Sometimes it’s difficult to imagine the far-flung past in anything other than black & white because that’s the kind of image we usually see. But here is one of the oldest color film tests from the Kodak company in 1922. Here’s a link to information about the footage.
Via Neatorama
This is the opening cinematic from the upcoming Wii game Epic Mickey. It is fun and has that ever-flowing look of a Disney cartoon. I have one quibble with it. You can’t always do in computer animation what you do in hand-drawn animation. In this case, I think the problem is in Mickey’s hands. They are a little off.
Simon Tofield has another episode of his extremely amusing Simon’s Cat series.
In general, I am deeply suspicious of the web trend for geeks to head toward steampunk, octopuses, and all things Cthulhu. There’s a vague and creeping racism underneath the cute old-fashioned, brass-fitted surface. I’ve also held a certain amount of contempt for H.P. Lovecraft. I think the guy was a closeted white supremacist with a knack for telling horrifying tales that are about white supremacists. I can imagine him as Sarah Palin’s favorite author… if she reads. The Cthulhu stories are genuinely frightening and his writing does contain a high creep quotient. But I’m just about ready to launch DOS attacks on sites that dig every alien octopus that shows its tentacles.
This, of course, is Lovecraft’s Call of the Cthulhu in under 2 minutes. It’s very well done and I like the use of the newspapers to move the story. Declan Moran made it. He also made Dante’s Inferno in Under 2 Minutes.
A film about an attractive spy during a rocket launch. By Clement Bolla, Aurelia Vernhes, and Laurent Gillot.
Today, I found out, purely by accident, that I am connected to the ‘ground zero’ mosque in an unexpected way. First of all, ‘ground zero mosque’ is a terrible name. The building is not on ground zero. It’s a couple of blocks away. It’s simply a New York Islamic center. I lived in New York for many years and I know perfectly well that lower Manhattan is tiny. Everything is near ground zero! For weeks, I have been reading articles about the plans for converting a building in lower Manhattan into an Islamic center and the accompanying controversy, based in large part upon the notion that an Islamic center close to ground zero somehow insults the memories of the 9/11 victims. I have made my thoughts on the virulent anti-Muslim bigotry spreading across the United States and Europe very clear in an earlier post. This form of bigotry is going to be seen eventually as one of the great shames of the early 21st century.
During my web travels this morning, I came across a Salon article about how all the fear-mongering surrounding this Islamic center got started.
Here’s a quote from the article:
Dec. 8, 2009: The Times publishes a lengthy front-page look at the Cordoba project. “We want to push back against the extremists,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the lead organizer, is quoted as saying. Two Jewish leaders and two city officials, including the mayor’s office, say they support the idea, as does the mother of a man killed on 9/11. An FBI spokesman says the imam has worked with the bureau. Besides a few third-tier right-wing blogs, including Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs site, no one much notices the Times story.
Well, as chance would have it, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is the older brother of my very best friend throughout my teenage years. I grew up in Washington, D.C. where Mr. Abdul Rauf’s father was the director of the Islamic Center. It is a beautiful mosque located on Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest D.C. I spent many of my days there in the seventies and early eighties because my friend’s family had their apartment inside the center. Those were days filled with the adventure of young minds trying to explore and figure out what they were going to do in life. I was – and still am – a non-religious liberal-minded fellow, more interested in riding bikes than attending services. My friend was the youngest of three brothers and he was very intelligent, rather sensitive, but always an irritatingly persistent arguer on almost any topic we could find. We’d argue on buses, in cars, walking through D.C., watching TV, going to movies, playing football – just about anywhere was a good spot for an argument. I spent many weekends there at the Islamic Center playing soccer with my friend and the young men who worked there. They tried to teach Backgammon to me down in the basement of the mosque where they smoked in secret because if Mr. Abdul Rauf found out about it they would have been in a little trouble with him. The father took his work seriously. But he was a gentle and kind man. He treated me like his son. I had many dinners at home with the family and Mr. Abdul Rauf never once tried to make me feel bad for not being a Muslim. He would answer my questions with simplicity and understanding. He would tell some little stories in order to illustrate a point. I was always told that he spent much of his time studying the Holy Qu’ran and writing books about it. I was amazed by his library of books. His office was a quiet place where books were piled and papers were spilled across his desk. I liked this man. He was reserved and slightly imposing, but profoundly kind and he took care of everyone I ever saw him come into contact with.
