30 of 30 (Yay!) Squall

Used mostly flat colors. May end up coloring her a little more, later…

How I did Week 13 (College Football Picks) and The Week 14 Crash! Top 25

Hhhhhhh…. The FSU/UF game was about what I expected. The best part of that game was knowing Tim Tebow won’t be back next year. After 17 years of playing QB for Florida, he’s finally moving on.  Although I am a FSU fan, I do like Tebow. He’s a great player  and a good person. I’m just SO GLAD that he’s leaving now. Next year the tables turn, FSU wins at Bowden/Doak in Bowden/Ponder’s last home game… Looks like FSU may be playing a Big East team in a bowl. We’ll have to wait and see.

The Alabama/Auburn game was a showcase of ugly hits, as it always is. Auburn’s defense outhit Alabama all day long, though. The Tide expanded their chests on the last drive, though, and pretty much just outwilled Auburn on their last drive. McElroy suddenly looked like a great QB again, Pensacola’s Richardson looked more than adequate spelling Mark Ingram and Julio Jones looked like the receiver he’s supposed to look like. If Ingram doesn’t play this week, that could be a HUGE loss for ‘Bama…

The Texas/Texas A & M game was a good one. I’ve said all year that Texas will win the National Championship. They just have to get past the Cornhuskers and then they’ll be off for a VEEEEERRRRRRYYYYY long time. I’m not a betting man (or am I) but I think ‘Bama will be playing them, not Florida.

Georgia was a bit of a surprise. But Nesbitt was playing hurt after the first quarter, so… Maybe that’s not that big of a surprise. Good for Mark Richt (former ‘Nole OC)!

Coming in: 178-40  in Top 25 Picks. 45-31  in ‘Other Notable Games.  That’s 223-71. Against Evil FSU Hatin’ ACC Blogger Heather Dinich (in ACC picks) I’m 62-25 to her 61-26 . And 4-14 vs ‘The Gut’.

How I did in Rivalry Week Top 25: 16-5 (Not too bad.) In ‘Other Notable Games:5-2 Against Evil FSU Hatin’ ACC Blogger Heather Dinich (in ACC picks) I was: 6-2…   The Evil One was (get this) 2-6 (Hahahahahahahaha… And she’s the ‘professional’… She covers the ACC and hates the conference, plus she has no idea what she’s talking about. It’s like a life-size bobble head that babbles… Oh, yeah. 0-1 vs ‘The Gut’.

Grand Totals:194-45…50-33…  Combined:244-78…  4-15 vs ‘The Gut’.

Don't look in her eyes...

Against the Evil One I got a little distance between us: I stand at 68-27 (71.6%) to her shaky 63-32 (66%)

Here’s My Week 14 Top 25
#1 Florida (12-0)
#2 Texas (12-0)
#3 Alabama (12-0)
#4 Cincinatti (11-0)
#5 TCU (12-0)
#6 Boise State (12-0)
#7 Oregon (9-2)
#8 Ohio State (10-2)
#9 Iowa (10-2)
#10 Georgia Tech (10-2)
#11 BYU (10-2)
#12 Penn State (10-2)
#13 Miami (9-3)
#14 Pittsburgh (9-2)
#15 Rutgers (9-2)
#16 LSU (9-3)
#17 Houston (10-2)
#18 West Virginia (8-3)
#19 Virginia Tech (9-3)
#20 Nebraska (8-3)
#21 Oklahoma State (9-3)
#22 Oregon State (8-3)
#23 Utah (9-3)
#24 Stanford (8-4)
#25 USC (8-3)

The SEC game should be a GREAT ONE. Can’t wait for that one.

29 of 30 GreenBean

Another quickie… I went small again. Somewhat of a generic dragon like character.

Last one’s tomorrow… I feel pretty good that I kept the deadline of 1 a day pretty easily, no matter how silly they were. Anyway, the last one’s tomorrow.

Fantastic Mr. Fox Short Review (4 of 5)

Couldn't this poster have read: Based on the book by Roald Dahl?

