Let's start the week with some wonderful weirdness (start as you mean to go on, after all). John Cusack, guest blogging on BoingBoing, celebrate the work of the 'Prague alchemist of film', Jan Svankmajer, a truly remarkable, artist who has been one of my favourite animators for many years. From Cusack's post: " They call Svankmajer a surrealist, but his visions make as much sense to me as escalators or velcro. It's hyperreality, and after all, it exists because he made it, so there it is —just like styrofoam and Fresca. Absurdism is the logical extension of the truth— or of current trends. Surrealism is true becouse it unearthers the subconscious, the stuff of fever dreams and fractured memory. It exists if one has the guts or madness to bring it to be... ( combine Surrealism and Absurdism and mix it with Dada, you get the Sex Pistols)."







(a clip from Svankmajer's Alice in Wonderland)



I've been in love with the cinema of Svankmajer for a couple of decades - like Cusack I can't remember where I first saw his work, probably a short piece somewhere, but it got under the skin and into the brain, seeping, trickling, dripping slowly into the subconcious where it lived and moved, casting strange shadows on the screen of the mind... I sought out his feature works in the arthouse cinemas and anywhere else I could find them - and as Cusack notes in his article, one of the wonderful things about today is that you can now find huge amounts of his work easily online through YouTube. When I first found Svankmajer's works I had to look about arthouse cinemas for a screening or a retrospective at a film fest, now you can go and explore it whenever you want - god, sometimes I love the web... His work is fascinating; often mixing live action with various forms of animation; it can be funny, it can be creepy, it can be downright disturbing, combining the seemingly everyday then watching the unusual, the odd, the downright weird and surreal bleeding through that everyday, a world where logic can melt and flow like a Dali timepiece.



And since I'm on a Svankmajer kick, here's a clip from Dimensions of Dialogue, which many of you have quite probably seen a bit of without knowing who it was by as it has been used frequently in a number of programmes over the years and spawned countless imitators:







As with all the most interesting artists in any medium I've found developing a fascination with one artist has lead me to others that I might never have come across otherwise, which is one of the remarkable qualities of any good art, be it animation, comics, books, music, film, you never take it in isolation, other works you've seen feed into your experience of the new work and the new work sparks ideas and images in your imagination that lead you on paths to other works and those lead you to more... Here's the Brothers Quay (huge admirers of Svankmajer) with their famous Street of Crocodiles:







and part 2:







Considering how easy it is to find some of this work nowaday you owe it yourself to go exploring for more - especially if you love work by people like Tim Burton or Edward Gorey or Neil Gaiman, or you devoured the disturbingly weird old Doom Patrol strips. Go look; if you haven't seen them before, you'll thank me later, if you have seen them you'll be delighted to find it is so simple to rewatch them now. And you'll have strange dreams...

Android 207

While exploring for some completely unrelated animation work I came across something else, as is the way with such searches, which sidetracked me because I thought it was a cracking wee bit of animation and finding it by accident made it a nice surprise:

Easter zombies

The Easter holiday weekend, when we remember Jesus Christ who died then rose from the grave, walked out of the tomb as an Undead, munched on some passing disciple's brains and so gave birth to the zombie genre and set the scene for the horror messiah Saint George of Romero. And praise also to the Catholic Church who took time out from buggering young children to create the myth of Transubstantiation where they held that the wine and the Host wafer literally became the body and blood of Christ when taken at services, giving life eternal, thus also promoting both the cannibal horror sub genre and of course the vampire. Where would modern horror be without Jesus and the Catholic Church, eh?

Spring time in Scotland

It's, Scotland, it's Easter, it's spring time... So, plenty of snow then... Walking in the Pentlands today, snow left from the dreadful weather earlier this week which dumped snow over a lot of Scotland and storms that have made a mess of a lot of bits of the coastline. Some of it has melted away but in the Pentlands on the edge of Edinburgh it's still lying there, from light dusting on some spots to seriously deep snow in other spots, coming up our shins almost to our knees.







Walking up the hill the skyline gave a great effect, making it look like the clouds were rising up from below the horizon:










Walking through snow is tiring, time for a breather; this also means time for Bruce the dog to scrounge a biccie from his master:






You can see Edinburgh spread out in the background here (click for the larger version on Flickr):

Looking for some movies over the Easter break? Here's the Woolamaloo Gazette handy guide to some recent releases:

Your Woolamaloo Gazette holiday movie guide

Looking for some movies to watch over the Easter break? Here's the Woolamaloo Gazette handy guide to some recent releases:

Mick-Ass: the tale of one Irish superhero and his forbidden love for his donkey


Butter Island: Intense psycho-drama as Leonardo DiCaprio suffers an allergic reaction to dairy products and takes a dark trip through his deepest fears

Splash of the Fountains: Anita Ekberg digitally reanimated and fighting monsters from Greek mythology in the Trevi Fountain. All now in 3D, including Anita's enormous knockers coming right out the screen at you.

How to Drain Your Flaggon: a delightful 3D CG animated romp of a young lad's first foray into drinking mead in his viking village.

Alice in Underwear in 3D: a now grown up Alice escapes a planned loveless marriage by travelling back to Underwearland and becoming a lingerie model.

Treen Zone: Matt Damon joins classic British hero Dan Dare to fight off an invasion by the evil Mekon of Mekonta's Treen army during the second Gulf War.

a damned date

I've been trying my best all day to distract myself with music, comedies on the radio and work, trying to keep my mind off the damned date. I've grown to loathe this date, I'd cut it from every calendar on the planet if it would make a difference, but it wouldn't. It's exactly two years since mum was ripped away from us, just like that and nothing's really felt right since.

Hi-Ex comic-con in Inverness

On Saturday I took a very pleasant trip northwards from Edinburgh to Inverness to attend the third Hi-Ex, crossing over the mighty Forth Bridge (images of the 39 Steps playing in my mind as always when crossing this huge landmark which rears from the Forth like a Steel cousin to the Loch Ness Monster), around the coast of Fife, sun glittering on the Forth and the North Sea, Edinburgh across the water glimpsed in all her magnificent, volcanic majesty in profile against the still rising early morning sunshine. And on north, through Perth, through hills becoming mountains, still retaining their snowy caps even as daffodils and crocuses signal the rebirth of the land and spring at lower climes. Highland Cows and the occassional deer are glimpsed as the train climbs through the peaks of the British Isles, ears popping to remind you that you are ascending into the Highlands as the train rolls on, clickety-clack, clickety-clack. One of the simple pleasures of attending Hi-Ex is that most basic of travelling delights, sitting back and looking out the window. We've now got an admirable mixture of comics events in the UK, from the Indy press events to the big guns of Bristol and Birmingham, but I'd wager few of our comic cons offer such stunning landscapes on your voyages to them, right through the Cairngorms National Park, the last, great wilderness of the United Kingdom, home to our highest peaks. Yes, I know, this is indeed a blog about comics, but forgive me for waxing lyrical on my homeland (BTW, Visit Scotland, I'll have that endorsement check now, please), but seriously, if you are travelling northwards to Hi-Ex then enjoying some of the finest scenery in the entire kingdom is a part of the pleasure.



