Gorillaz goes Monkey
Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl and Gorillaz) and Damon Albarn (Blur and Gorillaz) are at it again. This time, they've collaborated to bring one of my favorite childhood stories to life.
The ad is inspired the Ming Dynasty book Journey to the West (???), which one of the Four Great Classic Novels (????). As a kid, I was fascinated with mythology and lore. Beyond reading all I could about the Greek mythology, my dad went Chinese on me and bought vividly colored books about Monkey King's escapades to India during the Táng dynasty in order to obtain Buddhist religious texts called sutras. In fact, I built a tiny diorama based on the Monkey King's escapades. If only we had digital cameras back then. Oh, the craft I could expose you to.
Through time, I've seen permuations of the character crop up all over the place:
- Cartoon
- Musical
- TV Miniseries
- 2006 National Book Awards Winner: American Born Chinese
OK, enough talk, check out the clip via BBC's Olympic site here.