Sally Cruikshank and funonmars

April 18, 2003 11:14 AM

funonmars is the online home of Sally Cruikshank. She's perhaps best known for the animated sequence in Twilight Zone:The Movie, but her quirky cartoons (available here) are basically like treasure. On the site, may I recommend the epic Titanic 2? [warnings: Flash and Javascript. Also, sounds require somethin' called Beatnik player which I decided not to download 'til I familarize myself with it.]
posted by PinkStainlessTail (5 comments total)

Beatnik is Thomas Dolby's touted project
posted by KnitWit at 11:35 AM on April 18, 2003

Anita wants Quasi to take her out for some fun. Rollo has his own agenda. Ten minutes of mind-bending fun. Here's the guy who composed the soundtrack for Quackadero. and "played musical saw solo for opening and closing title theme music for Milos Forman film, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' 1975." He's a member of R. Crumb and the Cheap Suit Serenaders.
posted by hairyeyeball at 1:10 PM on April 18, 2003

This is a rather frustrating thing. 20-30 years ago, there were whole series of "Animation Festivals" that floated around the underground theaters in the US. That where I first saw "Quasi at the Quackadero", and hundreds of other top-notch (and a lot of not-so-great) animations.
One such was in its 13th+ season!

However, just try and find videos of them today!

You can find them, I know they exist, if not in the original AF order. I'm looking at one, "The Best of Zagreb Film", that's not even listed on the IMDB. But Zagreb studios were very prolific.

Most of the other animations were one shots.

I think even Spike & Mike gave up on "regular" animation festivals in favor of just the "sick & twisted."

I know there must be a market, so where are the sellers?
posted by kablam at 1:13 PM on April 18, 2003

I hear you, Kablam. My parents used to take my sister and I to animation festivals as recently as 10 years ago or so, and I really miss them. I can really do without "sick and twisted" - just give me "unique & different". I still can't get over how cool Pencil Dance was. Or the typewriter-animated Primiti Too Taa... I'd love to see more stuff in that vein.
posted by wanderingmind at 1:22 PM on April 18, 2003

Quackadero bent my mind permanently out of shape, and I've typed in "Cruickshank" now and then on eBay to see if I could find it somewhere. You're right, kablam, there is a market for those "Animation Festival" kinda things (although those Eastern European efforts - not including Jan Svankmajer, of course - were usually too cute or shallowly philosophical for me). Before Blockbuster, independent video rental joints used to stock animation collections. Thanks for the link, PinkStainlessTail.
posted by kozad at 4:00 PM on April 18, 2003