COLD SORES

cold sores & an apple



the pic below may be the beginning of a new comic.

This is NOT the first page of my web comic...

...or is it?


(it isn't...sort of)

Remus VII

S/M-CHIC(K) with ZVEN BALSLEV!

the first 15 panels...





























...to be continued.
if you wanna see the first 6 panels of the "S/M-chic(k)" that i´m doing together with FuFu Frauenwahl..well, then just click on the tagword "comic jam" somewhere alphabetically up on the right of this page. hmm, this since i dont really know how to make clickable links here..

Rags film report 5: Supernatural Martial Arts

After quite a lot of years of never really going out of my way to see martial arts films, I was lured in by the supernatural horror films made in the genre, which are some of the craziest films ever made, I even found a fascinating book called Spooky Encounters by Daniel O’ Brien all about this niche, while it taught me a lot about Hong Kong( particularly informing me of how alarmingly politically incorrect their films can be, a lot of racism, sexism and hatred for the Japanese in the earlier days), I sadly found out that I had already seen most of the best kung fu horror films and it was mostly downhill from there. I also learned that there is a Buddhist swastika with no relation to the Nazi sign. How do you wear a Buddhist swastika without creating trouble?

I started with the Chinese Ghost Story trilogy, which I think is consistently great with no clear better film of them all, the first probably is the best, but it doesn’t have Jacky Cheung, who is in the second and third, he’s probably the most instantly likable actor I’ve ever seen, he just makes me smile whenever he is on screen and he has a really great scene in the second film when he is frozen by magic and trying to warn Leslie Cheung of a monster behind him.
The third film is harder to find for reasons unknown to me, I had to buy a Chinese dvd version of it, a friend told me it is not considered part of the canon, but it has almost all the cast and crew of the previous films except for Leslie Cheung, but they had the even more famous Tony Leung Chiu-Wai ((there are 3 Tony Leungs in Hong Kong cinema, sometimes even acting together in the same film)) filling in for him.
The whole series of films has really beautiful and occasionally dazzling visual spectacles including a bad guy that enlarges his tongue to kill people with and shoots flying heads from his body, people flying on swords and great stop-motion zombies. At least see the first one.

Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain is my favourite of this type of film, there is just so much happening in it and fights go on for a pleasingly long time and loads of cool bizarre stuff happens in it and it can be hard to keep up with, which is the way I like it, rather than the modern style of slowing everything down and making it look boring. It was remade by the same director in a modern style and I’ve never wanted to see it, it probably never had anyone chasing after a laughing fish in it. Here is the trailer for the original...


Buddhas Palm is a similar film, with a bad guy that can enlarge his foot to giant sizes and a funny traveller who shouts his own name whenever he enters or leaves a scene. I once made the mistake of buying a modern tv remake instead of this original Shaw Brothers film...


For hopping corpse/vampire movies, people usually go for Mr Vampire, but Spooky Encounters is a superior film. Like a lot of people I first known Sammo Hung from the underwhelming tv show Martial Law, but when you see him in his hong kong films, especially the ones he directed himself, you will see why people love him so much. Spooky Encounters has the most fantastic hopping vampire I have ever seen, with a really fascinating fighting style you never see in the other hopping vampire movies, it also has the funniest movie ending I’ve ever seen.
Spooky Encounters 2 has a lot of good things in it and it is visually more pleasing, but it was lacking something. There is a great scene near the start when 2 hopping vampires attack Sammo and his girlfriend and they all end up hanging on a chandelier and all 4 biting each others necks. I really love Lam Ching Ying, since he is so stern and straight all the time, it is hilarious in this film when he does this exaggerated walk swaying his hips side to side. Lam Ching Ying could seem straight/normal to the point of boring, but he makes a strong impression on people, myself included, I really don’t know what it is about him that makes him so likable.


Heroic Trio is not that great, but it is worth seeing the trailer. If you like Maggie Cheung a lot you should see it, she looks incredible in it.


Iceman Cometh is sort of supernatural, but more of a time travel film, with the wonderful and handsome Yuen Biao as an ancient royal guard trying to understand the modern world, which is the source of all the comedy. It is usually not that funny when films have people from different eras misunderstanding the modern world, but this film is really hilarious.

A great deal of the 80s/90s supernatural Wuxia films usually based on Pu Songling stories are either directed or produced by Tsui Hark. Often when he is listed as producer he is still basically the director. If you really want loads of this supernatural wuxia stuff, just go look at his directing and producing credits lists. His newer films went into that glossy slow motion style I don’t really like.
I recently found out that along with America making movie quality tv dramas, Hong Kong has been doing this too with epic wuxia dramas, which look astonishingly picturesque and have so much more grandeur than I ever imagined could be on a tv show. They have not been made available to us yet, so I don’t know how good they are.

For straightforward martial arts, I think Knockabout is my favourite film, it is another Sammo Hung/Yuen Biao film. Really funny with lots of great complex fighting.


In Jackie Chan films I think Snake In The Eagles Shadow and Drunken Master 2 are the best ((although there is a lot I haven’t seen)), the original Drunken Master is made a bit redundant because the second film has more immensely complex fight scenes and Snake In The Eagles Shadow is almost the same film as Drunken Master 1 minus the drunken fighting but with same cast and crew with everything done better, most of all the story.

