Commentary &Daily post 23 Oct 2010 07:58 am
Tidbits
- Richard O’Connor has been posting excellent wrap ups of the daily events and films at Ottawa. If you haven’t been reading you should. Some of the capsule reviews of these shorts is excellent. Look to Asterisk for these posts.
- This week PBS aired a magnificent show about William Kentridge which showed his process for animating pieces for the opera he directed at the Met, The Nose. His combination of animation and live action was just thrilling, and to watch him doing this live with a stop-motion camera (No computers, he. Norshtein would be proud) was mesmerizing. Mistakes and all add to the life of the pieces.
I was sorry to have missed this opera, now I’m even more so.
Jeffrey Brown of The Newshour interviewed Kentridge about the show. You can watch and/or read this interview here.
You can see a short trailer of the show here and if you keep coming back, I suspect they’ll eventually have the entire show up there.
- Copngrats to Cartoon Brew editors Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi. Their breaking news about Brenda Chapman‘s being replaced on the Pixar film The Brave made it to the NYTimes on Thursday, and they got a nice mention. A nice scoop for them.
- Bill Plympton told me that his film, Angels and Idiots, was doing so well at the IFC Center in NY that it’s been held over, again, for a third week. Here’s hoping the film runs another dozen weeks.
Those in LA shold look out for the LA opening Oct 29th at the Laemmle Sunset 5 theater.
- Another site worth watching is the National Cartoonist’s Society blog. They presently have a display of drawings by Jack Davis. It was nice taking a look at some of the pieces they’re displaying. The double spread record album cover for The Mad Mad Mad Mad World just brought back a nice cozy feeling. Take a look at the site (and keep on looking after you’ve seen Jack Davis’ work.)
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- Watching Bill Maher, last night, the realization that a good part of the world doesn’t know the story behind Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas drove home. Much of the world is too young to have heard of or remember the big deal that was when Thomas was vying for his seat on the Supreme Court. Obviously, a guy who likes his porn, Thomas was also accused of some other questionable behavior. Believe me, his misdeeds outshone Bill Clinton’s, and Thomas still got to the big bench to help destroy that institution.
As animators, we also have a delicate history, and without careful watch and studious work on the part of the young, that history will also be forgotten. You have to get out there and see films to appreciate the animation history part of it.
Currently, I’m looking forward to the screening of the recently discovered Laugh-O-Grams at the MOMA. These shorts were restored by MOMA and will be presented for the first time at these two screenings. Serge Bromberg, the director of the Annecy animation Festival and a champion of early animation, will conduct the presentation of these first films by Walt Disney done in Kansas City. The films will have a piano accompaniment. There will be two screenings: Sunday Oct. 31st at 2:30pm and Thursday Nov. 4th at 4:30pm.
