Maurice Sendak died today at the age of 83. Nothing more I can add that so many others haven’t already. But in his honor, I’m hosting my own Wild Rumpus…you’re welcome to join, and roar your terrible roar, gnash your terrible teeth, roll your terrible eyes and show your terrible claws. If you’ve never had the pleasure (and heck, even if you have), listen to Sendak read his famous Where the Wild Things Are, here.
But the Wild Things cried, Oh please don’t go, we’ll eat you up, we love you so!
Another Sunday, another episode of Game of Thrones, wherein the HBO writers decide they’re not just going to modestly stray from the book, but hop into an all terrain 4X4 and drive it right off the map. This week’s episode makes some of the grandest departures from the novels so far, leaving me curiously puzzled and (for the first time) a bit disturbed–though not enough to stop watching. That’s crazy talk!
Saw The Avengers late last night and twelve hours later… I’m still catching my breath! The movie was fantastic–frackin’ fantastic. I’ve been pretty cynical lately about comic book flicks. With the stellar exceptions of Watchmen and The Dark Knight series, I’ve placed recent comic or graphic novel remakes into three categories: decent, lackluster or WTF? Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, ranked among my decent. These were okay movies with all the required action, though they didn’t rise above my expectations. I walked out feeling I’d gotten my money’s worth, but wasn’t itching to see either again. The Hulk and X-Men First Class, I found rather lackluster. There were superheroes so that was nice, but otherwise the storyline and plot earned a rating of “meh.” Wolverine, Green Lantern and Ghostrider were so god-awful, I left the theater wondering how a few screenwriters could so mangle a winning popular comic book? I mean, straight up guys, WTF!?! So what made the Avengers different? What did the film seem to “get” that so many of their recent counterparts hadn’t? More, after the jump. But be warned…there be SPOILERS!
I first saw the work of artist Kehinde Wiley at the Brooklyn Museum. It’s still there. You walk in, and on the left wall is an immense mural of a figure that looks somewhat like Tony Starks (Ghostface, not Downey Jr.), on horseback crossing the alps–a reworking of Jacques-Louis David’s 1800 oil-painting, Napoleon Crossing the Alps or Bonaparte at the St Bernard Pass.
The United States of Hoodoo is an upcoming documentary film by Oliver Hardt and Darius James. Originally picked this up from Aker Futuristically Ancient’s blog and was just going to reblog, but wanted to add my few thoughts. The blurb on the documentary’s official website describes it as an exploration “about how African based spirituality has informed America’s popular culture” that “shakes up traditional and stereotypical ways of thinking about race, religion, rationality.” The West and Central African syncretic religions that traveled to the New World via the trans Atlantic slave trade have indeed informed much of American popular speculative culture, but unfortunately in not so commendable ways.
Phenderson Djèlí Clark 