Pee Wee's Playhouse, the Movie

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Pee Wee's Playhouse: The Movie!
Do you think if Tim Burton direct it Johnny Depp will play Jambi??? Inquiring minds!

Sugar PSA

New video project up on YouTube.  This one is a collaboration with two of my class mates, Holly and Kristina.  Basically, I shot a bunch of crazy footage and turned them loose to post-produce the heck out of it.  The assignment was to make a 30 sec ish PSA.  I think we killed it:



I was cleaning sugar out of my ears for days :(.

The Velvets

The Velvet Underground is reuniting... for my Birthday!!  At the New York Public Library no less:

 http://www.nypl.org

The Velvet Underground with Lou Reed, Maureen ‘Moe’ Tucker, Doug Yule & David Fricke

Today, the Velvet Underground are the stars they always deserved to be – the Beatles of New York – with a rich and still mysterious story that continues to unfold: in the new visual collection, The Velvet Underground: New York Art, and tonight, in this unprecedented reunion of Reed, Tucker and Yule, on Tuesday, December 8th, LIVE from the NYPL!

  Too bad I won't be in NYC waiting in the freezing weather for a sold out show.  Hopefully this will result in some kind of free podcast I can listen to whilst pixel pushing.  Of course it's kind of lame since John Cale ISN'T going to be there, but I think he's probably cleared the day to come over to my basement to do a single note 48hour jam session featuring the cosmic tone on my casiotone.  Or a least that's how I party.

What should NOT be.

 This video makes me never want to touch vfx software again.  in fact, it makes me want to destroy all vfx software in a systematic holocaust to make sure this never happens again.



On the other hand... that cat tail on the exotic dancer certainly was a creative leap, no?

marvin gets minskied

Marvin Minsky lets you read his books online:

http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/

for free.

okay, not "society of the mind", but the most of the rest, including his new book.
I know what you are all getting for x-mas.

radiolab as visualized algorithims

Robert Hodgin


Solar rework from flight404 on Vimeo.


Radiolab + Processing = awesome.

Stop Motion

I'm pretty excited to be done with this project, inspired by a month of horror films and a five second challenge that turned into ten seconds of fun and learning (oh yay!). I did the stop motion first with a dollar store Halloween decoration, filmed myself against one of my truly spooky bedroom walls, then spent hours in photoshop color correcting and using a script to turn them into short movies when loaded into AE.




I'm looking forward to doing more stop motion pieces in the future, maybe with some more constructed sets.

Saul Bass

I found an awesome overview today of Saul Bass on wellmedicated.com. He designed the title sequences for Psycho, Vertigo, The Man with the Golden Arm, and lots of other worthwhile films. Apparently, along with movie titles and posters, he also designed the logos for AT&T, Quaker Oats, and United Way. I love his use of strong shapes and negative spaces, very high modern. So cool.




Also,
check out an analytical break down of his title sequences at notcoming.com.

visual stimulation overload

The first minute 10 of this promo somehow encapsulates what my brain is going though this semester.

Designflux #09 is OUT! from Designflux : Devoted to Motion on Vimeo.

soft sigh and more to come....

Ballin'

I recently complete a class assignment to document a person describing their occupation or hobby. I choose my friend, John Mayer (no, not the rock musician) to share with the world a little bit about his job: Ballin'. Enjoy!

October: one month, 31 films of horror!

So my friend Sarah and I have begun our October challenge. We plan on watching one horror film every day for the whole month, culminating with some sort of Halloween II on Halloween or something spectacular-scream-mystery-fest-of-doomed-hypens! So I though I'd blog about it. My first choice was a film I've had out from the library for a little while now, but have been saving for the Octoberhorrorfest09 called Andy Warhol presents: "Blood for Dracula" a film by Paul Morrissey. It actually wasn't really that terrifying of a film, despite the bad (and sometime confusing) accents, emaciated actors, and spooky filmed on location feel.
Here's the opening shot, a sickly Count painting on his own character's face, ironically in an empty mirror.