Fantastic Mr. Fox is the second movie I’ve seen recently that’s based on a children’s book, the other being Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are…. Just like Jonze, Wes Anderson (the director) took the source material and made it very much his own. This has all the eccentricities of a typical Anderson movie like the camera work, the ‘look’ and the yesteryear soundtrack. If you like his movies, you’ll probably like this one. I did. If you hate his movies, well… Give this one a try anyway.

Wes with his stop motion actors...

I have to compare this a little to a couple of other movies that I have reviewed here; the aforementioned Where The Wild Things Are and Men Who Stare At Goats. Unlike Wild Things, this movie was very upbeat and was much more fun than that one. And unlike the Goat movie (which also starred George Clooney ) this was very fast paced besides just being ‘quirky’.

VERY fast paced...

The story moved along very rapidly with lots of twists and turns. Anderson made sure that even in the moments where characters were just talking, there was still a lot going on ( I enjoyed Ash’s preoccupation with the ‘White Cape’ who is never really talked about by name. You just see the White Cape posters, the comics, etc… I also loved the kid badger in the skeleton costume).

I’m sure upon a 2nd viewing that I will see things that I did not catch the first time (and I think I caught a lot). Like all of Anderson’s movies, careful attention is paid to each character… Their mannerisms, clothes, their surroundings…. Every character, no matter how minor,  seems to have a back story.

The source material...

The movie makes use of traditional stop motion animation and is layered with the trademark Wes Anderson detailing. I don’t think the CGI route would have fit the director’s quirky style half as well as the stop motion method does.  There is real art in the puppet and prop builders and there is just something that I have always found cool about this style of animation. Maybe it reminds me of the old Rudolph Christmas cartoon, I don’t know, but I like it.

Anderson with the 'human puppet' cast...

The story itself is about a fox (the Fantastic Mr. Fox) voiced by George Clooney.Mr. Fox is basically  a chicken thieving con artist, but promises his lady love (voiced by Meryl Streep) that he’ll get a legitimate line of work when she reveals that she is pregnant. So he becomes a newspaper columnist.

Mr. Fox with the Missus...

Not happy with his lot in life (living in a hole), he moves his family into a very luxurious tree that has a few drawbacks to it. For one, it’s overlooking the farms of some of the most diabolical farmers in the entire world.

Kylie...

He’s only satisfied for a short time, before he begins plotting to raid the farms in one last big heist with aid first from his friend Kylie (a spacey opossum played by Wallace Wolodarsky), and Kristofferson (Mr. Fox’s gifted nephew…).

Kristofferson and Ash...

Of course this upsets the farmers… Not only that, but it disrupts his happy home life. He’s lying to his wife about the heist and his son Ash (voiced by Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman) feels inferior to Kristofferson, especially when Mr Fox enlists him into the heist scheme. And all of this snowballs into a mass of complications that encapsulates the entire animal community. I won’t give away any more. It’s worth finding out for yourself.

Murray with his Badger counterpart.

There were plenty of ‘cameo’ parts by Anderson regulars such as Big Bad Bill Murray (as Badger, Mr. fox’s lawyer),  Owen Wilson (as Coach Skip who relates the athletic exploits of Mr. Fox to his son) and of course Willem Dafoe (as the villainous Rat, a scoundrel from the Fox family’s past). Dafoe has had some pretty diverse roles in his career.

Someone with too much time on their hands combined this with another Dafoe movie of late that might give you a chuckle or two. That’s Dafoe’s voice at the end…

Brian Cox and Wes Anderson also add voice work and I was also VERY happy to see that the lovely Karen ‘Duff’ Duffy (of MTV VJ fame) voiced the character of Linda Otter. I always loved her. I hear she’s had some up and downs with her health lately.

The lovely Duff.... MTV VJ ICON!

Anyway… It’s an all ages movie. They don’t curse, but they do say ‘cuss’ a lot, which was pretty funny. It was actually one of the more entertaining ‘family’ movies that I’ve seen and would compare this in quality to older ‘family’ films such as Time Bandits and The Dark Crystal. Maybe not quite as good and resounding as those 2, but this one’s right up there. 4 of 5 Whatevers. A great effort!