I cant watch too many of these films all the time, because although it is nice to jump into this world and see so many familiar faces cropping up all the time and getting to know all the actors better,, they can feel really samey and the sense of humor can get really tiresome eventually. Most of the films I mentioned are on Youtube, which somehow gets away with having a large percentage of any martial arts films you would ever want to see. I still have to see the crazier Yuen Woo Ping films like Miracle Fighters and Shaolin Drunkard; older horror kung fu like Seeding Ghost and Attack Of The God Of Joy.

new piece "industry"

A couple of new things!

For the Covered Blog:
For Oh Shit They're Going To Kill Us' Discography CD that'll be coming out:

NEW WORKS

two new drawings.





by the way: i did a new zine called "ninja sushi" # 2, 24 pages with recent drawings & some writing (absurdity & a *review* of a movie i haven't seen yet).
it's available for a trade (preferred) or 5 EURO (p+p incl.) worldwide.
check availability (limited edition of 75!) at kapreles@gmail.com

review & preview at http://blackguard23.livejournal.com/55970.html

Leviathan intermediate State

Screen grab of a leviathan image I am working on for a series of brackish water related screen prints. Not sure is the green is what I want or if the gray is too dark or too light.

Roadkill

Roadkill is a book that came out a little while ago, but only now I am starting to working on getting some attention for it abroad. While Zone 5300 is a magazine in Dutch that operates as its publisher, Roadkill is entirely written in English by yours truly and can be ordered here: http://www.zone5300.nl/webshop/?p=2232

All copies are numbered and signed in a limited printrun of 950, with a nice silk-screened cover.

Like so many of you, I have been reading a lot of true crime stuff during the nineties. As a result, I did a mini compilation of charicatures of serial murderers. It was a first step into that field for me and it has been sold out since ages. Fifteen years later, I decided to take on a subject that I had been avoiding so far: cars. A self-respecting artist should push himself to do new things, and all that. But I was and still am struggling to appreciate any esthaetic about cars, so, to make the challenge more interesting, I decided to focus on the cars of famous killers. Below you can see, from top to bottom, my version of Ed Gein, Gary Ridgway and Angelo Buono & Kenneth Bianchi. The book's coverboy is Ted Bundy, of course, with his beloved Volkswagen beetle.

I had to be picky, though. They had to have a car that was special to them. So I had to regrettably leave out The Son of Sam, who was on foot, or Andrej Tchikatilo who travelled by train. I read until my eyes bled, but if no information about what type of car they had was available, they wouldn't be in the book. So, alas, no Harold Shipman. On the other hand, if I would find out that their car caused their downfall, like in the case of Bundy, Gein, or Leopold & Loeb, it provided a real bonus. Getting arrested for driving without a proper license plate became a standard joke after a while. Anyway, some lesser-known killers or single murder cases are included that proved to be irresistable enough, such as Leopold & Loeb or Katherine Knight. And hey, guess which brand of car came out as the most popular in this selection?

Third properly finished drawing of the year, less than two months to go

"MEILĖ..."

This is the first and the second illustrations for Diktatūra song "Meilė (Jūratė ir Kastytis)" ["Love (Jūratė and Kastytis)"].

["Ir buvo jis..." ("And there was he..."); 0,1 isograph]

[this is my hand-made book, where I draw these illustrations. pocket-size]

["Ir buvo ji..." ("And there was she..."); 0,1 isograph]

UNTREATED ACNE

Assorted pics.

BUBBLEGLAM BAROQUE

NEW SERIES. BUBBLEGLAM BAROQUE. INSPIRED BY THE EARLY 70S. FUTURIST CAROUSEL DESIGN. PINBALL GAMES. GLAM + SKINHEAD. CLOCKWORK ORANGE. BUBBLEGUM. ENGLAND. POSSIBLY TURNING INTO SOME KIND OF TAROT SERIES, BUT NOT TOTALLY SURE.

SUDOKU DOKU DOKU PANIC

I DO A SUDOKU PUZZLE FOR THE PAPER BANG! THAT I'M ART EDITOR OF. IT TEACHES YOU HOW TO DRAW LIKE ME AS WELL. WOW. HERE ARE SOME OF THE BIG CLEVER WINNERS.

It happens to us all, I'm sure...

You're sitting, drawing, listening to Rigor Mortis, or James Brown, or Grinderman and you pick your nose a little bit and suddenly you've got a gusher (werewolf teeth optional)...

New ink "River House"

I've been laughing all week thinking about this

Fahrenheit 451

Here are a couple of images from a rock musical adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 which I did this logo as well as many animated illustrations for, which were projected on a screen behind the stage. It's the reason why I've been away for a bit. It was a really cool project but immensely stressful to work on. In the last few weeks before the premiere I basically worked on it every minute of each day apart from 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Needless to say after the premiere two weeks ago I was a bit burnt out.
Anyway, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. The interaction between the actors and the animation creates a rather unique stage experience.
















The rock musical was directed by G. Mehmert and the music was composed and is performed by the Bananafishbones. It will be running for at least a year at the Schauburg Theatre in Munich. For more information about the production (in German) go here.