("these aren't the comics you're looking for, move along..." Some of the 501st directing visitors where to park their landspeeders at Hi-Ex, click the pics for the larger versions on Flickr)



(Hi-Ex co-organiser Colonel Richmond Clements, with artist Alex Moore. Not pictured, leading brand of stain remover who were sponsoring Rich's ensemble)

It's been a great day, as anyone who followed my and other attendee's Tweets will attest. With the Eden Court venue having a very good complimentary wifi several of us were able to log on and enjoy posting updates on Twitter and a bit of live-blogging. Several times I cyber-squatted next to Dave Evans and the FutureQuake Press table to post some updates; I have to say there's something enjoyable about being able to sit cross-legged with a laptop across your knees posting updates on the con and even getting some photos onto the web. Gone are the days when we attended conventions, wrote up our report in the local inn afterwards then either handed the copy to a fast pony express rider to carry to the editor or used the new fangled telegraphic device. By the time I stepped off the Edinburgh train the Saturday Hi-Ex (there are many more events on the Sunday) was in full swing – after a short walk along the Ness I came to Eden Court and a plethora of Imperial Stormtroopers guarding the entrance, a whole bunch of the 501st on parade. Inside I was to find that Hi-Ex has grown – when I came to the first convention two years back most of was in the adjoining 19th century Bishop's Palace. Now the main room in the Palace was used for the role playing gamers while the dealers and the artists now shared one much larger space than before in the main theatre, in the spot where at the first con the panels were held. The theatre seating cleverly recesses backwards into the wall leaving a great two-storey space, plenty of room for the writers, publishers and dealers to set up their tables and for the crowds to get around.



(some of the artist's tables - Alex Moore, Gary Erskine and Simon Fraser just visible from this angle)



(Looking down into the main hall with the artists and dealers' tables)

And crowds there were – it was impressively busy by midday and quite a few of the dealers' table and the artists had good crowds around them. Dave Evans with his FutureQuake Press table told me that by mid afternoon he thought he'd done as much as he'd do at a busy day at the Bristol comic con, so he was a happy bunny and there was busy traffic around all the table. The artists seemed to be doing a steady trade with original artworks being browsed and sketches drawn and again I noticed that the contingent of manga artists, along with the Beano crew, were a big draw with the younger convention goers (Asia Alfasi seemed to have a constant line of folks waiting to get a manga portrait made and her mini-comics tied up with ribbon were things of beauty). Actually again, as with the first Hi-Ex, I was struck with the number of kids who were there and clearly having a ball, it's a very family-friendly event and although I don't have a breakdown of guests I got the strong impression a number were local families who had come in because it looked like a fun event, complete with face-painting, sketching and how-to classes. Sarah McIntyre and friends were obviously enjoying themselves with the kids and I noticed she was constantly posting up more artwork some of the delighted kids were making with her.



(Sarah McIntyre and her other half Stuart - you have to dig Sarah's Gerry Anderson UFO-era retro SciFi costume and shiny white space boots!)



(Dave Shelton with his Good Dog, Bad Dog, part of the very first wave of DFC Library releases which we've been enjoying. Fortunately the dogs were all house trained)

There was a good mixture of folks in the main hall – guests ranged from some of the small press crew (I've come home with several fun looking mini-comics, which I will post more on later) through to very well known names. In addition to the aforementioned Sarah McIntyre, Asia Alfasi and Dave Evans there was Gary Northfield, Gary Erskine, John Higgins, Jeremy Briggs (flying the flag for Down The Tubes), the boys from the Indy Scottish superhero movie I mentioned recently, Electric Man, Simon Fraser, Cliodhna Lyons, Will Pickering (fresh from doing a stint as an extra on the John Landis Burke & Hare movie – clearly not content with just being the artist on the B&H graphic novel), Colin McNeil, Kevin F Sutherland, Charlie Adlard, Graeme Neil Reid (who I somehow kept missing), Cam Kennedy, Andi Ewing, the Com.X boys, Roger Gibson and Vince Danks and from the Harker comics (solid faves around and more. Panels included discussion on horror comics and the European scene and Kevin Sutherland managed to entertain and more than likely scandalise some with the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre which had me roaring with laughter (seriously, I know many of you have seen bits of the Falsettos at various cons or the videos Kev posts on YouTube, but if you get the chance to go and see the whole performance, take it, you'll thank me. His Sock Puppet Star Wars is genius).



(Dave Evans with the latest issue of FutureQuake)



(Asia Alfasi's manga portraits were hugely popular and despite being so busy she always seemed to be smiling)

Co-organisers Richmond Clements and Vicki Stonebridge, ably assisted by a team of enthusiastic young helpers, were buzzing around radiating a fascinating mixture of urgency, pleasure, concern, tiredness and happiness that I generally associate with convention organisers. Rich was especially fetching in his dapper three-piece white suit, somewhere between Randall & Hopkirk, Deceased and a scary Southern evangelist minister crossed with Colonel Sanders (Kentucky Fried Comics anyone?). The now annual Hi-Ex charity auction took place in the afternoon – Rich told me he was pretty pleased with the amount they had raised between the auction and raffle (we'll get the final figure later in the week, but unofficially it was looking like £1500 quid when I had to leave) and, in a very touching gesture, a number of the artists present came up to Rich to present their own further contribution in the shape of money they had made from their sketching during the day. Since I know many artists who attend comic cons rely on paid sketchwork as part of the way they can make a convention financially viable for them that's a really generous move on their part and huge kudos to them.



