Titania: The First Scene!

Dear readers,

Those of you who have been reading us a while know that we have been following the work of writer and director Lisa Stock and her talented cast of actors as they have launched their project, Titania, the first in a trilogy of independent films addressing the journey of a woman through fairy tale and mythological motifs. The film weaves together elements of The Divine Comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the fairy tale of the "armless maiden."

So - some exciting news - the first scene has been filmed! There is an almost symphonic artistry to the colors, the light, the music, and the acting -- it is quite magical. Watch it here, and please leave comments and tell us what you think.

Other things you might like to check out:

* a behind-the-scenes featurette on the making of Titania, available in the May 2008 issue of Dante's Heart.

* you can also visit the official website for Titania.

* a trailer for another project of Lisa Stock's - Brother and Sister - a short film adaptation of a haunting poem by Terri Windling:

do you remember, brother
those days in the wood
when you ran with the deer
falling bloody on my doorstep at dusk
stepping from the skin
grateful to be a man . . .

(You can read the rest of the poem here, in the archives of the Endicott Studio.)

Paper-Cut Art

Dear readers, I hope you all had a very nice Christmas and 2009 will be a wonderful year! These days have been very busy but I just had to share the works of this very talented artist; Elsa Mora with you all.
She does not really qualify as an 'emerging artist', as she is already very succesful, nevertheless she might not be known to most of you.

A little while ago I came a cross the shop she runs at etsy where I found the most beautiful paper sculptures as shown below:

Elsa Mora's paper-cut works are so incredible attractive because she has managed somehow to give a traditional art form a modern twist in a very respectful way. Most modern paper-cut art I find, and of course this is a matter of taste, too modern. Some of them do not even show any connection with the old art form, but Elsa Mora is an exception to this rule.
Looking at her work you will find yourself in a modern fairytale kind of world, surrounded by characters which all tell you their own tale.

I really would like to recommend you all to visit her gallery as you will not only find more of her paper cut works but also paintings, dolls, photographs and so on. Name it and she has done it! This multi talented artist really makes you very enthusiastic and an instant addict, as I am sure once you have visited her site you will return for more.

The Spirit: Yay for movies coming out on Christmas

Hitting the theaters on Christmas Day was The Spirit by Frank Miller. Based on Will Eisner's comic, The Spirit followed a long trend of comic book movies. Like its predecessors, The Spirit takes basic ideas from many of the comics and tries to make a single cohesive story. In The Spirit's case, the idea is success. However, the plot is a basic film noir, who did what and why story. It is not exceptional, and not worth the price to see it in the theaters. However, The Spirit is not just a film noir. It's not even mostly a film noir. It is a neo noir comedy. It is held together by great lines and absurd situations.

At first glance The Spirit is a Sin City copy. A comic book style done in a semi-black and white, with color accents. However, The Spirit does not try to nor does it feel at all like Sin City. They may share a conceptual cinematography, but that is all. The Spirit takes the 40's feel, the decade in which the comic first appeared in newspapers. The character the Spirit is a skirt chaser that uses it to his advantage and it is endearing. He is not greasy or scheming when he does it. He is just a masked man in his decade. The look and feel reminds me of classic Batman, dark and beautiful. The costumes are beautiful, reminding me of a golden age. Frank Miller takes the time period and his unique style and gives the movie a classic noir feel that works in this decade.

The Spirit is not for the serious. The villain is so over the top he is beyond the moon. Samuel L. Jackson is the only person who could play a psychotic genius with such results. He is hilariously crazy with some great lines. The one liners from most of the characters makes the movie side splitting. Do not expect the serious scenes to dominate. This mixed genre movie is carried by the humor.

I'd recommend seeing it, if you are a fan of movies that do not follow conventional genre rules.

Overall I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5.

Merry Christmas (or just happy December if you do not celebrate the holiday),
J.R West the Raccoon

Father Christmas - Around the World

With the holidays nearly here, I thought some of our readers might appreciate this site, called Saint Nicholas: Around the World. It offers a wondrous compendium of Christmas folk traditions and global variants (primarily Catholic ones) on Father Christmas -- just click on one of the national flags to read about how the old Gift-Giver appears in the traditions of that country.


A more diverse list of Christmas traditions can be found here.

From Russia:
Babushka is a traditional Christmas figure who distributes presents to children. Her name means Grandmother and the legend is told that she declined to go with the wise men to see Jesus because of the cold weather. However, she regretted not going and set off to try and catch up, filling her basket with presents. She never found Jesus, and that is why she visits each house, leaving toys for good children.

From Wales:
Caroling is called eisteddfodde and is often accompanied by a harp. In some rural areas a villager is chosen to be the Mari Ilwyd. This person travels around the town draped in white and carrying a horse's skull on a long pole. Anyone given a 'bite' by the horse's jaws must pay a fine.

