Author Archives: Editor

Russian Animation: Shareholders

by Editor

This is a cartoon criticism of capitalism by Roman Davydov, from Soyuzmultfilm.  It was made in 1963 and captures the early 1960s better than most American cartoons have.  It’s look at the struggle of an American worker fooled into thinking he’s doing well because he’s a stock owner in his company is very accurate and should speak loudly in today’s circumstances.  The widescreen art looks like it comes straight out of an illustrated magazine advertisement of the time.  The finale with all the race cars and crashes is incredible.  There is an irritating tendency to refer to films like this one as ‘propaganda.’  Why is it so difficult to criticize capitalism in democracies?  Capitalism is simply an economic program and should be under constant criticism and assault from all sides.  There is absolutely nothing about capitalism that should protect it from becoming obsolete.

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Obama and FCC Give Full Remote Control of Your TV Hardware to Corporations

by Editor

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Federal Communications Commission have given media corporations the legal power to remotely disable functions and outputs in your television, DVD players, and content receivers. This decision means that when you buy equipment it will have a shut-off and control mechanism built into it allowing Warner Brothers or Disney to flip a switch that will turn off various parts of your equipment so that you cannot do certain things with what you are watching. A lot of equipment currently sitting in American households already has this circuitry built in and now it can be activated by the entertainment companies.  The Obama administration is going after more than television equipment though.  It’s putting this control stuff into computers and operating systems.

This is a new form of fascism.  Corporate fascism.  When the government allows total control of what the population is allowed to do with its own media equipment and content you have in place all the machinery of totalitarian control of expression, both artistic and journalistic.

Smash your TV and throw it over the fence onto the White House lawn.  Better yet, open Obama’s mouth up wide and shove your TV down his throat.  I’ve had just about enough of this corporate-owned jerk in the White House who is more concerned about finding his cigarettes than saving the Gulf of Mexico from an outrageous act of ‘accidental’ terrorism by British Petroleum.  Obama should have a swim in the new Gulf.  The man who vowed to stop all the secret torture and military clown tribunals and needless wars has inflicted more grotesque harm in these areas than his monkey-brained predecessor.  Obama’s teeth drip baby blood.  He’s a human predator drone.  And now he’s disabling our televisions sets.

No media company is going to shut off part of my television, I can tell you that now.  I don’t give a damn what President O says.  He’s done in 2012.  It doesn’t matter who runs against this nitwit in 2012.  I’m voting for them.  I’m too angry to give a crap anymore.  Let’s give Hillary a shot.

See, you don’t need a tea party to be angry about a guy who steals for Wall Street.  You can do it all by yourself.

Film: Objets Oubliés

by Editor

Italian filmmaker, Fabio Scacchioli, works with zero budget and creates masterpieces of Italian cinema.  I think the great movement of cinema in the 21st century is underway and it looks to me like Italy is riding the top of the wave.  We are finally reaching the point where an artwork is created with a ‘zero budget,’ just like a painting is.  Picasso painted for just the cost of his canvas, his paints, and his own time.  Filmmakers can now work the same way, enjoying the privacy of their studios and making things with their hands and their computers and their cameras.  Filmmaking has finally become a visual art.  Online cinema is the most powerful movement in all of art today.  It is alive and aware of its potential.  Artists like Scacchioli are going to take it very far indeed and they are going to become the Picassos of the future.  It is time to start paying attention to this cinema, not as a silly form of entrance into the moribund feature film studio career, but as a major art form in and of itself.

This film, Objets Oubliés, is built upon four pieces of film found on the street.  The filmmaker attempts to connect the unknown images into some sort of coherent whole.  The narrating voice exists only in relationship to this attempt to create life and continuity from unknown materials discovered by pure chance.  There is something like a form of grace and true love of film or cinema in this act.  It seems to me to represent the very life of film.  It also seems like an effort that would quite obviously and most certainly originate in Italy.  It is mindful romance.  It is the literal taking of the baton from an unknown hand and carrying it forward to make something unexpected and marvelous.  One person makes something without knowing it is part of an artwork that has not come into existence yet.  But it will and it does.  The artist comes along and picks it up and shows us that the artwork existed even before he arrived.

Film: World’s Most Boring Musician Proves It

by Editor

I’ve always said that the world’s most boring musician is John Mayer and now the accommodating fellow has gone and proven my point.  He’s made a film about his average day during a tour.  From the looks of this film he could be attending a corporate seminar to give a PowerPoint presentation.  Shiny hotel fixtures and breakfast buffets laid out in one’s room certainly must go far toward making exciting music.  And look!  Sneakers!  He’s wearing sneakers!  How charmingly boyish.  And he finishes the film with ‘Fin.’  Just like the French do!  Gosh!  Fin!  And look at that audience of his!  My goodness!  They look like they’re at a Bed Bath & Beyond shopping for a new duvet cover.

I think the best shot in the movie is the elevator man opening the doors and ushering Mr. Mayor out into the lobby.  But John Mayer should stay in the elevator.  And play there.

Every once in a while I like to post something I hate.  It keeps things real.

Film: Look at that fire! Oh boy!

by Editor

Sit down, turn off your cell phone, close the door. You are about to see something magnificent. Several days ago, I posted a film, Yellow Plastic Raygun, on Vimeo. And today I catch this big fish of a filmmaker from Italy who made a comment about the film and who has made a gorgeous and moving statement about war and destruction. It grabs you and just won’t let you go until it finishes.  The use of old images, combined, layered and cut into pieces to form new images and artworks fascinates me when applied to video.  This is an example of the art form at its finest.

Fabio Scacchioli made this.  He’s made others, but this is the first one I’ve viewed and I’m convinced already.  Italy appears to be very healthy in its cinema heart.

The filmmaker has a web site.

Animation: The Scared Ladybird

by Editor | 1 Comment

Ok, do these kids have any idea how good this work is? I think they probably do, because they are a total crack-up. ‘People say I’m spotty, but I say I’m dotty.’ Lots of laughs and excellent dialog from these kids who are going to turn their school (Oxley Park Primary School) into an animation studio very quickly. This is the result of another animation camp from Quirky Pictures.