ONE FROM THE ART: DIRECTORAMA

Some of us have some pretty specific ideas as to where bad directors when they shuffle off this mortal coil. But did you ever wonder what happens to great directors go when they die? Me too. And now Peet Gelderblom has boldly gone where no critic has gone before-- the Great Beyond-- to report on the latest misadventures of Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Charles Chaplin, Sergei Eisenstein, and the two latest recruits on the scene, Ingmar Bergman and Micheloangelo Antonioni, who are sure to cause some knee-slapping existential dust-ups as they try to film a remake of heaven in their own image. In case you don't know to what I'm referring, you must checkout Peet's wonderful new comic series, Directorama, published every Monday at The House Next Door. Described by some as Doonesbury crossed with "Fractured Fairy Tales," and a more-than-liberal splash of Cahiers du Cinema, Peet's comic, adorned by his cheeky, angular artwork and sharp, impudent writing, is a weekly dose of giddy genius. (Someone at the House even aptly detected the influence of Sergio Aragones.) Peet's been cartooning for quite a while on the subject (as seen in this great Kubrick/Hitchcock panel) and is now channeling his hilarious observations into this continuing cinematic saga, what amounts to a new and surprising form of film criticism disguised in a Sunday Funnies format. Directorama is only three episodes in, and it's already become an addictive weekly stop. Check it out and see if you don't agree.

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