Ellen Pompeo como Meredith Grey en Grey's Anatomy (5x01-02)

- done with chalk so it was erased with each frame

"Fantasmagorie" - Emile Cohl

- first true animation in August 1908
- graphite on paper

"Walking" - Ryan Larkin

- was nominated for an academy award in 1970, but Ryan lost his way and fell into drugs and despair
"Ryan" - Chris Landreth

part 1

part 2

- a 2004 Oscar-winning animated documentary by Chris Landreth about the influential Canadian animator Ryan Larkin (see above - he did "Walking"), who in later years lived on skid row in Montreal following a history of drug and alcohol abuse.
Earl Heard 1915 - invented celluloid animation - all studios had to pay him a royalty until the patent ran into the public domain

"The Old Mill" - Disney

- tricks of the trade - multi-plane camera
- special effects animation from back in 1937 - old school cgi hand drawn and hand painted (very labour intensive)
- editing is so important, it's how you move an audience
- as the storm builds, the shots get closer and closer - cutting/editing make the film
- Walt Disney spent only 12 years to refine animation from Steamboat Willy to Fantasia

- Disney either created or refined modern day aspects of animation
- Leonard Maltin has published numerous animation history books, including "Of Mice and Magic"
- 1937 - Snow White - used multi-plane camera up to Little Mermaid - last time it was used
- now they use D Canvas or Caps and computers to simulate 3d and distance
- "Minnie the Moocher"

- opening with Cab Calloway Hidy Hidy Ho!
- Cab Calloway was the man back in the day!  Max Fleischer vs. Disney studios
- Betty Boop was one of the first fully female animated characters- early example of rotoscoping with Cab dancing - precursor to Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly plus the iPod commercials as well - music video by The New Pornographers
Waking Life - Trailer

A Scanner Darkly - Trailer

New Pornographers - Myriad Harbour

Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed)

- 300,000 cut outs to make this film - Lotte Reiniger - made in 1927
- very first animated feature film - she was the only one who did the cut outs - silhouette animation film

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello - steampunk animation

The Old Man and the Sea - Alexander Petrov

part 1

part 2

- hand painted on glass (finger painting)
- wow - incredible paintings - clouds turn into elephants - lions - the sailing ship
- amazing detail in the oar slicing through the water and having the drops drip down
- the swordfish leaps several feet out of the water and keeps puling the boat further out to sea
- phosphorescence at night is beautiful - the crowd of people on the beach is incredibly detailed
- in the credits, it shows the director Alexander Petrov hand painting each individual glass frame

Peter and the Wolf - Suzie Templeton (also did a film called "Dog")
- stop motion puppet animation

MISC CLASS NOTES:
lots of cutting edge animation happening in music videos
international film festival - should check it out
the story of pixar - director leslie was grand-daughter of the guy who helped do steamboat willy
- the man who planted trees was roger lassiter's inspiration - he played it to introduce his festival
- not an actual true story - was fiction - frederick back

animation = bringing life out of something static
- animation is about drawing movement
- is it possible to make a bad film with beautiful drawings (star wars 1-3, final fantasy...)
- can you make a good film with bad drawings (rejected, simpsons, don hertzfeld)

Welcome to the Show - Don Hertzfeld

- DAMN THE ILLUSION OF MOVEMENT TO HELL!!!!!

Intermission - Don Hertzfeld

End of the Show - Don Hertzfeld

Rejected - Don Hertzfeld

- animation = just for kids?!?!? nope, it is much much more
- film screenings on wednesday help showcase the various techniques

STOP MOTION
- claymation (chicken run)
- paper cut out (south park, adventures of prince achmed - first animated film ever) aka silhouette animation
- puppet animation (nightmare before christmas)
- pixelation (neighbours, space jam, white stripes hardest button to button
- object animation - stop motion (joanna priestley)

- experimental (painted glass, the street, norman mclaren)
- pin screen animation (very rare - use pin screen - NFB animations - do research - each shot is unique - cannot be recreated - alex alexsov)
- rotoscope (waking life, a scanner darkly)
- cell animation (disney, looney toons, duck amuck)
- limited animation (simpsons - all you get is mouth/hand being animated vs. disney where the entire body is animated)
aka illustrated radio because the shots are reused 1960's cartoons like spider man)

Additional Animation clips:

The Animatrix - Final Flight of the Osiris

Not only is Moodring the official home of all Rugs recordings--all of which you can stream through the site--it's also the place to find Schuchmann's and Rugs singer Matt "Dark's" side projects: Matthew Darkly and Shook Na Na Na. So far, Darkly has a six-song EP posted, titled Venus Flytrap. To listen to it, the Rugs and more as it gets uploaded, click these odd-colored words.

Fairly entertaining but not funny enough.

The Happening
0/5

Shit sandwich.

Gone Baby Gone
4/5

Really interesting mystery/drama starring Casey Affleck. Well worth checking out.

Ed Wood
4/5

Hilarious b&w biopic about the universally accepted Worst Director of All Time, Edward D. Wood Jr. Johnny Depp stars and it's directed by Tim Burton.

Planet Terror
4/5

Modern schlock horror at its bloody best.

Layer Cake
3.5/5

Great british crime film, starring Daniel Craig.

A Scanner Darkly
4/5

Disturbing story of drug addicts and an undercover cop in the near future. Uses rotoscoping animation technique to create a shifting, hallucinatory vision of addiction.