Enjoy the reading, and have a beautiful holiday season --

Daniel

Into the Rabbit Hole: "Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment"

Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment was written and drawn by Bryan Talbot. This creative graphic novel takes a while to read, but is completely worth it. Talbot connects Sunderland, England with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. His use of nonsense and reality intermixed perfectly. He tells of Carroll's life as a native to Sunderland, connecting it with the history of the area. Pieces of his famous Alice story come from life in Sunderland. The overall effect is amazing.

Talbot utilizes a wide range of artistic styles throughout the comic. The use of traditional comic layout and modern comic flow is blended expertly. Cartoon-like characters are intermixed with realistic characters as perfectly natural if not normal. The use of varying styles adds to the nonsensical story line. Talbot borrows heavily from the original Alice images, so that the original Alice is scattered throughout the text, constantly reminding the reader of the overall purpose of the comic.

Talbot is quick to the emphasize that while Carroll is Oxford's golden boy, he lived in other places. He was not born in Oxford, in fact he was born in Sunderland. The history and culture of that place influenced Carroll deeply...according to Talbot. Sunderland's history and future along with Carroll's are blended together in a cohesive (if not coherent) story.

The plot itself is surreal, a story within a play within a dream of a comic writer. Of course the story told on stage is "real." Talbot is mixed deeply within the story. He is the dreaming audience member, the playwright/stagesmith, the actor in the "real" world, and the comic book writer in our world. He is also our white rabbit leading us deeper into Sunderland(wonderland).

Talbot leads us deeply into the myth, magic, and "reality" surrounding Alice in Wonderland. He is an expert wordsmith and illustrator. His use of the absurd would make Carroll proud.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 5.

Jump into the Rabbit Hole with Me,

J.R. West the Raccoon

Encased in Amber

How can one not be transported by the image of the world's oldest spiderweb? This most ephemeral creation has been preserved in a drop of tree's blood for our wondering eyes. Oxford University paleobiologist Martin Brasier has confirmed the web-in-amber found on the south coast of England is approximately 140 million years old. Imagine the circumstances that have given this precious piece of that ancient past to us!

A Surreal, Snow Globe Moment

This is not a substantive post for today, just a quick sharing of a moment of wonder. Driving yesterday morning in my little blue kia, I tried to turn the heater on - I think the vent must have been blocked by the snow (it is very cold this weekend in Colorado). A moment or two into my drive, I felt little tiny dust-flakes of snow cold on my eyebrows and arms. Then I saw tiny bits of snow swirling around inside the car. It was snowing inside the car! I assume the blocked vent must have blown snow through into the cab. I was driving to church while sitting inside a snowglobe.

It was beautiful and magical, but very, very cold.

Daniel

Tonight, and the Rest of My Life

I have recently become enamored of (or addicted to) the art form known as the AMV, or "anime music video" -- in which visual artists, music lovers, and movie fans create music videos by setting video clips (often, though no longer exclusively, anime) to the lyrics of a favorite song. The pairing of lyrics and images are sometimes incongruous, sometimes ironic, and sometimes deeply poignant. Recently our blog featured a mainstream film trailer (for Watchmen) that actually works as a beautifully rendered AMV:



You can read the original feature on Watchmen here.

The AMV is a remarkable medium, and I look forward to discovering more of it. Our art editor, Jessica Fusch, has been trying her hand, and has granted me permission to share some of her beautiful experimentation with our readers. Here is her take on the film Advent Children, set to Nina Gordon's song Tonight:



I was startled by the choice of song, but how hauntingly the words and the images dance together, until the lyrics take on quite a new meaning. I found especially haunting the sight of the broken landscape of the planet set to these lines,

And the sky might catch on fire
And burn the axis of the world
That's why I prefer a sunless sky
To the glittering and stinging in my eyes

Having Gordon's haunting lyrics set to an equally haunting visual of a world beneath a sunless sky (in a film about a hero who wishes at first to turn away from saving that world so as not to feel the glittering and stinging in his eyes) sends shivers through me.

Post a comment -- our art editor would welcome either praise or feedback, I am certain. In most other hours of the day, she is a gifted photographer -- you can see her camera-work here.

You can also read an earlier feature on Advent Children, and a few other films, here.

Daniel

Avocado Art

Today I will feature the work of Marcus; a very talented sculpturist from Germany who runns a little gallery and shop named Avocado-Art. Here he shows and sells incredible, little sculptures made from avocado pits.

When I first saw his work I was completly flabbergasted, mainly because I didn't know that you could make such beautiful things of these pits. Just imagine the size of an avocado pit and then look at his work.