(Roger Gibson and Vince Danks, the team behind FP blog fave Harker)



(Cliodhna Lyons, Deirde and Kyle Rogers with a fine array of mini-comics - including some in Irish Gaelic they were showing to some of the Scottish Gaelic readers of the Highlands. On the basis of Mr Rogers' mini-comics he is a very sick man and I look forward to telling you more about that later)

All in all a cracking day out for kids and big kids alike – the only small niggle for me and, as I heard later, others, was the bar staff were rather bad (I gave up after several minutes of them taking turns to ignore me, heard later there had been other problems with service, which seems downright unprofessional not to mentions self defeating given the sheer number of visitors Hi-Ex was bringing in to the venue). But other than that minuscule aside I had a great time, even better than I had at the first Hi-Ex, and I loved that. It's grown nicely, there's more space, more guests (guessing the arts council funding must have helped a bit too and how great was it to see a comics event getting arts council help?), but it's still at a nice, human scale that makes it very easy to move around, talk to folks and simply to enjoy it. Congrats to Vicki, Richmond and everyone else who made the third Hi-Ex a great success and here's looking forward to it continuing to grow in future years.



(an Iron Man fan - perhaps he should have come as Big Daddy! - with adorable but getting a bit sleepy mini-fan' there were a lot of very happy looking kids wandering around Hi-Ex)



(hunting the most dangerous of all prey - comics fans...)

I know more of you who were there will be posting your own write-ups and pics from Hi-Ex, so please do send in links to those postings (and also the folks who were at Schmurgencon or The Thing over the weekend too) and we'll try and post up a links round-up for them for everyone; there are more photos from Hi-Ex on Flickr here.

Ghosts in the Hollow

Photographer Jim LoScalzo toured lost ghost towns in the Appalachians, once thriving mining towns which became deserted when those mines closed down, leaving the decaying, abandoned structures as ghosts of the past, crumbling monuments to the everyday life of the many men who toiled beneath the ground and their families who they toiled so hard for (and often lost their lives for, deep below, away from the light of the sun and the caress of the wind). Link from Selectism, via Jonathan Carroll.

Ghosts in the Hollow from Jim Lo Scalzo on Vimeo.

Reminded me a little of a day wandering around Prestongrange mining and industrial museum, early in spring, not another soul around, just me and rusting rail tracks, the long-disused winding wheel and old machinery. Not quite the same as his piece with the abandoned homes but still that feeling of ghosts of people, of a whole way of life gone forever, although at least here people can still come and explore that part of their industrial heritage.








I was also struck by another of his works, this time a more modern yet no less haunted ghost town, empty areas of New Orleans, street lights still working but few people returned or some neighbourhoods even devoid of those who once lived there...

Twilight in New Orleans from Jim Lo Scalzo on Vimeo.

Tory bastards

Fucking. Tory. Bastards. Unbeloodlievable. Cameron's rich, selfish cronies showing more of their true colours.

Academy Award Winning picture

This trailer sends up so many 'worthy' Oscar hungry Hollywood type movies in a few minutes, it's genius (via Stephen Fry's twitter):

Botanical

I'm enjoying some time off and lo and behold the grim, gray weather of the weekend vanished to be replaced by gloriously sunny, spring-like weather (although still pretty cool, if not actually frosty in the shade). Good lord, good weather on a week off? Gasp. And it's that beautiful, golden quality of sunlight at this time of year, not the brighter, bleaching sunlight of summer (well, when we get sun in summer in Scotland...) while the air still has that clear quality from winter, a combination which is especially good for taking photos, I find, especially of some buildings. Yesterday the sunlight was complimented by a wonderfully clear sky, like a blue crystal dome, utterly cloudless, as I decided to head down to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Despite the fact I have lived in the city since the start of the 90s I've rarely been down to the Botanics, mostly because it's never really been near where I lived or worked, nor is it close to any friend's home I might be going to or any other place I might be visiting.








I ended up spending hours walking through the greenhouses, from the lovely original Palm House (above), which dates from 1834 and is a splendid example of the glass, iron and steel construction the Victorian period pioneered so spectacularly. Still gorgeous today - especially on a bright day - but imagine how much more impressive this structure must have appeared to the Edinburgh citizens of the 1830s, who lived in a city of tall, impressive stone buildings.In the Old Town towering stone tenements used the limited space effectively but also make for shadowed canyons; even the New Town with its Georgian splendour and much larger windows and wider streets still would not have this quality, a space flooded with huge amounts of natural light sparkling through glass suspended from a seemingly frail - but actually very strong - slim latticework of iron. Being midweek it was fairly quiet and I often had entire glasshouses to myself and it was delightfully peaceful.



















I shot far too many photos as I toured through the various public glasshouses (there are others which are for research) from the Palm House through tropics and arid biospheres; I've only uploaded a few so far and will do the rest later, although I also shot a brief video in each of the glasshouses as I went through them and I've edited them together into a 'virtual tour':

Radio Times

Off down to BBC Scotland for a short time this afternoon to do a quick spot on the Movie Cafe, alongside historian Mark Jardine, talking about the resurgence in the big, tough hero again as Solomon Kane hits cinemas and another Robert E Howard creation, Conan, is heading back to cinemas too; show is available for a few days on the Listen Again feature.

the rare wee wellie dug

Spotted on the way home one evening, that rarest of all Scottish dog breeds, the Wee Wellie Dug:

Bugs and Opera

There's a long and very fine tradition of animation matched to music and some of the best came out of that glorious period in the 1940s and 50s; its not really a coincidence that one artform which requires close attention to timing and rhythm would work so well with another. And back in the day when studios could afford the much more lush, detailed animation (unlike later eras where budget constraints mean much less flowing animation) and the studio would just happen to have an orchestra on staff too they made some of the finest, with one of Hollywood's greatest ever stars (and a personal role model for me growing up), Mr Bugs Bunny being in not one but two of the best ever made, The Rabbit of Seville and What's Opera, Doc?, probably both of which would be my earliest introduction to the world of classica music, not too mention a lifelong appreciation for the skill and imagination of animators.

