Notes from the sketch book

This art collection is an examination of the Western genre, specifically focusing on Clint Eastwood's transition from television actor to cinematic icon. The series intends to analyze Eastwood's evolution, tracing his rise to prominence through Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy," films that redefined the Western's visual and narrative language. The intention is to observe, assess, and produce artistic interpretations inspired by these films, ultimately culminating in a study of Eastwood's role in the deconstruction of the Western archetype. However, the series initial point of departure is not Leone's work, but Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo." This choice underscores the acknowledgement that cinematic influence...

Bong Joon-ho, ever the master of the sleight-of-hand genre, takes on deep-space survival in Mickey 17, a film that wants to be a high-concept meditation on identity, a satire of corporate-megachurch futurism, and a doomed romance all at once. It's the kind of ambition you almost want to applaud, until the pieces start bumping into each other like lost satellites. Robert Pattinson plays Mickey, so down on his luck he's signed up to be a human guinea pig – or rather, a human printer cartridge . Die, get reprinted, repeat. It's a premise ripe with the kind of dark irony...

I am sitting outside having just finished a sketch in pastel, on a sunny day, thankful and reflective. The last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, has passed away at the age of 105. His story, a testament to resilience and unwavering courage. The sky, once a canvas of roaring engines and desperate maneuvers, now holds a different sort of silence. John "Paddy" Hemingway, the last of that fabled 'Few', has taken his final flight, not into the smoky chaos of wartime skies, but into the quietude of a well-lived century. He was, in a way, a living film reel, a...

History whispers its secrets in unexpected places. Sometimes, it's not the leaders or the politicians who hold the fate of the world in their hands, but the quiet individuals, the ones who stand firm when shadows loom large. Vasili Arkhipov was such a man, a Soviet submariner who faced down not one, but two potential nuclear catastrophes.   His story, often overlooked, is a precarious dance of survival on the edge of annihilation. Born in 1926, he witnessed the Soviet Union rise from the ashes of revolution, a nation forged in hardship and fueled by the promise of a brighter future....

Director David Lynch has sadly passed away at the age of 78.  David Lynch, the cinematic visionary who captivated and confounded audiences for decades, has left us. But the films he created, those mesmerizing journeys into the darkest corners of the American psyche, remain as potent and unsettling as ever. He wasn't a filmmaker for the faint of heart; he dared you to look away, even as he held you captive with his strange, singular beauty. His journey began with Eraserhead, a film that seemed to crawl out of the industrial grime of Philadelphia like a creature from a nightmare....