MONKEY DOMINOES!

From the Wii game released in North America if not anywhere else as Domino Rally; I can't say anything either way for it as a game (even whom the developer of it is has eluded me) but I know that I'm powerless to resist circulating the above still.

Current music: Baroque 'n' roll; Handel is EVERYWHERE (n.b. concept of "everywhere" may be somewhat distorted due to having got out very little this last week) and a generalised stereotype of the style of his arias, being in themselves something of a de-localised cumulation of baroque ones in general, seems ripe as medium in which to poke fun, even if it's already been done on at least one occasion by Misters Gilbert and Sullivan (in as much as "Oh, false one, you have deceived me" from The Pirates of Penzance comes to mind but perhaps I'm due to inexperience reading too specificity into that).

AniPages Daily recently posted reviews of Gwen, le livre de sable, bringing probably more knowledge of Jean-François Laguionie's first feature into the English language than there has ever been before, and new-ish feature My Dog Tulip. And though I don't like to be simply reposting news here, there are some things I cannot resist, and one of those is a teaser page for a new YUASA Masaaki-directed series.

Oh, and talking of new series, I now realise that I've still haven't posted this here, from Nord-Ouest Production…Current music: Emily Loizeau – "Coconut Madam"

I love Minna no Uta. That, La Princesse insensible and Ciné si occupy a special little trinity in my heart (The Herbs and Clangers being somewhat divided from those if only by being in my native tongue and the regular characters). But in particular… Well, La Princesse insensible benefits hugely from being projected rather than on the television screens it was made for; that or looking at production stills is the only way to get an idea of the detail of the background (and is particularly effective in those episodes which offer further background). But Minna no Uta, somehow, looses something when shown on a big screen and seen by many people in regimented lines of seats: I can say this from experience and I don't think it's down to physically "closer" shots (I use the parentheses as of course in drawn animation it's usually rather that drawings that are bigger) or that I've usually been seeing them for the second or third time when projected. It feels not really right, like tapping on something and expecting it to be solid but hearing it sound hollow, or the reverse; I put this down to a general mode of intimacy that mysteriously characterises Minna no Uta despite the revolving door of visual and musical contributors, a factor that should theoretically place Minna in a whole other world to Oliver Postgate and Michel Ocelot's very creator-led series (and much closer to the animated and experimental sequences of Sesame Street; how that series introduced at least one generation to experimental animation and non-narrative filmmaking is blog post in itself). Perhaps it's that an idea of what the "world of" Minna no Uta is has been collectively formed by the staff of earlier years of it, each new contribution simultaneously propagating that collectively-formed spirit while simultaneously forming, remoulding what that spirit is by the very nature of its addition to the cannon. It really feels to be television as chamber film.

Also, talking of Ciné si, Dragons et princesses, which still seems to be operating under that title, now has a roughly predicted broadcast period of June 1010 pencilled in, accorded to this on AFCA's weblog.

Gamey and stop-motion peopley

Tale of Tales will be in Wales, Penarth in particular, for a couple of weeks, hosing activities this Saturday (23 October) and next (the 31st).

Queen Games have finally got their Web site properly up to date for the first time in several years, now with video demonstrations (I, naturally, much prefer them with the German narration, though I only understand the odd word, than the strongly American-accented English).

Amanita Design's Karel Zeman-like Machinarium is now out and general creator/director of the whole thing Jakub Dvorský and composer Tomáš Dvořák will be in the UK in November, giving a presentation at the games side of the Bradford Animation Festival. This interview with him makes for a useful overview of Amanita's history; the site it's part of is in general of interest to me and other players of LucasArts/Sierra/Cyan Worlds-style adventure games. Also making an appearance there will Erik Svedång and his frustratingly Windoze-only Blueberry Garden and Sarah Quick of Tuna Technologies (who impressed me with her name-dropping of KAWAMOTO Kihachirô in this interview for The Artful Gamer and, on the film side, there's a screening of Jiří Trnka's Midsummer Night's Dream!

Current music: Kurt Weill week on BBC Radio 3!!

