O-kay, so I get to have a day off sometimes, and then some asshole comes along and says: "No, no, you should feel less godly about that," completely proving my point.
Idiots.
People glom onto the only entity bothering to do benchmarks/reviews/ratings/whatever, or at least the only popular one, even if the system is totally bogus.
I don't get any of this, really. MetaCritic and IMDB are also huge, and use alternate weighting systems, I believe. You can also just google the movie and underneath the 'big three reviewers,' there'll be a bunch more quality review sites, like NYT, The Guardian, Ebert's site and so forth.
So for anyone who wants to get a spectrum of opinions, it's really not that hard. Not unlike how one should get reliable news.
Thanks for checking that out! On my end, I found this version of "spank": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spanking#Etymology_1
Which of course is different from the other meaning, to "punish by swatting."
As for an example, from Tintin's Secret of the Unicorn:
https://i.imgur.com/6BguONT.jpeg
Question, if I may: in some sailing / pirate works I've read, a ship has been said to be making a "spanking pace."
Any relation with that back sail there?
I was just thinking that Sean Astin did a lovely job with Sam, but then I had the thought that pretty much *everyone* in the Fellowship was really strong. Some of the secondary actors maybe not so much, but then... not such a big deal since they're secondary roles.
"It still only counts as one!" Oh, and the dwarf-tossing thing.
So you think Gimli was portrayed a little farcically? I guess he did seem a little 'caricature-ish' at times, and maybe not as grim and deadly as he should have been as a great dwarf warrior. OTOH I think everything I've ever seen John Rhys-Davies in has been a little tongue-in-cheek, not unlike Brian Blessed.
his orks look like fucking zombies
LOL, I never thought of that, but I guess its true.
to me they are completely void of the fairytale-like magic the books have.
I tend to agree with that. So many of these Hollywood movies are utterly caught up with visuals & sound, building tension and manipulating audience reaction. Me, I'd love to see a BBC-made series adaptation if a budget could be found. One that could pay a little more attention to details and cover more of the text, such as including the Bombadil section, a proper return to Hobbiton, and the true coverage of Saruman's demise.
Another annoying thing for me is that some critical sections of the movie were shot but not included in the regular film, so you could only see these in the extended versions. For example, somewhere in the search below you can find:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lotr+extra+scenes
That said, I'm still kind of impressed by the movies given that Jackson and his little team were seemingly writing the adaptation on the fly, often finishing pages literally hours before they were shot. Really poor move by the studio IMO, which later wound up turning The Hobbit in to a total mess. Not that they likely cared due to money being their bottom line.
Btw, I do consider the extended 'making of LotR' movies to be significantly better films than LotR itself.
I pretty much agree with that. Somehow they got 'locked in' to cultural consciousness, which is cool in some ways, but deleterious in others IMO.
It's different for me though, since I'm a middle-aged guy who's been seeing various adaptations of The Hobbit & LotR for years, even if it's just fan-art stuff. Frodo does not necessarily look like Elijah Wood. Frodo looks like Frodo!
Another problem I had with the films (despite their quality) is that there were a few too many cheesy moments for me. For example when the cave troll speared Frodo, it was as if time stopped. Everyone in the party telepathically "knew," and swiveled their heads to look over in shock & horror, and of course the orcs all started moving in slow motion. Just show the damn event and follow-up with the aftermath, please. This isn't The Matrix, featuring "bullet-time," lol.
I've never been to Spain, but I'm guessing the artist draws on some local inspirations at the very least. This also gave me some 'Tokyo vibes,' or really, vibes from various European cities.
I imagine you might contact them at ArtStation to ask specifically.
Get hence, you blowhards...
Your queen needeth you NAWT!
From a couple years earlier, I fear.
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/j/jung_etienne.htm
Here's a Polish-French artist with a delicious sense of representational BD. His pseudonym is "O'Groj"* based on his name, Olivier Grojnowski.
