Let's start the week with some wonderful weirdness (start as you mean to go on, after all). John Cusack, guest blogging on BoingBoing, celebrate the work of the 'Prague alchemist of film', Jan Svankmajer, a truly remarkable, artist who has been one of my favourite animators for many years. From Cusack's post: " They call Svankmajer a surrealist, but his visions make as much sense to me as escalators or velcro. It's hyperreality, and after all, it exists because he made it, so there it is —just like styrofoam and Fresca. Absurdism is the logical extension of the truth— or of current trends. Surrealism is true becouse it unearthers the subconscious, the stuff of fever dreams and fractured memory. It exists if one has the guts or madness to bring it to be... ( combine Surrealism and Absurdism and mix it with Dada, you get the Sex Pistols)."







(a clip from Svankmajer's Alice in Wonderland)



I've been in love with the cinema of Svankmajer for a couple of decades - like Cusack I can't remember where I first saw his work, probably a short piece somewhere, but it got under the skin and into the brain, seeping, trickling, dripping slowly into the subconcious where it lived and moved, casting strange shadows on the screen of the mind... I sought out his feature works in the arthouse cinemas and anywhere else I could find them - and as Cusack notes in his article, one of the wonderful things about today is that you can now find huge amounts of his work easily online through YouTube. When I first found Svankmajer's works I had to look about arthouse cinemas for a screening or a retrospective at a film fest, now you can go and explore it whenever you want - god, sometimes I love the web... His work is fascinating; often mixing live action with various forms of animation; it can be funny, it can be creepy, it can be downright disturbing, combining the seemingly everyday then watching the unusual, the odd, the downright weird and surreal bleeding through that everyday, a world where logic can melt and flow like a Dali timepiece.



And since I'm on a Svankmajer kick, here's a clip from Dimensions of Dialogue, which many of you have quite probably seen a bit of without knowing who it was by as it has been used frequently in a number of programmes over the years and spawned countless imitators:







As with all the most interesting artists in any medium I've found developing a fascination with one artist has lead me to others that I might never have come across otherwise, which is one of the remarkable qualities of any good art, be it animation, comics, books, music, film, you never take it in isolation, other works you've seen feed into your experience of the new work and the new work sparks ideas and images in your imagination that lead you on paths to other works and those lead you to more... Here's the Brothers Quay (huge admirers of Svankmajer) with their famous Street of Crocodiles:







and part 2:







Considering how easy it is to find some of this work nowaday you owe it yourself to go exploring for more - especially if you love work by people like Tim Burton or Edward Gorey or Neil Gaiman, or you devoured the disturbingly weird old Doom Patrol strips. Go look; if you haven't seen them before, you'll thank me later, if you have seen them you'll be delighted to find it is so simple to rewatch them now. And you'll have strange dreams...

Android 207

While exploring for some completely unrelated animation work I came across something else, as is the way with such searches, which sidetracked me because I thought it was a cracking wee bit of animation and finding it by accident made it a nice surprise:

Bugs and Opera

There's a long and very fine tradition of animation matched to music and some of the best came out of that glorious period in the 1940s and 50s; its not really a coincidence that one artform which requires close attention to timing and rhythm would work so well with another. And back in the day when studios could afford the much more lush, detailed animation (unlike later eras where budget constraints mean much less flowing animation) and the studio would just happen to have an orchestra on staff too they made some of the finest, with one of Hollywood's greatest ever stars (and a personal role model for me growing up), Mr Bugs Bunny being in not one but two of the best ever made, The Rabbit of Seville and What's Opera, Doc?, probably both of which would be my earliest introduction to the world of classica music, not too mention a lifelong appreciation for the skill and imagination of animators.

Rabbit of Seville, featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd (1950) @ Yahoo! Video

What's Opera, Doc? - Click here for funny video clips

Alma

BoingBoing points out this delightfully creepy animation by Rodrigo Blass: Alma is a short, five minute piece with some lovely animation and the feel of the old style fairy tales (before they were all made acceptable and twee for small children):

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Merrie Melodies

Via the invaluable Internet Archive folks comes this wonderful and very early entry in the career of a rabbit who would later become one of the most enduring celluloid stars and a personal role model for me when I was growing up, Mr Bugs Bunny:

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

... and all through the night not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse... I've loved Tom'n'Jerry since I was a very small boy and have wonderfully warm memories of sitting there watching them with my dad. Truth be told even as an adult if a T&J came on when I was home dad and I would sit down to watch it, hee-hawing with laughter as we did so, my mum shaking her head and wondering when either of us would grow up. With crisp snow lying all around us this Christmas Eve it seems like a perfect evening to sit by a roaring fire and watch the classic Night Before Christmas film from the Oscar winning T&J:







Oh to be five years old again and watching this on Christmas Eve at home with dad while mum was making baking and cooking magic in the kitchen and all seemed right with the world and there was no problem in the world so big that your mum and dad couldn't sort it out and you felt wrapped up in that warmth and love. Looking back now I think that childhood was the most wonderful present I've ever received and at the time, of course, I didn't even know it. Little wonder as the world seems darker and colder that I warm myself by those memories of times that never come again.