Rabbit of Seville, featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd (1950) @ Yahoo! Video

What's Opera, Doc? - Click here for funny video clips

Poetry in motion

I've been on a bit of a poetry kick this month; Edinburgh City of Literature's annual campaign this year (previous years have seen Conan Doyle and Stevenson used to boost interest in reading) is in collaboration with the Scottish Poetry Library. Carry a Poem is encouraging people to find ways of taking poetry around with them and sharing it; as well as giveaways of books and cards it also includes projecting verse onto public monuments and buildings, such as the National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge (an institution which, coincidentally, digitally archives this very blog):







I love this idea; in our northern kingdom night falls very early in the winter months and I think it is rather wonderful that as darkness steals across the land the very fabric of the city becomes a page for the poet's art. For an ancient city such as Edinburgh it seems most appropriate; it's a city of history and culture, part real, solid buildings and streets, part fantastical, drawn from the imagination of painters and writers and photographers and others and the written word is as much Edinburgh's foundational fabric as her native stone and volcanic rock, from scholarly treatises penned by kings to the centuries of endless writers who have lived and scribed away inside her, their words shaped by the city but also shaping the city itself, re-imagining it, be it Burns or Stevenson or Hume or modern authors like Rankin. Even her streets have become pages, home to the written word:







How sad then that so many people walked past as I stopped to look at these scenes, words written in light and displayed on ancient stone, most of them oblivious to these little gems of art and life the city was offering up to them as they hurried home after the day's labour. Even when these schemes are not running there's so much that draws the eye, little stories beckon, little glimpses of history and lives and small delights and wonders if you but pause for just a moment. Look, here carved in stone it tells you Scott once lived in this building, that Stevenson drank in this howff. Sometimes my walk home may take ten minutes longer than usual as I pause to look at something (and usually try to photograph it too), but what's ten minutes? Who cares if it's home ten minutes later when those moment were spent not in the dull, mundane every day of work, home, dinner, washing up but in looking at something beautiful that most people are too blinkered to notice, a tiny splash of magic that made me smile.



Their loss. The city speaks if you have eyes to see and ears to hear and you haven't closed off that sense of wonder that first is stoked in childhood but so many seal off in adulthood, letting it atrophy, assuming it a childish thing and always left afterwards with a tug somewhere inside for something they know they have lost but they don't know what it is let alone how to recover it. Pity such people; they like to project an aura of being capable, practical, down to earth; often they affect to pity the dreamer as one who is a little addled perhaps or merely too indulgent, even childish. But they are the ones who are hollow within, closed, lost, stumbling through the world with their most important senses blinded to the wonder around them.



I think it's why I love poetry; it's like jazz, it stands outside of prose, although kin to it, it touches directly on sensation, experience, emotions in a way no other artform does, although many borrow from it for their own medium, which becomes richer for it. Poetry is one of our most ancient artforms - long before we wrote them down they were told orally (still the best way to experience a poem) and passed on, from the short to the truly epic, the longer ones memorised in verse because it helped the cadences of the storytelling and for the storyteller to recall it for their audience. Words, especially the written word, were seen by the ancients as being akin to magic, a symbolic way of interpreting and reworking some part of the universe. They were right. Since I'm on a poetry jag, here's a lovely little animation by Julian Grey I found which accompanies former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins reading his poem Forgetfulness:

Forgetfulness - Amazing Animated Poetry. @ Yahoo! Video

sunset

This afternoon, down where the River Esk flows out into the mighty Firth of Forth in Musselburgh, looking back across a very swollen high tide towards Edinburgh and the hills as the sun set behind the city and turned the world copper.







Funny, but although I've been on the beach on the opposite bank many times I hadn't been to this spot - just near the race course, behind the some houses, where there's a bit of a peninsula made from the clinker and ash from the nearby power station. And for some reason right next to the junction of the two rivers there's this giant blue arrow in a small park. Why? Turns out that it was originally put there right next to the river to let RAF bomber crews line up for their bombing run on a floating target out on the Forth. I had no idea this was here.

Burns Night

A happy Burns Night to you all; its the night Scots and millions of others around the world celebrate our national bard, Robert Burns. Burns Suppers will be held from the Highlands of Scotland to the sunny climes of Australia, from America to Russia (he's very popular with the Russians, who see him, correctly, as a man of the people). I think its rather wonderful that the life and work of a poet from centuries past brings people together the world over each January 25th to recite verse and song and enjoy food and another great Scottish contribution to world culture, the fine single malt. Here's a wonderful rendition of one of my favourite Burns works, A Man's a Man For 'a That, sung by Sheena Wellington at the opening of the newly devolved Scottish Parliament here in the heart of Edinburgh:







I especially liked when she got the normally boring old politicians to join in towards the end, not something you see in the House of Shame at Westminster. There were some cringeing royalist toads who whined that the choice of song could be viewed as an insult to the Queen as its a well loved libertarian anthem, explicitly celebrating the equality of all and pointing out the be-ribboned aristocrat may have rank and station but he's no better than anyone else and his estates and rank and status are worth far less than the words of the man who is free in thought and deed. Amen to that. Just remember please, if you are having haggis tonight, to make sure its a free range haggis, given the run of highland slopes and not some battery farmed haggis.

New Captain Alatriste novel coming soon

Really pleased to note there's a new Captain Altriste novel from Spanish author Arturo Perez-Reverte coming next month, The Man in the Yellow Doublet. I'm quite addicted to this series (also very much enjoyed his Fencing Master and Dumas Panel novels too) - he's a highly respect Spanish author but the Alatriste novels have the air of delightful romp around them, but a romp written by a top notch writer who gives us swashbuckling historical adventure and intrigue - like Dumas but for a modern reader rather easier to enjoy - but laces this pulp adventure with well researched gems from history, literature and the arts, especially Spain's history and artistic culture. Wonderful stuff, I've devoured the whole series thus far. Still disappointed that the film (starring Viggo Mortensen) never seems to have had a UK release, although it is available as an import (but a bit pricey for me), have wondered how the film version compares to the novels.

Magical Movie Moment: Cyrano de Bergerac

I thought I might start occassionally blogging on a series of 'triple Ms', or what I refer to as Magical Movie Moments. Its those scenes that stand out from a movie - sometimes a fabulous movie, sometimes just a wonderful scene in an otherwise average flick - that just encapsulate for me the real magic of cinema. They are those scenes that transcend narrative, genre or any of the qualities we would normally discuss about a film, they simply are and they are wonderful; they make you forget everything else for a few precious moments by their utter perfection, they enchant you and for those moments you are lost, a child again lost in another world. Long after the film ends and the houselights come back up that special scene, where the story, the imagery, the music all combined to a few moments of magical perfection, will stay in your mind.


For the first MMM I had to select a scene from my all time favourite film, Jean-Paul Rappeneau's astonishing Cyrano de Bergerac. Colossus of modern French cinema Gerard Depardieu is perfectly cast as the titular Cyrano; the finest swordsman in the realm, an inventive wit, writer, poet, philospopher, yet cursed with is enormous nose he feels women judge him not by his prodigious merits but his physical looks and so brave on the battlefield or the duel, he retreats from announcing his love for the beautiful Roxanne (Anne Brochet, never more beautifully luminous as here).