A graduate of the Angoulême School of Fine Arts, he published his first comics in PLG and Circus before collaborating on the magazine "A Suivre" in 1989.
More context here:
And here are the full-size versions:
Gaston:
https://i.imgur.com/dLwLYfr.jpeg
Oh, THOSE two:
https://i.imgur.com/KaZBFvh.jpeg
Good Lucky:
https://i.imgur.com/TNBhjU3.jpeg
Aw, supercutie:
https://i.imgur.com/NYhWgfB.png
Wait wait, stop, stop!!
https://i.imgur.com/Jx8Irfd.jpeg
Nice spiral, dude!
https://i.imgur.com/FzVbNVh.jpeg
I bumped in to this the other day and fell in love.
The scan is seemingly a little darker and more saturated than the print version, but methinks that works perfectly. It just needed a little upscaling to clean it up a bit, and voilà.
I'm not too familiar with Bravo's work, but he's certainly a terrific cartoonist.
More on him here: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/bravo_emile.htm
These come from the sixth volume Le Noyé à deux têtes (the "Two-Headed Drowned Man," I believe). The series is by Jacques Tardi, as collected by Casterman. It ran from the ~70's to the 2000's.
I haven't read too much of this series myself, but really liked the color scheme, panel flow, and overall action/noirish aspects of these two pages.
Tardi is one of the most important, versatile and influential French comic artists of all time. He invented an influential variation of Hergé's "Ligne Claire," but is first and foremost hailed as one of the masters of adult comics.
Recurring themes in his productive oeuvre are the early 20th century - particularly World War I -, steampunk, detective stories, and the underworld of the city. His signature series 'Les Extraordinaires Aventures d'Adèle Blanc-Sec' follows a feisty female private investigator in 1910-20s Paris. --Lambiek
Sisters Jeanne & Cécile appeared in Jean-Pierre Gibrat's Le Vol du Courbeau ("The Raven's Flight") & Le Sursis ("The Reprieve"), respectively.
These two connected series, each comprised of two volumes, are some of my most cherished graphic novels of all, representing just about the purest form of "BD" in my mind, being both whimsical and fraught with tension... delights & dangers all around. They're both set during WWII, and focus almost exclusively on the civilian side of things. Here's a brief intro to both characters:
Jeanne (the gal pictured above) is sitting in a police cell, denounced by unknown parties as a French resistance-fighter, when a smooth-talking scoundrel and petty thief is added to the cell. Her fate looks terribly uncertain; that is to say-- likely headed for humiliation, rape and abuse. But then, she and her new 'friend' manage to escape, and from then on are on the run, sharing a bunch of minor & major adventures along the way. The series also features one of the greatest 'twist reveals' I've ever seen. Sweetness becomes pain and vice-versa, and as a reader I'm left totally wanting more story, please.
Now Cécile... dear Cécile-- she still lives in the sisters' home village, helping to run a small café. A local friend of hers ("Julien") has been declared dead due to war events, but after the village goes through their grieving & a funeral, it turns out that he's in fact still alive, and has returned to the village! (albeit hiding at his aunt's place)
The duo reconnect stealthily with Julien's aunt's help, and things seem to reach a sort of normalcy. Cécile et Julien become easy lovers after some difficulties, but then the local collaborators pry in to affairs, and now everything's all topsy-turvy. The series finishes up with another incredible, tragic twist-ending, and note: this series (Le Sursis) was the original.
Remarkably, these two masterpiece series were Gibrat's very first foray in to being sole author(!) In fact I'm quite sure they'd make for some superb movie scripts.
Oolala, I really liked this cool topic from our [~big brother/~sister] sub, r/bandesessinee, so I've done a small tribute, listing all titles in order, filling in [settings] and (creators), and adding clickable samplers... all presented by Super-Grover!
Please enjoy. ^^
Credits: u/ILEAATD and the responders for the suggestions, and Alex Ross for the lovely art.
