If there was ever one animator I owed my childhood, it's Don Bluth. So to celebrate the approximately one-and-a-half-year-old birthday of this blog, I'm going to go ahead and fill my Netflix queue with every movie of his in chronological order, much like I did with his old bosses.
I'm not going to get as crazy as I did with the Chronological Animated Disney Canon though. I won't be including things like the "Xanadu" fantasy sequence (I actually like the movie -remember, I'm a thirty-something year old woman- but that's a l-o-n-g musical to sit through for something that was so brilliantly parodied in "Anchorman" of all places) or the Bluth Disney films (been there, done that; If you like, read the Disney Canon and branch off of it after "Pete's Dragon".) I'm only doing movies (and games!) available through Netflix unless I can get the VCR working again. That means I'll have to skip "Banjo the Woodpile Cat" and I very likely won't be able to watch "Rock-A-Doodle" or "Bartok the Magnificent". (As much as I am an obsessive-compulsive completest, I'm... not terribly sad about that.)
But I will get to watch Bluth movies I have never ever seen before! Films like... "A Troll in Central Park." Yay?
Man, I can already tell that the early films will be awesome, wonderful, and maybe even make me weep out of sheer nostalgia-buzz. And I can already tell that I will be wondering, "why I am doing this," round about the time I get to "Thumbelina".
I will not be watching any of the "Non-Buth" sequels either, but that goes without saying. (Damn you to hell, Universal! Damn yoooooouuuuu!!!!! )
The chronology will be based on the list over at TV Tropes. My plan is to watch a movie a night, however feasible, and however compatible with baseball and such. Then I want to get on here and post my immediate thoughts. It's a veritable Bluthapalutha!
NOTE: To curtail a bunch of posts from enthusiastic younger readers, yes, I know about the Nostalgia Critic and that it appears as though he and the Nostalgia Chick are gradually working their way through the Bluth filmography. Thank you.
I'm sticking with the M/W/F schedule for this. Up first, probably my favorite movie...
(This one's a little slapdash because I was -horrors- Away from the Internet for a few days and had to get this ready to post in a hurry.)
So FARK.com recently linked to this news article, which in turn linked to this website, a online shop providing original movie promotional art from Poland. The story goes something like this: for about fifty years, during the communist era, Polish movie theaters were not able to use the official movie posters or other promotional art from the studios. So they went ahead and created their own.
Now, I don't say this often, but before we get into this, I want you to watch "The Brave Little Toaster" if you've never seen it before (or watch it again if it's been a while). Because this review/nostalgia-tinged ramble will contain vast galloping herds of unmarked spoilers. Also, afterwards, you should read the review of the movie from the wonderful Total Media Bridge website, as a lot of my feelings about the film are shared by Mr. Johnson and I want to avoid repeating them.
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Ready? Okay clean up all those tear-sodden handkerchiefs, let's talk about this here movie.
In many ways, "The Brave Little Toaster" was the 80's kid's equivalent to "The Iron Giant". It's an offbeat animated film based loosely on a very offbeat book, and made with a sensibility that isn't quite anything like what we're used to from, say, Disney. (As a matter of fact, given the overall look and tone of "Toaster", I was a little surprised to not see Brad Bird anywhere in the credits.) It wound up in the hands of a big studio who was supposed to distribute it, but really had no clue what they had or what to do with it. Thankfully, somebody had the bright idea, "Well, let's just dump it on our cable TV station; it'll fill 90 minutes." Thus, more children saw this film on cable than would have ever seen it in a theater.
I was one of the kids who saw "Toaster" as a kid on The Disney Channel. This was back when it was a station you had to subscribe to, and it even had it's own magazine. One of my greatest-ever Nerd Regrets is not saving -or even reading- the article about the making of "The Brave Little Toaster" (you'll learn why this is such a wallbanger in a couple of paragraphs). But I watched my clunky VHS tape recording of it over and over and over again. I practically have the whole thing memorized, so watching it again for the first time since... college? Maybe? Anyway, it was a weird, weird experience.
Right away, as a child, I could tell this one was different. From the opening credits, there's a darkness and an underlying sadness here that you simply did not see in animated films of the time. As much as I am an animation fan (and an Emo Pisces), there aren't that many animated moments that *really* make me cry*.
But "Toaster" sports one of the saddest ever:
And mind you, in the context of the film,this scene comes out of rutting nowhere in the middle of a happy musical interlude. The fun stops suddenly, and without warning, we find ourselves in the middle of this tragic little story. As a child, it's scary and upsetting and you just don't have the vocabulary or experience to say why, exactly. You cry yourself to sleep over something you don't understand, and the scene haunts your memory forever. And the kicker: the scene is only a hair or two over one minute long.But something I never noticed before: it informs everything that happens in the movie afterward.
