Romeo & Juliet Projects, Part 2

Continuing to share my students’ awesome Romeo and Juliet movie pitch projects. In brief, students in my classes are assigned a scene from the last half of R&J and asked to create a modern take on the material for moviegoing audiences.

One of the things I believe made this year such a successful one in regards to these projects is my taking a slightly different approach to mentoring. I asked students to think more this year about creating a believable “feud” dynamic than I ever have before. That work reflects itself in quite a few of these projects.

 

To wit, I received several “Marvel Comics vs. DC Comics” Romeo & Juliet pitches. I have to imagine the popularity of superhero movies lead students down this route, casting the R&J roles based personalities of the various hero characters. In both of these projects, independent of one another, the students cast Deadpool as Mercutio… which kind of fits, if you think about it.

(FYI, the Batman/Spider-Man poster is not meant to lead you to believe those two heroes are the Romeo and Juliet of that pitch… although that is something of an unintended consequence.)

 

 

Here’s another cool take using pre-existing characters: A Romeo & Juliet casting the major roles from the play around the eternal divide between Nintendo and Sega. I wasn’t even aware this particular feud was still going on, but I’ve been since assured it is. In this version, Sonic the Hedgehog woos Princess Peach.

More in upcoming weeks…

Thrift Store Finds: Rejected Finds!

Most of the time when I buy stuff from thrift stores, I manage to squeeze a couple hundred words out of those purchases for a Thrift Store Finds post on Saturday mornings. Sometimes I’ll buy things and… I don’t know, it’s just not meant to be. Here’s a couple of rejected (but hopefully still interesting!) finds.

This was perhaps my favorite find in awhile: A plush ALF toy manufactured by Coleco in 1987. You all know I’m a big ALF fan, so of course I owned one of these in the Eighties… although I owned the Wisecracking ALF which included a voice box. This is just your standard stuff animal, although it’s in pretty great shape for being over twenty years old. I scooped this up for $4 bucks and I consider that a bargain. I rejected this for a longer post because… man, it’s just a stuffed animal of a beloved 1980’s icon. There’s really nothing much to say about this beyond “I found it and I’m happy with it.”

Another square-sized collection of For Better or For Worse I found for fifty cents, Pushing 40 collects a bunch of FBoFW strips from the late 1980’s… so Michael Patterson’s just starting puberty and there are lots of armpit hair jokes. I rejected this find for a longer post because I already wrote about Lynn Johnston’s work back in 2011 when I looked at It’s All Downhill From Here. I was pretty thorough in that post about how much I like FBoFW and I remain fairly proud of that piece.

Finally, TWO Nintendo GameBoy finds: 1992’s Looney Tunes for the GameBoy and 1999’s Looney Tunes Twouble for GameBoy Color. Two licensed games featuring many of the same characters separated by almost a decade; if I asked you to pick which one of these two games was the better, sight unseen, you’d probably pick the one made in ’99, right? You probably would and you’d be DEAD WRONG because Twouble is HORRIBLE. It makes a stab at being sort of a three-dimensional puzzle games and it just bites. The ’92 Looney Tunes cart however, is a completely solid and fun side-scroller. I haven’t played all the way through but you start as Daffy Duck, making your way through several other characters.

I rejected this find because, as always when it comes to GameBoy games, I don’t have a great way to show you the game I’m writing about.

Island of Misfit Toys: Koopa from Super Mario Bros. (Ertl Toys, 1993)

A very weird one this week, even for the Island of Misfit Toys. We’re looking at Koopa from Ertl’s Super Mario Bros. line of action figures, produced in 1993 to coincide with the live-action movie based on the ubiquitous Nintendo video game.

I found this beauty at a trashy comic book show in a “3 for $5 dollars” bin.

HPB Black Friday finds

 

I hit up the Half-Price Books Black Friday sale every year. My main goal is to pick up stocking stuffers for Ellen and the boys but I have to admit, I indulge pretty heavily in some buying for myself. This year, although they stuck with the standard $5 gift certificate for early bird shoppers, HPB switched things up a bit. Whereas the store normally offers a blanked percentage off your entire purchase, this year you could either get 40% off one thing… or $15 bucks off of a purchase of $50 dollars. I went with the latter sale and above are a few of my purchases.