Marcus must be a very patient artist, as I can imagine how much time it costs to bring such detail in such small object.
All of his sculptures depict mythical scenes. Though most of his work is based on Celtic lore, you can also find lovely sculptures such as The Arabian nights and the Egyptian, Isis and Osiris. And I have heard that he is currently studying the Arabic language and is teaching himself how to carve in Arab as well. Thus his current range of subjects is very broad and a lot of fantastic creations are to be expected in the future.

Estonia: Coins in the Ground

Craving an authentic national faith, Estonians have been drawn to the animistic religions that preceded Christianity: Taarausk, whose god was worshiped in forest groves, and Maausk, which translates as “faith of the earth.”

Ancient beliefs have survived in the form of folk tales. In stories, the sins of humans reverberate in nature — lakes fly away to punish greedy villagers, or forests wander off in the night, never to return. Trees demand the respect of a tipped hat, and holes in the ground must be fed with coins.

That quotation is from a feature in Monday's New York Times that another writer shared on the Sur La Lune message board. The article, entitled "A Hole in the Ground Erupts, to Estonia's Delight," details folk traditions around the geyser known as the Witch's Well of Tuhala:

According to legend, the witches of Tuhala were taking a sauna underground, beating each other vigorously with birch branches, oblivious to the commotion they were creating on the surface.

The article is very well worth the read - both detailed and deeply respectful of its subject. There is also an elegaic note, as the article notes how a local project to build a limestone quarry may drain the waters, making this year's eruption of the Witch's Well the last.

For a little more Baltic lore -- or in this case Scandinavian -- read our post on the stromkarl, the talented though dangerous spirit of springs and waterfalls, or you can read Isabella's compelling translation of The Fossegrim in a previous issue of Dante's Heart.

You can also read here the tale of a Canadian storyteller who rejected a $40,000 scholarship so that she could instead travel to Norway and live with the Sami reindeer herders, to rediscover the stories and language of her ancestors. Now, wearing boots of reindeer fur, she brings to children rhyming tales from the far north, recited from memory.

Does anyone know more folklore from that part of the world (beyond the Finnish Kalevala and of course the mythologies and sagas of Norway and Iceland)? What stories would you turn our attention toward, and what folk traditions? Such tales as those of the fossegrim and the traditions around the Witch's Well alert us that there is a beautiful and very ancient tradition of tales and lookings-at-the-world in that northern place, but surprisingly little of it has reached the attention of the West.

Daniel

Mythology in Wall-E

Disney Pixar's Wall-E clearly falls within the realm of science fiction. It is in Earth's future with robots and space ships. There are both humorous and even villainous AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the form of both computers and robots. Yet, mythology is deeply entrenched into the film.

In the beginning there are only two "people" on Earth. They are responsible for populating the Earth. They are the EVE and Adam (Wall-E) of the future Earth. EVE is the mother of the new Earth. She finds and protects Earth's signs of life in her robotic womb. It is her actions that put humans on the planet.

Additionally, the humans are men in the cave. The Captain of the ship can only see the Shadows of Earth life on the wall screen. However, even his Shadows are far more complex than what the rest of humanity sees. They have just the screens on their chairs, that give them Shadows of their cave, which they don't even know about. It is Wall-E who leads them from the cave, who lets them see the 3-D world, not Shadows on the screen.

In another sense, the robots are Gods, powerful beings who watch over humans. Not all are viewed as benevolent (just as not all gods are), but they all work to keep humans alive. They bring Knowledge and farming skills to the nearly Earthbound humans (as seen during the credits). They are the creators of the world.

Wall-E, like most science fiction, uses mythology to tell a futuristic story. And the future and the past are not so different in this film.

Looking for Mythology around every corner,
J.R. West the Raccoon

Twilight: The Movie

Until a few days ago I didn't know any of Stephenie Meyer's novels, so I have not read them, and have not even noticed that much the raging tides of fandom around them. But my wife and I watched Twilight in the theater a few nights ago, and I have to admit, I'm impressed. It's a romantic and delightfully moody film, with beautiful cinematography and visual poetry. While the plot can be quite predictable (with all the expected motifs of the teen romance), there are innovative and often breathtaking touches that I have not seen before. I was almost tired of vampires, actually, and am delighted to see them back with some refreshing newness. There was a vampire baseball game that was especially thrilling -- baseball becomes a more...vigorous...sport when played by supernatural predators who move faster than Nascar champions.

For me, the movie held a special nostalgia, as it was set in western Washington where I grew up. (If you are not from that part of the world, think Snow Falling On Cedars.) Ah, the greenery and the fog and the twilight rain and the moody land and the moody sea, and the moody people. I think I knew just about everyone in the movie. That part of the world mildews itself into your body and your blood and never leaves.

And Twilight even had me nostalgic for the Mariners.

So I definitely recommend the film - it was beautifully made, and makes me want to go get a copy of the book.