Line drawing is a lot harder to animate than it looks. Every second is 24 drawings. This is a film from 1958 by Len Lye to some African drumming. It doesn’t tell a story but is one with the music and I find it pretty cool to look at.
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Month: October 2008
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Real Live Monsters!
Well, okay, a real dead one. This is a 96 tentacled octopus. Each of it’s tentacles branches out 8 times. It’s as if each of your fingers had five fingers on them. Or something like that. Make a note, you can visit this one the next time you are in Shima, Japan at the Shima Marineland Aquarium.
But this one lives! This two headed Bearded Dragon Lizard just celebrated it’s first birthday. Say Happy Happy to “Zak n’ Wheezie”.
I am glad we live in a world with Fainting Goats. I am even more glad we live in a land where we can have a whole festival for them.
Don’t know what you are doing next weekend? I suggest you hop on a bus and get to Lewisburg, Tennessee, home of the 6th annual Fainting Goats Festival.
Don’t know about Fainting Goats? What tree have you been living in? Better read up on them here. Or visit the fest’s official site. Have a goat and want to bring it? Rules are here.
Or just watch them…
This is an earlier post from Let’s Make Better Films. I started that blog to discuss the films and filmmaking process. Sometimes we all just feel like we want to bury our head and avoid the biz altogether. I started TFF to help build and rebuild the infrastructure to support those better films.
We started Hammer To Nail because we found it hard to get go analysis of what Truly Free films that were out there were truly worth watching. The mainstream critics had stopped covering the smaller films.
Ad Age is now running an article on the effect of all the firings of the established critics on the specialized film business. The loss of established voices has brought a serious drop at the box office.
“It’s the consistent relationship [with a critic] that gets people to go to these movies,” said Mr. Bernard. “[Editors] felt they should get critics that connect to that younger audience that’s getting its news online, but they’re not looking at how the box office is affected when the critic changes.”
Of course, the loss of these critics had no effect on the revenues of all the interesting and great films that weren’t getting the theaters or coverage in the first place. For those films, just go to Hammer To Nail.
For a discussion on the state of film criticism, check out Greencine’s podcast here.
And to keep a vast and diversified culture alive, vote with your dollars, and go out to see a movie today. Seriously. We will lose it otherwise.
There’s a great new program in NYC that bumps the film experience up a notch with direct contact with the filmmakers and a post screening celebration. It also confronts head-on the over emphasis the exhibition biz puts on the first weekend revenues.
Credit the IFP and Michelle Byrd with putting their money where their mouth is an truly supporting both Independent and Truly Free films with their new First Weekend series (all done without corporate backing — c’mon you sponsors, follow suit!). Read about it here.
And guess what their inaugural film is? BALLAST! Did I tell you how much I admire this film? How great it is? How much I like it? I think I have. Go see it.
Troma’s own Lloyd Kaufman, the man who brought us not just THE TOXIC AVENGER, but also POULTRYGEIST and many, many more, is also head of IFTA, the Independent FIlm and Television Alliance, the organization that runs the AFM (American Film Market).
As a true independent filmmaker, he recognizes what is stake, and is not afraid to speak up, albeit with his own particular brand of wit.
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Pikapika: Doodling With Light
Matt Rivera put us on the scent of this wild animation technique. Or is it a drawing technique? Whatever the heck it is, it’s really cool.
Colored flash lights and slow shutter speeds and a horde of artists armed with illumination. We are definitely looking forward to more of it!
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Come To Woodstock!
I am on the jury and will be be doing another panel up at the Woodstock Film Festival this weekend. I am completely impressed with the films in competition. They’ve done a great job curating. And they’ve done a great job programming too.
Saturday at the Woodstock Film Festival has an embarrassment of riches, particularly in terms of yours truly. 1P brings Ang Lee’s RIDE WITH THE DEVIL, which I had the pleasure of producing along with this year’s Woodstock Maverick honoree, James Schamus, and the late, great Bob Colesberry. RIDE’s been cited as a fave of folks as diverse as Bruce Springsteen and Gore Vidal, but it’s been rarely seen. I think there will be some surprise guests at the screening, and I can only thing of one good reason to miss the show.
That reason is a panel I am on on the current state of what is still mistakingly referred to as the “Indie” film world. Woodstock’s assembled a stellar and diverse group for it: John Sloss, Mark Duplass, & Ryan Werner — all of us moderated by Variety’s Dade Hayes. It is on at 2P Saturday. Here’s the description:
IS IT SAFE? With the closure of many of the studio specialty divisions and the reported financial troubles of many of the independents, has “indie film distribution” come to an end, or is this just the end of the world, as we know it? What does the “falling sky” really signify for the independent film sector? Were these companies right to turn their backs or were they just spending too much? Should you make films these days without some form of distribution? And most importantly, who, what or where is the great future hope for indies (and is it all online?)?
Join this esteemed panel of experts straight from the front lines of indie distribution and learn where the light is at the end of the tunnel.
I wonder what I am going to say? Hmmmm…. We need to move the dialogue beyond my “1000 Phoenix Rising” and certainly beyond “The Sky Is Falling”.