Aire Libre : Le voyage en Italie [Vietnam, other] (Cosey)
Brelan de dames [?] (Dufaux, Vernal)
By the Numbers [French Indochina] (Laurent Rullier)
Chinaman [China, hah] (Taduc & Le Tendre)
Delisle's Burma, Pyongyang & Shenzen [respective] (Guy Delisle)
Dieter Lumpen [East Asia, various] (Zentner & Pellejero)
Hibakusha [Japan] (Barboni & Cinna)
Innommables, Les [China, Hong Kong] (Yann & Conrad)
Japan As Viewed by 17 Creators [Japan, hah] (various)
Pema Ling [Tibet] (George Bess)
Saigon-Hanoi [Vietnam] (Cosey)
Tengu carré, Le [Japan] (David B)
Toppi's Library, volume six [Japan] (Toppi)
Under Two Suns, from Broussaille #4 [Japan & Africa] (Frank Pé)
Voyages d'He Pao, Les [Vietnam, other] (Vinh)
Yoko Tsuno [Japan] (Roger Leloup)
White Lama, The [Tibet, other] (Bess & Jodorowsky)
White Tigress, The [China, Hong Kong] (Wilbur & Conrad)
Corrections and additions welcome! 🙏
Returning from the newspaper late at night, Phil Perfect had the habit of strolling around the outskirts of the "Royal Palace."
Well, I just kinda liked the arrangement and energy of this piece,
and bonus pts for being set in winter.
Serge Clerc is a creator I don't believe we've gotten to meet yet on this sub. Artistically, he seems to share much in common with Yves Chaland, yet there are of course notable differences.
IMO Phil Perfect the detective isn't all that noteworthy of a character (Clerc quickly moved on from him), but for sure, one day we'll need a good Clerc breakdown, a pretty versatile, rather ingenious creator as he was.
As an Elvis fan and singer this one hurt, but it was just too funny not to share. 😅
Pieter De Poortere is a Belgian comic artist, children's book illustrator, graphic artist and animator, most famous for his internationally succesful pantomime comic "Boerke," about the mishaps of a generally unlucky moustached farmer. The series combines an innocent-looking graphic style with pitch black comedy. De Poortere is also known for his large crowd paintings. He is part of the new wave of the Flemish humorists, together with Kim Duchateau (see the EGN+ index for samples of Esther Verkest), Jeroom, Bart Schoofs and Nix. --Lambiek, with Johnny's edits
What's also nice is that his comics are largely wordless, so the original Dutch / Flemish collections are usually fine no matter the reader's native tongue(s).
Lots more de Poortere info and comics samples here:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/d/de-poortere-pieter.htm
José is from Spain, and what first blew me out of the water was his ingenious, hugely inventive, isometric, stream-of-consciousness book, Adventures of a Salaryman. Here's the French title & cover:
It's about a Japanese "salaryman" ('career office worker,' essentially) simply trying to make his way home after a long day pointlessly wasting overtime hours in order to mildly impress his bosses (i.e. the usual salaryman thing).
Basically-- he just wants to get home and go to sleep, and is certainly not looking forward to anything new and/or unexpected. This dude, even if he wanted sex from his wife? That almost certainly wasn't going to fly. So he really, really just wants to throw down his head upon yon pillow(!)
Unfortunately (or fortunately?) absolutely everything unexpected, weird & wild happens to him from that point on, with flippin' bells hangin' off bells, a bit of an ol' Brit expression? :P
Anyway-- SAMPLES
TBH? I don't know that much about his other work.
Still, from what I do understand, this matey has his finger in many pies, such as animation, movies, cartoons, and et cet.
So then, here's some samples I liked in particular:
I love dancing too, and was impressed by how realistic the two people were portrayed in these frames, even if it was also slightly hilarious due to the guy's age and cranky nature.
I've added two links to Blutch's stuff in the third paragraph.