In the beginning of the film, the characters are all just out for themselves. They don't even appear to particularly like each other (this in itself was a huge deal for an animated movie of the time, where characters tended to be BFFs or rivals right from the start), and are along for the adventure just so that they can each be with their owner again. But then Toaster's cold, unfeeling appliance heart breaks over the plight of this lonely organic thing, and so she** starts being more affectionate towards Blanket (who, as a reminder, is a device designed to keep humans warm -- something he hasn't been able to do for at least five years). In turn, Blanket helps the whole gang, sacrificing his personal comfort to be a tent during a rainy night. Lampy (my personal favorite character as a kid; I just love his character design and animation) asks Toaster about this, and later rescues the whole gang in a last-ditch suicide mission. And so on.That right there is some brilliant writing. Who is it making us cry over these godless machines?
Awwwww...
I consider "The Brave Little Toaster" to be the first feature film from Pixar. Joe Ranft's influence is all over it, and I'm on good authority that John Lasseter was working somewhere behind the scenes too (he originally intended for this to be the first-ever CGI animated film. Oh, the things that could have changed the course of film history.) The level of craft is superb. The animation, the invented movement, of each of the machines is very imaginative in a way that has become a well-loved Pixar hallmark.
And unfortunately, this brings up the sad news. Disney owns the distribution rights to this film and they've always treated it as just a weird novelty. This is despite the fact that it deserves a good, cleaned-up DVD (really, if "The Lion King 2" gets a Special Edition, why the hell not "Brave Little Toaster"?) The picture and sound quality is no improvement on my twenty-year-old VHS. Debris litters the picture and the loud-quiet-loud effect of the soundtrack gets very irritating after a while (though it is nice that the film isn't pan-and-scanned). There is but one special feature, called "The making of the 'Brave Little Toaster' movies". And given the historical significance of this film, all it wants to talk about are the cash-grabbing sequels made, for some damn reason, in 2003.Still, the original "The Brave Little Toaster" is brilliant and deserves much better.
That said, I should note that this movie has, of late, been frequently cited as an official scapegoat for an entire generation's psychological problems. No, really. This movie is the reason why an entire generation can never throw anything away. Our machines have feelings, and they miss us when we do not use them. They'd feel horribly betrayed if we ever threw them away, even if they were broken or outmoded.I wish I could say I grew out of this weird sort of animism, but I haven't. And it hit me bad during the Great Basement Cleanout.
And then I found this Spike Jones Ikea commercial. And as much as "Brave Little Toaster" is one of my favorite childhood movies, I couldn't help but laugh:
By the way, if you like wonderful, beautiful, but very definitely melancholy animated films from the late '80s, you'll want to keep an eye on this blog next month...
* - Predictably, the list begins and ends with Seymour.
** - Ah, yes, one of the great controversies about "The Brave Little Toaster". I won't get into it, but you can read about it at the lovely Cartoon Over-Analizations blog here and here.
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This has nothing to do with anything, but I'm posting it here because it was just announced and others may have missed it. And, lo, out of the ashes of M Night's folly, there rose "The Legend of Korra"...
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Painting of the... whatever span of time it ends up being between acrylic paintings! Still getting used to this medium. Here's some "Toaster" fanart!
So recently, I watched and enjoyed a beloved, critically acclaimed, gorgeously animated film that involved John Lasseter about a boy who has just recently become a man. He and his single mother are getting him ready to move off to the far-away land of college. The movie really isn't about the man, though. It's about the objects he owned and loved as a child who come to life when he isn't around. The objects are upset because they don't know if their owner is going to leave them, throw them away, or take them to college with him. Eventually, the objects decide to reunite with their owner, and they get into various misadventures in the process. At one point, they find themselves in a building where objects are mistreated by humans and have gone a little nuts because of it. They meet other objects who tell them they're worthless junk without their owner, and they almost meet a tragic and horrifying end in a garbage dump. Thankfully, their owner finds them and brings them to a place where they will be loved, cared for, and -best of all- where they will be used and needed. The film ends with the man driving off to college.
So yes, I re-watched "The Brave Little Toaster".
But I also finally saw "Toy Story 3". My above summary is by no means meant to be a knock against the movie. Far from it. This thing right here, this is how you end a trilogy. It's almost unspeakably good.
