Inertial Observer: 2009

8.18.2009

Grant Morrison's Mahabharata

I absolutely love mad labors of love like this: Grant Morrison's CGI retelling of the Hindu epic The Mahabharata looks fascinating, bizarre, and potentially very, very beautiful. Morrison has long been one of my favorite comics writers--though his work can sometimes come across as incomprehensible, it is always interesting.

(luscious concept art from 18 Days)

The Mahabharata is a wonderful story to begin with, and I loved Peter Brook's (more faithful) adaptation when I saw it on PBS years ago. Here's a bit of that:

7.31.2009

The Naked Ape

I'm a big fan of the TED talks. Here's a particularly interesting one that just went up today: scientist Elaine Morgan makes an argument that humans evolved from aquatic apes. Her most persuasive points address the layer of fat under our skin, the evolution of other hairless mammals, and bipedalism. It's pretty fascinating, really.

7.23.2009

Filming the Unfilmable?

io9 just put up a very thoughtful post about the idea of "unfilmable books." Especially intriguing is the argument about how the idea that some books shouldn't be filmed is actually harder to defend than the idea that certain books can't be filmed. It's definitely worth reading.