Review – Creature of the Mist

What an odd little movie. The story launches into huge-tentacle-monster-attacks-feudal-Chinese-city action almost immediately. But then just as fast it gets bogged down in arguments between characters from different social classes forced to shelter together in an inn. The action sequences were okay. The rest didn’t do as much for me. At least it was short. Mildly amusing

Book Review – The Acrylics and Gouache Artist’s Handbook

The Acrylics and Gouache Artist's Handbook: A Practical Guide to Acrylics and Gouache Painting for the Home Artist by Barron's
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a good general introduction to the subject. Entries on gouache are scarce, so if that’s your main interest then you should probably seek elsewhere. On the acrylics side, coverage is fairly thorough. Some of the descriptions and examples left me wondering why one wouldn’t simply switch to oils or watercolors, but at least they demonstrated the versatility of acrylics (especially with extra media added). I admit to skimming the section on color and composition, looking for medium-specific information rather than (in my case largely unnecessary) lectures on basic theory. And I felt that some of the text reflected the author’s biases a bit too strongly. However, as someone who hasn’t done much with this kind of paint, I found the work overall helpful and easy to follow.

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Review – Forbidden Empire

I’m in awe of this movie’s stubborn refusal to make any kind of sense. There are some good visuals here and there, and if you like the vaguely brain damaged humor of Russian horror fantasies you will find yourself well served. Beyond that, Russia’s number one box office hit of 2014 left me wondering how bad the rest of the country’s cinematic output must have been that year. Mildly amusing

Review – House of Darkness

Justin Long seems to have a particular talent for taking uncomfortably awkward social situations and making them infinitely worse, a gift that gets free rein in this relentless tale of a date gone horrifically wrong. Except for a pause in the middle and a brief moment of actual action at the end, the whole production is like reading texts from a douchebro trying to get laid. So In the Company of Men with vampires, a combination nobody asked for. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Blood and Snow

This is what John Carpenter’s The Thing would have been if everyone involved had been terrible at their jobs. Though there’s plenty of blame to go around, the leading culprit is the script. Other than brief monster moments here and there, the vast majority of the running time is given over to pointless bickering, much of which is difficult to follow let alone care about. The only thing I found even vaguely intriguing about this experience was speculation about what sort of abandoned building it was filmed in. Shopping mall? Hospital? It’s a mystery on par with how anyone managed to scrape together a budget for something this awful. Wish I’d skipped it

Book Review – Breaking Cat News

Breaking Cat News: Cats Reporting on the News that Matters to Cats by Georgia Dunn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This review covers not only this book but also the rest of the series up through It’s Showtime, Sophie. Georgia Dunn brings clever illustrations and an excellent sense of humor to the tales of three cats (and their many friends) running a broadcast news operation that covers their daily apartment-dwelling lives. The storytelling is at its best when narratives run for a single page or maybe three or four pages. The longer arcs that crop up in later volumes often involve cats in peril, and those are hard to enjoy even when they have happy endings. But when the focus is on cats being cats with a twist of journalism, the series is highly entertaining.

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Book Review – Painting from Photographs

Painting From Photographs by Patrick Seslar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m an awkward fit for this book. Many of the watercolor techniques used by the author and his wife are well beyond me, though I hope to get there someday. On the other hand, I found a lot of the photography advice too basic (not to mention badly outdated). As the artists tend to use photos in combination and often modify them considerably, initial photo quality wasn’t all that big an issue. Indeed, in some places I found myself wondering why they bothered with photos at all rather than just painting from memory or imagination. However, the practical examples did a good job of moving from “photo sketching” through interim steps to end result.

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Book Review – The Empire Strikes Back

The Empire Strikes Back by Donald F. Glut
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Back in the early 1980s, KC’s Fine Arts Theater was in the same strip mall with Rainy Day Books. Finding myself with nothing to do between pictures in a James Bond double feature, I strayed down to the bookstore and bought a copy of this book. Which I subsequently forgot and left behind at the end of the second movie. So finding a copy more than 40 years later is probably a personal record for length of time taken to finish reading a book. The text itself is standard fare for a quick novel based on a pre-production copy of the script, but it turns into a fun “spot the difference” between book and movie (for starters, in this version Yoda is blue). The illustrations are Ralph McQuarrie’s concept sketches, so they’re good without being purpose-made for the print edition. Fans of the movie may get a kick out of this, but fans of literature most likely won’t.

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Book Review – Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators

Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators: Learn How to Paint Landscapes, People, Still Lifes, and More. by D.K. Publishing
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well written and copiously illustrated, this text covers a range of watercolor-painting-related topics from beginning elements to advanced techniques. This might work better as a reference kept at hand while one pursues the art. Thus I somewhat regret reading it cover to cover without stopping to actually do any of the lessons. But it was a library borrow and had to be returned.

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Book Review – Making Nonfiction Comics

Making Nonfiction Comics: A Guide for Graphic Narrative by Shay Sarah Mirk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overall this is a good book about the title topic. But be warned: the first half treats “nonfiction” and “journalism” as synonyms. So if your interests lie elsewhere, start reading with the chapter on memoirs. Even if you do want to explore 20th century news styles, you’ll probably need something more in depth than this, especially if you’re new to interviewing. However, when it gets good it really is good. The advice tends to be helpful, and there’s enough variety in the approaches to make it likely that you’ll find something that fits what you want to do and how you want to do it. A lot of the interviewees (and both the authors) are veterans of The Nib, so if you were a fan then this will feel like a reunion.

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Book Review – Ugh! As if!

Ugh! As If!: Clueless by Veronica Litt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Veronica Litt writes a charming little critique of a charming little movie from 1995. The picture was one of Hollywood’s “progressive for its time” productions, which makes it hard to analyze 30 years later. Does one emphasize the positive (directed by a woman at a time when that rarely happened, Black and gay characters treated as human beings) or criticize the narrative’s shortcomings (trivializing teenage girls’ hatred of their bodies, “colorblind” treatment of race as if it doesn’t exist)? The author does a loving job of striking a balance between the two. Now I need to go back and re-watch the movie.

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Book Review – Year of Wonders

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I picked this up based on Darcy Armstrong’s recommendation in her Great Courses series on the Black Death, and I’m glad I read it. I particularly loved the view of the 1665 plague from the perspective of a woman living in a fictional version of Eyam, the English village that shut itself off from the rest of the world in an effort to keep the infection from spreading. Geraldine Brooks is an excellent writer, and she uses her talent to explore several aspects of human behavior in extreme conditions. The last chapter and epilogue go a bit too far afield in search of a happy ending, but the bulk of the book was outstanding.

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