The plot center's around a starving Count Dracula reluctantly leaving his Romanian castle to search for virgin blood. His assistant believes that Italy will be full of virgins owning to the fact that the pope lives there, so it must be very religious. Dracula is a vegetarian, very sickly, and just wants to drink some virgin blood so he can go back home and hang out with his stuffed owl collection. There's also a great communist servant character named Mario played with in anachronistic New York accent who basically chops and sexes his way through the film. The scariest part was maybe the cameo by Roman Polanski as a tricky italian peasant, in which he uses the full powers of his 70's mustache to out trick Dracula's personal assistant. I think this is a good, arty start to what promises to be a month of watching people vomit blood, rise from the grave, and back away in horror. Hey, where are YOU going? Wait, come back....

Public Option is the only option

Let's talk about health, baby:



anybody want to get together and call some congress people? With 50-70% public approval for some sort of public option in the polls, basically if democrats drop the ball on the public option, it's time to question who you want to vote for next year, pepsi or coke. Man, I'm pretty sure I can see the blood money bulging out of the congressmen's pockets and fluttering down to the stained carpet of congress. disgusting.

I dare the terminally ill without insurance to visit DC and set up hospital beds on the congress steps. Maybe people dying outside of their puppet show may be the only photo-op that would make those selfish bastards turn their heads from counting their campaign contributions. Anybody up for a trip to dc?

Seasame Parodies

It all started with a video gum posting today on a sesame skit Parody of "Mad Men":


Then lead to "Twin Peaks":



400 blows:



Waiting for Godot:



I love Alistair Cookie's commentary "A play so Modern and so brilliant it makes absolutely no sense to anybody, including Alister." The ending on this is pretty cute, and actually WAS the original ending to Beckett's play... or maybe not.
Well, have fun kids, I wonder if they ever did a "Soprano's" parody?

Trailers that make you cry... a lot

Coming in November, for those of us who love to weep for 90 minutes:




oh, Oprah, you always lead me in the right direction... although I can't support Lenny Kravitz in anything in anyway.

The Cat Piano

Narrated by Nick Cave, a dark tale of a piano, MADE FROM KITTY CATS!!! I'm scared, and slightly amused.

The Cat Piano from PRA on Vimeo.

quoted from Motionographer.com

Opportunity for Video Artist

Cruising Craigslist today I found an AMAZING opportunity for a fellow Portland Video Artist:

Lice Circus(Portland, Oregon)
Date: 2009-09-13, 9:03PM PDT
Reply to: comm-abfbu-1373231965@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

Looking for a video artist interested in documenting the lice that have taken over my dreadlocks . I thought I was turning grey prematurely and then my GF discovered that the grey was moving. She is calling it my lice circus. As a vegan I don't want to use pesticides on my scalp of any kind so I have hired a professional Cambodian nit picker to remove the lice circus and to preserve my incredible trophy dreadlocks that took 8 years to grow. The nit picker is going to help me return the lice safely to the natural environment by taking them to a public park and putting them in the trees. I would really like to get this on video tape because it will be a feel good moment for all creatures large and small. I would not be getting rid of my lice circus if my GF did not threaten to leave and the hell if I'm going bald without my dreads. I am also offering the entire lice circus for $125 if you want them to complement your dreads.

I would totally do this, but, you know, I have a bit too much on my plate to take on another project. Any takers? Maybe he'll knock off a few bucks on the Lice circus if you document it for him.

Typographical insipration

I heart this:

Typophile Film Festival 5 Opening Titles from Brent Barson on Vimeo.

Handmade by students and faculty at Brigham Young University (BYU), Apparently this is all stop motion (ie, no after effects or computer generated graphics).

Gabe Askew's unofficial fan video

Check out this "fan" video for Grizzly Bear made by Gabe Askew and featured on Motionographer today.

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

Now *that* is some sweet fan loving! I'm so happy this exists.

Illustrator

So I've been doing more vector art lately trying to upgrade my illustrator skills to prepare for the coming video motion graphic storm I'm preparing to unlesh upon the world. The first sign of the apocalypse, behold, a pale bunny!!!

8-bit trip

Check out this epic stop motion music video from Swedish creative duo Rymdreglage

Finally, an accurate depiction of my childhood!

48hr film fest!

