Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. But I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled.

Sophie’s Choice (1982)

Watercolor on 12” x 9” watercolor paper

#8 in the 40 movies I haven’t seen from the AFI 100!

The second from the list that came out in my lifetime!

I didn’t especially like this movie but Meryl Streep’s work has stuck with me. Like Yankee Doodle Dandy it’s an incredible performance within a lackluster film. It’s also an egregious example of the male gaze, where a female holocaust trauma is told through the lens of a mediocre southern boy who’s just looking to lose his virginity. When it’s Streep as Sophie on her own the movie is at its best but dang, the POV character drags this thing down. It’s a rather astonishing level of getting it wrong, to where I feel like the world within the movie utterly failed Sophie and this movie did as well. But now I finally know what people mean when they say, “This is a real Sophie’s Choice scenario.”

But again, Streep is above and beyond here. She disappears into the role and gives the character the nuance and emotional weight she needs. There’s a reason this is regarded as one of the single best performances of all time. Not only did she work to get her Polish accent right, but in flashbacks when the character speaks German she made sure to do that with a Polish accent as well. A remarkable commitment to her craft. I think this is the first of her career I’ve seen that wasn’t lighthearted or cutesy, where I can see why she’s held in such high esteem.

I think that makes the rest of the movie so much more frustrating for me. They didn’t rise to HER occasion.

The painting speaks to Sophie being caught between the danger of reflecting on her past and the shadows cast by shedding that light. I didn’t find the movie to be that particularly artfully shot, but this specific moment when Sophie begins to finally tell of her past stood out and credit where it’s due they nailed it.

Next week: The wildly problematic Swing Time.

Card subject to change.

Rob’s Art on ShopAEW
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Katy’s book Oldest Kansas City

I’m wildly excited that Dark Winds season four started today! First thing I did when I woke up this morning was watch the premier. I’m a big fan of the show and now the books and so far this season is off to a great start. The characters are pretty fleshed out now, which allows a freedom with the storytelling to have the people we now know interacting with their world without everything having to be explained. The Tribal Police are called out to find a teenage girl who’s run away from the local Catholic boarding school (leading to a huge awesome moment with the cops when that’s announced that feels like something out of Reservation Dogs) that’s soon tied to a double homicide. There’s also a lot going on with Joe Leaphorn played by Zahn McClarnon, teasing that this may be his last case. And that’s just the first episode!

Earlier this week I read Star Trek: Lore War by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Chris Cantwell, Ryan North, Davide Tinto, Derek Charm and friends, the big crossover tying up this era of Trek comics. Data’s evil brother Lore has reshaped the entire universe in his image and it’s up to Sisko and his crew of all-star(fleet)s to set things right. If this batch of Star Trek was The Avengers, bringing together notable characters from various series to make new crews, then this story would be House of M (for you fellow comics nerds). It’s a fun ride and Scotty’s final scene is pure magic.

Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton by Ryan North and Mike Norton is a pretty much perfect book. It’s all told from Krypto’s POV from the destruction of Krypton all the way through to his reunion with Superboy. Full of heart, joy and complicated emotions, it’s a truly lovely metaphor for how rescue pets also rescue us.

Getting caught up on the Energon Universe books I read GI Joe volumes 1 and 2 by Joshua Williamson, Tom Reilly and Andrea Milana and they’re rad. After a series of prologue books we get to see GI Joe and Cobra face off for the first time, while also keeping close ties to the other Transformers and Void Rivals books. Much like DC’s Absolute line, there’s a lot of familiar faces and concepts but everything’s different, too. For instance, The Baroness is with the Joes! Also, man Tom Reilly’s art is some seriously fresh stuff, a mix of style, action and clear readability all done with a minimum of line. Good stuff.

A few skulls, a Godzilla, a Spider-Man and a Batman because why the hell not!

Katy and I go to a trivia night most every Thursday. The format is that you put your team name on a whiteboard and then hold it up with the answer written to each question. Naturally, if you give me a black marker and a white surface, I’m drawing on that sucker.

If it’s just Katy and I playing we’ll call our team World’s Finest, and there’s another couple we’ll team up with and we change the name each week. I had the idea this week for a Ninja Turtle and realized with a little tweaking that we had the perfect team name to match the number of syllables for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so that I could do the logo as well. I’ve got less than five minutes to draw it all out, so poor Raphael’s hand is funky here. I redrew it at intermission and gave him a sai.

There was one round this week where the host would name a streaming show and we had to say which platform it’s on and friend, my years of a hermit lifestyle finally paid off. I SWEPT that one. Naturally I do well on categories involving art, pro wrestling and superheroes. Shocker!

The funniest one where I knew every answer was where the host showed the playbills for different musicals without the titles and we had to name them. Here’s the thing: I don’t like musicals but somehow I managed to know them all. No idea how!

I’m not a competitive person and my joke every week is that I’m aiming for at least fifth from last place but on Thursday we actually came in fifth. Which was, like, sixth from last so I felt like a double winner.

Love you more,
Rob

PS: Abolish and prosecute ICE.