Annie, Skeezix

I've finished reading volumes 5 of Little Orphan Annie and Walt and Skeezix. LOA gets a bit repetitive, with Warbucks travelling abroad, Annie going on the road, ending up in some trouble and then being rescued by Warbucks, but there's still lots of charm. The strip is very melodramatic, but that works well within that Dickensian universe. When W&S go melodramatic, like the trial in volume 4 and the fake will in this volume, it breaks the tone a bit from the rest of the strip. As a reader I'm not hooked. Also, the drawings in W&S appeal less to me than the ones in LOA or cartoonier strips of that time like Polly and her Pals. For one thing, in W&S the angle is changed in every panel for no reason. LOA, for me, just works better as a comic. So I've ordered volume 6 of Little Orphan Annie whereas volume 5 of Walt & Skeezix will be the last volume I buy, I betcha.

Beetle

Gazelle

Two-Lane Passenger

The Passenger by Michelangelo Antonioni.

War correspondent Jack Nicholson takes another man's identity.
Of all the slow and rambling films from the seventies, this must be one of the slowest and ramblingest. I suppose it has something to do with existentialism. Nicholson is solid, some of the other actors are weak. It's really a bit too arty for my taste. The famous, long take at the end, though, makes the film almost, almost!, worth sitting through. "What do you see?"

Two-Lane Blacktop by Monte Hellman

James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are racing Warren Oats. Also, there's a girl.
The characters are completely uninteresting. Either they talk car technical gobbledygook or they're saying things like "You can never go too fast." or "We're just passing through." The old existential thing again, or is the film trying to say something about America? Visually, the film looks great, but it's kind of boring, actually. But then again, so are most cultfilms.

Gorilla

Another illustration, a mix of watercolours and acrylics.

Rhino

Illustration done for encyclopedia, late 90s.

Papillon

Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman are prisoners in a French penal colony. Apparently based on a true story, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner.

Great film. I don't really have much to say about it. McQueen gives a bravura performance. It helps that he has some lines on his face and looks as if he's actually lived a life. He didn't graduate from the Hollywood Prettyboy Acting School (HPAS for short). Hoffman looks slightly Jean Reno-ish. A minor negative thing is that the actors don't age during the film, so you don't really get an impression of how long they stay on the island. There's something about the films from the seventies that make them perfect for watching on lazy Sundays. The Roger Moore Bond films, the Agatha Christie and the Irwin Allen Disaster movies with a million old stars in them, included.