Elektra Lives Again is an out of print hardcover; although the material has been reprinted in some Daredevil collections, it hasn’t been presented in this original, oversized edition since 1990. That was good enough for me. Although Miller’s Batman work remains some of my favorite superhero comics, I have to admit, I haven’t read much of his Daredevil run – an isolated issue here or there is about as far as I’ve gotten. I will say this: the book is absolutely GORGEOUS. This was right before Miller started working primarily in black and white over at Dark Horse and as such, the last time Lynn Varley’s coloring really did anything for me. Super glad to have this big book in my collection.

I was excited to locate a copy of Spaceballs: The Book published by Scholastic Press under their Point imprint in 1987. The book was written by “Jovial Bob Stine” who we all know from my previous Thrift Store Find post on movie storybooks, is in fact Goosebumps writer R.L. Stine. I especially wanted a copy of Spaceballs: The Book because it’s clear the people behind this effort were completely in on one of the biggest jokes of Mel Brooks’ send-up… the omnipresent marketing machine behind Star Wars. This paperback looks like it came straight from the scene on Yogurt’s planet (“Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the Lunch box, Spaceballs-the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs-the Flame Thrower”) and that’s kinda cool.

Finally, I picked up Batman: Chaos in Gotham for the GameBoy Color… although I’ll be playing it on my GBA:SP. Batman’s weathered some fairly awful games over the years but most of his carts for the GameBoy system are surprisingly solid… and Chaos in Gotham is no exception. It’s a side-scroller with puzzle elements and it’s clear the design team went the extra mile on this one. The animation of the Batman sprite is fluid and appealing. He has a variety of moves and weapons and although I haven’t played very far into the game, there’s apparently a great level variety, with driving stages added into the mix later on.

Chalkboard Drawings: The “8 bit” edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom chalkboard everyday. I collect these pictures on my cellphone camera and post them on Sundays. You can see the rest here.

Continuing last week’s theme, this is an all video game week. It’s a bit of a mess. I originally wanted it to be an all Nintendo themed week… and I guess it still is, even though Pac Man isn’t best remembered as an 8-bit game.

Chalkboard Drawings: The “Mario” Edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

After a long and lengthy debate, I decided to kick off the year with a weeklong tribute to Super Mario Brothers, in all its’ various incarnations… or at least, the ones I enjoyed when I was growing up. I kind of felt like I was drawing the same thing four times this week, but I really liked the way the brick ground ended up looking.

chalkboard photo post: jerry nelson and nintendo

The rest of the chalkboard drawings are behind the cut, but this one is different from the rest and got a pretty great reaction from the kids. Jerry Nelson’s work with the Muppets was a HUGE part of my childhood. I didn’t realize how big a part of my students’ childhood he was as well. I’m glad I could share the guy’s life with everyone.

The rest of these are Nintendo themed.

chalkboard photo post: new year, new drawings

I debated long and hard as to whether I wanted to continue posting my chalkboard doodles for the upcoming school year. After three years solid of Sunday postings, I’ve done just about every character or situation I can think of. Further, I often draw the EXACT same drawings, year in and year out. It’s the nature of the job. Just as I teach Romeo & Juliet to every new group of Freshman, I’ll continue drawing myself as various superhero characters on the blackboard.

I’ve decided to keep posting these however, because… quite simply, they’re popular. I understand very little about “site views” and all that jazz, but when I do look at that widget, these are always amongst the most viewed of my posts… and that includes the comic. Over the past six months, a number of these have become popular on the website Pinterest. I know less about Pinterest than I do about site views, but if people are liking something I do well enough to share it somewhere, I should probably keep doing it.

Anyway, here’s the first drawing of the year. I decided I wanted to go big for the first week so I designed an elaborate Welcome piece for the Class of 2016 which took up the entire space of the classroom’s chalkboard.

I have to be honest- this was a larger undertaking than I anticipated! I thought I’d only need a half an hour to draw this beast, but it took double that when you figure in the sketch planning I needed to do to fit in as many characters as possible. I tried to run the gamut of cartoon characters that I found interesting and were relevant to someone who’d be in 9th grade this year. The only one I might have missed the mark on is Yakko Warner, but as established this summer, the characters are making a huge comeback, if only with my sons in our house.

thrift store finds: how to win at nintendo games #2

This week we’re looking at How to Win at Nintendo Games #2 by Jeff Rovin, published by St. Martin’s Press in 1989.

Cover price was $3.95… I paid a quarter.

sketchbook: a couple of random scribbles

I was thinking about doing a big drawing of all the Nintendo characters I loved as a kid… but I only got this far.

An 11th Doctor head sketch. It’s been awhile, but I believe I may have been aping someone else’s drawing when I doodled this in the margins of my sketchbook. I wish I could remember!