Not your usual weekly scroodl round up…

As I’ve been enjoying a well-deserved week off work for Easter, I’ve been able to devote a bit more time, than the usual half-arsed effort at the end of the day, to my daily scroodls this week.

So, I did a mini set, still featuring my fuckwitted creations, Wanderbury & co. but paying homage to iconic movie posters. See how many of them you can get.

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PS. I’m still looking for new blood to sign up for the scroodl challenge:

It’s simples. Just commit to doing one doodle a day for 365 days in a row. Just think of the sense of achievement you’ll feel, some time next April, when you’ve inflicted your 365th piece of badly-drawn crap, on an unsuspecting intarwebs!

MESSAGE ME HERE, with your name and email address, to sign up

One of the websites I frequent is currently holding a poll to find the “Worst Film Ever”. I added my tuppence worth to the debate and then realised that, with a bit of cynical recycling, I could rehash my post there as a review here . So here it is. Apropos of abso-bloody-lutely nothing, save the fact I’ve not actually written anything for a while, just been re-posting my scroodls:

If you measure awfulness in sheer tedium, as opposed to irritation, then you couldn’t do much worse than “The Last Station”:

Christopher Plummer [as Leon Tolstoy] spends almost the entire film, lying in bed, waiting to die… with a beard.

Full-on beard thrills.

Occasionally his slumbers are interrupted by the arrival of one of either of two visitors; his wife [Helen Mirren], who berates him for toying with the notion of leaving his money to The Siberian Beard Research Collective, instead of her; or a young representative of The Siberian Beard Research Collective, who likewise berates Tolstoy for potential betrayal of beard-dom, should he leave the cash to the missus.

The film continues in this vein for what seems like several days, with Tolstoy contemplating the ceiling and [presumably praying for death] while Mirren and whoever the hell the other bloke is, rotate in and out of his room on a carousel, repeating their demands that they cop for the eventual loot.

There may have been some flashbacks, featuring Tolstoy looking out from behind the different lengthed beards of his youth, but I’m not sure as, by this stage, I was watching my own whiskers grow, as a more action-packed alternative.

I’ve just stumbled upon this, through the randomness that is retweeting and I love it! It’s an entertaining read and it combines a review of the film with personal anecdotes and hand-drawn artwork.  what’s not to like?  Possibly something to ponder for you lot out there with reviews to write for your PDPs.

“Think outside of the box”,  and all thon!

War Horse –an illustrated review.

ice-cold in alex is on dave TV at the mo’. one of my all-time top five favourite movies.

as well as being a ‘cracking good yarn’ i think the movie [made in 1958] must be one of the earliest and best examples of product placement ever. in fact, back when this movie was made, i’m not sure that product placement -as a concept– would even have existed.

unfortunately, dave TV have chosen to show the movie at completely the wrong time of year; this is a film best served on a hot sultry summer’s day, with an unopened bottle of cold beer waiting to hand.  that way the viewer can work up an epic empathetic thirst, watching the characters struggle valiantly through the north african desert. 

the challenge is not to open your own beer until the heroes of the film do likewise in the legendary alexandria bar scene at the end of the film, by which stage you will –as the saying goes- be ‘spitting feathers’,  just as much as they are.

great stuff! –although, personally,  i usually pick something with a bit more taste than pissy carlsberg for my movie-accompanying prop.

“…people ought not to be afraid of their governments.

governments ought to be afraid of their people…”

last night, in honour of guy fawkes night i rewatched the excellent V for vendetta again.

for those of you who have yet to see the film, it is based on a graphic novel of the same name and is the story of… well, how to sum it up?  think ‘guy fawkes meets 1984, by the makers of the matrix’ and you’ll be on the right lines.

definitely one of the best british films of recent times.

i willnae give too much of the plot away, in case you have yet to watch the film but, in essence:

in the near future, the US has ceased to exist as a world power and britain is a totalitarian, orwellian state, ruled by adam sutler [john hurt] -a man who came to power, promising a return to traditional values and a crackdown on terrorists, homosexuals, islamists and so on.

[the original graphic novel was written in the middle of the thatcher era, so you can draw your own conclusions, as to the ‘message in the music’!]

the main protagonist in the film is a young girl called evey [natalie portman], who works as a general dogsbody in the state broadcasting company BTN.  we meet her at the beginning of the movie as she ventures out one night, after curfew, to visit a sick uncle.

on the way she is cornered in an alleyway by a menacing gang of undercover state policemen, hunting for curfew breakers.  gang rape looks set to ensue when, all of a sudden, a dark stranger appears from out of the gloom, dressed top to toe in black, wearing a guy fawkes mask and speaking in shakespearian english.  this is V [hugo weaving], who –with a beltful of daggers and a fistful of ninja moves– proceeds to educate the policemen as to the error of their ways and to save evey from their not-so-amorous advances.

from this point on, evey’s life and that of V become intertwined - all the more so when, shortly after,  he mounts an audacious raid on BTN headquarters [where evey works] and takes over the airwaves to broadcast to the british people and urge them to rise up against their fascist government on the next 5th of november.

further adventures ensue as V continues a one-man war against the apparatus of the state and the leaders of the government, via a series of explosions and assassinations.

against her will, evey is drawn into the battle, as the secret police suspect she is V’s accomplice and try to hunt her down for arrest and inevitable torture.

an added twist to the plot arrives in the shape of inspector finch [stephen rea] of the regular police, who is charged with tracking V down. in doing so, he begins to uncover a web of lies and deceit, which goes right to the heart of sutler’s government and suggest that V is not just a terrorist madman bent on wanton destruction, after all –and that the government has some very damaging skeletons hidden in its closet.

the film itself is wonderfully photographed and the storyline will pluck at the heartstrings of anyone with an ounce of the anarchist spirit within them. there are fantastic quotes and some of the set pieces -especially towards the end of the film- will have you punching the air,  as V well and truly “socks it to the man”.

if you havenae yet watched this movie, do it now!

this is most definitely not a link to a snidey copy of the film!