Winsor McCay, silent animation

Via Tom at Comics Reporter comes a link to this charming footage of early 20th century pioneer of comics and animation, Winsor McCay; for those not familiar with him, Winsor created the first movie dinosaur, Gertie, back in 1914 - it was imbued with proper character (no doubt thanks to his cartoonist training and skills) which gave it some personality akin to the proper animated cartoons which would follow in the subsequent years. As well as pioneering animation in the dawn days of the then new film medium McCay was a popular comics creator for the newspapers, with his Little Nemo in Slumberland full of beautiful, dreamlike imagery that has remained influential for over a century, cited by creators like Moebius and Gaiman. Its a lovely piece of early cinematic magic.

Doctor Poo

Viz offers up a scatalogical take on our favourite Time Lord with Doctor Poo, traversing time and space desperately trying to find a quiet loo to take a dump, thwarted at every turn by Cybermen, Sea Devils and Daleks. I especially like the 'handicapped' symbol on Davros' personal loo. Vulgar and crude (it begins with a farting version of the classic Baker-era Doctor Who theme) but funny (via SF Crowsnest):

Snow White - the sequel

Via Cartoon Brew comes a link to this Snow White - the Sequel animation by Picha, with narration by none other than the wonderful Stephen Fry (the whole thing is on YouTube in eight parts). Apparently made in 2007 according to CB but not widely released (first time I've come across it, I must say), its NSFW and a little naughtier perhaps than the original Snow White, although to be honest I always wondered in that one just what this young girl was doing alone in a home with seven all male dwarves...

Red Rabbit

Rather nice wordless animation (via Boing Boing):

Red Rabbit from Egmont Mayer on Vimeo.

Animation at the Film Fest

Among the movies I was eager to see during my annual week off at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival were two animated features which we’ve mentioned on here before (regular readers will know of my fascination for all forms of animation) - the Australian stop-motion film Mary and Max (that rare thing, a feature length, independent animated movie aimed at an older audience) and a more traditionally animated 2D offering from Ireland’s Cartoon Salon, The Secret of Kells, which was created primarily for a younger audience.

The Secret of Kells

(an illuminated text version of Aisling and Brendan)

Regular readers will probably remember me mentioning this rather beautiful Irish animation a few times before on the blog - artist Cliodhna Lyons (Irish 24 hour comics day) first put me on to it last year as she had been involved with the Cartoon Salon in Kilkenny and the descriptions and artwork I saw had me hooked. It is an Irish-French-Belgian production and this and the graphic novel based on the film meant Kells also had a presence at this year’s prestigious Angouleme Festival, which Wim covered back in January. Drawing (no pun intended) inspiration from the fabled Book of Kells, one of the incomparably beautiful books in the history of world literature, The Secret of Kells offers up the tale of a young monk, Brendan, a novice at the monastery of Kells where his uncle is the stern, towering, grim-face abbot.

It is an evil time for many - Rome is but a distant memory and the Dark Ages have fallen across much of Europe. One of the lights in the long, dark night comes from the early church and most especially in the monastery’s preservation and dissemination of learning and the dim, early days before nations like Ireland and Scotland were actually nations, but were slowly being forged in a cauldron of oral myth, the unique Celtic brand of Christianity, small kingdoms becoming larger kingdoms and the testing by fire of brutal events like the seemingly endless invasions of the Norsemen - the Vikings. Off the Western coast of Scotland, among the many islands which scatter there though the seas lies the spiritual home of early Scottish Christianity and it is from here that Brother Aidan must flee as the Viking raiders sack this sacred site and slaughter or enslave the holy men who live there, destroying or ransacking everything within. Aidan flees with a remarkable book, the Book of Iona, still to be completed after many long decades of patient illumination by many gifted, scholarly monks. Bringing it to Kells he hopes to complete it with the help of brothers in the scriptorium there, but the abbot has lost patience with such things, being totally obsessed with building walls and defences against the inevitable Norse assault he knows will come on Kells and the monks and many villagers who have fled there for protection. He actively discourages his young nephew from helping Aidan, who, now finding his old hands to unsteady for the job, seeks a gifted replacement to finish the book.

Disobeying his uncle Brendan steals into the forest, a dark place, home to strange creatures from Irish folklore, dark wolves, standing stones, strange caves, home to mythical beings. And a forest sprite in the form of a young girl (Aisling), who is suspicious at first but soon warms to Brendan until the two become close friends.

The film is beautifully animated - the artwork is often simply gorgeous, as befits a work inspired by one of the most beautiful cultural treasures in the world. Sometimes the characters appear to be walking in an odd way compared to the background and it felt to me that this was a deliberate style adopted by the animators; its as if the characters are flat and walking across a flat background, which seems appropriate to the art style of the period, long before the more normal (to us) adoption of perspective in Renaissance art much later. Some scenes are also broken into split screens, little triptychs which recall the lovely, large header illustrations common in many illuminated books of the period, while other scenes again draw directly for their design on the unique form of illuminated texts which the Celtic school of Christianity created, people, animals, beautiful plants, flowing script and twisting, interwoven lines and knots combining into something so beautiful it almost makes you cry (so beautiful its mere sight is supposed to blind sinners as Brendan says), while other touches are small and subtle, such as the way the dappled light sparkles in the forest as the sun comes through the leaves.

