Corto Stop Motion "Jaulas."

Classics Illustrated #80. "White Fang" by Jack London.

Ed Wood by Tim Burton.

One of my favorite Tim Burton movies. A film about a man whose name is synonymous with bad filmmaking.

If you want to talk about the father and pioneer of bad cinema, Ed Wood is your guy. He directed such "classic" films like "Plan 9 From Outer Space", "Glen or Glenda", and "Bride of the Monster".

His films were notoriously known for their poor and sloppy direction, their terrible and cheap production value and (even worse) acting, even when compared to the films of his time.

But ironically enough, this man and his poor films are more celebrated and liked today than they were when they originally came out. Not because everyone was blind to the fact that these were great films. No, no, they're liked in the more ironic way of being so bad that they're hilariously good. If I wanted to have a good laugh at a creatively bad film, "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is one of the films I would watch.

In my opinion, this is not only one of Burton's best films and a long-lasting meditation on art and commitment, but a great piece of cinema writing. Johnny Depp and Martin Landau are utterly perfect, as is Rick Baker's make up effects.

Little known fact: Johnny Depp's delivery of Ed Wood's enthusiastic speech pattern was partially based on Casey Kasem.

Fun Fact:

History's greatest hero deserved better...

The ending to Hercules' story is quite a downer. When Hercules was traveling with his new bride Deianeira, they came across a flooded river and the centaur Nessus offered to carry Deianeira across while Hercules swam in front of them. Only when Hercules got to the shore, he saw that Nessus had turned around and tried running off with his wife. So the hero took out one of his poisoned arrows and sent it ripping through Nessus' chest. Refusing to die unavenged, Nessus told Deianeira that she could use his bloody shirt to cast a love spell on Hercules if he ever got bored with her. And years later, she gave it a try, without realizing the shirt had also absorbed the poison from her husband's arrows and so the moment Hercules was tricked into putting the shirt on, his body cried out in pain. The poison entered his bloodstream, causing it to boil and hiss and the tunic grafted itself to his skin. So the only way to get it off was by ripping off his own flesh. Left with no other option, the immortal Heracles made a funeral pyre to burn away his physical form and soon after, his spirit was welcomed to Mt. Olympus.

Flowery Princess Kairi & Garden's Guardian Aqua

I love this shot.

When you look at sci-fi stories like Star Wars, especially, there's so much more to it than just the technology. It comes back to this idea of "the Force" which I think is based on a lot of Eastern philosophy and religious ideas of "you can either be on the dark side or the light side". It's kind of that Yin and Yang sort of look at energy as a whole. Star Wars has a second meaning to it.

I mean, George Lucas himself even admitted that Star Wars was an allegory for the Vietnam War, especially around Nixon trying to get reelected. He even mentions that democracies aren’t taken, they're given away. Though I also know that he also borrowed significantly from the legends of King Arthur.

I think there's a lot of meaning in sci-fi in general. It's a way to comment on our reality and our current situation through another lens. I think that's the beauty of sci-fi in general. It's also why I think the most recent Star Wars movies got negative reviews, because they were trying to tell Star Wars stories and not real-life stories.

It's a great reflection tool. If Star Wars is about Vietnam, then Dune is about the Middle East. Because Arrakis the planet = Iraq. Spice is the resource, oil is the resource. At the core of it, I think that's the whole point.

"Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail." - Tao Te Ching (Chapter 76, translation by Stephen Mitchell)

Hercules: Meg...? I would never... EVER... hurt you.

Yeah, I'm not so sure about that Herc. Don't make promises you can't keep.

While Disney's Hercules would never hurt the girl of his dreams, the guy he was based on certainly would. In the original myth, Hera was hell-bent on making Heracles rue the day his father cheated on her (because somehow, that was his fault). And to get revenge, she cursed the hero with such insane rage that he actually killed his wife Megara and their children.

The poet Seneca said that Hercules grabbed one son by the arm and swung him about like a ball and chain, smashing him to a bloody pulp. Then he shot his other son with an arrow and crushed Megara's head with his club. Apollodorus claims that he threw Megara, their two sons and his nephews into a burning fire. But the darkest and saddest one has to be by Euripides who wrote a passage where Hercules' son begs for his life before being pierced by one of his father's arrows.

As grizzly as this is though, I've gotta admit, after learning about what happened in the original Greek myth, it's a wee bit funny to me that in the Disney movie he literally says that he would never hurt Meg...

Hasta los Huesos (Down to the Bone).

On November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, West Virginia—Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette—told police they were chased by a large white creature whose eyes "glowed red". They described it as a flying man with 10-foot wings and said it followed their car while they were driving in an area of town known as the "the TNT area", the site of a former World War II munitions plant. This creature came to be known as "Mothman" and has since been blamed for everything from causing TV static to killing pets to even a bridge collapse. Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand claims the creature was something real and frightening, but explainable, that got woven into local legends. Others have claimed the creature was a UFO, some a large owl and others say it's a large American Crane.

What do you think the Mothman is?

Re-Imagining Kingdom Hearts in Final Fantasy’s style on PS1 1/???

I wanted to try to publish something different this time. I have been working on this project for some time and now I can finally start sharing the first ones. Tomorrow I’ll publish the next ones.

Covers in order: Kingdom Hearts,  Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories,  Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

I’m recreating all the covers (by the moment without final mixes versions), and that includes the last one that will be released in November.

Hope you all like it.

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