The entire film is simply perfect - the costumes and sets are wonderfully evocative of the period, the characters perfectly played by a superb cast, the doomed tale of love, swords and poetry delivers a heady mixture of swooning romance and flashing blades of pure swashbuckling grandeur, all given with the flair of poetry; even the subtitles, the English ones by Anthony Burgess, are a work or art, often translated into verse, suiting Cyrano's larger than life character perfectly.


Its hard for me to pick just one scene when I love the film so much (I rewatch it at least once a year) - the balcony scene as Cyrano in the shadows feeds line to the handsome but none too clever Baron to relate to Roxanne (who is drawn to his beauty but his words even more so, unaware they are Cyrano's), the scene where she tells Cyrano she loves someone, he thinks she means her but then learns otherwise; she leaves all breathless, commenting on his recent duel with a whole crowd of assassins "what bravery", "oh," he replies to her departing back, "I have been braver since..." and that wonderful scene where, convinced she does love him, he takes on a hundred men who are sent to kill his brother poet, "take away the midgets, bring on the giants!", the 'schink' of a hundred swords beign drawn then Cyrano leaping from one to the other, dispatching all the villains with his sword as the music swells... Fabulous.


But I can pick only one scene and I've opted for the famous duel in verse. It happens quite early in the film, as Cyrano is in the theatre after dispatching a fat actor from the stage for insutling his cousin a foppish aristocrat approaches him and insults his prodigious nose. Cyrano then follows him, teasing him and humiliating him in front of the crowd for not being intelligent and well read enought to craft a more inventive insult, himself tossing off dozens of poetic variations on possible insults he could have used, clearly showing that the Viscount may have rank and title but Cyrano is how own man, intelligent and brave and so beholden to none simply because they have the lace and clothes of rank (reminiscent of Rabbie Burns A Man's a Man for a' that). Then the swords are drawn and Cyrano announces to the crowd of Parisian onlookers he will compose a poem of the duel while he actually fights the foolish aristocrat. Flashing blades, swashbuckling swords cross as poetry flies, a wonderous marriage of verse and action that enchants me every time. I love film, I love poetry, I spent many years at school and college enjoying fencing, how could I not love this scene?

My best of the year selection:graphic novels, books and movies

Well we come to our last Best of the Year for the 2009 releases and before we embark on my own selection of graphic novels, books and movies from the previous year I'd like to thank all of the many guest bloggers who took part in our annual tradition; I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did and that the diversity of contributors meant there was an interesting variety of choices on offer. I certainly saw some I hadn't had time to read yet but now want to track down (simply click on the Best of the Year 2009 tag or category to see them all). My own selectionsare, I'm afraid, less than concise and more rambling in nature (which is not unusual for me), but they were works that really stood out for me in 2009 from beautiful animations to dark and disturbing horror and comics work from glowing retro science fiction settings to real world reportage. I think again in terms of comics and in terms of SF&F publishing I was again utterly spoiled for choice; these works I've picked out here are only the tip of the iceberg, there were many more I thoroughly enjoyed this year, but there's only so many you can squeeze into an article and I think I've squeezed in about as many as I dare, so here we go:

Graphic novels

Footnotes in Gaza

I've already flagged this up on the blog while I was in the process of reading it; with it only being published in December I think Footnotes has missed a lot of people's Best of the Year selections, which is understandable but a shame, because it is a brilliant work. Not just because of its 'worthy' content which is a subject matter of recent and living history which demands further attention, not just because Sacco is so good at putting the intimate, personal face onto historical events, giving us real people we can relate to and empathise with and a voice to people who all too often are just background in a news report to most of us, but because as well as his well documented comics reportage (and I hugely admire him for going and living among the people he is covering, despite the not inconsiderable dangers to get those reports), he is also, quite simply, a bloody good cartoonist.

From small, almost cosy scenes inside small rooms to larger landscapes of the city and refugee camps, replete with fine details to draw the eye in, to good cutting, from the same location right after a massacre to the present day where it is a market, both on facing pages, one large panel each, simple, powerful. It’s a terrific comics achievement and, I think, the form makes the subject more accessible to many readers than any number of in depth prose pieces from well-meaning broadsheet reporters. It will make you angry at injustices and cruelties (on both sides), it will make you sad for the losses that seem to go on endlessly, but it will draw you in.

Cash: I See a Darkness, Reinhard Kleist

This graphic biography of one of the most iconic musicians of the 20th century is one I had been eager to read for a couple of years, since we first blogged about Reinhard Kleist publishing it in Germany. When one English language edition seemed to evaporate into thin air I thought I wasn't going to see it, until SelfMadeHero stepped in with what I think was their first translated work from a modern creator. It was worth the wait – Kleist uses a mixture of biographical scenes with comics renditions of some of Cash's songs to give not a cradle to grave exhaustive biography but to give the flavour and essence of a fascinating figure and a passionate, troubled artist. Read it while listening to a playlist of your favourite Man in Black tracks. Simply brilliant. (see the full review for more)

Grandville, Bryan Talbot

Another work I had been eagerly anticipating – I remember seeing some art from Grandville the year before last at the Edinburgh Book Festival where Bryan was speaking. The lovely clothbound hardback is a lovely looking book and the work itself is a delightful Steampunk science fiction piece, set in an alternate history with anthropomorphic characters (our lead hero, a Scotland Yard detective, is a badger) entangled in an international conspiracy with echoes of our own troubled present. All of this is depicted in Bryan's fabulous art, with wonderful characters, some truly gorgeous depictions of an alternative Belle Époque Paris – the eponymous Grandville. Add in a good murder-conspiracy tale and a ton of references of all sorts, from nods to famous performers of the period to Tintin to Rupert the Bear, you'll find yourself going back over it again and finding more details and references you didn't get before.

League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 3: Century #1 – 1910, Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill

I was quite surprised not to see this being mentioned more in people's favourites of the year, perhaps because of its brevity or perhaps because it was way back in April and there's been a lot of comics since then and its easy to forget just what you read this year among so many (I know I had to think about some, did I read that this year or the end of last? Oh yes...). Its a little annoying that its so open-ended, but then again its part of a triple whammy of new LOEG work, so that's not really a criticism. Kev's artwork is, as always, brilliant and full of little sneaky details that demand going back over it with a magnifying glass while Alan, of course, delivers an intriguing story layered in more references than I can take in, even after he discussed many of them with Pádraig here on the blog.