Contrasted against this the Norsemen are depicted mostly in shadows, dark black and blood red outlines of hulking figures, swords and horns, recalling the demon from Fantasia (for which the great Bela Lugosi posed for the Disney animators, long before motion capture). Their acts, while never shown in detail, are brutal, dark, terrifying - for a film aimed primarily at younger viewers possibly a bit scary, but then they should be and I think its good that the animators don’t hide the horrible brutality of the period, especially as it makes the book stand out all the more. Too late the abbot will realise that his endless obsession with defences will still not halt the tide of Viking onslaught and that while they are all transient beings the book is more important then any of them or the abbey itself; the book is a symbol of the light, a beacon to shine a path out of the Dark Ages and to touch the souls of men and women for eternity (as it still does to this day). But only if Brendan and Aidan, with help from Aisling and a rather smart cat can save this remarkable work of art.

(the demonic Norsemen attack)

Its an utterly beautiful film - there’s a lovely adventure and a tale of friendship, of learned responsibilities, of what is most important, of coming of age, of saving what you can against the ages, served with a helping of folklore and fantasy, some humour and some wonderful moments of wonder that will have the eyes of child audiences open wide and the eyes of the adults too, all served up with some beautiful, traditional animation, which moves from the reasonably simple to the gorgeously elaborate scenes directly inspired by the Book of Kells. And as a bonus hopefully it will inspire kids to learn more about our history and our shared culture. Sadly there is still no news on a general UK release as yet, so at the moment you will need to watch out for it at film festivals. Which is a huge hint to any film distributors out there - this is beautiful, enchanting adventure with soul and culture and it needs to be seen by more people (and parents its a perfect one to take your kids to). And its not just animation lovers like me - Secret of Kells took the much vaunted Standard Life Audience Choice Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival - that’s an award cast by actual audience members as they leave the cinema, not an award given by critics, so obviously the audiences here loved it too; you can find out more on the official movie site here and director Tomm Moore's blog.

(director Tomm Moore - pictured centre - at the UK premiere during the Edinburgh Film Festival, from my Flickr stream)

Mary and Max

Also at the Film Festival I was lucky enough to catch another animated film I have been eager to see for months, Mary and Max. The first Australian film every picked to open the prestigious Sundance Festival and also the first animated film to do so (which is a strong indicator of how good it is, as is its award at Annecy), its one of those movies which has been gathering impressive word of mouth on the international festival circuit, although like all indy films that is only half the struggle - getting general releases in various countries is another matter and good showings at film festivals is part of that hard slog of getting the film seen by a wider audience (a task made harder by the fact its an animated movie made for adults - most film companies won‘t know how to market such a thing). And does Mary and Max deserve to be seen by that wider audience? Oh yes, without a doubt yes.

(Max Jerry Horowitz from Mary and Max)

This lovely, stop-motion tale is essentially a story of two damaged, lonely souls who find a remarkable connection across the world. Young Mary is a little girl in suburban Australia, with no friends at school, a funny looking face that gets made fun of, a father who spends most of his time on his hobby of taxidermy (using roadkill for subject matter) and a mother in hair rollers, hideous glasses and constant alcoholic and smoking fugue. It’s a lonely upbringing and Mary escapes into imagination and her love of chocolate and the animated show Nibblets. One day while her mother shoplifts items from the local post office Mary leafs through an international phone book, wondering at the ‘strange’ names in an American directory. On an impulse she decides to take down the details of one random name and write him a letter to ask about life in America.

Max is a middle-aged, obese Jewish man living in 70s New York, also a lonely, damaged soul (as we find out later, he has Asperger’s, which is one reason he has difficulty in relating to people until Mary writes to him), flitting between a succession of jobs, a number of fish (which keep dying and being replaced) and trips to Overeater’s Anonymous which are rather defeated by his love of chocolate. He is quite surprised to receive Mary’s letter, complete with some samples of chocolates from Australia and very soon they are swapping letters, chocolates and little bits of their isolated lives to something neither had before - a friend. It’s at this point that the situation could be seen as straying into potential landmine territory - lonely young girl corresponding with isolated, lonely older man? You can almost imagine a red-top tabloid screaming headline now. But it isn’t like that. Somehow these two damaged souls have found what they needed, a friend, and an unlikely relationship blossoms before, inevitably, hitting some more stormy seas, not least when a more grown up Mary, now at college, studies psychology and uses Max as her main subject.

The film doesn’t try to hide the shortcomings of the characters any more than it tries to wallow in sentiment - it simply presents them and the many little facets of growing up and life that everyone can identify with, from finding out the illicit pleasures as a child of sneaking a tin of sweetened condensed milk to the shattering implications of a dear friendship being damaged (and also presents Aspergers with some sensitive understanding). It’s often funny, sometimes quite sad, but even when sad it is that beautiful kind of sadness that draws you in. The animation is all done in stop-motion and looks wonderful. I have no problem with CG animation but there is something I always find fascinating about stop-motion, the fact that, as the producer (who did a Q&A after the screening) remarked, everything you see on the screen was there, it was all designed, built and then painstakingly moved by hand, frame by frame; its all real, every item you see on screen was touched by a person putting life into it.

