Wednesday 20 January 2010

THE ANIMATOR'S SURVIVAL KIT- Richard Williams

Richard Williams (born on March 19, 1933 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian animator. He is best known for serving as animation director on Disney/Amblin's Who Framed Roger Rabbit and for his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler. He was also a film title sequence designer and animator; his most famous works in this field included the title sequences to What's New, Pussycat? (1965), title and linking sequences in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968). He also animated the eponymous cartoon feline for two of the later Pink Panther films.

Monday 18 January 2010

LES TRIPLETTES DE BELLEVILLE- Silvain Chomet

The story focuses on Madame Souza, an elderly woman raising her young grandson Champion. Souza notices her grandson is sad and lonely so she buys him a puppy named Bruno to cheer him up. Although initially happy he quickly becomes melancholy once again. After discovering that Champion has a keen interest in road bicycle racing, she buys him a tricycle. Years later, Champion has become a professional cyclist with Souza as his coach.
Eventually, Champion enters the Tour de France but during the race he and two other riders are kidnapped by two French mafia henchmen and brought to the bustling metropolis of Belleville. Souza along with Bruno follow the men but lose their trail soon after reaching Belleville. Lost in the city with no way to find Champion, Souza has a chance encounter with the renowned Belleville triplets, music hall singers from the 1930s, now elderly women turned improvisational musicians. The sisters take Souza in to stay with them and over time she becomes a part of their group. Meanwhile, the mafia boss has a mechanic build a stationary cycling machine for the kidnapped cyclists to race on to create their own mini Tour de France for gambling.
At a fancy restaurant the triplets plus Souza perform a jam session using a newspaper, refrigerator, vacuum and bicycle wheel. The mafia boss who kidnapped her grandson happens to be in the same restaurant, and, with the help of Bruno, Souza realizes he has Champion. She tails one of the mafia's minions and discovers the scheme. That night, several mafia bosses and their henchmen arrive at the mafia hideout and place bets on the riders. Madam Souza, Bruno and the triplets infiltrate the hideout and sabotage the contraption, unbolting it from the ground and turning it into a pedal-powered vehicle on which they all escape. The mob henchmen pursue them, but each of them are disposed by Souza and the triplets. The film ends with Souza, Champion, Bruno, the triplets riding on the vehicle out of Belleville.

Thursday 7 January 2010

MAN WITHOUT A HEAD- Juan Solanas

hehehehe oh well, just watch it :)

THE OWL WHO MARRIED A GOOSE- Caroline Leaf

Caroline Leaf: I made The Owl Who Married A Goose back in the early 1970s, a time when there were no Inuit animators, and the National Film Board of Canada was benevolently trying to tell the stories of all Canadian peoples. I went twice to the Canadian artic to make this film. I chose the story from a written text, and went to Holman Island to work with Nanogak, an Inuit artist who worked for me with cut-outs to suit my sand silhouette animation. While I was there I found out that the old women were great mimics of arctic animal sounds, because as girls they had accompanied their fathers on hunts, where making animal sounds brought the animals within range of the hunters. So, after animating the film in Montreal, I went back to the Arctic, to Broughton Island, with the soundless film and a list of sounds and sound effects I needed. Six old women sat around a microphone and made the sounds and laughed a lot. I got what I wanted, but it was puzzling, uncomfortable work. For example, after I screened the film, which is nine minutes long and involves the eggs of the owl and the goose hatching, one old lady got up and walked out, saying that what the film showed was not true, eggs take two weeks to hatch. I was never sure that I wasn't using the Inuit people. I knew that their stories were truth and history for them, and they didn't tamper with the storytelling or make personal changes. That is why the stories were remarkably the same across thousands of miles of the arctic. And I had had to change the story, to personalize the animals, to make it mine in order to be able to tell it. 

Sunday 3 January 2010

SEXLINEA- Osvaldo Cavandoli

Osvaldo Cavandoli (January 1, 1920 – March 3, 2007), also known by his pen name Cava, was an Italian cartoonist. His most famous work is his series of short animated cartoons, La Linea ("The Line").
Cavandoli  moved to Milan when he was two years old (later becoming an honorary citizen of that city). From 1936 to 1940 he worked as a technical designer for Alfa Romeo. When he developed his interest in cartoons in 1943, he started working with Nino Pagot, who later created Calimero. In 1950 he started working independently as a director and a producer. He became famous for his La Linea, a simply drawn cartoon, first appearing in 1969. In 1978 and 1988 he developed two new characters: sexlinea and eroslinea.