I've been thinking we should all just treasure the fact that we live in the era of Pixar. So many CGI animation studios, since it's so "easy" to make an animated film nowadays, toss a bunch of random movies at the wall, hoping one sticks. They don't even have to be "good"; if you want, you can basically become a giant techno-organic machine that regularly spews out movies about Fairy Princess Barbie or whatever. Pixar is one of the few animation studios out there now that treats the art of animation as just that: an art. Something special to be done with love and care or not at all. Every feature they've made has become more and more daring (compare how "talky" the first "Toy Story" is to it's sequels). You can especially see this in their shorts - "Day and Night", which accompanies "TS3", is as brilliant and surprising in it's humor and animation as a classic Tex Avery cartoon.
I'm glad I brought up Barbie here because in "Toy Story 3", Pixar does things with her and Ken that are screamingly funny in a way the creators of the Mattel-approved Barbie movies will never understand. The fact that they go ahead and explore the rather lousy existence of Barbie's long-suffering mate is by itself one of the reasons to go see it. He is a male character -- but he is also essentially an accessory to a toyline directed at girls. (It's well worth it to point out that Barbie herself is based on one of the dolls from the "We girls can do anything!" time period.) He has no role outside "Barbie's boyfriend". Really, the only way his subplot could possibly be better is if somehow the equine Village People cover band Big Brother Ponies were involved.
Now, aside from Ken and a couple of antagonists who I won't spoil here, there aren't too many interesting new characters. I suppose this was intentional, it gives the characters we already know room for their team victory lap. And a celebration is essentially what this is, for both Pixar and the toys. You can tell the writers are going to miss the hell out of these characters, so they made sure everyone gets their own little character moment (my favorite of these is a scene involving a tortilla that is so clever and hilarious and unexpected and wonderfully animated that I won't dare ruin the fun by explaining it here). It's like getting the band back together for one last amazing show.
Taken as a whole, the "Toy Story" trilogy is where you can say that the Pixar family is absolutely perfect, just as overall terrific as they will ever be. So it doesn't matter that "Toy Story 3" is (as a few people have... well, not really complained, but pointed out) just a big fanservicey pat on the back that ends with Andy explaining how wonderful all the characters are. They really are wonderful. You've got to be pretty confident in the audience's love for the toys to have such a long scene like that at the end of the movie. That's how you can tell that Pixar knows they're at the top of their game right now. They've earned this touchdown dance.
Now, speaking of that ending. For all the reports of big burly guys bawling their eyes out during the end of "Toy Story 3", I have to say that I didn't think it was sad -- except in the sweetest of ways. Overall, the movie doesn't quite have the same emotional resonance of "Toy Story 2" (which is, let's face it, the finest fantastic film to meditate on mortality this side of "Blade Runner", and it will take a lot for anyone to come up with as great and terrible an emotional kidney-punch as Jessie's backstory). But I love how the writers had the stones to take the themes introduced in "Toy Story 2" and explore them much farther. (And I can guarantee that I would have had a very different reaction to that last scene if I happened to be one of the people who "grew up with Andy" and the toys.)
I had the pleasure of seeing "Toy Story 3" at the beautiful old Magic Lantern Theater in Bridgeton, Maine (pictured above). Someday, I'll have to do a post on my memories of the old Wollaston Theater. When I do, I'll hold up the Magic Lantern (heh) as an example of an old theater resurrection done right.
Admission is very cheap, there are only three screens but they are quite large, the theaters are roomy and two of them sport adult-only balconies. We actually sat in such a balcony for "Toy Story 3" and it was quite the experience. The kids in the lower decks didn't bother us at all (not that they would have), and the only other people there with us were two older couples. I don't know if I'd recommend the balcony unless the under-21 crowd *really* bothers you, because you're seeing the film from kind of a weird angle and the lower portion of the screen is "chopped" a little. That, and I had just watched "Matinee" the other night...
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Watercolor of the Week!
Speaking of things that make me cry (click for big and the story)
If you're as angry and sad as I am and you can draw at all, please consider donating a sketch card to Kelly Light's Ripple Project. I've donated three cards so far and they'll be up for sale sometime in the next month. All proceeds go to support animal rescue organizations.
I really liked it. Hell, I wanted to give everyone in the movie a hug.
Mind you, I did part of my thesis on Maurice Sendak, so I kind of "get" him. And in saying that, I can see why some people wouldn't like this. It IS weird. It looks -and, more importantly, it feels- absolutely like a Maurice Sendak illustration in motion. More to the point, and this might be what turned so many people off this movie, it doesn't play by the unspoken rules of what a kid's movie is "supposed" to be these days.
