Graphic novels & co. – more reading experiences
Continuing the previous post, some recent readings of graphic novels and comics.
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (same in all translations)
Written and designed by the Iranian Miss Satrapi, the graphic novel is great and better and more complete than the movie. Shouldn’t miss it.
Davide Toffolo, Pasolini (available only in Italian)
Naoki Urasawa, Monster
A master of the essential.
A note: this is not a recent read, but if you haven’t read the complete works of the great Venetian, Hugo Pratt, maybe you should: he did a great background and fantastic research for his stories, read either in French Le désir d’être inutile or in Italian Il desiderio di essere inutile to get an idea.
What is the difference between.. a cartoon and a graphic novel? More interesting is the question: what is the difference between a novel and a cartoon? Because my personal classification does not use as criteria the obvious one, that is, the presence of pictures. My criteria is the storytelling style of the author: there are novels, like Camilleri’s Montalbano series, that have the feeling, effect and timing of a comic book, and comics like Perseolis which have the style of a novel. It is all in the beholder’s mind…
One example that stands perfectly in between novel and cartoon: by Gipi, LMVDM – La mia vita disegnata male. In English there is Notes for a War Story,
I don’t seem to be able to stop adding entries to this post: Ari Folman, David Polonski, Waltz with Bashir (its also a movie), in Italian Valzer con Bashir. Get it.
Some reading experiences – esperienze di lettura
I give my very personal vote on some books I read recently. As my Italian readers have complained for the too many English-only posts, titles will be bi-lingual.
Before I start, my friend Steven Jakobs has published a crazy but really beautiful book on the architecture of the houses of Hitchcock’ movies, houses which never existed: see it on Amazon: The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock.
The wrong house cover
You definitively should read it
Louis-Ferdinand CélineVoyage au bout de la nuit (English: Journey to the End of the Night, Italiano: Viaggio al termine della notte)
Read it
Haruki Murakami What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Italiano: non è ncora tradotto)
Note: If you don’t know Murakami, you should start from something like Kafka on the Shore (Italiano: Kafka sulla spiaggia); but the book above will be interesting to lovers of Murakami.
Georges Simenon Trois chambres à Manhattan (English: Three Bedrooms in Manhattan, Italiano: Tre camere a Manhattan)
Georges Simenon La neige était sale (English: Dirty Snow, Italiano: La neve era sporca)
Michael Chabon The Yiddish Policemen Union (Italiano: Il sindacato dei poliziotti yiddish)
I didn’t survive til’ the end, but its a good book
David Foster-Wallace Infinite jest (in italiano con lo stesso titolo)
Maybe you can find something better to read
Wu Ming 4 Stella del Mattino (English readers are safe for the moment: no translation)
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt Impero (Empire)
Derek Jarman
I’ve just seen an old BBC interview of the extraordinary Derek Jarman (by Jeremy Isaacs, whom I don’t know), a British movie director who died in 1994 Though the interviewer brings all Jarman’s artistic activity to “homosexuality”, Jarman personality is so inspiring and beautiful, so nice to see., that the narrow mindedness of the interviewer remains in background. It also tells about the inspiration for his movies, his great sensibility, and smartness in findings way to express it. His movies try to express the nature of reality in ways that are totally unrealistic, just like good literature, and speaks universally; of course he is dealing often with homosexuality, but it would be very reductive to make him just a “coming out” facilitator.
I still remember seeing “Caravaggio”, fifteen years ago. Thank you for your works, Mr. Jarman.
Using Balsamiq Mockups for Teamwork ideas
Balsamic mockup screenshot
During these holidays I had an idea whirling in my mind, and I could spell it away only by… spelling out its details. By some chance during these days I also met again Balsamiq Mockups, so I decided to give it a serious try. I wanted to design a mock up of a personal productivity tool that writes data to Teamwork. So you can use teamwork as a sort of backofffice, of which you may even not be aware of.
Well, Balsamiq Mockups just rocks. I drafted the screens, and kept refining, adding, changing: its better than paper. It does exactly what you expect it to; its a sort of canned Illustrator for dummies, focused for mock-ups.
The only limitation I found is the ability to comment extensively the mock-up, I used the tool-tip, but it goes in the way a bit.
It is an air application, and having ben developed in Adobe’s environment, it must have been a real nigthmarish work (I’m used to the luxuries of JetBrain’s Intellij). Kudos to the developer!
So I also read the entrepreneurial story behind it, quite fascinating, moreover the guy seems to be Italian! We’ve already bought a license.
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