March 21, 2012
Translating comics

A couple of days ago, a comic book retailer caught the comics patch of the Twitter universe by lodging an exhaustive complaint about a poorly translated European comic.

He focused not the translation of language, but on the translation of visuals. The comic is the Italian classic, Corto Maltese: The Ballad of the Salt Sea by Hugo Pratt. The original page size and aspect ratio of the comic was altered to fit the finished size of the translation. The publisher later explained that the changes were made by or with the artist’s consent for earlier European editions.

Nevertheless, the retailer’s step-by-step breakdown of the changes offers useful lessons in reading sequential art.

The blog entry by Jared of Big Planet Comics:
http://www.bigplanetcomics.com/how-to-destroy-a-comics-classic

The publisher Rizzoli’s response, as reported in The Beat:
http://www.comicsbeat.com/2012/03/20/more-on-corto-maltese-rizzoli-responds-on-production-problems/

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Filed under: Comics 
February 11, 2012
The importance of storytelling, even in figure skating

A couple of weeks ago, I heard an interview with former future skating star Toller Cranston. He said he had no interest in the skating world and furthermore, it was dying. He blamed restrictive judging.

Today, Josh Wingrove of the Globe and Mail has a feature on Jamie Sale and David Pelltier, who 10 years ago won gold in pairs figure skating. They said the same thing. Wingrove interviewed some U.S. figure skating officials who said the scene hit its heights with the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan soap opera.

Both arguments suggest that figure skating may be arcane, but that it — or maybe anything — can be made more appealing when it involves a story that people are interested in, whether it’s off-ice shenanigans or in the performance itself. As Jamie Sale says, “We skated Love Story very freely. We were telling a story. I felt like an actress. I find when I watch today, I don’t see that at all. It’s just technical.”

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November 11, 2011
Gay Penguins FTW

Pair Bonding

I admit it: I can’t get enough of the Toronto gay penguin story.

“Story” is the operative word. I suspect most people who are writing and tweeting about that story is well aware that human behaviour can’t be mapped onto animal behaviour. 

For some reason, humans find penguins to be aesthetically cute. Their human-like social traits (the pair bonding, their ability to establish and return to their home, etc.) makes them cuter. 

Anthropomorphizing them is a way to select elements of their behaviour and slot it into a human story. Awareness of the gulf between reality and fiction only makes the story funnier. 

In Buddy and Pedro’s case, we get to cast them in a twist on the domestic narrative, adding the gay angle. So we get to imagine the penguin version of:

  • gay relationships
  • surrogate parenting
  • nationalist policies on reproduction (the Nazis encouraged German women to have babies to keep the population strong)
  • bisexuality and second families (Buddy had kids when he was in a long-term relationship with a female penguin)
  • May-December romances (Pedro is half Buddy’s age!)
  • social media use (yes, they have Twitter accounts! @PedroPenguin and @Buddy Penguin)
  • aging (Pedro is a member of the Twitter generation, Buddy is not.

It distorting reality to think of animals as having human stories, but it’s irresistible! Plus, the anthropomorphized version of Pedro can, um, animalmorphize humans.

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Filed under: media gaypenguins 
November 10, 2011
Shadow Theatre: Bless You, Billy Wilder

I highly recommend Shadow Theatre’s current production of Bless You, Billy Wilder by David Belke. 

Bless You, Billy Wilder is a play about storytelling, which makes it a good choice to mark the 20th season of Shadow Theatre and the 10th anniversary of the play itself. Belke spent a year and a half revising the play, and now Shadow Theatre’s John Hudson has staged a fresh and thoughtful revival.

Read More

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(Notes: 4)
  
Filed under: yegarts yegtheatre 
October 23, 2011
Auroras Animated

(Source: stephchantastic)

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(Notes: 1)
  
October 5, 2011
How Steve Jobs Ruined Comics

I’ve been meaning to share this post by Tom Pappalardo about how those sleek slips of Apple technology pose a challenge to cartoonists: http://blog.tompappalardo.com/?p=2016

It’s a brilliant little essay about why iconic images are important elements in a cartoonist’s visual  vocabulary. It also prompted me to reflect on how much Steve Jobs and Apple have changed everyday life. As the curmudgeonly Supernatural character Bobby Singer protests: “A computer has buttons!”  Personally, I remember being amazed by a news story about how iPods were prompting clothing manufacturers to change the traditional size of pockets on shirts, pants and jackets.

