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Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner - Kramer

I think this movie is very bad. Politically, aesthetically and technically. It’s very much a film for white audiences to pat themselves on the back for the liberalness which idk maybe injecting that idea int o culture helps in the sense of giving people a model for how to feel ike a hero for being decent. The stakes are insane and confusing. Joey seems oblivious and John seems weirdly knowing and unknowing. The sets are terrible and the camerawork is almost non-existent. There are so many moments that could have been saved with some more cinematic edit but seem insane play through. The politics are dated with John making an argument to his father for color blindness. Also the white people get to be the hero while the most Viallnous character is Tillie that black housekeeper. Most of the actually interesting issues and meat of interracial relationships is skipped over. And of course there is zero issue between Joey and John. It feels like a sort of a perfect world version of this story with no reality. Katherine Hepburn though stands out because she feels like a contemporary person. 

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La Pointe Courte - Varda

Phenomenal. Of it’s time and timeless. I watched this after seeing it mentioned in my Nouvelle Vauge book as an example of a low budget film that wasn’t so commercially successful. The first Film by Agnes Varda. I don’t know what I was expecting but this was miraculous. Two films in one almost. The near Documentary style the life of the town. Do honest and rich. Not a quaint caricature, not a hard scrabble kitchen sink drama. An honest look at people living both in tradition and modernity. Going so deep with just brief glimpses into ensemble life. and then contrastingly and long languish portrait of this very modern unsure couple. Unable to come to terms until the wife can appreciate in person the roots of her husbands personality. She is looking for a passionate exciting love and he has a sense of something maybe less exciting but enduring. And I don’t quite get the sense that either is wrong but that we are simply trapped in existence and what we know of it. Persona style shots of two peoples faces but this is made 11 years before in 1955. A Psychological drama and a slice of life. The ethereal and earthy. Truly Phenomenal. Apparently she didn’t make another feature for 8 years. 

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Drunken Angel - Kurosawa

This movie was really interesting historically but the plot is a bit one note and plodding. Interesting to see occupied Japan and see the first Kurosawa/Mifune collaboration. Takashi Shimura steal the show for me though.  A great anti-hero that feels both pitiful and righteous thought I think the movie leans on the slapstick of him being thrown out of doors a little hard. The finally paint fight and rust into the sun is aesthetically cool but the movie lost my attention long before that. The club scene is interesting but it’s a weird over all mix of realism and mellow drama that doesn’t quite hit for me. 

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Canterbury Tales - Passolini

Honestly was disappointed with this one. it never reached transcendences in the way that The Decameron did making the more vulgar ribald elements a slog. Overall the filming felt less artful and interesting besides a few well composed shots. And there was the same sense of poetry. COmethign feels lost in translation and I get that sense that the Italian dub loses some of that specific English humor which you can still see in the performances. Wasn't able to find information but wonder why they didn’t just use Italians. Overall where the demaceron feels sensual and earthy, Canterbury tales feels ulcerous and low. it has a specific sense too which is incongruously dark. The execution of the homosexual man. It is treated with a stark simple presentation that is justly horrifying. Even the devil seems repulsed and it feels jarring mixed in with all this “light hearted” infidelity and sexuality. All’s fun it seems to say except for those who step in just this one wrong direction. The hypocrisy. it feels strange to be in such a disorganized world but a society can come together for something like this. 

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Roshomon - Akira Kurosawa

I’ve seen this before but not since my brain fully cooked. It’s only classical and modern, theatrical and cinematic. The camera movement is very subtle but so active and expertly moving you from a closeup to an almost nature documentary like wide shot. The movement as the couple moves through the forest, shots of oerhead trees pushing you along. Moving with the woodcutter over and through the forrest. The abstracted closeup of the medium, the elegant composition of the pained bandit on the beach with his captor in the water. A lone shot of the river as the wife talks about contemplating suicide. A film designed as a series of vignettes all adding up to a whole. An endless series of juicy acting moments allowing each character range and expected actions. The ultimate fight scenes of two desperate men afraid and out of their element. The stark, beautiful psychological impactful composition of the testimonies. This film inspired the “Roshomon effect” and I appreciate the ambiguty that allows us to determine who is lying and about what and why. The ending is a bit forced and unsatisfying with the monk moving from losing his faith to regaining it in about 5 minutes. A weirdly stilted ending to a film that is so emotional layers through the rest. Maybe it’s ironic?