Burma Chronicles, Guy Delisle

I missed reading this when D&Q first did it in North America but picked it up when Cape published the UK edition in 2009. Travel Literature is a very popular genre in prose books and its surprising that relatively few comics creators work in that area because the visual element adds a lot in describing other lands and cultures. With Delisle spending a good, long time in Burma (his wife is working for Médecins Sans Frontières there and he and their baby go along). Travel Lit, for me anyway, has always worked best when the writer is immersed into a country and culture most of us won’t get to know, which is harder and harder to do in our modern era of easy global travel. Burma, however, with its dreadful repressive regime of ‘the Generals’ remains inaccessible and secretive, so as with his previous works on China and North Korea Delisle is, like the best Travel Lit writers, exploring a place largely hidden to most of us and its fascinating.

Deslisle’s artwork is fairly simple but effective and enjoyably easy on the eye, whether he is describing Buddhist monks, the friends he makes locally or the rich heritage of that troubled country. Its often laced with humour, from Delisle preparing for foreign travel by checking the language options on his Star Trek DVDs to cultural misunderstandings and the way he depicts the tyrannical Generals (small, self important uniformed dwarves) pokes fun at people who deserve to be ridiculed – a small act which would cause dreadful consequences for a Burmese citizen though. As he settles into life in Burma there are constant reminders that he can’t take for granted those freedoms we have in Western countries; giving an interview to a Western magazine he finds out later he may inadvertently cause problems for friends he is teaching art and animation to as the repressive authorities will associate his comments with them. Trips into the countryside afford Delisle the chance to draw both simple village life scenes and glorious temples at holy sites.

Throughout it all the invisible shadow of Aung San Suu Kyi looms, referred to by locals simply as ‘The Lady’, never seen in her home imprisonment but a constant presence. Its funny, its charming, its moving in places and it explores a culture most of us will never get to experience directly. Absolutely wonderful stuff and a book I’ve been recommending to non comics readers to show how diverse and accessible the medium is.

Robo-Hunter: the Droid Files Volume 1, Wagner, Grant, Gibson et al

The name's Slade, Sam Slade. That's S-L-A-Y-E-D to you, tin head! Ah, Sam Slade, one of my earliest and happiest of 2000 AD memories. An old detective who hunts down errant robots, he is dispatched to a world built and 'manned' by robots in anticipation of human colonists – all of whom vanish never to be heard of again after landing. So Sam is sent by unscrupulous colony bosses, his lightspeed shields sabotaged so he arrives at Verdus some decades younger (his young pilot is regressed to a foul mouthed infant) and has to face down an entire planet of comically insane robots.

Wagner and Grant deliver a great science fiction gumshoe character with piles of often sarcastic humour (a 2000 AD trademark, SF and smartarse humour) while Ian Gibson comes up with some of the weirdest, whackiest and simply brilliant robot designs (a cast of thousands!) I've ever seen. Now collected into a huge, great value omnibus like the Judge Dredd Case Files series. Sure, some of this comes from it being a nostalgia trip for many of us, but nostalgia aside its still a bloody brilliant bit of Brit comics writing and art.

Morris, the Mankiest Monster, Giles Andrea and Sarah McIntyre

Okay, technically this is a children's picture book rather than comic, but the two forms have a lot of overlap and one of our favourite comics creators, Sarah McIntyre, produced the art for Morris, a delightfully gross, disgusting monster that will make boring old adults feel sick while children (and big kids at heart, of course) will laugh and love it. Simply wonderful – and disgusting! - fun.

Years of the Elephant, Willy Linthout

Like Kleist's Cash book this is another work from Europe that I was waiting and hoping someone would translate into English and thankfully Fanfare/Ponent Mon stepped up. Its not the easiest read – the whole comic is Linthout, a hugely successful comics creator in Belgium, essentially trying to work through the turmoil of emotions caused by the suicide of his son. Losing a loved one is immensely hard, losing them suddenly harder still, but to lose a child and to suicide? How do you continue as a parent after your pride and joy has ripped themselves from your life by their own hand? Linthout's art here is a deliberately rough and unfinished style, sharing some of the artist's own sense of being bereft and rudderless, filled with conflicting emotions of deep sadness and anger.

His mental breakdown and increasing sense of unreality sometimes throws up scenes which seem almost humorous – a feeling emphasised by his art style, which has a humorous comic look to it – except of course, given the theme it isn't funny at all, its sad, its disturbing. Throughout the rough artwork his son is a constant presence, but when seen its only ever as the chalk outline left by the police around his body after he leapt to his death, giving him a cartoony, almost Gumby-esque look which again, under other circumstances, would be humorous; the conflict between that humorous look of many images with the sadness of the events and feelings the portray is quite unsettling, as indeed it should be, and I’d assume that was part of Linthout’s intention, sharing a tiny fraction of the confusion and turmoil his mind is suffering as it tries to understand and process what has happened to his boy. I found it quite difficult to read to be honest; too upsetting sometimes, so I had to read it in little bursts, but I'm glad I did, its a remarkable, personal work from a European creator most of the Anglophone world (including me) won't be familiar with, trying to come to terms with what must be every parent’s worst fear, losing their child.

Honourable mentions also go to Jamilti and Other Stories by Rutu Modan (UK edition again), which may not be up there her Exit Wounds but which still had some fine short gems in the collection of early work and a couple of nice little tricks on the reader too (not least those locked lips on the cover and what they actually denote when you read that story). I didn't pick up Jeff Lemire's Complete Essex County as I already had the original three volumes, but if you haven't got those then I've also got to recommend the complete edition which came out in 2009 as a book you really should have.

Crumb’s The Book of Genesis also has to get a mention – its certainly not my favourite, but where I found some sections irritating that’s not Crumb’s fault, its his co-author who he is adapting (presumably Almighty God) and my own dislike of organised religion which made it difficult for me. And endless ‘this person begat this person who begat that person who lived 460 years and 460 years were his days’ is a bit wearisome (it may be the word of God if you are a believer, but man, that deity needed an editor badly). But that aside it’s a major work by one of our major, influential cartoonists and while the original stories he is drawing from (literally) may be, in my view, badly written and the religious beliefs of the characters want me to loose Richard Dawkins on the nearest Bible Class, the artwork is superb and a reminder of what a bloody good artist Crumb is. Yes, it is Crumb so there are a lot of very large bottomed women wandering the Holy Land, but still his art is a joy and the heavy black and white suits the Old Testament work very well. And he also gets props not just for the scope of the work but for a graphic novel which achieved widespread coverage well outside the comics sphere, hopefully getting some more non comics folk to dip their toes in the medium

Books

The Hobgoblin Wars, Leo Baxendale

This was a lovely surprise, a present from Leo and his wife Peggy and, I have to say, one of the most enjoyable books I read all year. I’ve been lucky enough to read Leo’s previous autobiographical works and I was delighted when he told me he was working on this new volume, which mostly covers more recent years. Leo opens with a short discourse on Comedy and his old friend, The Absurd, as if giving a cosmology lecture but instead of matter and anti-matter in the creation of the universe he discusses Comedy and the forces of Anti-Comedy and that oppressive Almighty Power, to which one should always make a certain two-fingered gesture.

