Avast! Readers!

This be Talk Like a Pirate Day maties!

In honor of this world-wide Piratical Celebration, here's a little image from one of my very most favorite architect/pirates, a detail from the historically important map of the Mississippi river delta and adjacent coastline drawn by Barthelemy Lafon in 1805:

Excerpt of Lafon's map:  CARTE Ge’ne’rale du TERRITOIRE D’ORLE’ANS

in the public domain

And here's a great website, Big Map Blog, where you can see the whole map and zoom in on it and everything.

Set sail for Barrataria me hearties!

Beachy Break

More substantive posts comin' later, but for now I'm only reviewing sand (brown) and sea (salty).

Oh, and a classic pirate novel by Rafael Sabatini from 1922, Captain Blood.

A wonderfully old-fashioned swashbuckler!  The wronged and noble hero - a doctor - makes the mistake of tending the wounds of a rebel, is wrongly condemned for treason, sold into slavery in the Caribbean, rebels in his own turn, and escapes... into a life of piracy.  Turns out he's really really good at it.  Though secretly he's still darn noble, all for the love of a Good Woman.  Sea battles, intrigue, romance.  And all ends well.  Classic fun!

HERE's a Wikipedia article.

Early novel cover for Captain Blood, public domain  Wikipedia

Film Fest: The Pirates! Band of Misfits

The folks at Aardman are geniuses.

'nuf said.

Their new animated film - a blend of claymation and computer generated animation - is wonderful.  Funny, true to it's briny piratical roots, and stowed full of delightful gags and physical comedy.  It also takes English history and reality as we know it and tosses it like a salad: Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, dodo birds, ham, maps (oh! the wonders Aardman does with maps!),  and every "Best Of" awards competition you've ever sat endlessly through get treated with delightful and witty irreverence.

Immediately buy a ticket!

A poster from Belfry - The Animator, but don't watch the trailer here, it gives too much away.

I'm not kidding.  STOP reading.

Buy a ticket.

(And how appropriate that this story was written by a man named Defoe? Oh, and HERE's a discussion of the stop-motion process from the L.A. Times.  BTW I think Darwin was probably a nicer guy than portrayed in this film.  Earlier Darwin posts HERE and HERE.)

Film Fest Outing - Pirates!

A film review in two parts of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides.

PART ONE, AS TICKET BUYER - Fun!  It's got Jack Sparrow and Barbosa and Mr. Gibbs and Penelope Cruse as a pirate; it's got exciting chases and sword fights; it's got as much plot as needed and more clarity than the last Pirates flicks; and some wonderful new ideas, like the fate of the Pearl and the way mermaids are envisioned.  Oh, I'd absolutely recommend buying a ticket for a couple amusing hours in the cool and dark of your nearest movie theater...

But.

(MILD SPOILERS)  I think the film's creators made one terrible omission: they left out most of the comedy.  No humorous pairs of pirates (that wooden eye!) no pairs of Laurel-N-Hardy soldiers.  No really comic side-kicks, few really characterful character actors - and those were serious-ish.  Less funny talk, fewer quips, less ridiculousness all around.  I hadn't quite realized this, but it's the quirky background world I enjoyed - as much as the adventure - in the first three movies.

New characters in this film (like a mermaid and a religious junior-romantic-lead) are well done, but they're serious folk with serious problems.  Blackbeard and his daughter are serious-minded.  Mr. Gibbs is subdued this time - even the monkey has a one-note part.  And Jack Sparrow?  He's himself, bless 'im, but not as loony as before, or so it seems, because there's not a single character who's properly exasperated by him.   Bugs Bunny without Elmer Fudd.

Ponce de Leon at the Fountain of Youth - believed public domain

PART TWO, AS A DESIGNER - My overall feeling is of opportunities missed.

The zombie idea was hardly used: mentioned, but no zombie jokes, not even a handshake with a hand left behind, nothin'!  (Go watch Shaun of the Dead.)  The mermaid idea is more developed (lovely special effects), but after the first minutes they are treated as mundane.  The logistics of coping with a mermaid prisoner on a hike are... well, cheated, I think.  So much opportunity for complications and comedy!  Only a couple of these were used - resolved in a mundane way.  Heck, we didn't even see anybody turn youthful!  As a designer, I just itch to step in (years ago) and point this out to the film's creators.

The production design effects me this way too.  The ropes on Blackbeard's ship are cool - otherwise it's standard issue pirate ship.  (Standard for this world - it's beautifully done, of course.)  London is wonderfully period, but not heightened or quirky...  Where are Florida's swamps?  Is it not Florida?  The swamp as we approached Tia Dalma's hut and then her hut, held a LOT more visual and story interest than anything in this film, including the Fountain of Youth.  Mind you, I have no idea how you'd improve this setting... but it's The Fountain of Youth!  It's given a nice environ, but the Fountain looked corporate-plaza-plop-art to me.  I tell you, my fingers itch - Itch! - to correct this.

But I'll watch the next flick.

Coolest Kid's Room Ever!

A "real" pirate ship, floating above your head.  I want one!

By Kuhl Design Studio - check it out HERE.  (This article was brought to my attention by http://www.stumbleupon.com which I'm really enjoying.)