(Mary Daisy Dinkle wrapping up another package for her pen friend)

The voice talent boasts Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman, both agreeing to work for a fraction of their normal movie fees simply for the love of it (another indicator of how good this film is) and the narration comes from none other than the great Barry Humphries, who apparently they were huge fans of and terrified to meet, but he was charming and agreed to do it, even if he noticed Mary’s mother had a slight touch of the Dame Edna about her. It’s rare to see independent animation features and even rarer to see one aimed at an adult audience (although I think it’s also quite suitable for a YA audience too). There’s more than a touch of the Edward Gorey (or his modern heir, Tim Burton) to some of the style and humour, not so much Gothic but in the dark humour that life often throws up. What can I say except I absolutely loved it and, like the Secret of Kells, I hope that some film distributors pick it up and give it a proper general release here. Meantime, if you see it on the programme of a film festival near you, take my tip and go and see it.

The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow

This is another short film in the Cannes/YouTube/National Film Board of Canada award shortlist you can vote for over on the NFB's YouTube Channel; I think this one is fascinating, well worth repeat viewings as essentially the viewer is studying an old photograph, but as the camera moves in and around the different parts of the image we see more and it becomes increasingly disturbing, creating, without any dialogue or real movement, a rather Southern Gothic narrative in the viewer's mind. You can vote for the films in the running until May 20th. The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow (which sounds a bit like a short story for a Neil Gaiman or Poe tale, I thought) is co-directed by Rodrigo Gudino and Vincent Marcone.

Sebastian's Voodoo

This lovely animation, Sebastian's Voodo, by Joaquin Baldwin comes via Boing Boing and is in the running for a short film award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival; you can vote for it via YouTube and while you're at it check out some other animations (and other works) from the National Film Board of Canada on YT:

Mutiply your money animation

This slightly naughty animation for services to 'multiply your money' is brilliant:



(link via Boing Boing)

Watchmen Saturday morning cartoon

Happy Harry reworks the Watchmen in the style of a Saturday morning kid's cartoon, all happy and shiny (brutal, obsessed Rorschach is now 'friends with animals', Ozymandias and Bubastis are Shaggy and Scooby) but with nice nasty touches sneaked in like Doc Manhattan giving a criminal cancer to kill him. Genius.

Doctor Who anime

This fan-made anime-style Doctor Who is pretty bloody good - Jon Pertwee era Doctor kicking it Japanese anime style with his Venusiak Aikido, genius! I'd love to see a pro version of this authorised by the Beeb:

This Way Up

Britain's nominee for possible Oscar glory in the short animation category this year is This Way Up, a lovely little Edward Gorey-esque dark comedy of a father and son undertakers attempting to bury a little old lady after an unlikely accident sees the hearse flattened with a boulder, taking them struggling across country with the coffin and then into the Afterlife in their quest to finish the job, all performed without words. For a change instead of just reading about it or seeing a clip we can actually watch the entire short animation on the BBC's Film Network site (the Beeb part funded the film by Nexus' Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith). While you're there have a poke around the rest of that site because the Beeb have some other animation and other short film gems there (I'm not sure if it is geo-locked to only play for folks with UK ISPs or not though and you will need Windows Media Player or Real Player to watch it).

“For me, animation meant children’s films that you let them watch in order that they will leave you alone...” - respected Israeli war journalist Ron Ben-Yishai explains to the BBC that he was less than enthusiastic when Ari Folman approached him about contributing to the animated documentary Waltz With Bashir. Folman talked the 65 year old reporter around, fortunately - his segment, as the BBC article notes, is fairly brief, but as the first reporter to risk life and limb to enter the site of the refugee camp massacres his testimony is essential to the story; he’s now quite convinced by Folman’s animated efforts: ”The animation is adding a layer, a psychological layer of his trauma. In a normal documentary film you couldn’t have documented all these things - like the dreams…. Believe me, I have a lot of nightmares of this kind. After being in war situations… it comes to haunt you.”

Waltz With Bashir is a film I had been waiting to see for some time, following the good word of mouth it had been picking up on the international film festival circuit. An animated, feature-length documentary is a fairly unusual beast in the film world, and as someone who is fascinated by animation in its many forms I was intrigued. Ari Folman’s film looks back to the war in the Lebanon in 1982, seen through the memories, dreams and nightmares of former Israeli conscripts. The film opens with a pack of rabid dogs, barking, growling, running through the city streets, eyes glowing red, terrifying people, before arriving outside a building where they bark viciously at the inhabitant. The scene cuts to a bar and Folman is listening to his friend recount the dream of the dogs, which he has repeatedly, a mental echo of the war when he was forced to shoot dogs before their patrol could enter a village so the dogs couldn’t bark a warning (Shakespeare’s line “let slip the dogs of war” sprung to mind). When he asks Folman what bad dreams he has from the war Folman answers that his memory is mostly blank from that period. His friend’s troubled dreams spark the first glimmerings of memories and images from the war in Folman’s mind and so he sets out to talk to former comrades, slowly piecing together events surrounding their time in Lebanon, culminating in a horrific massacre of civilians in refugee camps.

