Richard William's 'A Christmas Carol'

In 1970, Richard Williams, known for Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Thief and the Cobbler, directed an animated version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol for the American Broadcasting Company. Ken Harris, who worked on a number of Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera cartoons as well as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, served as chief animator. The animation style, aimed at an adult audience, is based on original 19th century engravings for the book by John Leech and Gustave Doré. The resulting film is dark and completely unique. It won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 1972. Watch it below:

Spooky Shorts for Halloween

To help get in the mood for the haunting season, here are some of my favorite spooky shorts. Enjoy!

First, Tim Burton's brilliant stop-motion film Vincent (1982), made while he was an animator with Disney, and his original (and in my opinion superior) live-action version of Frankenweenie from 1984:




Next, the musical puppet short Graveyard Jamboree with Mysterious Mose (1999) by the wildly talented Screen Novelties:




This Oscar nominated short, The Sandman (1991) by Paul Berry, an animator for Cosgrove Hall and later The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, was based on a tale by E.T.A. Hoffman:




The nightmarish short The Cat With Hands (2001) by Robert Morgan (for those interested, there's also an earlier animated pilot version):




Lastly, The Listening Dead (2006) by Phil Mucci. Check out the "making-of" video to see more on the scale model and puppet shots:



Happy haunting!

Jim Henson Shorts

Jim Henson would have turned 77 last week. On what would have been his birthday, the Henson Company released "Drums West," a recently discovered short animated film made by Jim in 1961. I love the brief footage at the end of Jim at his paper-covered work table in the midst of making the film. Here are more of my favorite Jim Henson film experiments:

"Time Piece"

Made in 1964-65, Jim wrote, directed and starred in this surreal 9 minute short which was nominated for an Academy Award.

"Idea Man"

An experimental short from 1966, animated and narrated by Jim Henson.

Test footage for The Dark Crystal:
Early tests for the Podling puppets.


Tests for a rock puppet made by Cheryl Henson in 1979.


Testing early Gelfling puppets, Mystics and other forest creatures at Jim Henson's home in New York, 1978.

Finally, one of my favorite shorts from Sesame Street, produced in 1970 by Jim Henson and directed by Frank Oz, who also built the amazing contraption:
Another version with an alternate ending is here.

West of the Moon

West of the Moon, a truly lovely short film by Brent Bonacorso, based on the book El Monstruo de Colores No Tiene Boca by Roger Omar, an illustrated collection of interviews with hundreds of children about their dreams. You may read more about Omar's project here.

West of the Moon from Brent Bonacorso. Watching in full screen is recommended!

Pirat

..a short Czech animation by Jan Bubeníček and Bretislav Pojar. I'm such a sucker for pirates. And puppet films. A pirate puppet film, ahhh...

Part one:


Part two:


Apologies for being quiet, but it's been so sunny and I've been up to my elbows in pulp and wire and epoxy.

(note: the videos seem to be down, but check out clips from Pirat here and here, and Jan Bubeníček's lovely director's reel here!)

love, love, love

I woke up with a tune stuck in my head and it took me a while to realize it was this song from Sesame Street:

I have no idea how long it's been since I've seen that clip. Strange it swam into my head, but it is a happy spring-y song to go with our happy spring-y weather.

Hope it's lovely where you are too!

noodleheads, nincompoops, mooncalfs, ninnyhammers & fools

"The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly."
-Erasmus

When I was little one of my favorite books was an edition of The Wise Men of Gotham, retold and illustrated by Malcolm Carrick. The people of Gotham were said to have feigned foolishness to keep King John from staying in their village in the 13th century. The stories recount villagers drowning eels, sending rent away tied to a hare, failing to trap a cuckoo in a hedge and other misadventures.

The book is silly and wonderful and had an incredible smell the way some books do, a bit like a mature cheese. When I was very small I somehow thought this was because one of the tales was about a man rolling his cheeses down a hill in the belief they would take themselves to market. This and other Gotham tales can be read on Project Gutenberg.

Another story about a fool who is not entirely foolish is the Russian fairy tale The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship. It is about a simple young man who wins the hand of the Tsar's daughter with a flying ship and the help of a strange band of travelers. Here is the first part of a 1990 stop motion puppet version by Cosgrove Hall:

A full version of the story can be read here.

Happy April Fool's Day to you!

Work while you have the light..

Len Lye's Rhythm, 1957

Busy busy busy... nothing much to report. Yet.

your closest exit may be behind you

I'm spending the day packing and getting ready to fly tomorrow. My sister posted this a couple of days ago but it amused me so much I had to put it up it too. If only all airport staff were so sardonic. I think I payed more attention to this than I ever have to safety announcements I've watched on planes.



I love the nun at the end. Nuns on my vacation make me very happy, especially at amusement parks.

30!

Michaël Dudok de Wit

Hand drawn animations by Dutch artist Michaël Dudok de Wit:

Father and Daughter (1994)


The Monk and the Fish / Le Moine et le poisson (1994)

when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens

...from Jan Švankmajer's short film The Fall of the House of Usher/Zánik domu Usherů, 1980.

The Pearce Sisters

The Pearce Sisters, a lovely animated short by Luis Cook

More about the film here!

Windsday

Because it has turned out to be a Rather Blustery Day, here is a Soviet animation of AA Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh..

Madame Tutli Putli

After watching many clips and waiting patiently, I finally got to see this!

Madame Tutli Putli by Clyde Henry Prodictions

View the film in higher quality and see more of the Clyde Henry's fantastic work at their website.

shadows

Very many sad and difficult and awful things in the last few weeks.. I am trying to remember what is good.

I first saw some of Lotte Reiniger's animated silhouette films a few years ago. The movement she managed with flat cutouts is more elegant than that of much three dimensional puppetry.

The Little Chimney Sweep:

The BFI has more of her short films and clips available to download.

This was created using black paper and a light table by Edward De Leon:

It's rough, but gives a bit of hope for simple animation in the face of masses of rubbish.

And digitally animated but still roughly in the spirit of traditional silhouette films, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello.

moving day!

(Betty Boop in "Bimbo's Express", 1931)

Prokofiev in the morning

Suzie Templeton's beautiful stop-motion animation Peter and the Wolf:

oh busy day

Today I saw a woman vicar on the street wearing her sensible shirt and collar with a flirty above-the-knee floral skirt, was chatted up in the grocery store by an elderly Carribean gentleman, and received a book in the post about Paris, Méliès and automata.

Have also had this song stuck in my head...



..the original Betty Boop/Cab Calloway cartoon which inspired it can be found here.

Winsor McCay

Little Nemo animation from Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and his Moving Comics, (1911).