Whew! Just got done recovering from doing the Portland 48hr film festival. Our 7 minute opus The Long Meow" produced by Team Bokeh was debuted last night at the Hollywood theatre. The film crew was mainly comprised of my fellow PCC students, from the director, dp, main writer, ad, lighting, title design. I was the Production Designer, which mainly meant I ran around looking for cool props, tried to dress the actors appropriately, and moved furniture and knick-knacks around like a kid with OCD. I am proud to say that the chewbacca/werewolf mask that I made for my editing class made a triumphant return to cinema.



I'll see what the film festival rules are for posting the movie, and may have it posted to my portfolio site soon for further viewing.

Wes and Bill get bendy

Wes Anderson directs Bill Murry; now in Claymation!!



perhaps?

Mad Men Avatar fun

Mad Men awesomeness! After being reminded of how good the AMC period show "Mad Men" is, I found this application that lets you make your own Mad Men Avatar on the AMC website.

Here's Mine:

I was going for the sophisticated women of the night doing her walk of shame through the office to get to her next fabulous meeting of the day. Good Morning, Peggy!

Gold Key Comics

So being a scavenger of sorts, I went out hunting tonight for some new inspiring desktop backgrounds and had some great luck with some Gold Key Comics' Covers. Check out these beauties!






Star Trek??? Twilight Zone?? all in groovy sixties comic book form?? who knew? They even made some Dark Shadows and Ripley's Believe It or Not comics as well. I found a great Flickr account with all sorts of fun vintage art and photos of old signs and postcards. Enjoy!

Jim Henson gets Surreal, and it's okay by me!

Check out Jim Henson's surrealistic 1966 short film "Time Piece"

Time Piece


Posted on I'm learning To Share

Movies, movies, movies

Looking through the film vaults for public domain movies I'd like to share some of the films I've watched in the last week:







I'm still trying to find Horror Hotel/ City of the Dead on something other than the internet archives. I may have to go to the Madness of Movies to find it...

New Website

So I finally got my act together, bought a domain name, and put up my very own website.

trepancrafts.com

I'm still working out the kinks and trying to decide whether or not to put up more of my 2d art, but so far it's a good show case of all the video work I've been doing up till now. Fun, fun, fun!

This is Special

A special Youtube tribute to Father's day!!

This guy is AMAZING!! Lou Reed meets Leonard Cohen meets the crazy guy screaming and laughing manically in the street at nine in the morning.

And then this one looks familiar somehow...


God bless the internets...

RiffTrax: Mst3k?.... uh, kinda

So has anyone seen this before? I don't think it's new, but some of the writers/actors from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 have a website called RiffTrax in which they're selling audio commentaries to new (and old) movies that you can play in sync with the rented movies you may own. They also allow user to upload and sell their own commentaries. You can buy DVD from them as well and wait the few weeks, if you're not techno savey



Sorry, Joel's not involved... still pretty funny.

The Room

August 15th at Cinema 21. Who's with me???

Will blog for food

So I just got a blogging job with Examiner.com blogging about Portland's vegan restaurant. I get paid by how many hits I get, so read up, good people. My official title is Portland Vegan Restaurant Examiner and you can read my articles here.

Future plans include writing a list of places that serve vegan icecream; interviewing the mastermind behind Voodoo Doughnuts new vegan yeast doughnuts; going to "Casa Diablo", the world's only vegan strip club; and interviewing the chef of the new Vegan bakery, that's opening on Alberta in June, Back to Eden. Excitement!

Also, check out my Awesome Vegan Links list for more restaurant review sites, and a link to a list of Vegan beers and wine that are popular around Portland. I love you guys, let me know if there's something or someone I should write about!

Three Wolf Moon!!

Three Wolf Moon!!



So according to neatorama.com, there's been an outbreak of hilariously snarky reviews on Amazon.com over this T-shirt. Samples include

"This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that's when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to 'howl at the moon' from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn't have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn't settle for the first thing that comes to him.

I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the 'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark."

As well as:

"I accidentally spilled a glass of Tuscan Whole Milk down the front of this shirt, and my soul was torn from my body and thrown into heaven by a jealous God."