Folman travels to meet old comrades, some fairly open about their war experiences, others quieter, more troubled; in between he talks to his therapist friend, troubled by his own missing memories and wondering what he saw or did that caused his mind to blank so much out. As anyone would be in such circumstances he wants to know but is also worried what he may learn about himself in the process. The film itself is mostly non-linear, made up of frequent flash backs as the former soldiers talk to Folman. But this is no straight ‘talking heads’ documentary - many of the men have only fragmented memories and images, often dreamlike or even hallucinatory. Folman himself is jarred into remembering a scene of himself and some comrades floating in the sea like drowned men; slowly they come to life and, quite naked, shamble slowly towards the war-torn shore, the scene lit by the eery light of flares. It reminded me of one of cinema’s strong visual scenes, Martin Sheen emerging from the dark waters in Apocalypse Now (and like Apocalypse Now there is much of Heart of Darkness about this film) crossed with a sort of D-Day landing but by undead, zombie soldiers, slowly shambling through the surf, across the beach and into the war zone.

And much of the film is seen in this manner; while some scenes are related and shown fairly literally (such as an ambush on a column of tanks) many are hazy, drawn from confused images in the memories of men who saw more than they wanted to and still see it frequently in their dreams, or composed entirely of fantasy images and hallucinations (one man on a boat heading to the war imagines a giant naked woman, who lifts him gently from the ship and swims away with him nestled child-like against her stomach as the ship and his comrades behind them explode into flame; another distances himself from events by pretending he is taking photos of it for an article). Its something a live action documentary simply couldn’t capture but the medium of animation is suited perfectly for; the animation takes us as close as we can be to the dreams and nightmares of those men, as well as showing how different minds react to the stress, how they interpret what they saw and endured, the strains, the stress, the guilt over actions forced on them or simple guilt for being alive when friends are dead. The film doesn’t try to excuse actions, nor does it seek to judge and condemn, it simply shows and shares those events and memories.

(escape fantasy, sexual fantasy or simply the childlike urge to have a mother figure taking you away from harm - one of Folman’s friends recounts his vision of a giant, naked woman who carries him from the boat taking him to battle)

Popular music of the period features throughout, especially in scenes where the soldiers are given leave to visit home. A home life which now seems alien and bizarre - at the front they dream of being home, at home they feel strange, uncomfortable. Around them people are playing music, video games, enjoying everyday life, all familiar things which now seem so odd compared to what the soldier has been living. In this Folman scores again, showing us just a bit of the contrast the soldier (of any war) encounters when they come home and try to be ‘normal’ but wondering how everyday life can be so ordinary after what they have seen (its no surprise that many former soldiers have to deal with mental health and a myriad of other problems when they return to civilian life. A peace treaty might end a war politically, but it doesn’t end in the minds of many who had to prosecute it).

Its very powerful material, extremely emotional and often very, very uncomfortable to watch - but then, it should be. The last act leads up to the slaughter of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in refugee camps (spoiler warning, you may not want to read this last bit if you are going to see the film), the very event that Folman has been wondering about as he probes the gaps in his memory. The Israeli soldiers themselves are not directly involved, but they are ordered to encircle the camps while their Christian militia allies enter them, ostensibly looking for terrorists. They see women, old folks, children, being rounded up and loaded onto trucks; Folman flashes back to an earlier generation of his own family being loaded onto trucks by the Nazis. What happens next is, sadly, a matter of historical record - hundreds of innocents were slaughtered. Ben-Yishai, the reporter, was on the front lines and following leads from Israeli soldiers troubled about what they suspect is going on inside the camps, he investigates, bringing it to the attention of the government.

(Lebanon, once called ‘the Paris of the East’, shattered and ruined by war; a scene probably familiar to many from news bulletins in the early 80s)

In the very last scenes animation is suddenly, jarringly, dispensed with in favour of Ben-Yishai’s news footage. Its simply horrific and the sudden move from animation to news film re-enforces that horror. Its dreadfully hard to take - I found myself seriously struggling to maintain some emotional control - but its something that should be seen by a wider audience (and I wish we could make our so-called world leaders sit and watch it before they decide on more foreign adventures). Like Apocalypse Now it is by turns fascinating and yet often horrific, but its engrossing and powerful. Sad to think Folman must have been working on it when Hizzbolah were firing rockets at Israeli civilians and Israel was bombing Lebanon once more just the other year. Which, regrettably, makes this not just a look at a historic event from decades ago but very contemporary to ongoing strife in the Middle East and elsewhere, while the animated nature of the bulk of the film guarentees images that will stick in the viewer’s mind long after the film has finished. One of the most unusual and remarkable animated films I’ve seen; as I said, it can be hard to watch, but you should try.Waltz With Bashir is on general release in the UK now; a graphic novel version of the story is due soon.

(I originally wrote this review up for the Forbidden Planet blog)

Oliver Postgate

Very sad to hear about the passing of Oliver Postgate; Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, the Clangers, Bagpuss, all wonderful pieces of hand-made animation put together in an old cowshed in the finest tradition of the great British eccentric. And all lovely parts of that half imagined, half remembered childhood memory, part of the good childhood memories along with other rose tinted nostalgic memories which tell you that when you were young summers were always long and sunny, winters always came with deep snow to sledge on. Basic animation to be sure, but in the long ago time before multi channeled TV, the web or digital animation these were as essential to generations of British kids as their copy of the Beano. Another little piece of my childhood tumbles away...

