BAD BOYS STICK TOGETHER...NEVER?

THIS WEEK IN THEATRES...

* Eastern Promises, a surprisingly effective crime drama starring Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts and directed by David Cronenberg.

THIS WEEK IN DVD REVIEWS...

* Avatar the Last Airbender - The Complete Book 2 Collection, bringing season 2 together in one package, continuing the high-flying adventure.

* Tekkonkinkreet, the awesome anime adaptation of the Taiyo Matsumoto manga.

Current Soundtrack: Plaid, Tekkonkinkreet soundtrack

Current Mood: interrupted

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2007 Jamie S. Rich

CARTOON BLUES: PLATFORM ANIMATION FESTIVAL, DAY 6

I wasn't sure how much of the Fest I was going to do today. Last night I only stopped in briefly at the street party stuff, enough to see some of the Basil Wolverton art at a gallery downtown--but I had a friend in town and we ended up hanging out instead.

This made sleeping in all the more appealing, so I missed the early morning programs. The presentation by Henry Selick, director of Nightmare Before Christmas and James & the Giant Peach, was too good a prospect to pass up, however, so I headed over in the early afternoon for that. They showed a clip reel featuring highlights from his films, as well as early shorts and promo spots he did for MTV that just about everyone has seen but probably never realized was his handiwork (I was surprised). He then talked at length with David Walker. I don't know if it was just the angle of the lights where we were sitting, but Selick appeared to have his eyes closed nearly the entire time. It was kind of creepy, giving him this trance-like, hollow look.

The true lure of the session came at the end when he showed us some script doodles, character designs, maquette models, and very brief test animation from his current project, the feature-length stop-motion film Coraline. It looks incredible. I'm stoked for it. (No pics, sorry. They took our phones and cameras before we could go in.)

When it was done, I saw that a band was setting up for tonight's closing party. Except it didn't look like a band, it looked like a bunch of junior high girls. Turns out Smoosh is performing. This may be enough to get me to go to the shindig, but once I get comfortable here in the house, I may not want to go back again. A gap of four hours is a long time between things.

It wouldn't be so long a gap if the last program I sat in on had been better. I lasted less than half an hour in the Internet Shorts Competition. I kind of got what I was expecting: lame political humor, inside jokes, and poorly rendered fantasy stuff. There's a reason I don't watch such things in the privacy of my own home at my convenience, so there wasn't much compelling me to stay.

All in all, if that is it for me and the Platform International Animation Festival , I've had a good time and have no real complaints. I am not sure I necessarily enjoy the nonstop go-go-go of a fest, and can't imagine what it would have been like with a paid pass where I felt I had to get my money's worth, but all in all, it was a good program with a wide variety of material. If it's to be a regular event, this is a very good start.

Current Soundtrack: Smoosh, She Like Electric

Current Mood: drained

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2007 Jamie S. Rich

CARTOON BLUES: PLATFORM ANIMATION FESTIVAL, DAY 5

My biggest must-see next to Tekkon Kinkreet was the 1941 Chinese film Princess Iron Fan. Based on a portion of the mammoth Journey to the West, this vintage black-and-white cartoon featured the Monkey King and his cohorts as they tried to pass through the mountains of fire!

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a little disappointing. It wasn't horrible by any means (though the image quality was; restored in 1994, I'd hate to see what it looked like before it was cleaned up!), it just turned out to be more of a historical curiosity than the sort of old school 'toon that woos you with its primitive charms. You could definitely see a Walt Disney influence, particularly Silly Symphonies and how they used music, as well as some Betty Boop in the character designs, leading me to think there was a time lapse in maybe what was making it to China. There were several action sequences where a particular movement was repeated a couple of times as if the animators were trying to show off, and even two singalong, follow-the-bouncing-ball songs. I'm glad I saw it, as it's a rare outing of something very few have likely heard of, let alone seen, but not all that I had hoped.