28 of 30 Bloodbath: Superhero*

Bloodbath: Superhero*…. It’s almost December….

 

The Men Who Stare At Goats Short Review (3 of 5)

This review is not going to be that thorough and it will only be a review in the sense that I talk about a movie called ‘The Men Who Stare At Goats’ and occasionally mention something from the film. This movie isn’t terrible. It isn’t great. It just ‘is’, and depending on what ‘is’ means to you might determine how much you like the film. This is the way the film meanders. I get the general point that they were trying to make (they kind of spell things out with the bookends), but it seemed that it was more important to the  filmmakers to be quirky/zany than to make a good movie. The actual point wasn’t anything profound, either.

A goat makes it onto the poster before Stephen Root or Robert Patrick or...

The movie begins by telling the audience that the movie is more true than the government would care to admit and then we watch an officer rise from behind his desk and tries to run through a wall. Then we meet a reporter played by Ewan MacGregor, who wants to be a better reporter. His wife has left him for someone that he knows. His life is in semi crisis and takes a turn for the _______ when he meets a man that tells him of a secret government project that he was a part of that tapped into the powers of the mind called the New Earth Army. He also speaks of a very psychically talented man who owns a dance studio now. The reporter chalks this all up as nonsense and travels to the Middle East to hopefully get to do combat reporting and be a REAL reporter. Then he meets the man who owns the dance studio played by George Clooney.

Clooney staring at a goat...

Clooney repeatedly tells MacGregor’s reporter that he is a ‘Jedi Warrior’ and soon becomes convinced that MacGregor is one also (of course! He’s Ben Kenobi in the 3 Crappily Unfunny Star Wars movies). From there on, Clooney tries to convince MacGregor that he has psychic powers and they wander around and interact with people in seemingly random events until they….

Hippie officer Bridges with Clooney, Spacey and the New Earth Army

It sounds like a funny setup. I did chuckle throughout, but it wasn’t THAT funny. They didn’t put all the clever lines into the trailer, but there never are any real big laughs. This movie also wasted some great actors in this. Jeff Bridges plays an absurdly  flower child officer who sports a pony tail while guiding the team members of the New Earth Army. Kevin Spacey also makes an appearance, has a couple of funny lines  and then just stands around in the background and kind of looks at the other actors with more lines than him. They make you think that he’s going to be the villain, but no. There isn’t really a villain. There’s some drug use scenes in the film. there is the ‘staring at goats’ which is in the title. Clooney gives a typically slapstick performance as he’s done in movies like ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, Leatherheads, and Burn After Reading. MacGregor is a likeable actor, who seems to end up in less than stellar films for some reason. He’s a good actor (see his earlier films with Danny Boyle). I also was glad to see another movie with Stephen Root. He’s a top notch character that rarely gets mentioned when people talk about great actors… but they should.

He doesn't look like this in this movie....

The biggest sin of this movie is that it’s VERY predictable… I felt like I was the one writing the script  and from parts of  movies that I’ve already seen. I was even picking what songs they were going to use. The minute Clooney said his caharcter liked Boston (the 70s Rock band) I started humming “More Than A Feeling” and within a few minutes they were playing. I guess I laughed though.

The biggest saving grace of the film was that the characters of the film were likable, excluding Robert Patrick’s character in the movie and a few terrorists… But even some of the terrorists in the film were just being kept down by ‘the man’. In the film makers’ view, the terrorists don’t want to hurt anybody and they’re just VICTIMS, man (Say that like Jeff Bridges in the Big Lebowski)! Anyway… If I sound like I’m not sure what to write about this one; I’m not. This is one of those movies that as soon as we walked out of the film, we’re talking about anything but this movie. “Hey just killed 2 hours… Let’s go get something to eat…” I chuckled along with them for the most part, but it wouldn’t have been a big deal had I missed this one. It’s the kind of film that now that I’ve seen it, I don’t really care to seek it out again, but if I’m vegetating in front of the TV some night and it comes on some cable channel, I’d probably watch it. 3 of 5 whatevers….

