Sagan on media

A veces pienso que la industria de animación es tan inútil y banal que hay que saber muy poco para trabajar en ella. Eso a veces me cansa. Si uno ve los trabajos de todo el año, poquísimos aportan algo realmente necesario. ¿Que hace a Paranorman diferente de Coraline? ¿Que hace a Brave diferente de Como entrenar a tu dragón o cualquier otra peli gringa animada? O, talvez lo q me cansa es pensar que a la industria le gusta ser como es, que es la industria superficial por excelencia.

-Sagan:

"An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth -scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books -might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it. What kind of society could we create if, instead, we drummed into science and a sense of hope?"

  

Red crux

Tener obra propia es similar al deseo de los carajillos de pararse en medio de la sala a bailar para que les pongan atención. No me salgan con que es una decisión altruista porque no lo es, al final está motivada por egoismo. Si lo fuera estudiarían educación o ayudarían en la cruz roja.

"Second-hand heroes"

A study of popular music shows that styles undergo a radical change about every four or five years, the time for a given group of teen-agers to attain majority. The old generation does not change its tastes. Those remain constant. Twenty years from now middle-aged Beatles´ fans will still be listening to reissues of Beatles´ records, as those who dated to the music of Glen Miller subscribe to new editions of Miller records or the Time-Life nostalgia swing series. What changes are the tastes of the upcoming generation, who want nothing to do with second-hand heroes and desire to create new ones. 

"Información y entretener: ¿Alguien nota la diferencia?"

Me gustó esta nota de la teleguía, pero me parece equivocada la forma despectiva en la que trata al arte, como si no pudiera informar tambien.
Me parece errónea la idea implícita de que periodismo = transmitir información valiosa y "arte" = pasatiempo vacío.  Ni qué decir de la idea de que lo placentero sea malo o decandente, jajaja.
Si un noticiero da información muy valiosa es un noticiero de buena calidad, sean noticias entretenidas o no. Y el arte tambien puede dar educación de calidad. Pero en general estoy muy de acuerdo.

About Inspiration

"Nothing in art is created without effort, and the painter´s ideas don´t come to him on wings while he dreams, either. The one may be more talented than the other, of course; but without untiring diligence, single-mindedness and a combative spirit, there can´t be any good results. All this talk about "inspiration" is nonsense"

-Arnold Böcklin segun Imaginative Realism de James Gurney


"Nada en el arte es creado sin esfuerzo, y las ideas del pintor no vienen a él en alas mientras sueña tampoco. Uno podrá ser mas talentoso que otro, por supuesto, pero sin incansable diligencia, resolución y un espiritu combativo no pueden haber buenos resultados. Toda esta platica sobre "inspiracion" no tiene sentido."

Neil Gaiman sobre Will Eisner

No puedo quitarme de la cabeza esta frase del apendice de Will Eisner: A Spirited life de Bob Andelman. Gaiman sobre Eisner:

"Over the years, one of the things I have loved about Will is having conversations with him about whatever we are doing or whatever is happening and he is probably the only person in comics who is capable of saying, ´Of course, they tried that in 1947, but they did it like this and it worked.´

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"A través de los años, una de las cosas que he amado sobre Will es tener conversaciones con él sobre lo que sea que estamos haciendo o lo que sea que está pasando y el es probablemente la única persona en los comics que es capaz de decir: ""Por supuesto, eso lo intentaron en 1947, pero lo hicieron así y funcionó.""

:3

Dos joyas: La primera es una carta de Ward Kimball hablando sobre animacion y sobre los estudios de tele. Yo lo encuentro muy motivador. La entrada original la pueden ver acá con Will Finn (a quien iba dirijida) hablando sobre el tema y con otras imagenes adjuntas.

La segunda habla sola, es de Saul Bass, un diseñador super famoso y que fue muy cercano a Hollywood.

Cause the circle of hatred continues unless we react

Bah! Digo yo, dejad que los niños lean basura, que ahi vive la pasión.

