Persepolis

Sadly, I am disappointed. Not that it wasn't good... but it didn't have the same impact for me as the book did. Also, it combined the book and its sequel, so perhaps that is why I didn't feel the same emotional connection. I enjoyed the childhood scenes far more than I did the ones that followed Marjane into her young adulthood abroad.

The movie begins and ends with her at the airport, not in Tehran. These scenes are the only ones animated with color. I thought this was a little too obvious and heavy-handed.

However, the animation itself was really interesting! It was beautiful and very different from any animation I had seen before. It was all done the old fashioned way as well, no computers here! All artists and tracers for every single frame. I actually most enjoyed watching the special features to learn how this type of animation is done. The time and meticulous detail that is required for producing this type of animation is amazing. Things like maintaining the thickness of a line so that the image doesn't appear to wobble were gone into in great detail. Every single image had to be traced with a black felt tip pen to perfection.. Since this movie was all in black and white, every single line stood out. It was visually a treat. But I felt that the narrative dragged because it attempted to span too long a period of time.

Ressurection

There haven't been many to read this, but there hasn't been much here to read. My life has been... very different. Much different than I ever pictured it. I no longer have a picture in mind of what it should look like, and perhaps that will lead to less disappointment. I would like to just be without judging whether it is good, bad, foolish, or wise. I join the ranks of the unemployed this week, which means I am going to need a few things, not the least of which -- a project. I hope to revive this one. Between job hunting, house hunting, otherwise chasing a livelihood, I would like to take a figurative deep breath and do the things that I used to love to do and remember why I loved them.

So. Netflix has just provided me with my next post. Persepolis.

I read the book in undergrad by Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of A Childhood. A memoir of a girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, the book is presented in the form of a graphic novel. One thing that I really love is that it is all in black and white, very stark. On one page you will laugh at some prank she is pulling and on the next crying about young boys sent to front lines wearing "keys to paradise," plastic keys painted gold.

The movie is also animated and I can't wait to see how it interprets the book. Look for a post sometime in the next week.