45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Proper care and feeding of your three wolves, May 19, 2009
By Mr. Crumbles (USA) - See all my reviews
It's a Tuesday afternoon, and you walk from your single-wide to the mailbox to discover your new three wolves t-shirt has arrived. Your heart skips a beat; it's time for the chicks and vision quests to start pouring in. So you rip open the package, throw it on, and await your destiny, right?

STOP!

I've seen too many three wolves t-shirts put down unnecessarily at the hands of owners who did not fully understand their needs. Wolf t-shirts are unlike any other garment you've ever owned. The ownership experience can be extremely rewarding, but it carries responsibilities. Here are the three most important things to know about these remarkable t-shirts.

1. You are the wolf pack leader. This is most important, so I'll repeat it: You are the wolf pack leader. You must gain the respect as alpha wolf before you can safely put on this t-shirt. At mealtime, the alpha wolf eats first, then his subordinates. The same thing goes for bathtime. Before you put the shirt in the washing machine the wolves have to see YOU bathe first. Using the same washing machine is ideal, but a shower or bathtub can work just as well.

2. You must respect your three wolves' natural diet. This should include plenty of corn chips, slurpies, and hot pockets. Feeding should be done on the couch while watching television (it relaxes them). Fallen crumbs that hit your large, protruding belly should be enough, but your wolves will definitely appreciate a dropped chicken wing every now and then. Just try not to spoil them. Other than water, their bodies can only handle cheap, low-quality canned beer. Nothing imported, ever.

3. These t-shirts are very territorial. Even though you may have established yourself as pack leader, in their minds the three wolves are still above everything else in your closet. This means you cannot wear anything over or under the t-shirt. Not even a wifebeater. Nice-looking pants can make them nervous, so you're best sticking with something like oversized jeans, preferably tattered with lots of holes. This should minimize the chances of your wolves becoming jealous. Otherwise, if you want to play it completely safe, a pair of boxers or briefs without pants should pose the wolves no threat.

Now that you've read these guidelines, you're ready to become a responsible three wolves t-shirt owner. Get ready, it's going to change your life.

Okay, Okay, I'll stop! But Do check this link out before the owners take it down. And Vange, you might want to use the bathroom before you look at this. Hey, I'm just saying.

Onion Video

God, I love the Onion. This is almost as good as the cover with Bob Dylan on it that just says "How did this man rhyme so many words???". You make my week bearable, oh Onion of my eye.

Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics To Find Cause Of Dorm Fire

This is so awesome, I filmed it on my phone's camcorder and have been showing it over skype to my top twenty myspace peeps!

Algorithm

Oh man, it's done! It's done-ish! It's sort of, hey wait I could really change that.... sigh, you know what they say, you never finish a project, it just gets taken away from you.

So here's the Polly High video for their song "Algorithm" that I've been working on for the past year, shooting, editing, learning after effects and the like. It's been really fun!

Algorithm from Ruth Pierich on Vimeo.

If you like the band, Polly High, you can contact them here:

http://www.myspace.com/pollyhighmusic

Thanks to Andy and Jack for everything!

Filmed By Bike

So we've finally finished making the promo for Kim's internship with Filmed by Bike.



We had five cameras, seven people, and about twenty hours of footage. Robert edited it down to action shots with the drumline audio over it, and I edited in the Interview soundbites and tweaked the audio for the final piece. Aliye also made a "bootleg promo" that's on Vimeo. Pretty darned good, if I have to say so myself.

let's paint, exercise, and blow your freakin' mind...

La Onde

So we had to do a one minute animation yesterday as a final for our "Vector Graphics in animation" class at PCC. I did a Cindy Shermanesque sea voyage set to a song I wrote in an electronic music class I took in the Fall semester. It's pretty ridiculous, and kind of awesome. La Onde is french for "the wave" though not a sea wave, which would be vague. hmm.

Music Video in the workings

So we learned how to do rotoscoping in Flash last week using video footage. I thought I'd try and make some footage that I shot for a music video a little more interesting. Here's the test I turned in for a project. I'd like to eventually do this to the whole video. It's shot in a friend's Winnebago, btw.




It's so amazing to feel like anything I can come up with out of my head is possible to make using these programs. The outcomes are limited really only to my imagination. Now where did I put it...?