Literatura es literatura compái. Inferior? Who´s inferior?

Los ++ para mí

Sobre las entregas de premios, Avatar y literatura

1) Hace poco me di cuenta que Avatar ganó mejor pelicula en los Golden Globes y fue nominada a varias categorias en los BAFTA y seguramente lo hará en los OSCAR como pasó hace unos años con la mesa gallega que hizo Titanic. Es normal que el público al ver que la peli gane tantos premios y que tenga una publicidad exagerada trate de pensar que de verdad es la octava maravilla, aunque compita con joyas como Inglorious Basterds y District 9, por ejemplo.

David Brooks escribió una columna en el New York Times interesante

Anima = Alma

Hoy quiero agradecer con esta entrada la suerte que he tenido de haber crecido en un país y en el tiempo exacto para haber podido estudiar realmente lo que me apasiona. Que suene superficial no me importa, me alegro hoy de la libertad de expresion, de poder escribir idioteces donde sea, de poder explotar mis ideas en paz. Es un regalo que vemos tan innato adonde yo he crecido que muchas veces no lo vemos del todo, y una responsabilidad para con mi generacion y con la gente que no ha tenido esa suerte.
Yo no habría estado en paz conmigo mismo hasta no haber estudiado cine, y espero recordarlo en los momentos de calamidad.

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FB005: Oh Gordito Alan

Jun 22, 2008 9:27 PM

TJKC: I hear all the time from people who say that all the super-hero stories have been told, that they're done; that these stories and ideas can only be fresh once.

ALAN: Yeah, so then you have to go to the trouble of actually going and making something else fresh. It is a bit of work and I can understand how a lot of creators these days don't really seem to be prepared to do it. They'd rather wait for somebody else to do the innovation and then jump aboard because that is much easier.
It's much safer in terms of your career. If you wait for somebody else to prove that it works and then jump aboard, you'll probably get more out of it in terms of profits—and so will your characters—than the actual person that did the innovation ever did. You could carry on doing stories about super-heroes forever. There's still new cowboy stories to be written. If anybody disbelieves it, they should pick up the works of Cormac McCarthy and try picking up Blood Meridian and see if that's not a new way to tell a cowboy story. I do get a little tired of hearing people saying that everything is done that can be done.
"All the great innovations were in the past." What kind of culture would we have if everyone always thought like that? Certainly people have been thinking like that for a long time. I'm sure that ever since any form of art or music began there's always been a huge crowd of people thinking, "Well, that's it, really," thinking, "How could we ever top this?"
And then somebody comes along who doesn't believe that and doesn't buy into that—doing something which is completely revolutionary and changes everything around, and then everyone is euphoric for however long it takes for the buzz to wear off, and then they say, "Well, now all the great ideas have been had.
There's no possibility of anything in the future"; which I think is a weak and defeatist attitude. I think that any creator worth their thoughts should not be believing that there is a point further down the highway, but trying to reach it.
Creativity or the advance of any medium is like one of those old Warner Brothers cartoons, where you'll have a railroad train running across the desert with Daffy Duck having to chop up the railroad train itself in order to lay tracks in front of the train. I don't know if you are familiar with the particular cartoon image I've got in m'head: Sort of laying tracks in front of you where there are no tracks, which is a giant leap of faith.
You have to first believe that there is something in front of you, then you have to do your best to actually reach that point rather than say, "We've reached the very edge of creativity because I can't think of anything to do. Therefore, I will decide that the entire humanity has reached the edge of creativity just because I've given up," which is a very cowardly and defeatist attitude. If only more artists could grab the medium by the horns in the way that Jack Kirby did and sort of decide that they are going to make up their minds whether we've reached the end of ideas and whether there might be a few more in there. My basic position is that ideas are infinite, limitless, but it just depends whether we're prepared to do the work to actually bring them in. Whenever you get creators talking about some inherit fall or failure in the medium or in any particular genre, they are mainly talking about their own flaws and failings in their own creativity. You can't blame the medium:
"I guess there weren't that many super-hero ideas. I guess that we've used them all up." It reminds me of the ancient Greeks when they were coming up with all these myths in the first place. The world of ideas is inexhaustible and infinite. You just have to find them, which an awful lot of people are not prepared to do. They'd rather let someone like Jack Kirby do all the hard work and mining and the back-breaking; mining an industry for thirty or forty years and then the nuggets that he happens to throw to the surface always find them and they put a new spin on them.
They don't want to do the hard work themselves. This is not a blanket condemnation of the whole industry. I think it's fair to say there are a number of people in the industry who are much happier sort of working with stuff that's already been placed, rather than to try and build up their creative muscles and do some of that work themselves. But that's just my own particular feeling I'm sure."I hate the movie industry [because] if I make a bad comic, it does not cost a hundred million dollars, which is the budget of an emergent small third world African nation. And this is money that could have gone to alleviating some of the immense suffering in this world but has instead gone to giving bored, apathetic, lazy, indifferent Western teenage boys another way of killing 90 minutes of their interminable and seemingly pointless lives." -Alan Moore (Nevins, 277)

