Pineapple in Le Havre

Sketch of a pineapple from the film Le Havre.

Aki Kaurismaki, the director of the film, has been quoted as saying, "I think the more pessimistic I feel about life, the more optimistic the films should be." Le Havre demonstrates that sentiment perfectly. It's a feel good movie that's strangely pessimistic, working by using an idealized story, characters, and setting in order to show you how terrible the real world is. The ending is ridiculously happy, and brings into sharp focus the falseness of the entire film. It's a fairy tale, complete with heroes, love defeating death, real villains, apparent villains who turn out to be heroes, journeys to unfamiliar places, and beautiful worlds, and like many fairy tales, it's an exhibition of what the world could, should, and what we wish it to, be. Never has a film's happy ending made me feel good and so sad simultaneously in such degrees.

I loved that nearly everyone in the film, besides the young boy, is well past their forties and fifties. After watching so many Hollywood films, I forgot that movies could be about people who weren't rich, young, and beautiful.

It's also very funny. The opening is like watching a Sergio Leone, or Jean-Pierre Melville, scene from the perspective of a couple of bystanders who are more concerned about making enough money to buy food for their evening meal than they are about the action and violence going on around them.

I was going to draw one of the characters in the film, but decided to draw the pineapple that one of them purchases and takes to a bar instead.

My brother wrote about the film as well.  Check it out.

The Dancing Skeleton

In my early teens, once a week, I'd walk down the street to a friend's place and watch WCW Nitro.  We'd have a lot of fun laughing at the antics of pro wrestlers and acting out their interviews and various moves.  It was good, clean fun.  My absolute favorite wrestler from this time was Mexican luchador La Parka.  There was something otherworldly and profound about the guy.  The dude was absurd with a capital "A."  He dressed up like a skeleton, did strange little dances, and his signature move was hitting people with folding chairs.  He's a surrealist superhero, Death personified as a lovable prankster/showman, and the thought has crossed my mind of building a small shrine to him in  a corner of our apartment.

WWLPD? (What Would La Parka Do?)

Answer:  He'd hit you with a metal chair, and then dance around you as you writhe in pain.

The John Hurt Boogie

This is John Hurt dancing in the movie Melancholia.  If you haven't seen it, check it out.  It's pretty good.

Faces

This drawing is of Lynn Carlin in John Cassavetes movie Faces.  My wife's aunt got me the John Cassavetes Criterion Collection box set for Christmas.  I'm very slowly going through it.  Every frame of Faces could be an amazing photo, drawing, or painting.  It's like humanity turned up to 11.

Battle in Heaven

This is a drawing of Marcos Hernandez from the movie Battle in Heaven.  That movie has a lot of amazing visuals.  The most beautiful scene, for me, was just a dude checking the oil in a truck at a gas station, but it was done so skillfully, and with such strange angles, colors, and music, that it blew my mind.  Good stuff.

P.S. Be warned if you check this movie out, it does have a few scenes of un-simulated sex. Crazy.

Goat

Goats are weird animals.  They're funny, they eat tin cans in cartoons, they look like old men, and they also have satanic connotations, all at the same time.  I really liked the movie Le Quattro Volte.  It's got some great goats in it.  The film kind of is a goat.

The Last Circus

I drew this image from the film The Last Circus.  It's a really bananas Spanish film about clowns, sex, religion, violence, and machine guns.  My movie-bot brother has a nice description of it here.

After I did this drawing of one of the main characters of the film, I really didn't like it at all.  I thought it was sloppy and lazy, but after a few days I grew to kind of like it.

Harry Dean

Harry Dean Stanton.  The guy is amazing in everything he's in.  He's one of those actors that has a great face and the acting chops to back it up.  I was thinking about his character in Repo Man recently, and I found a great photo of Mr. Stanton, so I drew it.

Starting with a Dead Shark

So, in an effort to help get me off my depressed, whiny ass, I've decided to start posting my drawings on this blog.  I've been doing some drawing based on films, games, books, dreams, and anything else that goes into my ears, nose, throat, eyes, skin.  I haven't done any serious drawing for a long time, probably not for about a decade, but lately I have the itch again, and it seems to help my depression somewhat.  I've decided to use this blog to push myself to continue these efforts.  I may still write some posts about various things, but mainly I'm going to post drawings with a short description of where the imagery came from and why I decided to draw it.

I just want to warn any readers that the drawings may not necessarily be any good.  I'm okay with that.  These are going to be sketches done in one sitting for maybe thirty to ninety minutes.  I'm not trying to be Joe Da Vinci over here.

This first drawing is called "Dead Shark."  You wanna know why?  Because, it's a drawing of a dead shark.  There was always something weird about seeing a picture of a shark that died of natural causes and washed up on the beach, like "damn, even a shark can't beat Death."  I had a dream or a thought while I was waking up that involved a whole pile of dead sharks.  That's where the idea of drawing one came from.

Changes Ahead, or Third Times the Charm

If you're out there, stay tuned, changes to this blog are incoming.  That is all, for now.