1000fps

1000 frames per second. High Def.

This is what it looks like.


I-Movix SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel from David Coiffier on Vimeo.

Band Photo

So I spent a few hours last night working on a non-cheesy band photo for my band. It seemed like kind of a pain in the ass to coordinate an actual photo shoot, so I took the easy way out and just used a combination of photos from our myspace page, and one from a video I shot of my self. I think it looks pretty cool as far as band pictures go.

Our first show, by the way is May 30th downtown at the Tiger Bar (NOT the Hungry Tiger, this place is on Broadway next to OutsideIn). Get there early 'cause I'm going to try and get 86'd halfway through our set, ha ha, just joking, although please, nobody buy me alcohol in shot form, for the love of god.

A Wolf loves Pork

Rad picture animation posted on Cartoon Brew this week. We've been studying stuff like this in my mm231, this is a bit over the top, "time on your hands" deal. It's very playful, and well worth your 3min.

Why I love Video Gum

Every single time I go to Videogum.com I emerge ten times happier, and now a bit envious I didn't produce this music video. Good god, I'm in love. or blown away, if you will

oh yeah!

Time is flexible

Another beautiful sunny/rainy day in Portland. I was defeated in posting a comment on Vange's blog about how I, too, love scalding showers. Boo. Anyway. Listening to Nick Cave and remembering why I love the Hammond Organ, and how stoked I am to be playing with a band that has one. We actually have a few shows booked a month or two away, I'll be posting more info closer to the dates. I'm actually trying to plan a bit of a house party to with some really fun bands on the bill.

I just finished yet another Flash project for school and thought I would link it up to the page to show it off. You can find it here and play around with it. It's has movable buttons so you can practice making flower arrangements. I know, SO useful! The assignment was to figure out a creative way to use draggable buttons. Try it out and tell me what you think!

Tarotmation

So just for fun I thought I'd post my final flash movie from my into to flash class that I finished last week. Yes, the music is Polly High, and some of it may look familiar.



The prof said it made a good candidate for his student hall of fame...

Polly High music video

Wow, what a week this has been! Thank goodness finals are over. Here's a preview of the music video for Polly High I've been working, almost a year in the making (!). It's a combination of my editing, flash, and after effects classes. I'm hoping to finish the full four minutes when I can get back into the computer labs next week, the render time on those animations is a beeatch.







This is the song "Algorithm" off of their debut album Run Little Boy. It's on sale at CDbaby.com, and it's real good.

Rom Zom Com

So we had to make a short film in my editing class that highlighted the idea of continuity editing. My group decided to do a Romantic horror comedy, or as I like to call it "Rom Zom Com". I wrote an original casiotone/garage band score for my version, and was in charge of the makeup/ special effects.



pretty freaky, I know.

Literal White Wedding

White Wedding: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

Check out this literal interpretation of Billy Idol's "White Wedding" music video via Video Gum. Pretty awesome!

Photography in 10 easy steps

Just wanted to post a link to an article on smashing magazine.com on how to improve your photography skills.  It's a good reminder for some of us, and has some great HDR photographs (which serve as a good inspiration to upgrade your camera, if nothing else.  The article can be read here.

It even has a bit of speculation to the direction of art and photography in general, which is nice to ponder over.

Scintillation

I found this video on Cartoonbrew this afternoon from a Paris based artist named Xavier Chassaing, apparently it's "comprised of over 35,000 photographs and using a mix of stop-motion and live-action projection mapping techniques.". No one is quite sure exactly how it was all done.

SCINTILLATION from Xavier Chassaing on Vimeo.

mmmmm....pretty.

Croquet Society!

Check out my first animation in Adobe After Effects.

a salute to Terry Gilliam!

Sita Sings the Blues

Check out this clip from Nina Paley's "Sita Sings the Blues" via cartoonbrew.com

It's won a ton (srsly) of festsival awards, but unfortunately, the bits of twenties jazz in the piece are under copyright lock and key, so the film can't be released. It's making the festival rounds right now, so if you get the chance, go see it in it's entirety. Maybe it will unlock the secrets for me of following Indian epic story lines and character dynamics (or confuse me even more). Anyway, it's beautiful, it features old jazz, hindi art, and lots of heartbreak. Sounds perfect.

