Baking with Batman

This made me chuckle:More here.

David Mamet on visual storytelling

I'm reading David Mamet's Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business, and I came across this passage about visual storytelling. He's talking about movies, but I think it relates pretty well to comics, too. It starts off as a discussion of Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, but that's just context, the third paragraph is the important one:

...Hitchcock designs each sequence magnificently. There is no "master, over, close-up" about it. Each sequence is designed around its particular theme and purpose in the unfolding story. Once could easily label them, e.g., alarm, suspicion, second thoughts, challenge, remorse. It may be the world's best silent film, undiminished even by the addition of dialogue.

Why are silent films potentially better?

The perfect film is the silent film, just as the perfect sequence is the silent sequence. Dialogue is inferior to picture in telling a film story. A picture, first as we know, is worth a thousand words; the juxtaposition of pictures is geometrically more effective. If a director or writer wants to find out if a scene works, he may remove the dialogue and see if he can still communicate the idea to the audience.

Ancient theological wisdom put it thus: "Preach Christ constantly - use words if you must."

I've heard that suggestion before, to watch movies with the sound off to see if you can still follow the storytelling, though I've never done it, because, seriously, who has the time (and patience)? But I'm always meaning to look at my comics the same way, skipping the words and just reading the images to see how the artist tells the story. The only artist whose work I've ever made time to do that for is Sean Phillips. I don't know why I do it with his work and not any of the other dozens of artists on my shelves. Maybe it's the starkness of his drawings, or his cinematic approach, I don't know, but I should really start paying attention to what other people are doing, too.

I am so glad I don't know how to do this...

...because if I did, I'd spend all my time making my own little action figure movies.

The entire video is done so well, and looks really professional, from the motion blur in the opening, to the way the camera moves, to the laser special effects. The music and the choreography are pretty good, too.

The same person who made this has another series up as well, in the format of some kind of YouTube game. The game isn't particularly interesting, but the images of Batman and the Joker dancing crack me up. (On a side note, I really, really, really loathe the ads that show up on the videos on YouTube now, particularly because they're ON the videos).

Pack it in, nothing you ever do will be as awesome as this

At least I don't have to go to the movies anymore, now that I've seen the peak of cinema:

Is there any such thing as celebrating too early?

Remember the consternation about Usain Bolt's celebrating his win before the end of the race?  Well, it hasn't stopped him:

The fastest boy alive

My brother's always buying hockey clothes for my sister's older kid.  Being an athlete himself, I think he'd like to see my nephew take up sports.  I got to thinking that I should get my say in from the comics side of things, so I bought this outfit for him:

"Time to get to work."

Hockey player or superhero?  I know what I'd choose, but hey, it's up to him.  I just want the kid to have options. 

I almost didn't buy this costume for him because I thought, "Well, Hallowe'en's so far off."  But then I remembered that when you're two, you can wear stuff like this anytime, anywhere and it's fine.  Nobody cares that a two year old is at the mall dressed like the Flash.  Just one more disadvantage of growing up, I guess. 

Let's start the year off right

I posted Matt Harding's last "Where the Hell is Matt" video once before, but in order to get the full effect of the actual content of today's post, I think you need to watch it again, so here:

The lyrics for the song in this video are from a poem by Rabindranath Tagore. This is "Stream of Life":

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

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And here's a link to a more recent video in which Matt Harding explains how he is an actor and he faked the whole video (but not really).