French movies.

Also on a movie theme I saw a couple of new releases in the cinema from Luc Besson. BANDIDAS was written & produced by Besson. It's a fun romp with Salma Hayak & Penelope Cruz as bank robbers in turn-of-the-century Mexico. It's pretty mindless stuff but fairly entertaining & the girls look great.




ANGELA-A is his first directorial gig since JOAN OF ARC. It's on a much smaller scale than his 'Hollywood' pictures. Shot on location around Paris in black & white it's a film noirish tale of a low-life hustler who seeks saviour in the form of an angel. She's played by Danish amazon Rie Rasmussen who must have the longest legs in cinema. The effect is exaggerated by her co-star, French comedian Jamel Debbouze, who is TINY next to her!

Anime in France

In France you can get hold of rare animation films that aren't distributed in the UK. Recently I picked up a couple of anime movies that I've been after for a long time. Sci-fi epic TREE OF PALME relates the quest of a Pinnochio-like cyborg boy & his journey through a surreal dystopian future. There's some dazzling visuals & the alien backgrounds are reminiscent of Roger Dean's artwork.

SPACE FIREBIRD is an old film from the 80's written by Osama Tezuka & directed by Taku Sugiyama . The animation isn't great but the film is very inventive visually. Highlights include a robotic-girl who can fold up like a deck chair & a swooping aerial camera move over a city that isentirely hand drawn!

YOKAI

In Paris a couple weekends ago I visited the Japanese Cultural Centre where they were holding an exhibition called YOKAI.
YOKAI is Japanese for 'goblin' & the show featured artwork on paper & long scrolls that depicted goblins, spirits, demons & the supernatural. It was one of the most fun shows I've ever seen & I couldn't draw enough! The catalogue had sold out so I tried to get down as many of these creatures as possible.




Ooh, that's gotta hurt! Apparently demons love to torture humans.


Frogs & toads seem to be held in low regard in Japanese mythology - they're always presented as evil, diabolical or bad omens.


Those really are that squirrel's nuts! He'll have trouble burying THEM this winter!


The exhibition had a trailer playing for Takeshi Miike's latest film 'THE GREAT GOBLIN WAR'. A fantasy film released last year in Japan it was a local effort to create a film similar to The Lord of the Rings but using Japanese mythology. It's aimed at a younger audience but looks mighty entertaining. Should see a European release this year.
There's a great piece on YOKAI in the January section of monsterama.blogspot.com. See also www.obakemono.com
www.mangajin.com/mangajin/samplemj/ghosts/ghosts.htm

XING

In Paris they have special road crossing points for sausage dogs!

January People

More Parisians & Eurostar travellers.

ASTERIX

ASTERIX & THE VIKINGS is released in France in April & the posters are already on the Paris Metro. But WHO had to draw all those characters? Boris . . .

Life Drawing January 24th

Baby condor nest

Small painting inspired by a scene I recently storyboarded.

More life drawing!

At last, after a gap of over 2 years the London chapter of the Animation Blogging Community have found a new, regular life drawing class to attend! Monday & Tuesday nights at the CANDID Arts Centre, Islington - behind Angel tube station. Here's what I did in the first session.

Merry Christmas!

A little late maybe but here's what Santa brought me for Xmas! An original drawing by Uli Meyer that appeared on his (now sadly deceased) blog (RIP). The other original drawing is master caricaturist Ric Machin's rough drawing for a painting he made of DeNiro as Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER. Interesting article on Ric & his art here:
http://www.gkrkarate.org/pages/people/machinf.html

What iceberg?

TERRIBLE TIM

One episode of TERRIBLE TIM which I designed & directed is now online at www.ulimeyer.com
If you head to the Flash section of the website you'll find the relevant page.

X-Rated Searle

As a Ronald Searle/Ralph Steadman fan I often trawl the second-hand bookshops of Charing X Road looking for old or out of print editions. I recently found 'Ronald Searle's Secret Sketchbook'. It's a small volume of very rough & loose pen drawings that Searle made in the red light district of Hamburg. An American magazine sent him there on assignment to document the colourful 'night-life' & the results are rapidly executed sketches of strippers, prostitutes, johns & punters. The book's jacket says 'this sketchbookis an observer's notebook, not a participator's, and was never intended originally to be seen in print'.

London Exhibitions

Over the holiday break I managed to get to a couple of the big art shows in London. CHINA: The 3 Emperors at The Royal Academy is packed with exquisitely crafted objects & hand painted scrolls.

RUBENS: A Master In The Making at the National Gallery shows all his major early works. 8 years studying the Renaissance Masters in Italy transformed from from a struggling artist's pupil in Antwerp into the most successful painter of his day.
Incredibly dynamic work on display, the highlight is his version of St.George vanquishing the Dragon.

The 'ecorche' figures on show are miniature wax works (by Willem van tetrode 1562) of flayed human bodies in dynamic action which Rubens had copied endlessly from every angle while studying anatomy. The figures are displayed next to Rubens drawings of them.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Happy New Year to you all . . .