Pulp Fiction - Goo style!

Tyger

Another very imaginative animation found via YouTube (this one by Guilherme Marcondes), using a variety of media and inspired by one of my favourite poems by one of my all-time favourite poets (and artists), William Blake:

Oscar

A rather lovely Oscar Wilde animation, a mix of puppetry and stop-motion, I came across, by Lucy Knisley:

Tttttttthththt That's all folks!



This incredibly cool set of Looney Tunes characters such as Wil E Coyote and Bugs Bunny (one of my personal role models as a child, which might explain a lot) as skeletons is for the Day of the Dead and was snapped in a Hollywood cemetery where the great Mel Blanc (a saint in my Church of Seventh Day Cartoonists) is also buried - the item on the lower right is apparently a rubbing from his headstone. It comes from Superape's Flickr stream, via Boing Boing. Happy Halloween and a macabre Sahmain to you all.

Popeye Vs Anime

Two separate cartoon cultures clash as Popeye comes face to face with Anime and has a similar reaction many folks not clued up in the genre have - what the heck is this? Warning, contains scenes of silliness, violence and spinach.

Blogland

I quite like these Blogland animations you can find on YouTube:

Painting on walls

I came across this very interesting animation via Meathaus - the medium of the animation is different from the great Prague alchemist of film Jan Svankmajer but the look and style of it reminds me very much of some of his early short works.

May the force be with you

How cool is this Family Guy Star Wars poster?

Nagymama

I love this very cool animation of a grandmother's tale:

Say 'Cheese'!

Dammit, the very cool Gentlemen's Duel animation I mentioned the other day has been pulled - I heard from a friend that the studio hadn't okayed the web release, so that was probably why it had been removed. Which is a shame because it seemed to be getting some great word of mouth which would suggest to me they should consider sticking it back up in one form or another since it was doing their studio's rep no end of good.



However, since that one is gone, here is another cool animation I came across this week via Steve Ogden's rather fine AnimWatch site: "Cheese" by Slovakian animator Peter Harkaly, a graduate of the Vancouver Film School. I love the old 40s style story of the mouse and the spring trap and the cheese - even the music adds to that classic feel. Six months of work according to AnimWatch (one of the especially nice things about the site is that Steve doesn't just post the animation, he posts a bit on the artist and work as well, it's a great site) and I like the fact that Peter chose to ignore his mentor's advice and render fur for his mouse - not easy even when you have a full animation studio working on it, so pretty brave of him to do. It's only a couple of minutes, but very funny and nicely done.

A Gentlemen's Duel

I came across this animation via Boing Boing today and thought it was terrific as a comedy French and English duo compete for the favours of a rather busty noblewoman (the men can't keep their eyes from her chest) which ends in a duel - at which point they climb into wonderful steampunk battle suits which look as if they should have come from a crate marked 'acme'. The creators have clearly watched a lot of classic cartoons...

A gentlemen's duel
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Simpsons

Since we were going to see the Simpsons movie on Saturday I thought I'd swing by and get the tickets in the afternoon in case it was busy later, although in the event the auditorium was half full. I think I got the ticket clerk who is either the stupidest or, being kind, perhaps just having one of those days. I tell her I want the 8.45 showing and she says, right, 4.15. No, 8.45, please. She looks a bit confused and then goes, oh, okay (not sure where she got 4.15 from at all, but hey); I tell her I need two tickets, putting one on my cinema pass card, paying for the other on my debit card, handing her both as I do. She takes them and looks at them like she has never seen a plastic card before (bear in mind this cinema has its own card which I use regularly).

I have to explain to her again that I want two tickets for that performance and am paying for one, the other is on my own pass, again waving the cards in front of her so it is pretty obvious visually if she can't grasp spoken words. She takes them slowly, looks at them uncertainly then picks at her keyboard. So, that would be one ticket and one other ticket - so you really want two tickets? Er, yes, one and one would be two, which is what I've asked you for several times now... She did finally get there, although she forgot to ask me which seats we wanted. Jeez, we all have off days, but this girl was slower than a tortoise on Prozac.

And was it worth it after that? Well, no. My friend pointed out one of the biggest problems with the Simpsons movie is that it isn't really a movie. As with the X-Files movie it is really just a longer than usual episode with a bigger budget, which doesn't carry a movie. And as with the X-Files movie I have a general dislike of TV shows making a movie version while the series is still running. After the end of the run, as with Firefely or Star Trek, sure, but generally doing a movie when the show is still continuing seems to be to be just a flagrant cash cow. South Park is an exception here as it offered something unusual and different from the series as well as providing a story that worked as a movie. The Simpsons didn't. Don't get me wrong, parts of it are funny, there are some scenes that made me laugh, but it doesn't hold together and overall seemed weak and somewhat futile.

Mind you, I've not thought much of the TV episodes either in recent years. I really loved the Simpsons for many years, but the last two or three seasons have been poor; as with the movie they have some scenes which are brilliant but I can't recall an entire episode which worked for me in the last few seasons, only some scenes, but never an entire episode; magnify that problem by the length of the movie and you have a very poor offering which dilutes the genius of the earlier show. Heresy perhaps to suggest the Simps is past its sell-by date, but it hasn't worked for me for a while now and the announcement that there would be several seasons more after the weak movie depresses me because it tarnishes the reputation it had during its high water mark. As with the X-Files, good shows need to know when and how to bow out, not just keep milking a tired series for money and so ruining the memories of the earlier, better years (of which there were many). Meantime they are talking about another X-Files movie...