That clip is pretty much what it looked like in the theatre, too. Even that weird panning that made me think sometimes it was a film of the film being projected on teh screen, like how people used to film live TV broadcasts off the TV. We had subtitles, though. Someone also posted the first 8 or so minutes on YouTube if you want to search for it.

While waiting around for my next pogram to start, I sat in on the first four shorts in the 6th round of the competition. Outside of a commercial called "Speech Bubble" (it's balloon, moron!), they were all really good. "Small & Deep Love Stories" (Taiwan; dir. Hsin-Ping Pan) was a cutely designed series of vignettes where things like clocks fell in love and teacups kissed each other. It reminded me of comic strips you might see in an indie anthology. It was followed by "Naked (Sex)" (Netherlands; dir. Mischa Kamp), which combined rotoscoping and home-made art-styled hand animation to illustrate monologues about two young boys and their misconceptions about sex. It was very funny, though not as amusing as the fact that it was entered into the "TV for Children" category. Oh, you crazy Dutch!

Super awesome was "Wolf Daddy" from South Korea, directed by Chang Hyng-yun. It's about a wolf who is a novelist and who has several women show up at his door and drop off children he's sired. It's like a "Fractured Fairy Tale" redo of Miyazaki. But don't just take my word for it:

I should have stayed when I was on a roll, but I was curious about the "Viva Cuba" program, a retrospective of state-sponsored animation from our southerly neighbors. Boy, what a load of dross. I got through a half-hour of music videos that were seemingly cobbled together with clips of long cartoon series, corny gag shorts that felt like they were ripped off wholesale from Mad Magazine, and informational factoids for children before I left. I could see some government messages buried into the material (a strange gag with a black vampire and KKK members, the anti-Imperialist undertone of a foppish French king into S&M, etc.), but the limited animation wasn't appealing enough to weather through the weak writing.

On the way home, I stopped in at PNCA to see some of the installations: mainly, animated pieces projected on walls. The most interesting was the one you see when you first walk in. It has three different loops of action, and when you walk around to the back of the screen, you discover that the action is being created live. Cut-outs of the backgrounds and characters were put on a spinning wheel, and a camera captures the simulated movement as they turn at high speeds. Very cool.

There is a street party tonight that I may go to, but a friend is also in town. I'm actually pretty burnt on going out. There's been a lot of it this week. If I had my druthers, I'd stay in and watch the last three episodes of Studio 60.

Current Soundtrack: Pulp, Peel Sessions; Rihanna, Good Girl Gone Bad

Current Mood: exhausted

CARTOON BLUES: PLATFORM ANIMATION FESTIVAL, DAY 4

As I noted was likely to happen, I skipped the Platform programming yesterday to get some work done. I also wanted to go down to the Central Library here in Portland, where Douglas Wolk was presenting a panel called Appreciating Comics. It consisted of comics people of all stripes: Gail Simone, Colleen Coover, Jen Manley Lee, Dylan Meconis, and Scott McCloud. (Rather than me link to them all, go to the library page on the event.) Since this is Portland, there were also plenty of local creators in the audience, like Diana Schutz, Steve Lieber, and more. I went with Joëlle, and we enjoyed listening to an in-depth talk about our art form. I particularly liked how each creator introduced him or herself by showing some of their favorite pages from their own work that they felt used the comic book form to its most unique advantages.

It was also gratifying that the presentation room filled up as soon as they opened the doors about half an hour before the panel was set to start. Many people were turned away, including some professional comics folks. I think just about everyone who got in walked away with a crush on Colleen Coover, though. She's too cute and funny.

I made my way back to Platform today for a couple of studio presentations. The first was from Aardman, the people behind the Wallace & Gromit movies and so many others. The basic outline of the program was talking about the history of the studio from its earliest days up until now, and using the stop-motion Curse of the Were-Rabbit and CGI Flushed Away to compare and contrast various aspects of production, both traditional and modern. It was a decent event, but one downside of the DVD age is that there was very little by way of special information for the speaker (producer David Sproxton) to impart that wouldn't have already been familiar to anyone who has spent some time with animation discs. I'd even wager some of what we saw was from the Flushed Away DVD.

