Mes amis

Last week Gerby, Crookie & Boris came to visit. I showed them around Nice & tried to give them a taste of the best parts of the Riviera in the short time we had.



The Gorges du Verdon is France's biggest & most beautiful gorge. We drove 2 hours out of Nice to Castellane & rafted down the river. It was fairly tame with only a handful of pulse-quickening rapids. Things were livened up when the guide pushed Boris into the water, I jumped in voluntarily & a lizard jumped out of the water into Gerby's life vest!


Our guide suggested we tip the raft for fun so we all jumped to the same side & in we plunged. When I tried to re-surface I was somehow trapped underwater beneath the raft. Panicking I managed to get out choking & spluttering. Crookie passed me my helmet which was on his foot! A near drowning in two foot of water was the highlight of an eventful day. It may have been the worst organised trip ever but we had fun despite the fiasco of the car keys, the fly sandwiches & carrying the deflated raft 200 metres uphill!



The next day we drove to Cannes & caught the open top bus along the Croisette to the port. There we took the ferry across to Isle St. Marguerite & spent a relaxing afternoon sunbathing, swimming & throwing pebbles at each other.




Crookie had a later return flight than the others so on the last day we visited the musée Picasso, Vallauris. Picasso had settled in the town during the late 40s to focus on ceramic works but he also found time to decorate the small chapel with his 'War & Peace' mural. While not exactly Guernica it's a joy to enter into the 'tunnel' & be inside a Picasso painting.


Above is the view as you enter. The peace section looks like this-


-and the war section-




A small collection of ceramic work is on show. I love this stuff-Picasso experimenting with a new medium & having so much fun at the same time.

Firenze

A couple weekends back Raja & I drove down to Florence & stayed for two nights in the city-a short walk from the famous Ponte Vecchio. I didn't get much drawing done, we had just enough time to relax & take in the sights of this beautiful city.

We had a look inside the Duomo but didn't go up-the queue was too long! Instead we toured the Palazzo Vecchio.


We found the famous brass boar & rubbed his nose for good luck!


Neptune duck hunting in the Jardin de Boboli.

Cannes Natives part 2

The juxtaposition of Hollywood invading a French seaside town is always amusing. The locals have seen it every year for decades & observe it all with bemusement.


The younger locals like to come down to the Croisette to show off. Semi-transparent dresses with thong knickers just don't work for everyone!


The contrast between the glamour of the film festival & the homeless begging on the streets is striking too. Rich, glamorous folk parade up & down the Croisette with destitute Eastern European families begging at their feet.
Meanwhile cinephiles get so desperate for an invitation to a premier they spend all day outside the Palais pleading for a spare ticket.




The 'Kung Fu Panda' costumes that Dreamworks had manufactured to plug the movie were funny-while not exactly 'on model' they gave the character a kind of spasmodic goofy charm!

Annecy 2008

Had a blast at Annecy last weekend. It was a late decision for me to go this year as I didn't plan it & expected all the hotels to be booked up. But at the last moment I was lucky enough to find a central hotel with cancellations & bagged a room. I drove up from Nice on the Thursday & returned Sunday afternoon.




I hooked up with my old pals from Uli Meyer's studio in London. I hadn't seen Uli in a year-look how he's grown!



Out on the first evening I bumped into an old friend, Jakob Schuh, director of Studio Soi & teacher at FilmAkademie. We started sketching on themes of dinosaurs & French tarts!

The day after we caught a morning screening of Gabriele Zuchelli's fascinating documentary on animation pioneer Quirino Cristiani. The boys were feeling a little worse for wear.


I was educated & enlightened by the film- Cristiani created what is now considered to be the earliest feature length animated film in 1917. He worked with only Emile Cohl's primitive work as a precedent to learn from, inventing new techniques to realise his first satirical masterpiece 'El Apostol'.


Cristiani made his films for a mature audience,cartoons weren't for kids in those days. Animation was perceived as part of an evenings' entertainment & no cute talking animals appeared in Cristiani's films. His background in illustration & newspaper cartooning informed his film-making, they were satirical & political with a strong emphasis on caricature. One can't help but wonder what the situation would be today in feature animation if the medium had followed Cristiani's path & not Disney's?


Next day we went para-gliding where we chanced upon Cartoon Brew's Amid Amidi. He was just dropping in from NYC to research his new book 'A guide to what not to eat before jumping off a French mountain'. Animation doesn't get more rock & roll than this. I'm ashamed to admit though that when my pilot began some high speed sky acrobatics the extreme g-force made me scream like a little girl! See Uli's flight here.


Driving up on Thursday afternoon I missed the organised Sketchcrawl around Annecy. So, on the last day, we took things easy & made our own belated crawl around the old town. Paul, Jakob, Jean-Paul, Sean & I drew around the picturesque canal & the old town.


All the sketches from the official Sketchcrawl event organised by Bannister can be viewed here.



Here are mine:

The old prison is a sketchcrawl must.




Le Munich Restaurant where we met every evening before dinner.

Cannes Natives

I've been working up drawings based on some of the characters I saw at the Cannes Film Festival.


6. 'The Wannabe'

This dame was dressed up to the nines hoping to be 'discovered' despite looking like an over the hill, transexual prostitute. Or perhaps 'she' was an over the hill, transexual prostitute?



