MetaFilter posts tagged with cartoons and film

The trouble with CG is that nothing is left up to chance

filthy light thief — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:58:33 -0800

Since the mid 1990s, Don Hertzfeldt has been making animated shorts by hand. To date, his 8 primary films have an apprioximate runtime of 75 minutes, and in total have won 117 awards, all shot on 16 or 35 milimeter film. (There is another 8 minutes or so that was part of the Animation Show (previously).) His recent films have been shot on the same camera rig that recorded It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966), as he noted in a 2007 interview (part of a Scene Unseen Podcast (direct link to the MP3)). Hertzfeltd is currently two thirds of the way through his most ambitious project to date, a trilogy of films which have been called "the closest thing on film yet to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey." (Video links inside) Ah, L'Amour (1995) - awarded Grand Prize Award for "World's Funniest Cartoon" in 1998 from the HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival (now known as The Comedy Festival). Genre (1996) mixes stop-motion and 2-D animation, and was shown on an episode of MTV's Cartoon Sushi in 1997. Lily and Jim (1997) - single-handedly animated from over 10,000 drawings, and was shown on an episode of MTV's Cartoon Sushi in 1998, and Hertzfeldt's first short with a vocal track. Billy's Balloon (1998) - The film was invited into Official Competition at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival (where Don Hertzfeldt was the youngest director involved), and it won the Grand Jury Award at the 1999 Slamdance Film Festival; has also appeared on Adult Swim and MTV Rejected (2000) toured North American theaters between 2000 and 2004, first as part of Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, then with fellow animator Bill Plympton's films called "The Don and Bill Show," and finally as part of Hertzfeldt's own the Animation Show tour. Welcome to the Show/Intermission in the Third Dimension/The End of the Show - 3 shorts created as an introduction, intermission, and end for the first "Animation Show." The Meaning of Life (2005) is the result of almost four years of production and tens of thousands of drawings, single-handedly animated and photographed by Hertzfeldt. Everything Will Be OK (trailer) (2006) won the 2007 Sundance Film Festival Jury Award in Short Filmmaking, a prize rarely bestowed on an animated film. I am so proud of you (2008) Hertzfeldt traveled with the film on a sold-out special theatrical tour of his work in 2008 and part of 2009.

The Visual Telling of Stories

carsonb — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:53:36 -0800

The Visual Telling of Stories
A lyrical encyclopedia of visual propositions;
a visually orientated taxonomy of the ways in which pictures are used to tell stories. And we, spectators always, everywhere Looking at, never out of, everything ! It fills us. We arrange it. It decays. We rearrange it, and decay ourselves. Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, the eighth elegy, 1922

Short films, court métrages and more from up north

Shepherd — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:21:52 -0800

Mentioned here earlier in its beta form, Canada's National Film Board has released the bulk of its films online, for free, in the NFB Screening Room. With hundreds of films from the 1920s onwards, including groundbreaking work by animator Norman McLaren, documentaries, dramas, bizarre anti-smoking (or pro-smoking?) screeds and much, much more, it's a breathtaking trove of amazing film to be discovered from north of the 49th. Personal favourites: The Sweater, the story of a young Quebecer's crushing blow due to the malfeasance of the Eaton's catalogue; Waterwalker, a feature-length documentary about one man and his canoe; Cartoons by Zlatko Grgic, a master of comic timing; Our Northern Neighbour (1944), a short film about how awesome it is to be allied with the Soviets and how nothing can possibly go wrong with that plan. See also Inside Fighting China (1942); Carts of Darkness, a recent documentary about homeless people who have turned cash recycling into an extreme sport. How can one viewer manage all this content? I recommend the Playlists, a section of the site where guest "curators" present a selection of NFB films around certain themes. I should note that the site launched yesterday or the day before, and their servers seem to be getting slaughtered -- connections are somewhat spotty, and YMMV but bookmarking the site and the films you want to check out and coming back to it in a couple of weeks might be more fruitful than "stalling out" halfway through a 60-minute documentary.

Animation Treasures

stavrosthewonderchicken — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:58:45 -0800

The author of this site takes screen-shots from long-pan scenes of classic animation and puts them together to re-create the original larger background images. Much cooler than it sounds, honest. [via MeFi's own kokogiak, sort of]

Th-th-th-that's a lot of title cards, folks!

Robot Johnny — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 08:51:53 -0800

The Warner Bros. Cartoons Filmography And Title Card Gallery has more title cards and coloured rings than you can shake a carrot at. A great resource that goes hand-in-hand with this and this for all your Looney Tunes-related research.

The current cinema

Prospero — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 11:03:27 -0800

If all goes well, and I think it will, we will soon be entering a golden age of American cinema, the likes of which we haven't seen since the heyday of Scorsese and Coppola. Behold: Nicole Kidman and Jason Schwartzman to star in Bewitched; Vince Vaughn in talks to play Racer X in live-action Speed Racer movie; Paris Hilton in talks to star in Dungeons and Dragons 2.

Niahmas — Sat, 12 Jan 2002 13:29:44 -0800

555-LIST Insane Collection of 555 phone numbers from TV-Movies-cartoons. 555-6542 Rev. Lovejoy The Simpsons 555-4044 Tanners residence ALF