Still, there were some great clips of very early Aardman efforts, as well as neat promo reels. They showed some of Nick Park's live action enactments of scenes from Were-Rabbit, and a great little how-to demonstration on slapstick put together for a silent film festival. (I looked for this last thing on YouTube, but did not find it.) He also brought along the actual clay models of Wallace, Gromit, and the female lead from the movie (though, I imagine there are many different ones.)

After that, it was a program by Pixar Studios, run by Gary Lyndstrom, an award-winning sound designer and the director of "Lifted," the short that is running in front of Ratatouille. Where Sproxton felt like he was giving us something conventional, Lyndstrom really knocked out a special program. To start, he showed the first four Pixar cartoons--"Luxo Jr.," "Red's Dream," "Tin Toy," and "Knick Knack"--all of which Lyndstrom did sound for. Most of them I hadn't seen in years. He followed this with "Lifted," and from there he walked us through the creation of "Lifted" piece by piece, including reference materials and hilarious videos of the animators experimenting with hair gel to create the substance the alien characters would be made out of. He also isolated sound effects to illustrate how unconventional sources can lead to exciting audio, and showed the construction of various shots in the cartoon.

Best of all, though, is he showed "Lifted" again immediately after, and it was amazing to see all these elements at work. I heard the sounds differently, I saw the visual things I hadn't noticed the first time, and most impressive of all, even though he had exposed the seams, the finished animation still flowed smoothly. The true magic was making all of the mechanics disappear.

I skipped out again on the evening events. Let's just say, something else came up. Joëlle Jones got to see the new Harry Potter film, and I'm doubly cool because I got to see it with Joëlle Jones, who is so kick-ass we should just call her Hermione. Weep in envy, muggles!

Special thanks to the mega-swell Sam Humphries for hooking us up!

Current Soundtrack: various Arctic Monkeys and Erasure

Current Mood: relieved

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2007 Jamie S. Rich

CARTOON BLUES: PLATFORM ANIMATION FESTIVAL, DAY 2

Today was the day with the event I was most excited about. I headed down early to make sure I could get in to see Tekkon Kinkreet, the anime adaptation of the manga Black & White by Taiyo Matsumoto.

This film definitely lived up to expectations. A surreal story set in a squalid future (or was it the past?), it involves gangsters, super fighters, and two homeless brothers who rule Treasure Town. The Cat Gang, using the monikers Black and White, basically live as if the world is their oyster, but their connection has some deeper, metaphysical overtones that lend the movie a philosophical weight. They are the yin to each other's yang. The movie is a genre explosion, including exciting action and a completely mindblowing third act. The animation style preserves some of Matsumoto's line work, but pulls back on the detail to a degree, giving it life, movement, and color. It's mainly hand-drawn animation, with some effective use of CGI.

Interestingly, Tekkon Kinkreet was directed by an American, Michael Arias, and he came out for the screening. After the film was done, he sat down with David Walker for a thirty-minute chat.

I stuck around after for the third round in the competition of short films. Ten movies from around the world, and naturally, a mixed bag. The best were "God On Our Side" (dir. Uri Kranot & Michal Pfeffer), a cut-and-paste film from the Netherlands that showed the horrors of war by taking pieces of Picasso's Guernica and bringing them to life; Ian Gouldstone's "Guy 101," a British-produced student film cleverly using online icons to describe an online encounter, which takes a strange turn that held the audience in a tight grip; and Sweden's "Never Like the First Time" (dir. Jonas Odell), animating four different real monologues about how the speaker lost his or her virginity, using a different style each time.

