Tristan Murail, Hellboy and others

First of all: http://www.ingernet.de/rs/_grau_robertseidel.mov

Now that that is out of the way, I've got a busy week ahead of me. I've got a premiere on Thursday. I hope I remember to take a picture. Also, there is some sort of external review of the composition program at McGill. I'll get to meet Tristan Murail, one of the most famous composers living today! Apparently as part of some sort of external review, he wants to hear what I think about McGill's composition program (along with the other comp grad students).

Rajat and I saw Hellboy Sword of Storms the other day. It was fun, but it wasn't as good as the comics. I think it was made for TV so they had to scale some of the weird stuff back. HB looks cool as a cartoon but they took away all the gritty dark stuff that his character relies on. Instead it was very bright and Hollywood. Hellboy never really works as a normal hero, that's why I like him. Strange to see the writers try and make him seem like something he isn't.

The villains in the cartoon were much weaker than they could have been. Instead of the tragic, twisted and desperate villains from the comics, we got shallow cannon fodder. The majority of the monsters in this one were drawn from Japanese mythology. Fun to see Hollywood versions of some very old demons.

Also, part of what makes the HB comic cool, is the fact that the characters don't look like models. The woman are very normal looking and middle aged. Somehow in the cartoon they all turned 15 and, lost weight and got a bunch of eye makeup.