Painting Show this First Thursday

So I'm putting the finishing touches on some paintings I'm hanging tomorrow at the Star Y Rose cafe on 24th and Alberta. There are four pretty large paintings in a series I've been working on called "The Carpet's Lava" about children and their imaginary friends. The size of the paintings is part of their overall appeal, so if you can make it out to Alberta sometime this February, you should stop by the cafe. My sister will also be showing 3 of her woodburns that are very much for sale. It's the blue building with the old pharmacy sign up above it. They serve up a mean cup of coffee and a cheerful slice of pie. They even have vegan voodoo donuts. Hooray for life (sorry, not enough ventilation in my work space).

Wolfman hat!

So I spent most of last week preparing to make a short monster movie in my video production/editing with a my group, group "buttons". I was in charge of special effects, hence the twenty hour wolfman costume making marathon. I particularly like the hat.





I should have the movie edited and up and running in a few weeks. Look for me as a sandwich eating zombie. mmmmmm....

Feelin' good

check out this awesomely designed nina simone music video from infosthetics.com

Feeling Good, Nina Simone
by mrfnk

I love the retro feel of this piece!

After a long day of wrestling with (and conquering) my Final Cut and After Effects projects it pretty much sums it up my day today on about three different levels. BTW, I got 10 out of 10, a "wow", and two ! ! on my first Flash animation assignment (the giraffe vs. plant posted below). Now if I could just get up any motivation at all to do my laundry, clean my room, or finish the fifty million projects I have going on I'd be stoked. Still, feelin' good, indeed.  You just have to feel inspired by Ms. Simone.

The Last Smoke

J'aime aime aime cette illustration de Garance Dore, a French illustrator and fashion blogger living in Paris.

This one is entitled "The Last Smoke", a tribute to the artist as she gives up cigarettes. Maybe I'm just in my own private mourning over Portland's new smoking ban.

Her blog can be found here.

Not a cartoon

Pete Seeger:





I find this surreal. and good. Woody would dig it, I think.

the best lines:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

NFB of Canada

Check out who's got the goods! The National Film Board of Canada just put up a new website featuring full length films, animations, as well as clips and trailers from throughout their history all posted online for your viewing pleasure. It's a nice resource for this ground breaking publicly owned organization. And if you dig a bit you can find some full length films and videos; a collection I'm sure they'll be expanding as time goes on. Who needs to convert their teevee to digital? Not me (okay, I will miss the Dr. Phil.....).

It did remind me of this Malcom Mclaren animation:




mmmm... publicly funded arts....

My first Flash!

Check out my very first mouse drawn flash animation! Someday I'll learn how to add sound...

Robert De'sposito

Check out Robert's awesome blog at:

www.otisopsed.blogspot.com

films, stories, fun!

Nirvana Bassist fails at Rock Band 2

Nirvana Bassists Krist Novoselic recently admitted to failing to be able to play the bass line for "In Bloom" on the video game "Rock Band 2" He writes on his blog at the Seattle Weekly's website:

"I know about Rock Band, because Nirvana has some songs on it. I had never tried the game before, so I gave it a go. I worked through the menu and found the song "In Bloom." I picked up the little guitar-shaped controller and hit the stage.

I knew the bass line to the song, of course, but I couldn't quite master this new, different way of playing it.

The game reminded me of Space Invaders. I tried to hit the notes cascading down the screen, but could barely keep up.

Meanwhile, this kid was watching me fumble with the game. I became self-conscious and took the controller off. I handed it to him, and he proceeded to jam on the song—and was really good! He had no idea that I was the musician he was emulating on the game, and I didn't tell him."

Hmmm, makes me feel better after the last time I went up against my arch nemesis Eric Clapton's guitar riffs on "Sunshine of Your Love" on Guitar Hero.  Don't be sad Krist, you could probably kick that kid's ass when it came to Space Invaders.... right?

Super Mario Live

Thanks to Videogum.com I now want to move to Japan.



Game show? Performance Art? Tribute to America? Does it even matter...?

