All Hallow's Eve...

I figured this one was appropriate for Halloween as I was told that it looked like something out of The Shining.  On a strange side note, I once met Joe Turkel, who played the phantom bartender, Lloyd, in the Kubrick film (He's perhaps better known as Dr. Tyrell in Blade Runner), at a breakfast place in San Diego.  Of the rather lengthy number of entries on the "People I Least Expect to Run Into Today" list, I must say that he ranked rather high.  But he was very polite, and I was happy to give him the newspaper from our table.

From Across the Table...

Another quick collaboration with Jason Shawn Alexander.  He spent a section of the evening doing half-faces with most of those present, including Jim Mahfood, David Mack, and others.  A fun night and a fun experiment. (Psst...I'm the one on the left....but you already knew that.)

Double O Jonzo

Not really a quickie sketch so much as a quickie painting.  A gift for a friend who needed a little secret agent flair in his life.

Princess Dragon Mom...

This sketch isn't of the evil villainess I used to title this entry.  It's merely one of her mutant henchman from the bizarre Shaw Bros. knock-off of Ultraman, Super Infra-Man (1975).  If you never saw this one as a kid or aren't quite the trash cinephile I find myself being from time to time, it's essentially a bizarre, incoherent mess about ancient demons wreaking havoc on the earth, until a super-scientist creates a bionic man to fight the evil.  It's far less Lovecraft than it sounds...and is more rubber monsters in a kung-fu movie with a certain hint of the 60's Batman TV show.    Now you might say, "But, Ry-Guy (I hate it when you call me that), Ultraman wasn't exactly Ingmar Bergman."  No...no he wasn't, but on the sliding scale, this pushes him much farther in that direction.  Ah yes...Witch-Eye was what the subtitles called her...

Weird Figures...Straaaaange Figures...

Mondo Candido (1975) was a strange modernization of Voltaire's Candide, and the only fiction film by "schockumentary" directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, makers of Mondo Cane (1962).  This time, Candide not only travels through a variety of places but also time, in a very similar look and spirit to the films of Gilliam and Jodorowsky. The above sketch is of actor Gianfranco D'Angelo as the Barone.

"If I were my father. I'd have you tortured..."

Claudia Cardinale was born in Tunis to Sicilian immigrants to the Northern coast of Africa.  In 1957, she won the Italian embassy's "Most Beautiful Italian Girl in Tunisia" pageant which sent her on excursion to the Venice film festival where she began her work as an actress.  A sex symbol of the 60's, Cardinale appeared in two of my favorite western films, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, d. Sergio Leone) and The Professionals (1966, d. Richard Brooks) as well as playing the lovely Princess Dala in Blake Edward's The Pink Panther (1963).  (Her "drunk" scene with David Niven is incredibly charming.)

Random Ronin...

I'm not really going to try and explain this one.  It was another drink and draw and I was drawing a blank.  Not very visually stimulating, your average blank.  Then I remembered a favorite Japanese woodblock print, so I started sketching and smearing...and eventually ended up with this cute li'l devil.  Go figure.

The Center of the Galaxy

Sagittarius, the ninth symbol of the zodiac, contains the densest part of the Milky Way as it lies near the galactic center. The Babylonians identified the symbol with Pabilsaĝ, the tutelary god of the city of Isin (now in modern Iraq).  The Greeks later associated him with Chiron who was the mythological tutor Achilles.

As a fun side note, the Greeks sometimes described centaurs as drunkards who could not handle their liquor, and yet drank all the time.  Interesting, considering what was going on when I drew this.  Not half-bad for a drawing of a horse at a gallop with no reference.

Hey There, Li'l Fella...

Another entry from one of the drawing sessions with Jason Shawn Alexander, Jim Mahfood, Dave Crosland, et al. (Yes...I'm aware that his arm's way too long...)

Crashing Toy Trains

This was a late entry from a late night drawing session.  And no, it was not reflective of my condition at the time.

"If I could find my head, I'd go get it examined."

Perhaps Stanley Donen's best known film, amongst a cavalcade of good ones, is Singin' in the Rain (1952), which is not only a musical that even musical-haters might enjoy, it's also a fantastic recreation of the effect that the introduction of sound had on motion pictures.  I was introduced to Donen by Saturn 3 ( 1980), which, despite a promising cast, director, a script by British novelist Martin Amis, and one of the craziest robot designs of all time, ends up being a dull throwback to cheapie 50/60's scifi movies (it's too competent to contend with the abysmally trashy fun of a Robot Monster (1953)).  But my favorite Donen vehicles, outside of the Cook & Moore spectacular Bedazzled (1967), are Donen's two Hitchock knock-offs, Charade (1963) and Arabesque (1966).  While Hitch still produced a few more films during this time, Hollywood seemed to be looking for someone to fill the suspenseful void.  Many tried, and while some are good campy fun, only Donen's really hold up and stand on their own from Hitch's mold.

The above quickie was inspired by a lobby card of Sophia Loren from Arabesque.  She's quite the stunner and far more the femme fatale foil for Gregory Peck, as compared to the chemistry of Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in Charade.