The characters really get hurt and angry and sad. The little boy acts like an actual little boy and throws tantrums when his sister ignores him, bawls openly when his face is accidentally planted in the snow (there are few things worse), and plays under his mom's desk and tells her strange kid-logic stories off the top of his head. He does not act like a snarky miniature adult. He grows and changes but there's no inevitable "and then we all learned a lesson" moment.
It puts a lot of naked emotion on the screen and lets you deal with it on your own. There's no hand-holding and no babysitting. "Where the Wild Things Are" actually reminds me less of any current movie made for children and more of the time, not too long ago, when children's entertainment could be really weird and offbeat, and could haunt you with questions and ideas and images you suspected, as a child, that even mom and dad couldn't answer or explain for you.
Kids need more movies like this. I watched "Don't You Forget About Me", the documentary about John Hughes and his films, shortly after I watched this and the thing that hit me was something that kept coming up with all the teenagers interviewed for the film: they could not relate in any way at all to what modern-day Hollywood thinks young people are like. The only characters that reminded them of themselves were the ones in Hughes' twenty-something year old movies. Hughes had a knack for writing young people who thought and felt the way adults usually like to pretend they don't really act and feel. That's a rare gift, but I'd say Spike Jones inherits it here.
And, yes, it is a children's film. One that had my entire family enthralled. I say do what our parents did in the '80s: sit your kids in front of it and leave them be. We made out okay, right?
It is freakin' miraculous that this movie exists in the form it does. I haven't even mentioned that it's also absolutely gorgeous and is the one movie out of the many many films I've seen recently that really stuck with me (well, except for the two I'll review over the rest of this week). I could go on, but a lot of my feelings are echoed here.
So here's the first acrylic-on-canvas painting I've made in... I don't want to think how long. I won't feel sad if you all laugh at it. This is what happens when you follow along with "The Joy of Painting" using really old brushes, the wrong kinds of knives, and acrylics. It's pretty obvious here that there are some serious differences between oils and acrylics. I wanted to go back into it again later on, maybe in a day or two, just so it wouldn't be so transparent.
Now a funny thing happened between me deciding this and this painting's ultimate fate: somebody closely related to me happened to see the painting.
This person (who wishes to remain anonymous) saw this painting and said she loved it and wanted it and could she give it away as a present please please please? I said, sure, but I need to work on it before I let anyone else see it. See, it didn't feel like anything I'd paint.
So, I went ahead and added in an Oviraptor.
Because why the heck not? By the way, the people who now own this painting love it!
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"Inception" is out this weekend, and we should all go see it. Because buying a ticket to this movie is an unspoken vote for creative, director-driven, non-sequel, non-spinoff, non-franchise movies in what has so far been a spectacular summer for astonishingly bad movies. My feelings are more eloquently expressed in this old Devin's Advocate article from CHUD.com (which, by a happy coincidence, involves another crazy-ass director-driven movie that just happened to be released by the Dubya-Bee; emphasis and visual bleeping mine):
"Know that you went out and voted with your ticket, that you sent a message to Warner Bros that you'd prefer them to keep taking chances, to keep trying new things, to not always be safe. Know that you sent a message to the studios that they don't have to make horrible movies... that you won't wait to see the interesting films at home. And if you don't go, I don't want to hear you complaining the next time there's a sh*tty remake or a sh*tty sequel or a sh*tty movie based on a sh*tty toyline or cartoon." - Devin Faraci
It should be said that "Inception" is one of only two, maybe three, movies I am 100% on board with this summer. I *just* got to see the first of these, so next week is Movie Week! Which will hopefully build to something very special for August...
I took apart my old French easel to sand and stain it, then I put it back together again.
Right, now for what actually happened.
I had this French easel for years and years and never really played with it. This summer, I decided I ought to get back into acrylic painting, something I abandoned years ago for whatever reason. Before I did that, I wanted to spruce my old easel up, hopefully making it easier and safer to use. So I unscrewed everything, removed all the metal pieces, and took the easel apart. Then I sanded and applied several coats of polyurethane stain to each wooden piece. I set the whole thing outside to dry overnight.
I came back in the morning to put the poor thing back together.
Here's how the easel looked when I was finished.
This is the best reason to use this kind of easel: The whole thing folds up into a convenient box shape. At least it's supposed to. I had a hard time folding my easel back up and let me show you why:
Um... hrm...
Helpful Hint: If you ever feel the need to take a complicated thing like this apart for whatever reason, TAKE LOTS OF PHOTOGRAPHS BEFORE YOU BREAK OUT THE SCREWDRIVERS! I didn't but I have the excellent excuse of not having a camera handy. So I brought everything indoors, looked up catalog pictures of French easels, and after an hour of squinting at low-res photos on my laptop, here's my easel, all folded up...