Also noticeable was Andreas Hykade's "The Runt" from Germany, which was an unsettling look at the personal travails of rabbit farming, and Nick Mackie's "Cold Calling," a British man's real audio of him giving crap to telemarketers. On the bad side were two other films from the UK. Chris Shepherd and David Shrigley's "Who I Am and What I Want" was poorly drawn and nigh incomprehensible from a narrative standpoint, and it's bodily function jokes just got more obvious the longer it went on. The Welsh-produced "Dreams & Desires - Family Ties" (dir. Joanna Quinn) was better drawn, reminiscent of Bill Plympton in its style, but overly frenetic. Plus, a gauzy soundtrack made it impossible to understand the thick accents. I was also annoyed by the fact that Quinn established a POV of her main character running a video camera, but then allowed the scenes to morph into fantasy. You can't lock down the conceit of a real-world POV and then suddenly have angels and orgies.

The screening was almost marred by the fact that I had sat in front of three industry insiders who talked rather loudly about how they had seen most of the films before the lights went out, and then proceeded to complain about the ones they did not like during the actual showings. Tip of the Day: You never want to sit by industry insiders at an industry function of any kind. They are full of themselves and won't shut up. Don't sit next to me at a comics function for just that reason. I'm unbearable!

Also, slightly overweight bald men who like to wear baseball caps, listen up. If your cap is going to make you sweat and itch so you have to pull it off every five minutes to air your dome, don't wear it. And don't sit in front of me at the movies!

Anyway, not sure how much I'm actually going to catch in the next two days due to other things. If you don't hear about more of this Fest until Friday, don't fret. That's just the way it is.

Current Soundtrack: Girl Group Sounds Lost & Found: One Kiss Can Lead To Another [Disc 2]

Current Mood: alone

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2007 Jamie S. Rich

CARTOON BLUES: PLATFORM ANIMATION FESTIVAL, DAY 1

Last night was the opening party for the Platform Animation Festival in Portland. I had gone down midday to pick up my badge and various stuff, including the super swell messenger bag they packed all of the pre-reg' goodies in. The guy handing out the materials recognized my name and pulled one of the most regular faux pas (pases?) comic book editors encounter.

"I like your comics," he said.

"Thanks," I replied.

"Are you still writing?"

"Of course. I've had a bunch of new stuff recently actually."

"Really? Are you still doing comic books with Chynna Clugston? I love Blue Monday."

This is a step up from the usual, "So, as an editor, you do what? Write all the bubbles?" First of all, if you call them bubbles, you're an idiot. Second, I'd like to know, if I introduced myself as an editor at the New York Times, would they ask me if I wrote all of the articles? If I said I was an editor at Simon & Shuster, would they inquire what novels I write? Is it that hard to understand how a comic book editor is an editor like any other?

Anyway, I didn't make the first night round of shorts. I had thought I would, but I got to working on revisions of Love the Way You Love vol. 6 (more of that later), and when I looked up, it was too late. I did go down for the party, however, as my DVD Talk editor was going to be there, and they had free champagne, which was the perfect mask for my otherwise dark mood. A few other people I knew showed up, including the whirling dervish Plastorm. (Check his blog, he saw last night's cartoons and can give you the skinny.) He had a friend named Slater, but it was loud in the party hall and I heard it as "Spider," and so baffled everyone with my seemingly rude question, "Is that the name it says on your birth certificate?" Later we goaded Spider (that's his name now, I decided) into hitting on a young lady he was admiring, and as he did so, hung back and did a play-by-play commentary as he impressively worked his way into a group conversation, eventually jettisoning the other members of the group. It was a special kind of work. We thought it was over when a guy in a strange combination special needs helmet/Mexican wrestler mask tried to move in on the action, but he was thwarted, too. It was an inspiring sight for two married guys and the walking dead to witness.

(Yeah, the walking dead would be me. What of it? Like you couldn't smell the rot all over me. It was nice of you not to bring it up, though.)

Naturally, I forgot my new camera, beginning the string of what I am sure will be a long line of me forgetting my camera.

Current Soundtrack: Echo & the Bunnymen, Siberia

Current Mood: morose

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2007 Jamie S. Rich