Ocelot in Switzerland

I felt compelled to report on the confusingly named but impressive Manga Impact festival of anime in Locarno, Switzerland this year some posts ago. Funnily enough, the Locarno Film Festival's MySpace blog has since announced that one of the live events that will accompany the many screenings is a conversation (presumably in French) between Michel Ocelot and TAKAHATA Isao! Their mutual friendship and support is well-known but I am always interested to know more exactly what they think of each other's works and I would love to have a transcript, or even merely on few on what this conversation covered (I once read some such notes on a lecture given by Takahata which included Kirikou et la sorcière as an example which were posted as a comment on a blog post; I may still have the URL of that post somewhere but don't have the time to go looking for it among my dissertation notes at the moment).

Current music: La Planète sauvage – « Les Fusées »
Excited, of course, so listing to one of, perhaps my single most, favourite element of this film. I may even recommend that someone listen to this and imagine what a film that it accompanies might be like as their introduction to the film, before seeing any of the imagery.

Fantastic news

It has been announced, in the very underhand way of being mentioned in the recently uploaded .pdf of their new print catalogue, that Laloux's La Planète sauvage is to be one of next films from the Masters of Cinema series back catalogue (the other being Godard's Une femme mariée) to be re-released on Blu-ray Disc! Considering their track record with the matter we can be pretty sure that it will be all regions, but those outside of the region-B zone had better hold off until one of us within there can confirm it (and it's not as if there's as much as a time frame for the release announced; judging by what has, expect 2010, or December 2009 at the earliest). It has been added to my list of animation on Blu-ray Disc, which I could do with making a prominent link to from the start page. A slight re-shuffling and re-wording of that should be forthcoming.

Also, though it's now been out for some months I've only just noticed that KimStim, who have previously brought Kawamoto and Ocelot's films to North America, have released a region 1, English-subbed version of the New Animation Animation collection of TEZUKA Osamu's experimental short films (the original NAA DVD, unusually for their collections of Japanese filmmaker's work, is without English subtitles; the region 4 version from Madman in Australia was the first English-friendly release of these films on DVD that I know of).

Current music: Kate Bush – The Sensual World
Making the most of giving into autumn, I suppose. Although been listening much to (iTunes samples of) Nina Hagen (another Norn recommendation) and wanting muchly to buy some but am still far from recovering from having splurged all my money on board games…

DRAWINGS!

The others very recent (i.e. mostly from my current sketchbook and in my currently preferred black and white); the first from GCSE or A-levels (there's no label on the book I scanned the spread from and I've largely forgotten what I did when).




I don't know if I've mentioned it here before but I've recently been more seriously thinking about creating a more impressive-looking, portfolio Web site. Or rather, I have the idea that it will serve two purposes: to be a "best of" my work as a whole, which I expect will be mostly recent things, but also, in a more interior part of the site, a best of my school sketchbooks, which you'd be able to browse through by clicking. That is why I wish to ask of anyone reading this: does this size of image (the full size one gets after clicking them, not the previews embedded here) provide an appropriate level of detail for this size of page (which I think is A5, if that's what half of an A4 page is)? I don't really think it does, not for the first of the images here; 940 × 670 pixels seems more appropriate to me but that may only be because I've been using my computer with the display set to the maximum resolution. There is also the issue that some earlier sketchbooks are A4-sized, double the hight or width of these (depending on which way round I draw in them) and I think it would be appropriate to convey some idea of the difference in size between them (if not making them actually as much as double, as what I've drawn in them tends to be simpler) while still fitting on most people's monitors without the need for scrolling.

Current music: Rick Wakeman – "Anne Boleyn 'The Day Thou Gavest Lord Hath Ended'," "Wild Moors"

Very small update on new Ocelot series

Nord-Ouest's Web site has changed the title from Bergères et dragons to Dragons et princesses (though I suspect that even this might not end up being the final title) and, more disappointingly, the running time of each episode from 13 to 5 minutes. The number of episodes has also decreased – though quite sensibly, I believe, in this case – from 52 to 26, which still makes this his longest project since Gédéon.

Animafest in Zagreb, Croatia will in early June 2010 hold a Michel Ocelot retrospective as part of the festival, with screenings of three of his features and one of many of his shorter works, including Les Quatre Vœux; this screening is particularly notable, even for someone some distance away from Croatia, in that the Web page for it has some nice, proper stills, one of each of the segments, including several of which I haven't come across in this form before.

And lastly, a few notes on cinema releases: Gake no Ue no Ponyo is out in Australian cinemas tomorrow (tomorrow being Thursday, 27 August and Brendan and the Secret of Kells is to reach the Netherlands in September and the USA in October 2009.