This opening had me laughing out loud, rather disconcerting other passengers on the train I was on at the time, but I didn’t care. Leo makes a serious point about the events and the grim-faced, usually humourless people who can and do make life for everyone more miserable and how it is Comedy’s role to fight those forces (an assertion I completely agree with). Its not a flippant point, its serious, but delivered in a wonderfully humorous way. I could imagine the spirits of Buster Keaton, Spike Milligan and Bill Hicks nodding their agreement with him. There’s a lot of travel in this volume as Leo and Peggy are involved in various exhibitions and conventions at home and abroad. Its interesting to learn about the ways Leo has experimented with various folks over the years to achieve the best possible quality prints of some of his original work, which is too fragile and too susceptible to the ravages of age and environment (aren’t we all?) to travel for exhibitions; contemporary artists will almost certainly pick up some ideas for exhibiting their own work from his experiences.

Often these exhibitions involve more of the great and the good in the Brit comics community and it’s rather wonderful to read about some very famous names who all pitch in with suggestions and help for exhibitions. Leo also discusses his work for the Guardian and the approaches of the BBC for the Comics Britannia series, for which his presence was pretty much essential, and his own wariness over contracts with the media but how it all worked out. Its funny, it’s a nice insight into the life of one of our most esteemed comics creators, but mostly its simply a delightful read, mixing anecdotes and art, serious points and humour. It left me with a big smile on my face. The book itself is lovely – actually hand-bound, a rarity in this day and age, making it all the more special (and urging me to enjoy the tactile sense of it, running fingers along the spine, sniffing the paper). Of course this also means it is produced in a fairly small number and is quite pricey and, while its well worth it (as well as being a great read, it’s a highly collectable tome any bibliophile would love to have on their shelves) obviously not everyone who would love to read it could afford it, but don’t despair, because Leo has generously had the text placed onto his site for everyone to enjoy and you should take advantage of that.

The Naming of the Beasts, Mike Carey

Since Mike’s previous Felix Castor novels have all featured on my earlier Best of the Year picks it won’t be a surprise to regular readers that his latest one is again one of my faves. I admit it, I’m quite addicted to this series, although not for the first time I wonder where on earth Mike gets the time to pen multiple comics series and prose novels. Through the previous novels featuring our down-at-heels freelance exorcist Mike has provided not only a gripping story but built up the background around Castor and the other characters, a world almost like ours except the supernatural is real, the dead sometimes walk and there are other, more dangerous things out there.

Like a powerful demon welded to the soul of Castor’s best friend, kept safely caged for years and now loose and cutting a swathe through London. Driven by circumstances Castor is forced to return to his old employer, a ruthless scientist who experiments on the undead, werekind and ghosts with a total lack of morality. With more blood and guilt on his hands Mike seriously pushes Castor into events and actions which are totally gripping. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, its one of the best series going right now.

My Dead Body, Charlie Huston

Another real world meets supernatural series that I’ve been addicted to and another book from a scribe also noted for his comics work, Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt series of novels, which have taken the often cliché-ridden vampire genre and given them a real Mean Streets edge to them, more Scorcese meets Chandler than Anne Rice or Stephanie Meyer. Sadly this is the final book in the series and although I’ve been addicted to the series since the beginning I have to admit I think Charlie is right to contain it within a set limit and not simply keep going endlessly. It certainly piles on the dramatic tension – with the end coming, Pitt down and out (and indeed living in the sewers at the start), the various Manhattan vampire groups at war, the love of his life now vampirised and living in a vamp community now run by someone he despises, its all to play for and in the unflinchingly brutal world of street violence Charlie depicts you know that you can’t take the survival of any of the characters for granted, not even Pitt himself.

Its all rapidly going pear shaped in the Manhattan vampire world, with Pitt pulled every which way in his attempt to get to where he wants, making deals and double deals and all the time trying to work his own angle, his one aim to get back to his girl, knowing fine well that there’s every chance that even if he makes it to her against the odds she may well tell him to crawl right back down that sewer pipe. Add in a Romeo and Juliet romance with star-crossed mortal and vampire (Huston gleefully riffing on Twilight, perhaps, in his own inimitable style?) and you’ve got a vamp tale told in hardboiled Noir style. Many characters are going to be changed, maimed or even dead before the end of this and its hugely compelling.

Orbus, Neal Asher

Neal is one of the consistently best from the impressive roster of top class SF writers we're lucky enough to have right now in the UK, one of my go-to writers for solid, inventive SF that also delivers a ton of action, not to mention some quite devious nastiness. Especially when Prador are involved. This follows on from events in The Voyage of the Sable Keech, with the Old Captain Orbus trying to overcome the last few centuries of his mis-spent past and personality changes brought about by the Spatterjay virus and the Prador Vrell now infected by the virus and mutating rapidly. Their paths will cross, drawing in the Prador Kingdom and the Polity, uncovering secrets, risking a new war and awakening something ancient which should be left well alone. Its fast paced, gripping, often downright brutal (although like Richard Morgan the violence rarely feels gratuitous, there's a moral dimension and consequence to violent actions and pasts), solid right down the line.

Bar None

The end of human civilisation has come, almost every single person wiped out in a short space of town. Towns and cities are deteriorating without maintenance and a few shattered survivors find a quite space in a country house, unsure why they were spared or what to do next, whiling away the time and their trauma swapping stories over some good beers at night. Ale is central to this apocalypse; it’s the social glue that helps the disparate survivors bond together and it’s the trigger for flashbacks to the better times before the end of the world. The aroma of a particular beer, its colour, its taste and how its bound in to memories of happier times, drinking a pint of this or that real ale on a warm, summer day in a pub’s beer garden, idly passing a day with the woman you love, talking, drinking, kissing…

But that world’s gone, isn’t it? And our survivors know their supplies are running low, but are loathe to face the reality of their situation or to go foraging for more because in the distance over the city there are shapes that aren’t birds… When a mysterious rider arrives and takes shelter for a few days with them he seems to know all about each of them and what they lost as the world of mankind crumbled. When he leaves they are all given the strong urge to set out on a quest – a very British quest. The world has ended and they are going to seek out the last pub in existence which their mystery guest told them about. Where there is endless food and beer and its safe. The world ended and the last great haven – if it actually exists – is a pub!