Pre-golden Age Sci-fi

Check out this article featured on BoingBoing.net today concerning Pre-golden age (1904-33) sci-fi book cover art!

It's found on io9.com, an online sci-fi magazine that features eleven sci-fi books from the early twentieth century that have exceptionally good cover art, as well as a synopsis of their plots and a slight historical contextualization of the work. This one concerns "A shy and retiring Chicago scientist manages to communicate with an advanced alien civilization, whose scientific secrets he refuses to share with Earth's flawed political powers; and he accidentally "broadcasts" a gorgeous naked blonde alien with whom he falls in love."

And there are NINE more where that came from!

Tru Blood

Sadly behind the times, I just saw the trailer for Alan Ball's latest HBO series, Tru Blood. The premise comes from a sci-fi angle with the invention of a new synthetic blood drink that allows Vampires to live out in the open in society along side humans, much to the dismay and fear of many (I smell a sociological metaphor). The main character is a psyche southern waitress, set in the vampire laden state of Louisiana.





(is it just me, or were there a few "Buffy" moments near the end of the trailer??? I wonder if Alan Ball is a Whedon fan?)

I really enjoyed Six Feet Under and American Beauty, so I'm stoked to find out if this series is just as good. Of course with SFU, I had the good fortunate of being waaaay behind the times and could watch the whole series on DVD with the course of a month or so. Now, being HBOless and unable to speed up time for tv watching purposes, I'm forced to see as much as I can on youtube, and wait around until they come out at the video store. Boo. I guess I could read the Sookie Stackhouse book series by Charlaine Harris that the show is based on, but won't that ruin the fun??

Has anyone seen the series? Is it good, bad, just okay?

Hilarity

Check out this funny remix of "The Shining" turning it into a feel good movie of the year (thanks to Madeline of XPlane for pointing this out)!

I love the cheesy music they always use for trailers like this!

Check out the latest internet craze! It's "tilt shift" photography made easy!

This photo was made all miniature like from the website www.tiltshiftmaker.com. You can upload your pictures up to their filter and get some interesting effects by selecting the specific area you want to blur. It's similar to using a "len's baby" on an SLR, which distorts in much the same manner. The site works best on landscape photos that have a great amount of depth of field to be exploited.  This is a photo I took in 2005 from the big hilly park in Prague with the fake Eiffel Tower.  The tower was not photographed.

Intergalactic Stellar Space Circus!

Lookie Lookie,
I scanned and posted about half of my illustrations for the children's book I've been working on for the past few years up to my flickr account. "The Intergalactic Stellar Space Circus".




It's about a crazy space circus that lands on in the most boring town on earth and proceeds to freak everybody out! I'm hoping to get this beast done by the end of this quarter, let's shoot for that. If you'd like to test the story out on any kids, I can email you the manuscript, it's a pretty fun rhyming story that has a happy ending after all.

Fleischer Brothers give chase to rain

From the weather outside my window, I believe we can all agree (at least in Portland) it's a cartoon kind a day. Here are two rarely seen Fleischer Brothers' films from the thirties

The first is about a hick couple at the World's fair from 1938

and the second is entitled "Dancing on the Moon" 1935, which features lots of. you guessed it, dancing on lunar surfaces:

One cool thing to take note of here is Fleischer's innovated use of the "stereoptic effects" used to achieve the highly realistic looking backgrounds. The studio would build models of the background and photograph them moving along with the actions of the cell animated critters. Pretty amazing effects, especially considering it was all done in the 1930's!

What not to watch at work

My very first blog contribution is from my friend Andy J. who told me to check out the adult swim show:

"Xavier: Renegade Angel" a computer animated cartoon featuring "a Native American-influenced faun-like wanderer/seeker with a snake hand, backwards knees, a beak, heterochromic eyes, and six nipples" from the people who brought you Wonder ShowZen.

In this episode Xavier wakes up from sleeping on his dream catcher only to have conversations with mother earth and stop a cookie factory that's gone too far! Told in a non sequitur-style humor like many adult swim cartoons, it's a wacky ride through absurd country on a pig drawn peanut brittle sleigh...
You can watch them here:

http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=8a25c39216cdd4f10116d02893ee0109

They're rated MA, so probably not the best thing to watch at work, but hey, I ain't your boss. Enjoy, and thanks, Andy

Classic Sesame Street

My search for animated inspiration has lead me to rediscover these childhood gems from the olden days of Sesame Street:

First it's the Teeny Little Super Guy!

