Oh, and also, this movie heralds the first depiction of an LSD trip.

Smokin' Aces- A Vegas magician with mob ties lives it up one last time before going to testify against said mob in court. A bunch of hired killers step up to take the contract on his head. The story moves along at a frantic pace with the magician's health rapidly deteriorating as he continues his bender. Some of the killers get bumped off early on, and one who barely got away alive ends up in a side story at a house dealing with an elderly woman and her MASSIVELY attention-deficit-addled grandson who apparently gets turned on while threatening the guy with his martial arts skills. The kid in this movie, though a minor part, was one of my favorite parts of this movie.

Barton Fink- A Jwish screenwriter is offered a job writing a B-movie script about a wrestler. He gets horrible writer's block and weird things start happening to him. It didn't take me long to figure out this was a Cohen bros. movie. The movie takes place during WWII, the dialogue is cool, the main character is nuts and maybe a little delusional, and John Goodman turns out to be a Nazi spy--or something to that effect. My favorite scene in the movie is when Goodman's character is standing at the end of a hallway he had just started on fire (long story). He starts running toward two detectives at the other end with a shotgun, and the flames are right on his tail.

Alvin & the Chipmunks- While this may not seem like a movie I would see, remember that I grew up with cartoons like this, so watching this movie with Isabella took me back to my own childhood. While there are some slight changes, like the size of the chipmunks, the movie stays pretty true to the original stuff in the sense that the cartoons did music that was modern at the time, and nobody after Dave Seville seemed to question how chipmunks could talk, let alone sing and have human attitudes. The question was never really an issue in the cartoons, nor does it need explanation here. The only thing that bugged me at all was the hip-hop version of the witchdoctor song.
Delinquent Daughters- A girl's suicide ends up revealing some of the seedier aspects of high school culture of the 1940's. Didn't care much for this movie. The "teens" looked a bit old for high school, and there was a lot of "aw gee fellas"-type acting that I could have done without. The chick fight is okay, but the nice, wholesome ending made me sick.
The Trouble With Harry- This is what happens when Hitchcock decides to do a little comedy. A man out hunting rabbits unwittingly shoots and kills another in the forest. As numerous people seem to inexplicably happen upon the scene, they all react differently to the body, and we find out more about the "victim". I thought it was pretty funny.