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:
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...
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.
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.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
In my meager efforts for fame and glory I've now got a:
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...
