Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Before getting to the business at hand, today, let me post this link to an article in the NYTimes. Her Prince Has Come. Critics, Too. It gives a good indication of what to expect when The Princess and the Frog is released. Many of the reviewers will discuss the racism inherent and miss the cartoon on the screen.

- The on-again / off-again rains had me depressed enough that I didn’t pull my camera out, nor did I take one shot. However, my friend, Steve Fisher sent me a stash of photos this week, and they’re so good I don’t want to pass them up. So regardless of the fact that the pictures have little in common, let me post them.

Memorial Day (Click any image to enlarge.)

With just nine days before Fortunoff’s closes its doors forever,
the civility of its customers was thrown to the wind.

The steel frame structure in the foreground is under construction
virtually against the residential building partially seen beyond it.
As soon as the new cladding is erected, one will not be able to see that
side of the house at all. But more unfortunate is that the folks in the
house will no longer be able to see anything outside from their windows.

Thought these pipes found in a utility tunnel under a
building at Stony Brook made for an interesting image.

The innards of a GULF sign, like looking into
the inner workings of the gasoline company.

Memorial Day seems to be about the right time for me to remember mailboxes. Both brown and and blue, they exist in droves holding onto the snailmail still out there. One might wonder how many more postage rate increases it can withstand before we depend allmost exclusively on internet communication.

These days many of the boxes have been decorated with graffiti of different sorts. All of it seems to be some kinda message to the world.
Nice and clean with dozens of coats of paint

Given that it’s probably a federal offense, one would expect such graffiti to be limited. But I’d say that that’s not the case.

I can remember walking down the street with John Leguizamo and his director David Bar Katz as he was about to open in Freak on Broadway. Al around town his face was stenciled on sidewalks and walls promoting the show.

We passed a mailbox and John saw his image/ad. He got upset. He knew that it was a federal offense to mark up the mailbox and he asked his director to see if he could look into stopping such practices. The show opened and I suspect there was no such inquisition from the feds.

(Click any image you want to enlarge.)

One graffiti writer wanted the world to know that “Papa Loves Baby”

It certainly got the point across to “Baby”.

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“Faro” is someone who’s been out there for quite awhile.
(S)he doesn’t just cover mailboxes. Subway walls and posters
are also fair game for this scribbler.

They can get pretty gritty.

or some get newly painted with just a touch of pink.

Sometimes they come in pairs – brown or blue.

or threes. (newly painted)

Unfortunately, clean up painting things don’t get much better. Splotchy coats
of paint that don’t match the undercoat don’t always improve things.
It’s exhausting when you think about it.

These last two photos are by Steve Fisher,
a better eye for the humorous than I.

Thanks to Karl Cohen for the following information from Gianalberto Bendazzi:

Dear Karl,
I just want to share with you my sorrow for the death of twice Oscar-nominee Giulio Gianini.
He died in Rome on Saturday morning, May 16th, 2009.
He was born in Rome on February 9, 1927.

His lifelong friend and artistic partner Emanuele Luzzati had died in Genoa on January 26th, 2007.

I’ll post some further piece about his work later this week.

- I was starting to put together a post of photos of signage and thought I should look back on what I’d posted in the past. I wasn’t impressed with my photos, but I enjoyed reviewing some pictures sent me by Steve Fisher.

Since I don’t have enough of what I wanted to put up today, I decided to send out Steve’s images again. They’re great.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Finally, this one. You have to get right on top of it
to see the message printed on the fence.

Photographed by Steven Fisher.

Where do all the cherry blossoms go when Mother Nature is tired of them? You guessed it.

We’ve had about ten days of drenching rain and thuderstorms that has brought New York into a soggy depression. It’s exhausting. The NYYankees had to leave town to be able to play a dry game. Oddly enough, they went to humid Baltimore which was, at least, less damp.

We’re looking forward to a day of sunshine and dryness, as was predicted by the weatherguys for today.

How do you depict the contemptuous disregard for the beauty of cherry blossoms in animation? It sounds like it might be a complicated effect scene. There’s something about animation that doesn’t allow you to have the layers of subtlety that a live, still photo can offer. Perhaps the only way would be to use painting to get the point across, abstract painting. It would probably have to be an expressionist image.

If you wanted to do it in cgi, you’d have to do a photorealistic version which would be pointless and souless. You’d have to find some abstract way to represent things other than with little doll images. Perhaps that could be a challenge that no one would take up.