An Orange Singing "Carmen" and warping young minds, possibly from Jim Henson:

And finally, some really worthy animation from Jeff Hale (note the Pointer sisters backing up the soul on the soundtrack)
This one is even better than I remembered...

Wow, what a great show!  Good old PBS.  xoxo.

Brad Neely's a freakin' genius

In honor of my first Flash class today I'm posting my favorite Flash cartoon ever!

Brad Neely's Washington:

You can see more of Brad Neely's animated genius at Superdeluxe.com   (which is now apparently part of Adultswim.com)

I especially enjoy Baby Cake's philosophizing and the Leprechaun's rap about (what else?) GOLD!

Here's hoping my meager brain can put together something half as interesting!

Jan Svankmajer's Sileni (Lunacy)

I had the pleasure last night of watching Jan Svankmajer's 2005 film Sileni or "Lunacy".

The narrative structure is hung on two Edgar Allan Poe tales "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" and "The Premature Burial" and features a character developed around the philosophies and politics of Marquis de Sade. Anyone familiar with Svankmajer's work will anticipate the dark themes, surrealist imagery, and stop motion animation that run amok in this film. Essentially, I interpreted it as a political work, much like de Sade's essays written just before the French Revolution, Svankmajer lays out questions of personal freedom, acceptance of normalcy, and getting a laugh out of shocking bourgeois sensibilities.

The main character is snapped out of night terror fits throughout the film.  He fears the fate and label of inherited insanity brought on by his mothers funeral. I found the repeated sequence of him awakening suddenly quite effectively used to establish questions of the hero's sanity, as well as the reality of the world he is awaken to. Each scene is sandwiched by short sensual plays acted out with animated chunks of raw meat. This film is NOT vegan, however I especially appreciated the disembodied tongues copulating, if I am allowed to separate my own personal beliefs for the sake of discussion.

  If I had any critical observations to make, I felt that the stop animation perhaps could have been integrated into the film with a little more finesse. The main story was strong enough that it could have stood on its own without the short plays, except perhaps to add a strongly disturbing graphic element to the social commentary of the film.

As Svankmajer commented in the prologue of the film, it is a horror movie, but the horrors presented seem to be more of the brutalities of oppressive absolute beliefs and the violence of a ruling class. But I may just have a strong stomach.

Kure Kure Takora

It's official, I'm addicted!  In this one they steal a cop's mustache!

It's a 1973 absurdist Japanese kids show featuring violence, sex, greed, and the occasional mustache. Gimme Gimme Octopus!  There's a whole website full of their 2:40 minute adventures.  www.kurekuretakora .  Thanks to BoingBoing.com for pointing out their glory.

In my meager efforts for fame and glory I've now got a:

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joy.

Anyone else ready to forget the holiday season?  I've been waiting around aimlessly watching whatever free movies I can get my hands on and tearing through all the books laying around the house, waiting for classes to start up again.  I finally managed to sit through a full-length Internet Archive film noir the other day called "Five Minutes to Live" starring the one and only Mr. Johnny Cash.  It actually was moderately watchable, I think a lot of it depends on how big of a Cash fan you are.  In it he machine gun downs a cop, murders his girl in cold blood, and goes on a rape and shooting spree in 1960's suburbia.  There's an amazing scene where he smashes bric-a-brac to a wailing housewife's pleas for sanity. All of the characters are fairly detestable and morally ambiguous, which is kinda fun, and apparently Ron Howard plays the bratty little kid who gets the last laugh.  All in all it's not a bad way to kill an hour and some change, and it's all at the right price! Unless of course you've got "Five Minutes to live!! Here's a condensed youtube trailer with the key plot points and such.  Too bad it wasn't edited down to five minutes!  Maybe that will be my next editing exercise...

Or you can watch the whole thing here at the internet archives...


Oh the Humanity! The Theme song is pretty great as well. "Here the tock tick tock of the laughing clock.... you've got five minutes to live!"