Le freak, c'est chic

I love this Paris fashion article in August's Harper's Bazaar (there's a publication you will rarely see me discussing here) in which Simpsons animator Julius Preite has created a Paris fashion show article with our favourite yellow family. Genuis and somehow it puts me in mind of the episode where Homer buys the New Yorker for Richard Avedon's photographs of Lenny.



Normally the overblown marketing exercise which accompanies major movie releases annoy the smeg out of me, but so far the Simpsons one has been entertaining and clever, from turning Seven Elevens in the US into Kwik-e-Marts to a faux chalk carved Homer next to the Cerne Abbas giant and now this. Gives an idea just how deeply embedded into global culture the Simpsons has become that it crosses so many boundaries of class and style. Fashionista has the pics (link via Comics212)

Animated Calvin and Hobbes

I came across this today, a short, unofficial animated Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. We're unlikely to see a full length Calvin and Hobbes cartoon in the near future and of course Bill Watterson finished the comics a while back, but this short little gem by Italian film student Donato Di Carlo (in Italian with English subtitles) captures the spirit of Calvin and Hobbes very well and really made me smile.

Flâneur animation

A very neat little Flâneur animation by Gould (amazing how inventive someone can be in a minute and a half) - Link via Boing Boing.

Pixar - 20 Years of animation exhibition

The National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street, Edinburgh is currently hosting Pixar: 20 Years of Animation. Celebrating the most famous exponents of big-screen computer animation the exhibition, as the name suggests, has material from just over two decades of Pixar studios work, from the very early shorts such as the animated desk lamp (still seen on the studio’s logo at the start of each movie) through Toy Story, Finding Nemo, the Incredibles and Cars right up to concept art for the forthcoming Ratatouille.

As you would expect for this sort of exhibition there is a lot of art on display, from preliminary sketches and storyboards (looking at the storyboards makes it clear these animators were all big comics fans as kids and never grew out of it - good on them!) through to finished works, models and maquettes (there is a cracking series of head models from the Incredibles, each showing a different expression on Bob’s face, like exhibits from the world championship of gurning) and short videos showing of different aspects of Pixar’s work. There’s a chance to get interactive with touch-screen presentations allowing more access to behind-the-scenes looks and information while the museum is running a whole series of related events, from lectures on animation, showing Pixar movies every Sunday in the lecture hall, storytelling events inspired by Pixar movies, showcases on Scottish animation and more (the NMS site has the full details).



While all of this was highly enjoyable the standouts of this exhibition are two mini-shows. The first is shown on a wide screen. Actually, a very, very wide screen. A wiiiiiiiiiiiiiddddddddeeee screen. The sort you have to swivel your head from left to right to follow movement. It takes the form of a wall of art from the Pixar crew; as the camera pans across the gallery wall (some of the pictures static, others animated) it periodically moves into a particular picture and the viewers are treated to a new animation playing on themes from previous Pixar movies, all on this enormously long screen; it is big and it is clever.

Oh but there is even better than this. There is the Pixar Zoetrope. You remember those wonderful Victorian toys for children, where a form of lampshade has a series of slightly different characters printed on it, with slots cut - spin the shade around a lamp and the figure ‘moves’. We’re all familiar with it - it is after all the basic principle all animation, from the most basic outline drawings through Ray Harryhausen stop-motion creatures right up to the most cutting edge CGI cartoons work, a sequence of still images flickering before our eyes at 24 frames per second until our eyes and our brains interpret them as movement and static cartoons come to life. Pixar’s Zoetrope is designed to explain this basic concept in the most incredibly fun way - it makes a cartoon come to life in 3-D. Victor Navone, an animator for Pixar, has a short looped video of the Zoetrope taken from the earlier show at MoMA in NYC, although, as he says himself, it simply doesn't do justice to how it actually looks when seen with your own eyes, nose pressed up against the glass.



In a darkened room there is a large, glass case. Inside the case is a very large disc, with several rings of models of different Toy Story characters, all in slightly different poses. The disc begins to rotate slowly, speeding up; as the characters being to blur before your eyes as the frequency increases a strobe light comes on and suddenly something magical happens - the models come to life. Seriously, the illusions is utterly magical; Woody rides his horse, Buzz Lightyear balances on a ball while endless toy soldiers leap from the top of the bucket o’ soldiers, parachutes blossoming into life as they leap down. It is for all the world like having a real, solid, 3-D cartoon right there in front of you. The fact the exhibition shows you exactly how it works doesn’t detract from the magic in any way whatsoever; frankly it was worth the price of the exhibition for the Zoetrope alone. It did what a lot of the finest animation does - it makes you feel as if you are five years old again, standing with big wide eyes open in wonder. I’m still buzzing from watching it (actually watching it several times, it kept drawing me back); I saw this with my dad, the man who ensured I was raised as a Seventh Day Cartoonist, and we both emerged with smiles like Cheshire Cats to my patiently waiting mum (with them both retired now and me off this week we were having a very nice day together, food, drink and sightseeing).

