Kurosowa's The Hidden Fortress, and new comics!

After not being blown away by "The Seven Samurai," I finally got what Kurosowa fans love about him after watching "The Hidden Fortress," apparently one of the main inspirations for George Lucas' Star Wars: A New Hope. A spunky teenage heroine probably helped endear the film to me, as did repetitive use of curse words and slapstick humor by the two peasant/clown characters - who were the models for C3PO and R2D2. He had a great eye, a good sense of humor, a way with scoring, and a way of making a movie visceral and satisfying. If you haven't seen it, "The Hidden Fortress" is a suprisingly fun popcorn flick. I also felt that, besides the resonances to A New Hope, I felt there were echoes of the film in Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.

A new comic series called "Fables" has been called to my attention, in which different folk and fairy tale characters come to life in the contemporary world, and I finally got my hands on the last three Buffy comics (I've been living too far from any comics stores for six months now...) And I read there's going to be a Buffy/Fray crossover soon, which is good, since I became very attached to Fray's character.

X-Files Movie

Is anyone else getting excited about the new X-Files movie? The more shaky, fan-filmed versions of the movie trailer I see, the better, I say! Still very few female tv role models can hold up to the scientific Scully, and I love David Duchovny in his role as Mulder.

In other news, the second-rate Japanese anime version of Witchblade is making me impatient for TNT's Witchblade non-anime movie and seris to come out on DVD, already! I guess the anime version's Sara is okay, but Sara Pezzini as the tough-talking cop who defied the always-bustier-wearing comic stereotype was better.

Ten tips for great short stories

I'm not a fiction writer, but I think these are helpful tips, whether you're writing for a literary or a sci-fi audience:
http://io9.com/366707/8-unstoppable-rules-for-writing-killer-short-stories

Poetry, Robots, and Post-Apocalypse: an Interview

Think poetry and post-apocalyptic anime landscapes have nothing to do with each other? Check out this interview at the Poetry Foundation:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/feature.html?id=181239

Teaching a Class on Mythology and Comics

I'm going to be teaching two weeks straight - two weeks of junior high kids who come to this site to learn to do art, to dance and to act in a play and make puppets out of wax and, with me, learn about the many connections between poetry, mythology, and comic books.
I grabbed up a bunch of illustrated mythology guides in case the kids didn't have much of a background - one illustrated Greek and Roman, one illustrated Norse, and a giant 40-pound World Mythologies Guide, which include everything from Egytpian, Native American, East Asian, etc, to African and Celtic, with lots of fascinating pictures. I'm debating whether to bring in a beautifully illustrated "Tales of Genji" I found in the Manga section, but it does have some female nudity, so it's probably fof the list.
Then I was trying to decide which comic books were safe enough - that is, free of blood-and-guts-and-nudity - to bring in for these junior high kids (who will be chaperoned, so I really can't break the rules.) Astonishing X-Men? Some new Gail Simone Wonder Woman? Fray? Buffy? Even the ones I consider pretty safe have a surprising amount of adult stuff in them.
Recommendations? Ideas?
I'm going to have them do some writing exercises every day, including writing their own creation-type myth, two persona poem in the voices of a villain(ess) and hero(ine), a character sketch of a comic book character that includes some archetypal realtionship to a mythological character...some fun, right?
Thank you, Centrum Young Artists Project, for setting something like this up. Should be a blast!

Poetry and Comics, Chuck Renewal

Bookslut alerted me to an interesting blog post:
http://garysullivan.blogspot.com/2008/02/poetics-of-comics-bill-randall-on.html
on the relationship between poetry and comics. Obviously, as a comic book geek who is also a poet, this was an interesting topic for me.
I'm teaching a class in a few weeks in which I'll encourage kids to write about comic book characters, mythology, and even illustrate a comic book character of their own creation. It seems like a good way to include stuff kids are naturally interested in (say, comics and graphic novels) with things they may not initially be so excited about (ancient mythology, persona poetry, archetypes.) Maybe I'll post about how it goes.
I personally would love to have a poetry graphic novel or comic. Maybe publishers will start publishing hybrids like these soon.

In television news, Chuck was renewed, yay! Although boo, Heroes won't be back til the fall. Reaper has a few more new episodes to burn, but not sure about its renewal yet. In other news, we need more female-centric hero shows, no? Neither Bionic Woman or Terminator's Sarah Connor Chronicles really scratched that itch, what with their bad writing and bad acting and all.

No Flying, No Tights

Sometimes you find a web site so uniquely cool, you must tell people about it right away.
Here is one:
http://www.noflyingnotights.com/