From Russian animation studio Toonbox comes this marvelous animation based on a poem by Sasha Svirsky. I don’t understand a word of it but I love the sound of it. I really must find the woman who does the voice-over. She is just magnificent and totally fearless. The drawings are fascinating. The rhythm is catchy. Toonbox does so many of the best animations that I see. They seem to balance their commercial projects with artistic ones very well.
Via Cold Hard Flash
This is British artist Banksy sneaking out at night to deface a wall that has a security camera. It think in general that it’s a pretty neat idea to deface, destroy, disable, or demolish any 
wall that has a security camera. This artist is unidentified because he probably likes it that way, makes more money that way, and avoids arrest that way. He uses stencils a lot. Seems like he can draw. Seems angry in a mild sort of way. Seems like he runs away a lot. But I think his pictures are good. I like them. I keep looking for more of them. The odd part is that I don’t look at them for long. Very short lifespans. About seven seconds. Then finished. Like signs passing on the road. They hit fast then run.
I think he should make a picture that you are supposed to look at for an hour. But when have you ever seen someone doing that? Stand in front of picture for an hour. You’d think they were nuts, wouldn’t you?
About art galleries Banksy says:
These galleries are just trophy cabinets for a handful of millionaires, the public never has any real say in what art they see.
Damn right. When you give the public a real say in what art they are going to see, you know what you get?
A T-shirt.
This 2008 film was written, produced and directed by Javier Chillon of Madrid, Spain. The director of photography was Luis Fuentes. Artistic direction by Ángel Boyano. In the fifties, a Soviet cosmonaut chimpanzee crash-lands in West Germany. Within weeks, a deadly virus has spread across the country and confounds all the scientific experts. The film is composed of entirely original footage made to look like a fifties documentary or newsreel. The very first shots with the camera tilting down through the trees to show us the crash site at long range is a nearly prefect rendition of old documentary style right down to how the camera would move. You have to really know what you are doing to come up with shots like that. Very fine work.
This is science fiction that is a deadly accurate portrayal of the calm, governmental, ponderous yet urgent, carefully-framed and full-of-import quality found in mid-century documentary films. The humor is sly and builds its effect gradually. It’s also somewhat frightening.
Found at No fat clips!!!
DOWNLOAD PINOCCHIO – CHAPTER 3
Per l’Italia! For playing in the living room!
This is one of the great gifts from Italy to the children of the world. Carlo Collodi’s 1883 masterpiece, The Adventures of Pinocchio, is the story of the wooden marionette who desperately wants to be a real boy. His adventures are full of mischief, wonder, sadness, joy, treachery, danger and all the exuberant life of a real Italian boy. This is the English translation by Carol Della Chiesa. The first seventeen chapters of this wonderful novel were recorded intermittently between 1999 and 2006, specifically for children to enjoy on the web. But I was unable to finish it. It is a very long story indeed and the demands of this particular recording were very great. I have decided that it would be a good thing for Italy and its most beautiful living rooms if I were to finally finish the book. I am cleaning up the sound a little bit and will start recording the eighteenth chapter soon. So here we begin the long story and in a few months we will reach the finish!
Subscribe to audio with iTunes
Reading and illustration by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute copies of our MP3 audio or video stories. They are for your personal use. If you choose to burn our MP3 stories onto a personal CD, do not make copies of the CD or distribute them to other people. Also, do not sell CDs containing our audio stories. All audio stories are copyrighted by Candlelight Stories, Inc.
DOWNLOAD PINOCCHIO – CHAPTER 2
Per l’Italia! For playing in the living room!
This is one of the great gifts from Italy to the children of the world. Carlo Collodi’s 1883 masterpiece, The Adventures of Pinocchio, is the story of the wooden marionette who desperately wants to be a real boy. His adventures are full of mischief, wonder, sadness, joy, treachery, danger and all the exuberant life of a real Italian boy. This is the English translation by Carol Della Chiesa. The first seventeen chapters of this wonderful novel were recorded intermittently between 1999 and 2006, specifically for children to enjoy on the web. But I was unable to finish it. It is a very long story indeed and the demands of this particular recording were very great. I have decided that it would be a good thing for Italy and its most beautiful living rooms if I were to finally finish the book. I am cleaning up the sound a little bit and will start recording the eighteenth chapter soon. So here we begin the long story and in a few months we will reach the finish!
Subscribe to audio with iTunes
Reading and illustration by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute copies of our MP3 audio or video stories. They are for your personal use. If you choose to burn our MP3 stories onto a personal CD, do not make copies of the CD or distribute them to other people. Also, do not sell CDs containing our audio stories. All audio stories are copyrighted by Candlelight Stories, Inc.
I sat down with my Kindle e-reader on Saturday morning to read the Los Angeles Times. There was an article about an L.A. used bookstore called Iliad Books. Sounded nice. So I went. What should I find but a section of books about books and publishing. There was a copy of The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making by Adrian Johns. The author’s main thrust is to examine how books in early modern England influenced and largely caused the development of the modern scientific method and the general acquisition and spread of knowledge. He wonders why readers assume that books are accurate and fixed. This is an interesting inquiry in light of the recent changes in publishing which involve ever-changeable electronic publishing and web postings. The history of the effort to make books fixed and true representations of their authors’ intentions and ideas is a fascinating one. It includes an analysis of widespread piracy that dogged publishers of books from the very beginnings of printed material.
Thinking about the nature of books and their history, along with the underworld of book manipulation, piracy, copyright, and the conveying of knowledge is essential as publishing undergoes its greatest changes since the beginnings of the printed page.
