Click the thumbnail picture to see how the video in the previous post appears in my local media player when I click the “Player problem” link. I’d love to get playlists to appear in the embedded videos as they do in the standalone player, but so far no luck.
Here is Eric’s pick for this week’s Animé from Netflix…
At the end of the 8th grade, a school friend of my son Eric recommended the 24-part Animé series Last Exile. Eric urged me and his mother to watch it with him, and we got hooked right away.
It became our “Last Exile Summer,” with Eric getting two of his cousins wrapped up in the show, as well. My wife and I particularly enjoyed the often humorous little teasers at the end of each episode. Here is one of them.
You can learn a lot from reading old comic-books.
The original National Lampoon magazine had some good writing and cartooning, up to the release of Animal House, when the emphasis switched to movies. Cartoonist Gahan Wilson, known for his macabre humor, had a regular feature in NatLamp called “Nuts.” The installment I remember best is perhaps the least macabre. I felt exactly this way after making a drawing board for myself when I was 11 years old.
Click the picture below to see the entire cover to the January, 1965 issue of a humor magazine called HELP! The Beatles’ movie HELP! wasn’t released until August, 1965, leading one to speculate what possible influence Terry Gilliam’s bit of airbrushed artistic whimsy may have had on the title. Yes, that’s Terry Gilliam the animator, director and Monty Python troupe member who is listed as contributing editor.
HELP! was the brainchild of Harvey Kurtzman. In an earlier posting I have a link to a gallery with one of Kurtzman’s early comic-book stories. Kurtzman is still remembered today as the man who started MAD Magazine. One evening, Gilliam, who had replaced HELP! staffer Gloria Steinem, went to an off-Broadway show that featured a performer named John Cleese. They met and Cleese was talked into performing a photo comic strip for the magazine. Look for that in a future posting. After HELP! folded, Gilliam later caught up with Cleese in London, and then there was something completely different.