Doomsday
1/5

Neil Marshall's third film (after Dog Soldiers and The Descent) is about a viral outbreak in the UK. It is really stupid.

A full movie, one day.

F-yeah.

And second, because Robert Downey Jr. is one of Generation X's best actors, if not perhaps the best. Sure, he's had his problems -- drugs, jail time, more drugs, more jail time -- but you cannot deny the dude's talent. All the movies that he appears in may not be stellar success, by whatever measure you happen to employ, but I defy anyone to show me a bad performance by this guy. Can't be done.

I, of course, recall first seeing him in Weird Science, a bizarre teen angst film about two geeks (one played by Anthony Michael Hall, another GenX actor) who, utilizing their computer and geek obsession with science and fear of never getting laid make a hot woman, played by Kelly Labrock, who teaches them the value of having fun, and he stood out instantly. Of course, it was his performance in Less Than Zero as the crack-addicted Julian that was really allowed Downey to show his dramatic acting chops.

Some of Downey's more recent films that I really dig include: A Scanner, Darkly, Zodiac, and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang! the latter of which I don't think many people have seen, but they should, and not just because of Downey. Val Kilmer is quite good in it too; who knew he could play such a good fag.

Also looks like Downey will be making a cameo in the coming in June The Incredible Hulk, playing Tony Stark/Iron Man in it. And of course the obligatory Iron Man 2 seems to be slated for 2010. Can't wait.

Dexter, due to an intense trauma when he was three, has grown into a thrity-something serial killer who, despite his lack of a typical human morality, kills only the "bad" people. With thirty-six murders-let's not bandy words after all-you might think that he would have been caught, or that he would at the very least be under suspicion.  But when your adoptive father was a cop, and you yourself work as a blood-spatter specialist for the Miami-Dade police department-well, these things make it far easier to embrace the serial killer lifestyle.

But when trouble does arrive for Dexter, it comes at him from multiple fronts.  The first is a new serial killer working the same city as Dexter, a killer whose methods Dexter cannot help but admire.  In describing the dismemberments, Dexter fairly gushes with admiration for this new killer's "art."

The second is Dexter's sister, Deborah, a cop stuck in the vice squad and hooker-gear.  When one of the new killer's victims shows up in her gritty little corner of Miami-Dade, she is suddenly thrust into the middle of both the murder investigate and the back-biting politics of a homicide unit. She desperately wants into homicide and clothing that covers more than her bare essentials. But the lieutenant running the show doesn't like her, doesn't respect her, and doesn't let her too close to the investigation.

The third are Dexter's dark dreams, something that has never plagued him before. In them he sees himself floating above the victims of this new killer while the fiend himself prepared to slice and dice.

There are more troubles, such a girlfriend who escalates their relationship from platonic to very-much-less-than platonic, amorous advances from Deborah's nemesis the lieutenant, and a police sergeant who trusts Dexter as much as he trusts the city of Miami to behave itself. All these things are thrown into the cauldron of Dexter's once neat and tidy life and makes for a compelling, page-turning thriller that turns the serial killer genre upside down.

Which is not to say that the book is flawless. Rather, it is far from it.

The most glaring issue with "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" is the ending. I will be the first to admit the difficulty in crafting an end to a story that explains the whodunit, offers satisfactory action at the conclusion, and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat.  In this particular case, Lindsay has constructed an entire serial killer murder mystery around a contrived premise.  I won't reveal what that premise is here. Instead I'll simply say that the ending was neat and orderly (despite the bloodletting) and, while it is the only plausible explanation, it is still a disappointment.  Lindsay seems to have built the story around the ending and built the ending to avoid exploring how far the murderous angel of Dexter might have fallen.

My next gripe relates to the first, insomuch as it is contingent upon the ending. Lindsay has written in the narration a number of red herrings designed to make you question the sanity of the main character. While this in and of itself is not particularly problematic, what is an issue is that he never makes it believable. Were it less doubtful and hesitant, it might have worked and I might have been gnawing on my nails a bit, but in this case, I never fell into the trap he set.

(For a fantastic example of red herrings, reader traps, and pulling it altogether at the end in spectacular fashion, read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.)

By now you may be asking yourself why I enjoyed this book. The singularly best aspect of this novel is the narrative voice. The story of Dexter is told by Dexter himself, and we get to follow along this empty human husk as he admires a murderer's work, commits murder himself, and marvels at the world around him with the detached indifference of a housecat. The narrative voice is so convincing that you can feel yourself nodding when Dexter runs through the justifications for his crimes. You too can think like a serial killer.

The other thing that makes this book so good is Dexter's murders. Naturally. There are only two, but they are deliciously told. Your heart will beat as you wait for Dexter to begin his acts, using a knife with the same cautious zeal as a painter with a brush. If there were one thing I would have wished for, it would have been for more of these soul-deadening trips. There are only two in the book and one that is referenced "off-stage", but the two we see make for some lovely reading. If you enjoy reading about that sort of thing. One thing that works is how Lindsay holds back on the bloody details, and you get the sense that such restraint is difficult for him. There is not as much blood and gore as you might get from any Jack the Ripper book, but the planning and approach to Dexter's murders is fun stuff.  If you like that sort of thing.

All in all, it was a fine outing for the first of a series. So much so that I have loaned the second one from the library and cannot wait to knife right into it...