6/23/2005

Ah, handy handy links...

*Dear me, I’m afraid that Outside Work is standing beside me right now, tapping its foot and making faces behind my back. And not the ‘oh Jog you’re such a cunning and handsome sort I do love you and I’ll wait forever’ sort of faces but ‘Jog, if you don’t attend to things right now I’m going to kick straight through your left kidney.’ And that’s my favorite kidney, so I have to hurry up.

*Good thing there’s stuff to link to…

OVER AT THE GALAXY

This time around the new CBG we’ve got a review of the latest in Checker’s series of obscure Winsor McCay reprints, aptly titled Winsor McCay Early Works: Volume V. The quality of the reproduction varies wildly (and the lows are quite low indeed), but every fresh batch of heretofore unseen-in-decades material gives us a broader picture of that insanely prolific master cartoonist. Have a gander, or a goose if that’s your thing.

*Jeffrey Wells pointed this out: it’s the lengthy internet ‘first look’ trailer for the new Cameron Crowe film, Elizabethtown, his first since 2001’s underrated Vanilla Sky (sure it was a convoluted and sometimes extremely silly star-studded Hollywood remake, but I thought the air of ridiculousness aided the dream tone, and the excellent soundtrack often made it seem like an ode to those pompously amusing head films from back in the day, though admittedly at ten trillion times the budget - I’m probably in the minority here, seeing as how one of the friends I saw it with walked out about twenty minutes from the end and sat in the lobby, his disgust with the film was so plain). I’m of two minds. It’s put together really well; I liked how it started out as rough set footage, folks talking and laughing between takes, only to gradually transform into a 'proper' trailer. I loved the music, and how every so often the action on screen would synch up with the soundtrack, but not always. I totally forgot that was Orlando Bloom in the lead. There’s some lovely shots, quite a few of which would make for excellent trailer-enders; I liked the one they chose, though I’d have gone with the hand sticking out of the car, releasing the ashes. On the other hand, Kirsten Dunst displays about two facial expressions (three at the absolute max) through the entire eight-minute affair, there’s too many shots of whimsical dancing, there’s way too many shots of characters applauding performers (let’s not get too self-aggrandizing, folks), and the whole thing looks to be sort of twee. Twee is ok with me (as anyone reading this site for any length of time could probably detect), but only in either perfectly rationed slices or utterly heroic doses (I’m talking goddamned Magnolia); falling in the middle will make me annoyed. But, it’s one of the more compulsively viewable trailers I’ve seen recently.