Jaz Design

http://www.happiness-project.com/

I used to read this blog a lot about a year ago and then had to cull my ‘net reading to finish uni and whatnot. I poked my nose around Zen Habits’ door again a few days ago, and then decided to come back to this one as well. I don’t always gel so well with the personality of the author – but then the same goes for any of these blogs I read about personal development. It’s not the author’s fault at all, it can just be very hard I think to talk about these things without sounding patronising some of the time. Or maybe it’s just ’cause I know they’re right.

In any event, today Gretchen talked about spiritual masters and it got me thinking about who mine was. I’ve never particularly researched anyone. Obviously we idolise musicians and film stars and want to be like them, but I wouldn’t call them spiritual masters. A lot of them don’t tend to make good decisions, and half of them are famous for very little.

I can think of people who would be good choices, but they’re still not mine. Or maybe we should pick different aspects of different people and ball them all up into one super awesome person who we could aspire to be?

Looking at Gretchen’s post, she talks about biographies. I think I’ve read five auto/biographies, Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, Geri Halliwell, Anne Frank and Anne Frank’s cousin.

Depp and Burton aren’t really a surprise since I love them and the combination. Burton’s view of the world and Depp’s reactions to the world can be quite inspiring or quite depressing depending on which way you look at it. What I do know is the films they made together, and apart, were the main inspiration for a lot of my art a few years back, and whilst it did carry the goth cliche, I was fine with that and it helped me move forward and provides me with a great comfort zone when I’m feeling a need to assert myself artistically again.

Geri Halliwell I read when I was much younger. I think it came out just after her split from the Spice Girls and I was probably about 11. It fascinated me because they fascinated me, as they did many other 11 year old girl’s at the time. Reading about how they came to be took away the magic somewhat – it was my introduction to manufactured pop and removed the shine from those kinds of bands very quickly.

Anne Frank and her cousin’s stories were maybe even before that. We studied world war 2 when I was 9 or 10 and I quickly delved into my reading. They were amazing reads from what I can remember, and the things they went through were mind boggling and really showed how adaptive people can be.

I wouldn’t pick any of these to be honest. I’m running artists, authors, designers and not finding mine. Maybe I just haven’t found mine yet…

4/5

I forgot to review this, I read it a week or two ago. It’s been on my bookshelf for about a year. Finally starting to get through them all. There’s a lot I’m really excited about reading, particularly some my uncle got me.

I picked this up in HMV pretty cheap, I think along with The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy: And Other Stories (which I did read at the time). It’s no secret I love Burton’s work (aside from the Batman films), so to read about it was pretty interesting. I love knowing the process, the reasons they did this that and the other, the subtle things (like for instance in Big Fish, how when Edward’s standing in all those daffodils, how they’re real and not CG). If I like a film I’ll buy the DVD that has the director’s commentary (which is why I was pretty pissed that the special edition of Sweeney Todd has no commentary, the featurette makes up for that, sort of, I guess).

That said I think this is obviously a book for people who like his work, who want to know a bit more, why he does this that and the other. Some of it’s pretty funny. The intro by Johnny Depp is good. It was interesting to see why their relationship works so well. There was also a lot of things I didn’t know, that he animated some of the Fox and the Hound for example. I guess I never realised how hard it is to get a film made.

Amazon Summary

Tim Burton is one of the great modern-day visionaries of cinema, a director who has fabricated his own deliciously nightmarish universe in movies as extraordinary as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Mars Attacks! – not to mention his twisted take on the tales of Batman, Sleepy Hollow, and Planet of the Apes. Coinciding with the release of his re-imagining of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with long-time comrade Johnny Depp, this updated and fully illustrated new edition of the definitive Burton interview book casts light on Burton’s Burbank childhood, his early work at Disney, the recurrent themes and stunning designs of his movies, and the creative obsessions that fuel them. One of the best – selling books in the series, this brings his career right up to date Includes interviews on all of his most recent films, including the long awaited Charlie and the Chocolate Factory He never gives interviews, so this is the one opportunity film fans will have of hearing Tim Burton’s opinions on his work.