I know, my vision is biased and limited. It’s all those molting cherry blossoms.

Another great picture by Steven Fisher.

- Last night the 40th annual ASIFA East Festival took place in a rainy NYC at the New School auditorium. There were about 2 hours of award winners to be screened after which everyone moved to the fifth floor to attend an after-party.

The place was packed. I wasn’t able to get anywhere near the food table so I had a few glasses of wine and raced about snapping pictures. Unfortunately, I’m a horrible photographer, so I apologize to all those here for the bad representation I’m giving you. for all the rest of you, these are just some of those I bumped into or who bumped into me. It was fun.

John Canemaker and Irra Verbitsky at the beginning of the night.
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Amid Amidi and Celia Bullwinkle got to the food pretty quickly.
You can see what I mean about the bad photography. Sorry guys.

Michael Sullivan is in the thick of it.

John Dilworth with Heidi Stallings.
John’s just back from Spain in time for the party.

Irina Margolina and Adam Snyder. She just arrived
from Russia hours before the Festival.

Emily Hubley and Don Duga

Signe Baumane

Doug Vitarelli

Adrian Urquidez looks like he’s having too much fun.

Dave Levy (ASIFA East Pres) and Nancy Keegan tend the wine
while getting caught by me in a hot spot.

Howard Beckerman tries a sandwich. Sorry, Howard,
this was shot from the other side of the room.

It’s a crowded affair.

Bruce Knapp in a dark spot.

Janet Benn at a nearby table.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Michael Zodorozny.
Glad to be able to catch up a bit.

Matt Clinton and Katrina Gregorius from the Sporn Studio
enjoy the food after the long wait on line.

Pilar Newton and Ivan Katz stop by our table and bring
that glowing enthusiasm always there with her.

The Rauch brothers, Mike and Tim, were the stars of the night.
Their film Q&A won the grand prize at the Festival.
Look for the film; it’s brilliant.

Candy Kugel chats while Mr. Rauch, the father of the brothers,
watches in the background. He’s thrilled for his sons’ success.

Debra Solomon in the thick of the party.

Linda Simensky, former ASIFA East Pres.,
came in for the event, as she always does.

Finally, the trio, Michael Zodorozny, John Canemaker and Jennifer Oxley,
who won a prize. Sorry for the overexposed, badly lit shot. But I’m glad
to have it. the party was a success.

It was just about this time that the battery in my camera died.
Time for me to leave, anyway. I had a busy morning to face on Monday.

- Paddy Doyle’s novel, “The Van,” made me realize that we had a lot in common with our British and Irish friends. The travelling food sellers are a common dressing though the cuisine sold, I’m sure, is different.

A major part of the look and feel of New York is in the food carts that are standing everywhere. In the past, my childhood, the carts were basically hot dog vendors. Then they added the salted pretzel, and things started to develop.

With the new immigrant class in the city, lots of new foods entered the picture, and in fact, I believe, they’ve taken over. Today it’s almost impossible to find a hot dog vendor. I’ve searched for one in the last week and was coming up empty-handed until I saw one late last night. A vendor was wheeling his cart home after what was, obviously, a long and tiring day. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera.

They still sell the hot dog and the pretzel, but you can add “Halal” foods to that menu. Shish-ke-bob, sausages, and so much more have been added.

This is what carts look like today. They come in larger sizes and smaller
sizes. They sell everything from shish-ke-bob to hot dogs to pretzels.
Their prices are usually a good deal, if you trust the sanitation.

Many of these carts sell sandwiches, bagels and breakfast pastries in
the morning. Sandwiches in the afternoon. They usually are established
locations and the same people occupy a space for many years.

Here’s that very same cart as the vendor sets up in the morning –
I shot this at 6am. This same cart has been here for at least 12 years.

In the wee hours of the morning, carts are delivered to the requisite areas.
Oftentimes, if the cart is small, you’ll see the vendor pushing it himself.

This one is setting up early morning across from
Madison Square Park on 23rd Street and Broadway.

Stocking the shelves with pastries, preparing coffee and icing juices.
Getting ready for the morning rush about to start.

Another similar cart, in the Village, all ready for the crowds. This one has an
overhang, to protect patrons from the rain, and a external cooler with drinks.

