Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Today’s the day we vote on the short list of the short films to select the nominees. They will be screening the live action shorts from 10am to 1pm. This will be followed by a lunch break, then the animated shorts for another two hours. I’ve seen and remember all the animated shorts, and, in fact, have already voted on this short list. So I’ll skip that second screening. (Two of the best of these shorts are on line. Cartoon Brew has put up Dimanche and Wild Life. There’s a trailer for a third, A Morning Stroll. All of the others are films I’ve seen a couple of times and have no favorites. (But have dislikes.) I wouldn’t mind if any of the three won the big award and hope all three are nominated.)

Tonight, Heidi and I will go to the annual After New Year’s party of one her theatrical friends. Lots of great Broadway people will be there.

- I’ve seen plenty of movies this week. We’re coming to the near-end of the animated features.
Tuesday we saw Alois Nebel, a film from the Czech Republic about a Polish station master at a small town train station circa 1989. Smuggled Russian alcohol, a murder and lots of atmosphere fill this film. The plot isn’t the clearest, but there’s atmosphere to spare. The animation is tightly rotoscoped and looks like a cross between Waking Life and Waltz with Bashir. Lots and lots of vehicles mix with live action smoke and dust helps add to that atmosphere. The film is essentially a high contrast black and white Eastern European movie.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. I’ll say this, I was able to sit all the way through the film though I kept asking myself why. The film is obviously designed for the five year old girls out there. I’m not sure the audience goes far beyond that. I was entertained watching the poor live action performances as they stared just off while talking to the animated characters. Never a winning eye contact is made. Half the time I couldn’t understand what the chipmunks were saying in their too-sped-up voices. By the way, why hire celebrities like Amy Poehler, Anna Faris or Christina Applegate if you’re going to speed up their voices to an unintelligible sound so that they all sound alike?

On Wednesday it was back to live action:
WE is the first film directed by Madonna. It’s about two love affairs one between between King Edward VIII and American divorcée Wallis Simpson. (If you remember the movie The King’s Speech. His brother who left the throne to marry an American – the American was Wallis Simpson, and she’s the focus of this movie.) It’s also about the affair of a married woman with a Russian security guard. The two stories interrelate, and they both relate to Madonna’s life. The public attention keeps her down on the farm. The movie got too precious, and audience members laughed at points when they should have been upset.

Sherlock Holmes 2 has gotten even flashier that the first film. It didn’t help. The film became monotonous in its loud dissonant attack on the senses. All climax; no movie. I walked out 2/3 of the way through it.

On Thursday there were two animated features:
Chico and Rita is a Spanish animated jazz love story about a jazz pianist and a singer. It’s drawn in a rotoscoped loose line style with lots of evocative backgrounds copied off some beautifully detailed archival photographs. (Many remind me of Johnny Vita’s fine backgrounds for Fritz the Cat.) The film is lovely and touching. It was very nice to see a truly adult feature film with large adult themes (as opposed to something calling itself “adult” and vying for the 14 year old boy’s attention.) One of the better films in this competition.

Cars 2; I’d already seen this film and hope to not sit through it again. (See Sherlock Holmes, above, for the review.) The first Cars started loud and stayed there. This one doesn’t have any of the character development or quiet moments of the first film. A failure in my book.

- Now let’s talk about something worth viewing. I was always a fan of Saul Bass‘ incredible title design. Once I saw some of the Hitchcock designs he created, I was sold and did everything to see anything he did. But then I kept looking and found another designer whose work I felt closer to. Dan Perri has had a very long and brilliant career designing some of the greatest title sequences that are somewhat less flashy than Bass’ work, but every bit as notable for their designs. His titles don’t get the same attention given to Saul Bass, but they’re every bit as deserving.

Perri designed: Bull Durham, Midnight Run, Wall Street, Raising Arizona, Blood Simple, Star Wars, Caddyshack, The Exorcist, In the Valley of Elah and MANY others. He designed many Scorcese films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, After Hours, King of Comedy and The Gangs of New York. As a matter of fact, I was disappointed when Scorcese left Dan Perri to work with Saul Bass on Casino, The Age of Innocence and two others. (Randy Balsmeyer designed the credits for Hugo.)

This past week I found a site for the man’s work, and spent a good hour there looking at many a title sequence. DanPerri.com is a site you have to visit if you have any interest at all in the form. Unfortunately, they don’t give complete sequences, but you can find them on the site, ArtoftheTitle.com. There, you can see Days of Heaven, Mulholland Drive, Raging Bull, and many others worth searching for.

- Screen writer, Irv Bauer, has produced a DVD on the hows of writing a screenplay. Mr. Bauer was one of the writers on the John Dilworth series, Courage the Cowardly Dog. The 4 DVD set can be purchased from Amazon.

- The New York Times hasn’t been remiss in noticing the Ghibli Studio retrospective at the IFC Center. They’ve reviewed two of the films that opened in NY for the first time. Porco Rosso got a love letter of a review from Jeanette Catsoulis on Dec 22nd and Pom Poco received a relatively positive notice with a few darting barbs in the review by Andy Webster.

There are capsule reviews and star ratings for all of the films in the program.

- Last night, Friday, Buzzco hosted a memorial gathering in honor of animator, Vinnie Cafarelli, who died this past December 3rd. It was a sad and moving event, but it was wonderful that Vinnie had brought together some of the older animators to mix with younger.

Candy Kugel had set up a computer running videos of a number of pieces Vinnie had animated, another screen had home movies running, and another table had a book of great photos. (Including several of Vinnie in Cuba with Pablo Ferro posing with some rebels hoisting rifles.)

Bill Feigenbaum, Amid Amidi, Cottie Kilbanks, George Griffin, Arnie Levin, Lee Corey, Larry Ruppel, Ray Kosarin, John Dilworth, Ken Kimmelman, John Canemaker, Vinnie Bell, Debbie Solomon, Howard Beckerman, J.J. Sedelmeir, Tony Eastman, Doug Crane, Richard O’Connor and many others attended. (I apologize if I didn’t post your name; there just were too many for me to I.D.) It was an important event. I kept thinking Vinnie would have loved it.

- The genius of an illustrator, Ronald Searle died this past week. It was upsetting on many levels. He was involved in many animated pieces. I grew up with his art all around me. His artwork was seemingly everywhere in the early 70s, from books to cartoons to New Yorker covers to ads to movie titles such as Scrooge, the Albert Finney musical, or Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. Fortunately, he leaves his art behind, but it’s a disappointment to know that Mr. Searle is no longer there. (May I advise you to go to Matt Jones’ tribute of a site, Perpetua, for wonderful pieces about Mr. Searle.)

Last May we posted artwork for the Dave Hilberman directed film, Energetically Yours. You can find those preserved cels here. They were contributed by Hilberman’s son, Dan.

I’d also posted some cartoons from a collection book by Searle titled The Female Approach. Tomorrow, in a small memorium for Mr. Searle, I’ll post more cartoons from that book.

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