sethos

I'm good on a few specific fields of literature - 20th Century American Drama a speciality.

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how about Sam Shepard? do ya like his stuff? I wrote a rather nice essay on his play "The Unseen Hand".

My dissertation for my MA in English was on Hemingway, actually. specifically on "For Whom the Bell Tolls". ever since working my way through so much of his stuff for that one, I've found myself unable to go back to his writings though. a shame.

weird that this hasn't happened with my BA dissertation in Celtic Studies: I wrote on the origin of the weakness of the Ulstermen (the starting point of the Ulster Cycle/Táin Bó Cúailnge), but I still find myself very interested in the subject.

My MA in Celtic is probably gonna be on the subject of the Dindsenchas, the collection of Old Irish tales on how places in Ireland got their names.

I'm good on a few specific fields of literature - 20th Century American Drama a speciality. James Joyce, too...

 

I'm also a pretty reliable source of musical arcana - Bob Dylan is the obvious one (dissertation research in particular gave me an alarming amount of Dylan-related trivia and knowledge), but years of obsessive reading, listening and mulling-over have left me as quite the expert on a good few eras/bands/genres.

 

Those are my major areas of knowledge...I'm also reasonably hot on my Shakespeare, with some gaps, and I've got a basic comprehension of Old English (eg. Beowulf, The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer...a very strange language indeed). I love films, and am familiar with a fair bit of cinematic history, but I wouldn't dream of calling myself an expert.

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Old English is great. a hell of a lot easier than Old Irish and Middle Welsh too.

I have a vast amount of trivia in my head on all sorts of things.

I know a lot about movies. all sorts, with quite a bit on Japanese/Hong Kong movies (I'm still catching up on Korean movies).

Comics, especially small press stuff.

drawing (I think I have worked with pretty much every ink nib in the WORLD before settling on the Deleter G Pen and the Leonardi 111EF)

My knowledge on English Lit is pretty damn good too, though just like Mark I have some gaps: it's just impossible to know it all.

oh yeah, I know quite a bit about Celtic Studies... :)

I really rather like that, Sethos. Nice one - excellent detail, too.

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thanks! one of the few pics in recent years I've done on larger than A4 size paper (A3 in fact)

well, i know... Jeff Smith isn't that much of an artist, really... i prefer your work.

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hmm. well, thanks for the compliment and while you are probably right as Smith is mainly a cartoonist, he is an utter genius at storytelling in the comics form. he's up there with Eisner and Frank Miller. panel transitions, flow of story, Bone is utterly genius in that regard. plus, his black and white art is amazing: he is great at "spotting the blacks" (i.e. knowing where to put shadow to make a 2D drawing have depth). the best examples of that are in "Eyes of the Storm" the third Bone collection. the lightning scenes are just fantastic.

A bit on the wide side, Sethos...

for some bizzarre reason, reminds me of the cover or interior artwork for Bone : Stupid Stupid Rat Tales...

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I wanted to make the pic as big as possible do everybody can see the lovely detail I put into it :)

as for Stupid Stupid Rat Tales, well, that one also features a guy being launched in the air while holding on to a rope, I think.

And, Rogan, while I'd love to be able to draw like Jeff Smith, I don't think there are that many similarities between his art and mine...

I never discuss supposed "twists" without good cause.

 

I thought it was handled well except Old Boy's erm "mental breakdown".

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I actually quite liked that. I mean, come on, it is something that would give a person a breakdown.

Lately I are been mostly reading: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (frankly, I don't give a fuck what you think). Having finished that I'm about to re-read Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy (I cannot recommend this highly enough, challenging morally complex, children's fiction with a neat line in agnosticism).

When I've completed that I'll be reading George P. Pelecanos' DC Trilogy. A triptych of novels set in Washington DC during 3 separate time periods. The DC trilogy thing is a bit of a misnomer as most of Pelecanos' work is set in DC. Again, I cannot recommend Pelecanos' stuff highly enough, he's a first rate crime writer with an eye for needle barbed social commentary.

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His Dark Materials is truly excellent, yeah. I dread the movie versions that they are currently in preproduction for.

btw, Tom, if you like good fantasy children's fiction, you should check out the Abarat books by Clive Barker. two are out so far, I've just started reading part 2 and it's brilliant. Barker's illustrations are pretty damn neat too, and I can't understand how he managed to sell it to Disney as a movie franchise, as most of the monsters and shit in it look like cenobites, really.

I also recommend his other children's book, The Thief of Always.

Frightfest 2004

 

Oldboy was fun.

Apparently arbitrary street kidnapping turns out to be about revenge, but why ? And when our man gets out (after fifteen years) of what appears to be a warehouse where gangsters hold kidnapped people until ransoms are paid or the joke is over.

 

He then has to find out why he was victimised (in fact first he has to find where he was). When he does, there is a great fight scene in a corridor - consider the two man fight scene in They Live, but make it thirty to one ! The motive of his tormentor is revealed shortly before the FULL REVENGE PLOT is revealed, and he's not happy (cue the one scene I could have done without, where he begs and grovels and barks like a dog).

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what did ya think of the big twist, Ade? and the subsequent ending? I really thought the movie was fantastic, one of the best flicks I've seen this year.

as for myself, I bought Tartan's remastered DVD of Hard Boiled a few days ago. It was better than I remembered it, and it's funny how much it seems Infernal Affairs was based on it (Tony Leung even plays the same kind of character).

My Gallery (hasn't been updated but still)

and here's a bigger version of one of my fave current pics on there:

Well there goes my mysterious tough bitch persona..hehe

 

Down the drain that is..yes its me

Maybe I can distract you long enpugh to ver take u in the posting counts.

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I normally stay away from threads like these, but you really are a lovely looking lady!

....and we hit 16 concurrent users this morning, which makes that point quite nicely for me.

 

Welcome to the new gaff Sethos, hope whatever speed issues you're having clear up sharpish.

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it turns out my network card is dying on me again, so it's definitely not something to do with the new boards itself.

My name is Sean, I live in the Netherlands and am currently doing an MA in Celtic Studies (I already have an MA in English Lit. yep, I'm a real Mr. Smarty-Pants). oh, and I'm 28.

I like drawing, as you can judge from the sample below...

fucking excellent film, I got myself the US DVD, which features not just a brilliant audio commentary by the director and Bruce Campbell, but also a truly hilarious commentary by Bruce Campbell as The King himself.

for me they seem to be going much slower. but maybe that's just me.

testing... testing. god, I hate getting started on a new forum. anyway, Tom, that was brilliant.

EDIT: shit, I'm member 13. now I will have bad luck forever!