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This guy is parked outside the IFC center downtown.
As you can see his menu is quite varied and ethnic.
Quite tempting.

You can also find fruit vendors around town. The prices of various fruits is about
half what the local supermarkets charge, and the quality is generally good.

Here’s a virtual travelling store. This truck is set up daily on 28th Street
off Madison Avenue to serve breakfast. They’ll cook the eggs for you.
Later in the day they move around the corner to Madison off 28th St. to serve dinner.
They’re open all night with lines of taxi drivers waiting to buy food from them.
I have to admit, I’m always tempted but haven’t tried it yet. After all,
can all those taxi drivers be wrong? The vendor must be doing
something right.

I also caught this truck downtown and wondered if they were
establishing a spot on Bleecker Street. But they never set up.
On the move.

- This past week started with a deluge of rain that flooded the city overnight, Monday. The rain took a full four days to finally pull out of town, but when it did it left sun. On Thursday, it became obvious that Spring had finally sprung and touched the flowers of the city.

Steve Fisher caught this shot at the beginning of the week.
A real harbinger of Spring.

By all rights, the blossoms should have been blown from the tree,
but they held tight.

This NYU housing area seems well pruned for the season.

The flowers there are boldly vivid.

I had hoped that the flowers of Madison Square Park would be
as brilliant as they were last year, but I was quite disappointed.
Perhaps there were some cuts in staff, the economy being what it is.

However, nature takes its course and does work on its own.
Here some trees are in full blossom without much help.

The most ordinary of buildings have spruced up
their tiny lawns with the brightest of colors.

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The trees that line the sidewalks, however meagre, seem to be in blossom
and the attitude on the street is positive and optimistic.

The trees take on verdant greens and the streets seem alive
after a long winter.

Even the most pedestrian of signs looks better.

Other signs slip into the background, if they weren’t already there.

Walking the city seems fun, just now.

- A recent post I’d done on Fire Escapes brought the suggestion that I show some Water Tanks, another key to the identity of NYC. It took only five minutes for Steve Fisher to send two photos, one above and the other below.

Of course, in New York, any way you turn you can see some water tower or other in many different shapes and sizes.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Many buildings feature more than one tower.

Some towers seem to be layered on different levels.

Some are lifted far from the roof trying to get them higher.

This tower is oddly long in shape. Again , like many others you see
it’s built on a sort of pedestal so that it’s as high as they can get it.

Here, courtesy of Steven Fisher is a water tower in SoHo that burst
mid winter. All the water froze on the side of the building.

Here’s the very same tower after it and the building have been
restored the next Spring.

In the end they become a part of the City’s silhouette, an important part of the character. Like many elements in the city, they become
just part of the background and rarely noticed for their own sake.

One last picture.
Steve Fisher sent me a photo of what remains after the
water tower has been removed – in a slapdash fashion, I might add.

- How tenuous everything is.
On Thursday a pitcher for the LAAngels was killed in a hit & run accident.
That night the same thing happened to a non-celebrated woman in Brooklyn.
You never know what you’re going to face when you get out of bed.

When you’re a kid, there’s a strong compulsion to chase after the speeding fire truck, with the loud sirens, the speed, the unique look of the hook & ladder.
When you get older, the fire trucks are just as compelling. However, I think the reason is for the tragedy playing out at the end of their mission.

Walking up Bleecker Street yesterday, early morning, you could see the flashing sirens, the multiple trucks and ambulances, the whirring lights. As I got closer to the scene it was obviously a fire in progress and a lot . . . I mean a lot of fire trucks and firemen.

I walked by on the other side of the street and took a rash of photos. It makes for a good Saturday post, so here are those pics.

From about half a block away, the buildup of fire trucks was overwhelming.
You could see a ladder going up to a building’s roof and
the lightest wisp of gray smoke coming out the top.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Trucks even filled the neighboring cross streets for two full blocks.
There were a lot of firemen at work here.

The fire hydrant issuing water was a full city block away
from the building on fire.

As I got closer, the numbers of firemen increased.
They milled about and watched intently.
Some carried objects back to the trucks.

Two ladders shot up on separate streets to the corner building.

A quiet business continued as I moved past.

I got the sense that all was in order as many of the
fire workers went to their vehicles.

I left to go to work.

Hopefully no one was hurt or actually lost anything in the fire.