Jeff: if you need someone to blame, throw a rock in the air and you´ll hit someone guilty dice:yo tengo los huevos para hacer en donde sea

Jeff: if you need someone to blame, throw a rock in the air and you´ll hit someone guilty dice:d los cojones!

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Here comes Alan Moore (again)

Some new excerpts:

1. Comics don’t work as films.

“The main reason why comics can’t work as films is largely because everybody who is ultimately in control of the film industry is an accountant.

And this is why a film is going to be a work that’s done by dozens and dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of people.

They’re going to show it to the backers and then they’re going to say, we want this in it, and this in it... and where’s the monster?”

2. Hollywood is full of idiots.

“We had one particularly dense Hollywood producer say, ‘You don’t even have to do the book, just stick your name on this idea and I’ll make the film and you’ll get a lot of money – it’s… The League Of Extraordinary Animals! It’ll be like Puss In Boots!’ And I just said, 'No, no, no. Never mention this to me again.'”

3. Comics are better than blockbusters.

“There is more integrity in comics. It sounds simplistic, but I believe there is a formula that you can apply to almost any work of modern culture...

The more money that’s involved in a project the less imagination there will be in the project, and vice versa. If you’ve got zero budget, you’re John Waters, you’re Jean Cocteau, you’re going to make a brilliant film.”

6. The modern American comics industry is ideologically flawed.

“Back when I wrote Watchmen I still trusted the viperous bastards, I had a different feeling about American superhero comics and what they meant.

I’ve recently come to the point where I think that basically most American superhero comics, and this is probably a sweeping generalisation, they’re a lot like America’s foreign policy.




America has an inordinate fondness for the unfair fight.




That’s why I believe guns are so popular in America – because you can ambush people, you can shoot them in the back, you can behave in a very cowardly fashion. Friendly fire, or as we call it everywhere else in the world, American fire.




If you’re up there in the stratosphere so that everything on the ground looks like ants, it might be insurgents, it might be an Iraqi wedding party, it might be some English soldiers.



There’s that beautiful bit of dialogue from the cockpit video when they say, “You’ve just bombed a load of Brits.” Their pilots say, “Woah, dude, we’re going to jail.” This is the Iraq war, not Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure!



I believe that the whole thing about superheroes is they don’t like it up them. They would prefer not to get involved in a fight if they don’t have superior firepower, or they’re invulnerable because they came from the planet Krypton when they were a baby.



I genuinely think it’s this squeamishness that’s behind the American superhero myth. It’s the only country where it’s really taken hold. As Brits, we'll go to see American superhero films, just like the rest of the world, but we never really created superheroes of our own.

I ♥ Alan Moore

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On that beautiful shore (Part A)

I hate Star Wars.

With all my guts.

Because when were kids...

It was already ours by heritage.

:P

(Hell Yeah!)

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About Technique

-I don´t know why I don´t care much about it-

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