It sounds light-hearted, a bit Shaun of the Dead perhaps, but while there is humour it soon becomes dark and very nasty. Tim Lebbon is, after all, noted not only for his good tastes in fine beers but for writing some very dark fantasy works, full of horror elements and those are present here on the journey to the fabled last pub, braving the world that has passed and gone wild – and worse than just wild, there are things that simply shouldn’t be, but are… It’s a very British end of the world tale – even the chapter headings are drawn from the names of real ales – with real, creeping horror mixed with the mundane but lightened by the glow of warm memories of days now gone. Unusual and brilliant. But it will make you very thirsty.

We Never Talk About My Brother, Peter S Beagle

We Never Talk about My Brother
(buy from Amazon)

This collection of short stories by Peter Beagle is a treasure chest of wonder; the award winning writer is probably still best known for The Last Unicorn and it is a pleasure to see Tachyon publishing more of his work. A peaceful king thinks about war as a way to be remembered, an old Jewish uncle paints an angel who comes to model for him, a middle aged American changes into the last, true Frenchman, a brother's thoughts change the world to the dismay of his family, a criminal fleeing on a snowswept moor takes shelter by the fire of an old minister who tells him of being spirited away to Faerie... I really can't do Peter's writing justice; he's not really a writer, he's one of those rare breed of scribes who I think the old Scots term makkar suits, what Borges once referred to as a maker of words. Elegantly crafted glimpses into a variety of worlds; here is an author who gets praise from the likes of Ursula Le Guin – that should tell you all you need to know.

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, Jesse Bullington

Jesse's debut novel arrives with a recommendation from the quite excellent Jeff VanderMeer. Now that would be enough to pique my interest anyway, but when I picked it up I didn't know that, but I had an instant feeling about it, I just knew this was a book I wanted to read. Taking old fashioned fairy tales long before they were cleaned up for children's book Jesse spins a medieval, down and dirty, violent, often vulgar tale of the Brothers Grossbart, part of a line of grave-robbers, fighting, killing and stealing their way from the Germanic lands southward to 'Gyptland' to ransack the legendary tombs. Creatures in the dark woods threaten, demons can gobble souls, a moonlit monastery is deserted save for the dead, a witch resides in her cottage, a man monk raves in such a manner the Brothers assume he follows their own perverted form of worship... The action is brutal, the supernatural elements dealt with fairly matter of factly, the humour often vulgar, the language often very coarse – its not for the easily offended, but I loved it. Fantasy all too often can drown in clichés; Jesse takes the genre by the seat of its leather britches and kicks it solidly in the backside. An author to watch.

As I've noted a number of times over recent years we're pretty much spoiled for some excellent science fiction and fantasy at the moment and space simply doesn't allow me to list all of the other books which I really enjoyed this year, so quick honourable mentions also go to God of Clocks by Alan Campbell (a satisfying if slightly rushed end to his debut trilogy which was inventive and often disturbing), Charlie Stross's Wireless, an enjoyable smorgasbord of his shorter fiction and Mike Cobley who moved from his fantasy roots to science fiction with the first part of a great new series, Seeds of the Earth. And throughout the year as usual that stalwart of the British science fiction publishing scene, Interzone magazine (and its darker sister Black Static), delivered some quite brilliant short SF, some from established names, some from authors totally new to me who I will be watching for in the future; still the place to check out fresh, new SF writing.

Film

On the screen front its hard to ignore Cameron's visually impressive Avatar; the story and characters are totally predictable, you can pretty much figure out early on how it will all work out, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially when you are dazzling the audience with astonishingly rich visuals that immerse them into another world. And JJ Abrams' reboot of Star Trek overcame my old Trek fan cynicism at the thought of seeing other actors in those iconic roles to deliver a real shot in the arm to a tired franchise and successfully reboot it. Terry Gilliam's Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was not his best work, but even a flawed Gilliam movie is still more interesting than many other directors at their best and, as always, was a delight in terms of imagery and rampant imagination.

Star Trek XI DVD & Blu Ray

Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus DVD & Blue Ray

Moon [DVD] [2009]

Moon [Blu-ray] [2009]

But to be honest those weren’t my favourites – actually no less than three of my favourites of the year I saw at the Edinburgh Film Festival and, sadly, two of them have still to gain general releases in the UK, while the other has gone on to great acclaim. Duncan Jones low budget British SF flick Moon was terrific; yes, I guessed the twist in advance, but it didn’t matter, it was well played and put together. I even appreciated the fact they had gone back to the old ways of physical effects even for the Lunar exteriors, giving an almost Gerry Anderson, Space 1999 feel to those scenes. Jones and his crew talked to the audience after the Festival debut and their enthusiasm for it was very clear and that carried over into the screen. (full review here)

The other two which I loved were both animated works, both quite different in style and target audience. Brendan and the Secret of Kells, a gorgeous, traditionally animated (no 3D CGI here) all-ages feature from Ireland centred around one of the glories of Western literature, The Book of Kells and like that remarkable work showcased some beautiful artwork (see the full review here). Also at the Festival I caught another traditional form of animation, this time stop motion, with the low budget Australian film, unusually an animation aimed squarely at an adult audience, Mary and Max. What could be a dodgy area – a growing long distance friendship between a lonely young girl in 70s Australia and a single, middle-aged man with mental health problems in New York, is actually a lovely, bittersweet tale and its infuriating to me that its done so well on the international festival circuit and yet is still to get a proper release in the UK -- it got a fairly limited release in some US cities, I think (a full review can be found here); Kells did get a release in Europe (it was a combined Franco-Irish funded work) and its native Ireland but still, months later, hasn’t had a general release in the UK. Perhaps distributors are convinced that if it isn’t CGI and 3D then no-one will come to see it, which is short-sighted and means a lot of people are missing out on some wonderful films.

Mary & Max [Blu-ray] [2009] [US Import]

This first appeared on the Forbidden Planet International blog as the final part of the annual Best of the Year feature