27 of 30 Sarko: Intergalactic Space Pirate

I didn’t ink this, just tried doing the ‘digital inked pencils’. Don’t like it… I tried making this look like the old 70s mags or pulp-y type art… Okay, I don’t know what I’m saying.

Week 13 College Football Picks

Crap! Forgot to post these. I’m going to fudge on the Texas game. Wasn’t posted before the game started (There’s 12:04 left in the 4th), but since I picked them in the national championship game, I wouldn’t have picked A&M to beat them. Yup. I’m fudgin’ it. Week 13!

So #3 Texas over A&M.

#2 ‘Bama over Auburn in the Iron Bowl (IMO, the most fierce rivalry in all of sports… and I’m a ‘Nole fan) .

#5 Cincinnati over Illinois

#6 BSU over Nevada

#9 Pitt over West Virginia

I’ll save the FSU game for last…

#4 TCU over New Mexico

#7 Georgia Tech over Georgia

#12 Okie State over Oklahoma (unless Zac Robinson doesn’t play)

#14 Va. Tech over Virginia

#15 LSU over Arkansas

#17 Miami over South Florida

South Carolina upsets #18 Clemson

#19 BYU over #21 Utah

#20 USC over UCLA

#23 Houston over Rice

#24 North Crolina over NC State

#25 Ole Miss over Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl…

Other Noteable Games:

Boston College over Maryland

Wake Forest over Duke

‘Zona over ‘Zona State

The Fighting Manginos over Missouri  (The players rally around the coach and get to a bowl game… Against the gut on this one…)

Texas Tech over Baylor

Washington over Washington State

Stanford over Notre Dame (Dan Hawkins is coming back at Colorado just like I said he would… because of the contract. Charlie’s deal is even better than Hawkins’ deal… I don’t know if the Irish will pull the trigger on firing him. It’ll cost them 18 Mil to do that).

Navy over Hawaii

And… The Big One:Florida State at the Swamp. Tim Tebow’s last game. Spikes’ last game. Heck, maybe even Urban’s (Don’t believe that crap about him staying at UF ‘as long as they’ll have him’. If the Irish pony up, he’s leavin’). FSU’s Defense has been awful this year. Christian Ponder’s out for the rest of the way. FSU’s Redshirt Freshman EJ Manuel is running the show. Urban Meyer is undefeated against FSU since arriving at UF. Florida has a national title shot on the line. FSU is turnover prone… All that adds up to:…………………………………………..I can’t do it! I won’t do it! I won’t pick the Gators over the ‘Noles! Somehow, yes, some WAY… FSU is going to pull this one out! AS AGAINST THE GUT AS IT WILL EVER BE (short of  me playing QB for the ‘Noles).

The ‘NOLES beta Florida in the upset of the year! EJ Manuel becomes an instant FSU legend!

 

 

 

 

Okay… No. I’m not insane. I’m holding out hope, but Florida’s going to win this one. Saint Bowden WILL be back next year and so will Ponder. They’re going to have a great year next year and Tebow will have finally moved on after being the Florida QB for the last 12 years. This year, though, as have the last few seasons, will belong to the Gators. I said it. Now I’m going to find the bag to put over my head. Forgive me, Saint Bobby!

 

(And Texas has won with Colt McCoy having a pedestrianly MONSTER game. Give him the Heisman so we can have a repeat of the Heisman versus Heisman from last year… And this SHOULD be a rematch on both accounts…)

 

26 of 30 Wobble Gobble: The Wild Turkey and Happy Thanksgiving

Wobble Gobble The ‘Wild Turkey’ is the world’s greatest stunt-bird/daredevil. See his show and you will believe that a turkey can fly (and just like his idol, he carries a cane filled with his favorite beverage:Wild Turkey).

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. I had a pretty good one. Hopefully next year this time will be even better.

25 of 30 Sarah Twotree

Drew this one quick. It shows. Colored it  pretty quick too. Made some of my own brushes and stamp patterns yesterday abd tried them out on this… Hope she looks western enough….