I was a late convert to Apple. Early Macs were memory hogs and incompatible with everything. However, at some point, the company’s products became more useful and accessible, and I got tired of messing around with PCs and their array of unreliable OSes. 

I’m not on board with all of Apple’s decisions (especially in the patents area), but I can’t deny that their stuff works for me with very little fuss. And even fewer buttons. 

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(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: apple steve jobs comics 
August 21, 2011
Fringeopolis: 9 Months to Mars

Quick note: This play by Matt Alden and Ryan Parker is stucturally sophisticated, but that might be overlooked because it’s also hilarious. Kudos to the young cast of two for bringing this to life.

One performance left, at 6 p.m. tonight:
https://tickets.fringetheatre.ca/DateSelection.aspx?item=1054

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(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: theatre Fringe 2011 yegarts yegfringe 
August 19, 2011
Fringeopolis: The Sparrow and the Mouse

There is a lot of great music in this production. Singer Melanie Gall has a wonderful, strong voice that is such a joy that I found myself wanting to hear more. 

Gall plays Simone Tertaut, who recalls singing with her half-sister Edith on the streets of Paris. Most of the play is told from Simone’s first person POV. There are a few pre-recorded voice-overs, from the same POV, then there are the songs to tell Edith’s story. 

This actually left me confused about whose story was being told, especially since we learned more about Edith than Simone.

(After the play, I learned that there is some question over whether Simone actually was related to Piaf. There is probably a whole other play in there!)

Nevertheless, The Sparrow and the Mouse is a good excuse for hearing Edith Piaf’s music at the Fringe. So thanks to Melanie Gall and her accompanist, Erin Craig!

Tickets:
https://tickets.fringetheatre.ca/DateSelection.aspx?item=1036

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Filed under: Theatre Fringe 2011 yegarts yegfringe 
August 17, 2011
Fringeopolis: Belated Warning

My Fringe posts are more like personal notes than reviews, so they will be more subjective than my past reviews. 

I’m also under the influence of work that is at least as much a personal reading of history than not. Specifically, I’m reading the book, Supergods, Grant Morrison’s take on superhero comics.

Also, I started this year’s Fringe experience with All I Needed to Know I Learned at the Fringe, a personal memoir of the Fringe by former Fringe staffer Lee Ann Kepler.

Bottom line: these posts may not be useful as marketing material or consumer guides, but they will highlight what resonates with me — unless something completely flummoxes me, in which case take it as a recommendation.

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Filed under: theatre fringe 2011 yegarts yegfringe 
August 17, 2011
Fringeopolis: BANG!

One of the things I love about physics is that so much of it sounds so crazy, it just might be true — and in fact, a lot of theories thought to be whacky at the time have been proven to be sound.

BANG! captures this idea with a science teacher who is hellbent on proving people wrong and “finding the edges” of ideas: she seeks definitions and boundaries. But physics needs poetry, experimentation and also failure to hit upon the crazy ideas that just might describe the universe.

The teacher is just one character in this multi-discipline collective creation by a group of young actor/dancers, many of whom are graduates of the University of Alberta drama program. We also meet a scientist, a little girl, the earth, a constellation of stars and even dark matter, all of which interact to approximate the relationships between humans, between humanity and star matter, and between physical phenomena. The star nursery skit where a young constellation learns how stars are made is particularly hilarious: “Sometimes gravity and gas pressure play a special game.”

The stories were intercut, but actually quite linear. However, when the cast appeared in white hazmat suits and theatre masks, I just went with the flow.

I just really appreciated the mad activity of the show (the performance space was a strip of dance flooring in the middle of teeny New City Legion, the basement nightclub immediately north of Hudson’s), and the enthusiasm of curious women posing questions that may not (yet) have answers.

Tickets:

https://tickets.fringetheatre.ca/DateSelection.aspx?item=1119

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