5. 'The Mystic'

This fella was dressed like a Buddhist monk & hung around the Croisette sleeping rough at the foot of a palm tree. He was very tanned & very dirty. The first time I saw him he was carrying a stuffed panda & pontificating about Chinese politics.

4. 'The Usher'

Even the staff at the festival are movie fans. I drew this usher reading French Premiere as we waited in line for the Indiana Jones screening.



3. 'The Promo-Girl'

Dark Dog Energy Drink had hired a gaggle of promo-girls to totter around the Croisette in search of photo opportunities. They were soon mobbed by hordes of tourists & locals who swarmed around them to get a shot, like hyenas around a herd of gazelles!


2. 'The Geek'

Outside the Palais many people without a festival pass would wait with signs begging for a ticket for that nights premiere. This guy, obviously a fan of genre movies was looking for an invite for Indiana Jones.




1. 'The Bum'

Every morning I would find a parking spot at the far end of the Croisette near to Palm Beach. This old boy would be sitting close by in the same spot every day. He looked like the ghost of Orson Welles trapped in movie limbo. Somehow he had a different jacket & a different chair each time I saw him. He would hold court as other homeless, alcoholics & junkies gathered around him on the ground. He had swollen legs & red skin from sitting in the sun all day drinking.

And the Palme d'Or goes to . . .

. . . a bunch of French schoolkids! 'Entre les murs' is the first French film to win the top prize in 20 years & it was great to see the kids getting to be stars for a night. It was an appropriate choice for a subdued festival with most films in competition focused on social issues. My favourite films were two terrific documentaries-'Tyson' James Toback's portrait of the troubled boxer & 'No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos'-the riveting story of the great cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs & Vilmos Zsigmond who escaped the Russian invasion of Hungary & became the D.O.P.s of choice for the new Hollywood of the 60s & 70s.
But where is my prize for surviving Steven Soderbergh's 4 & half hour biopic of CHE?

It continued to rain all week. Sales in the film market were reportedly just as poor as the weather & most execs were packing up by Friday & heading home.

There was one sunny day on Thursday so I skipped a screening & spent the afternoon drawing on the 'festival only' beach behind the Palais.

The yachts that drop anchor in the bay & the port are unbelievable. Just as you think you've seen the biggest boat ever built an even more immense vessel sails into town! There was one bigger than the car ferries that go to Corsica-up on the poop deck there was a rock band performing on a concert stage.

The chap above was shooting my favourite film critic Mark Kermode reviewing movies on the beach.
The main hall of the Palais des Festivals.


Views from the café terrace.

The International All-Stars Pétanques Championship.


Some of the freaks,geeks & nutty folk who make the festival such fun.

Encore Cannes!

Once the red carpet frenzy begins every evening it's impossible to get a glimpse of any celebs or film-makers; they're surrounded by a wall of photographers. Then behind them are a sea of tourists, curious locals & invitees struggling to get close to the Palais. It's a real circus & once everyone is up the famous steps the mob instantly disperses!

The daily VARIETY had a nice double page spread yesterday for 'A MONSTER IN PARIS'. The artwork was made here at the studio in Nice; layout by Seb, painted by Aurélien & Carlos.


I saw the hotly anticipated INDIANA JONES & THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL but I'm disappointed to report it doesn't warrant the buzz. After almost 20 years you would think they could come up with something better than quicksand, ants & waterfalls . . .and gophers! What's with the bloody gophers!
Sure these perilous obstacles (except the gophers) were staples of the classic serials that originally inspired the series. However even the pre-digital fx original films offered much more inventive cliffhangers & set-pieces. For all of Spielberg's insistence that digital fx were used sparingly 'SKULL' plays more like a film in the 'MUMMY' series with its nuclear explosion & ant-swarms, even those Indy influenced films restrained from cheap gags such as using a stretchy rubber snake as a rope! Skull is a parody of the Indy series- & not even a good one. The jokes aren't funny, the new characters are under-developed, there's no suspense. They should have made this 10 years ago when everyone involved still had some fire in them. Apparently Lucas stubbornly insisted on the 'skull civilisation' macguffin & rejected all other scenarios. I would love to read Frank Darabont's draft on which he worked for a year & was reportedly a cracker. The story Lucas preferred is more like one of those lightweight supernatural Indy novellas that have been published in the intervening years.
Even with his considerable cinematic genius Spielberg couldn't save this-it's arguably his worst film. Towards the finale someone laments 'so much of human life is lost in waiting' with which after 19 years, 2 hours in a queue & 2 hours viewing I regretfully agree.


After the turgid 4th Indy film creaking under the weight of it's overblown nonsensical script it was an utter relief to be blown away by Jean-Stephane Sauvaire's 'JOHNNY MAD DOG'. A 'platoon' of young soldier kids roam the Liberian countryside killing, raping & terrorizing villagers before besieging an un-named city. The brutality of their atrocities is outweighed by their apathy & callousness. Their adult general has brainwashed them to think of their guns as their parents & any sign of parental longing results in execution. They have been stripped of their childhoods & their humanity allowing them to act without empathy or guilt.
The camera-work is frenetic & intense, the soundtrack blisteringly loud, the young cast totally convincing. It will be hailed as this year's 'CITY OF GOD'.