The Edinburgh exhibition runs through until May 28th at the National Museum of Scotland, along with a raft of supporting events, with full details to be found on the NMS site. And when you come out one of the other exhibitions on at the National Museum currently boasts a huge, shiny rocket straight out of a Dan Dare comic (a Black Knight rocket from the aborted 50s British space programme, which is pretty much the same as Dan Dare in so many ways) and an actual NASA Gemini space capsule on loan from the Smithsonian.

For the journey

A couple of weeks ago I was talking about the gorgeous animation for Lloyds TSB bank - it doesn't make me want to switch banks, but the animation is lovely, following a couple on their train journey which is also a compressed version of their life as they meet, fall in love, marry and have a child. The style of the animation from the looks of the long-nosed characters, tall skinny buildings and raised railway line is obviously influenced by the wonderful movie Les Triplettes de Belleville, which is not a bad animation to borrow from. There are a series of them, apparently, with the second running on TV now (these sorts of adverts are often the main source of income for struggling animators); YouTube has the first one up now:



Someone left a comment on the previous post on this subject (sorry there was no name on the comment I think) asking about the lovely music which goes along with the adverts. I did a bit of Googling and found on the Boosey and Hawkes (very famous musical name) that the music is a version of Eliza's Aria by Elena Kats-Chernin, composed for the ballet Wild Swans, based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen - according to the B&H site it will be getting a new release on CD along with other work including her Piano Concerto No 2 and Mythic. There's a link on the B&H site to where you can order the disc - I may pick that one up myself. Meantime someone else has uploaded the music to YouTube as well:

Oscar time

I was posting about the short animated film winner at last night's Oscars on the FPI blog earlier today and being the nosy bugger I am I had a look for something online so I could point readers to where they could check out a bit of the film, but couldn't see much more than a very basic website for Mikrofilm. So I dropped them a line and heard back very quickly from a very nice lady called Lise there who sent me a link to this fetching site where you can have a look at the (now Oscar winning) Danish Poet by Torill Kove, with narration by Liv Ullman, with a clip and various other snippets of this quite gorgeous looking animation (I thought the art reminded me of a cross between children's picture books and Metaphrog's lovely Louis comics).



On the other end of the Oscar scale how brilliant is it that Martin Scorcese was finally awarded the Best Director Oscar? Ironic that it isn't actually for his finest work which the Academy didn't recognise in previous years, although The Departed is still a damned fine movie (right to the end which I didn't see coming), but given they have overlooked him for decades and he is pretty much the greatest living American director (and still working) it is amazing he has been so overlooked by Oscar for so long. Thank goodness they finally gave it to him; I was worried Marty was going to end up with one of those 'lifetime achievement' awards which usually mean the recipient has about a year to live - those things are the kiss of death :-).

Matters of the heart

No, I refuse to get all slushy for Valentine's day - just why people associate the slow and painful death of an early church priest with sweeping romance is beyond me and what idiot decided to make it the middle of the month two weeks from payday?? - but I passed this window in the British Heart Foundation's charity shop, festooned with little paper hearts with messages written on them (I was tempted to write 'lonely Aztec seeks warm, beating heart' on one) and a big stand-up of one of animation's classic ladies, Betty Boop. So a boop-oop-ee-doo to you all.

Guy 101

The winner of last night's BAFTA award in the short animated film category was Guy 101 by Ian W Gouldstone; it tells a story which plays out between two men talking on an online chat, using items like chat screens, pop-up video player windows and messenger as the basis for the animation to tell the story. I was lucky enough to see it last year when the nice folks at the British Animation Awards (BAA) sent me some material on disc and thought it was a very clever bit of animation. The problem with film awards, all too often, is that the works in the short animation (or short movie for that matter) never get seen by most people and you end up trying to describe it instead. As luck would have it though this very animated short is hosted on the BBC's Film Network site; there's a bunch of other material on there (live action and animated) including Run Wrake's 'Rabbit' which I also saw last year and is inventive and nicely disturbing.

Channel Frederator

Posting on the Black Horse animation reminded me that I had forgotten to mention the recent Channel Frederator awards here. Frederator was set up to encourage animators and video makers; there's been a ton of interesting material on there and the recent awards page has links to the winners so not only can you read about them you can see them (too many to link to here, so just follow this main link). I wish the Academy would do something like this for the short animated movie nominees in the running for Oscars this year, since otherwise most of us will never get to see them. Some SF awards like the Hugos have done this with some tales in the short story awards nominations, making them available online so more people can get to read them and I think short animations could benefit from this in the same way, especially now it is so easy to upload short videos for mass viewing online.

Black Horse

I love the animation in this advert for Lloyds TSB bank (not that it makes me want to bank with them but the animation is nice), which is based around a train ride which also incorporates a couple's journey through life. The animation in it is lovely and is it just me or does a lot of the style in this advert look like it has been cribbed Les Triplettes de Belleville (probably better known here as Bellville Rendevous)? The faces of the characters (especially the long noses), the elevated train track and the style of the tall, skinny house all look like they've been borrowed from Belleville (perhaps another reason I like it since I thought Belleville was a great little movie with some brilliant animation and some almost Gerald Scarfe-like characters here and there).