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The Decameron - Pier Paolo Pasolini

This was my first film by Pasolini. Initially I was disappointed as it begins with a very 70s campy, vulgar style. Something like Airplane. But the film evolves and who is retains an earthiness, it weaves in enough genuine emotions and beautiful images to make you being to appreciate the vulgarity as part of the richness of life. This seems to be the undercurrent of the film. A joyful seeking of pleasure in a wholesomely hedonistic way. I couldn’t help but feel this especially in the episode about the basil plant. The scenes of the brothers luring and chasing the apprentice, presented out of linear narrative creates a tension and ambiguity. That we see only the swords drawn and never his actual murder or reaction, is interesting. The movie is not interested in that which is truly offensive. The senseless murder of a person expressing love. The film seems to challenge all conventional authorities and beliefs while fostering an appreciation for sensuality and intimacy. It culminates in a scene that was truly awe-inspiring to me. Where we began in a latrine suddenly we have a fully populated scenes of heaven. Borrowing from all we have scene. An involved, designed set up onset from the naturalism of the rest of the film. And final the painter lamenting about the nature of art and finishing things. with a clear whole where there should be an additional painting, The ongoing story. 

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Perfect Vision Zine

An 8 image zine with writing and drawing from October 2017. 

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#WIP #illustration #jellineck #pencil

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New piece inspired by the relationship between The Ronettes and Punk music. I’m a huge fan of both and I think the influence of this group of women of color on a genre that is typically seen as white a male says a lot about the erasure of minority work but also the interconnection of people across arbitrarily establish divisions of genre, race and gender. 

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New project!

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Walking after midnight.(Digital Illustration). Finally fisnihed this off with some hand drawn Aubrey Beardsley inspired foliage. #jellineck #ink #digital #illustration #witch

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Hope you have a resistance heavy Presidents' Day. #presidentsday #jellineck #resist #digital #illustration

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A little project WIP from this afternoon. Started off with a doodle I had done and it really morphed over the course of things. Incorporating photos was something I had done recently in another little piece and I’m really liking it as a contrast to some more immediate, cartoony drawings. I’ve also been looking at a lot of layout design recently as something to explore an I feel like this abstract background is coming from some of those 60s book and magazine covers.  I think tomorrow I’ll try to push the contrast by adding some heavy hand drawn foliage. 

#WIP #illustration #digital #pen #jellineck 

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Fooling around at work getting ideas #jellineck #inspiration

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Split time today between working on some commissioned graphics for movie props and working on some branding/goal setting. 

I’ve been listening to and very inspired by Andy J. Pizza’s podcast “Creative Pepe Talk”.  The latest episode I listened too (I’m not doing them in order) was about figuring out what to make and suggested making a playlist of music with a similar vibe a listing out all the things you loved as a kid or a youth. It was fun an actually did help me figure out some common themes for things I like which in turned made defining my “Audience” (you?) much easier. 

The summation of things that interest me are:

Outsiders/Underdogs/struggle. Rebellion. Ghosts/Magic/Monsters/Spooky. Mental Breakdowns/breaking Points. Violence/Macabre. Humor. Mystery/Religion/The Unknown/Afterlife. Friendship/Camaraderie/Found Family. Turning Hardship into Fun! Retro/Nostalgia. Inventiveness/Making Something New! Simplicity/Immediacy. Messiness/Grit.  

You can listen to the episode here: 

https://soundcloud.com/creativepeptalk/110-how-to-know-what-to-make

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Taking some advice from @andyjpizza's Creative Pep Talk and listing things that I've loved and been inspired by over the years.

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Trying this tumblr thang again.

Trying to get back into the tumblr game. This was a great resource for me making work a few years ago. Since then I’ve move across the country, changed jobs a few times, changed homes a few times, learned some new techniques and grown a lot as an artist and a person. I hoping to push my art practice to a new level by focusing on consistency and my “personal voice”. Bear with me. oh and welcome.