My friend’s father knew that his son and I had developed a keen interest in Super 8 film cameras. He invited us to come into the mosque for a wedding ceremony and he said we could film it. We were to be the chroniclers of a real Muslim wedding! We prepared for this over several weeks. My friend taught me the ways of showing respect in a mosque. He showed me the beauty inside a mosque. I felt comfortable there even though I didn’t have a religious bone in my body. Frankly, I felt more comfortable there than I’ve ever felt in a Catholic church. Much more relaxed. And the beauty is of a much less imposing and ostentatious nature. The beauty is subtle and serene. Like water.
So my best friend and I filmed his father performing an Islamic wedding. We felt very much in charge of what we were doing and we did the best job we knew how. I always felt proud that I had this connection to the mosque and its activities. There were plenty of other occasions the family invited me to. I even helped them prepare for some of the big feasts and celebrations. I’d haul dessert trays and pile foods onto tables out in the courtyard. I’d help clean the family apartment after some big gathering or dinner. Then my friend and I would sneak into all the leftovers when his parents were asleep. I believe that this was where I had my first taste of a magnificent dessert called baklava. It was a good time then and I had experiences that are very rare for an American boy who doesn’t worship a god.
Here’s a music video made entirely out of illustrations, photos, and text from second-hand books! I never watch music videos all the way through. But I watched this one and admired its clever associations of images to lyrics. It’s all spelled out for you in the most charming and humorous way. Good song too! Ben Reed made this for a band called The Wave Pictures.
Here’s how you obfuscate 1000 years of history. You animate it into an unintelligible eight minutes for an expo in Shanghai because certainly those Chinese are interested in how the Poles won their freedom. But the real problem with this animation that seems to place Poland’s entire history squarely into an Xbox game is the ending. All that history brings us up to the overbearing and rather creepy final images of the great corporate towers ascending into the heavens, completely taking over and creating the corporate citadel of wonder that houses only cubicle workers and offers relaxing courtyards where business people can take a mandatory lunch. It’s as if the only thing the western world can figure out to do with cities anymore is to turn them into gargantuan corporate business parks unfit for any human habitation.
If you don’t know anything about being a painter, Andy Warhol clears it all up in this short film clip. This is the entire 20th century in art summed up to perfection by a raving genius.
Here’s a 1936 cartoon from the Max Fleischer studio. Little fish need to go to school under the ocean. But one little fish doesn’t behave so well and gets hooked by some dangerous trouble.
This is the latest version of a print I’ve been working on that’s loosely based on my Yellow Plastic Raygun film. I printed what I thought was my final version on a large canvas and looked at it for several weeks until I decided that it was timid and boring. So I went back to work and tried to let loose with the image and not worry about mooring the thing in some kind of reality. So this is what I’ve got to show for the effort. I like it much better this way.
I also renamed it from Don’t Turn Back to Don’t Look Now!
Here are the first two versions of the print.
Animator, Michel Gagné, has just premiered his latest film. Sensology is a visualization of music played by Paul Plimley (piano) and Barry Guy (bass). The images actually look like the sounds they accompany. I couldn’t help thinking all the way through the film that the pictures were exactly how the notes sounded. I’m normally very hard to amuse with shapes that illustrate music, but this piece is short and good. My favorite part is the machine-like animation near the end.
Via Cartoon Brew
Filmmaker Declan Moran made this under 2-minute version of Dante’s Inferno which is based on a book called Dante’s Inferno: A Comedy’ by the Brothers Grim & Grimy (undead). I like it. Dante’s actual book is so full of colorful Italian whining that I find it almost unreadable. I mean really, the nasty old fellow used his trip through the underworld to take out his revenge for every little insult he ever suffered at the hands of almost anyone he ever met. Insufferable. Well, suffer no more, the Inferno is here in short form!
Here’s a super fun game that will have you drawing all kinds of lines to try to guide the dropping balls into the cup. Sounds easy. Try it. It gets harder and pretty close to insane.
Since the Anti-Defamation League has just decided to support the mission of bigots opposed to the building an Islamic center in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site in New York City, I thought I’d offer them a special presentation on the building of a mosque.
Another suggestion for all bigots like those who work at the Anti-Defamation League would be to schedule a field trip to a local mosque to see just how well-treated one is upon entering a mosque. If you have never been inside a mosque I would recommend going. What you imagine goes on inside a mosque is most certainly not what goes on inside a mosque. Give it a try sometime. Get to know the people inside the building and when you start to feel really bad about the way you have behaved, just chalk it up to your own uneducated imagination.
Here’s an article about the raging anti-Muslim attitudes spreading across the U.S. and Europe.