And here she is in alt-mode. Glad to have you back, easel. You and I got a date with a Bob Ross DVD!
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Sketch of the day!
Or rather, another Watercolor of the Week! Here's a very-sensitive-if-I-do-say-so-myself study of the view from part of Long Lake:
Literally, in my case, as it's in St. Louis Missouri and I am in Massachusetts and unable to attend in person. Which sucks, however the website sort of acts like a virtual gallery (my page is here). Also, there is a book coming out the same day, so there really is no excuse not to support the participating artists, like myself, in some way or other.
Here's information shamelessly swiped from their website:
"The Drawgasmic exhibition and book is an effort to expose, promote, and push forward the work of international independent artists, illustrators, and designers working today. We, as curators, are trying to create the sort of experience we feel is missing in the in the all to often pompous and institutionalized art world. An experience that combines the talent of hundreds of great artists with a mash-up of unique performances.
"We are excited to be able to document the entire collection in a quality, limited edition coffee table book. The book will exist as a historical marker of the unique styles and concepts being created by living and working artists of 2010. This book is being released in conjunction with the exhibition in July 2010.
"Located at 2720 Cherokee Street St. Louis MO 63118, 4 blocks west of Jefferson. From Highway 40 or 44, take Jefferson South to Cherokee Street and make a right. They are 4 blocks down on the left.
"2720 Cherokee is a place for music, art, shopping, events, parties, socializing, drinking, relaxing, learning, expressing and more. In addition to bringing you the work of so many amazing artists in the Drawgasmic Exhibition, we will also be filling the night with other unique artistic acts, bands, performers, and personalities. We're installing webcams and will be streaming the gallery live all night. We will also be airing a live video-cast for your viewing pleasure!
"Why the name 'Drawgasmic'? If you're an artist you'll understand the awesome feeling you get from creating new work and viewing inspiring art! That, my friend, is a drawgasm... So the name is pretty spot on... and hilarious sounding too"
CHUD.com, a movie news website I enjoy, has been listing their choices for the worst instances of CGI animation in (usually) otherwise live-action films. They range from Wolverine's "Roger Rabbit" claws in "X-Men Origins" to the forty-two sauropod pileup in Peter Jackson's "King Kong". As a person who has blogged quite a lot about animation, I figured I should share it. Right now, they can all be found accumulating here, or you could start with part one and work your way through. I have to say, I agree with most of the selections (Part One in particular, as it covers the Scorpion King sequence in "The Mummy Returns", which is easily one of the most downright embarrassing and Narm-tacular things ever put on a screen.) I have to nitpick, however, that many of the sequences were done with the best animation available at the time and simply have not aged well. That said, a fair number of them were... not. And I agree with their argument that we wouldn't be having this discussion at all if the sequences that could have been done practically were. Take entry ten, the "Burly Brawl" in "Matrix Reloaded". Now, when I saw that at the theater I thought it was awesome. Then when I watched it again last summer it was still awesome... up until a point. There is a moment, and you can tell exactly where it is, when the film-makers eschewed practical effects and stuntwork for motion capture. This is about the only scene in the entire trilogy where they do so and... man, it just sticks out like you can't imagine. It looks like something out of "Happy Feet' and happens to be the only really badly animated scene in the trilogy.
When last I talked about my garden, it was overrun with tulips and onions. Those have since gone to fruit, but there are loads of wildflowers taking over the big garden:
You can see the "spent" onions, lots of Rose Campion (to think some people would call this a weed!), and some yet-to-flower daylilies and chrysanthemums. I don't remember if I showed off my irises, but here's what's currently blooming in their part of the garden:
Some crazy Asiatic Lilies I don't remember planting! Really, I don't remember planting these. I do remember having lilies in this garden, but they were all eaten years ago by those horrid little red beetles whose larvae spend all their days eating lily leaves and (from the looks of it) coating themselves in their own feces. Perhaps they weren't all eaten? It is a mystery...
I apologize for the blurriness of this picture. This wasn't a particularly good year for the Delphiniums. They are so pretty but one strong rainstorm and they flop over. At least the bees don't care.
On the other hand, my Clematis is having an incredible year. I've never seen so many blooms on it! They only lasted a week or so but what a show!
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Sketch Costume design of the day!
It's almost Independence Day, so how about some patriotic pants?
This was part of a costume I designed for a Fourth of July party called America Pants (for reasons un-freaking-known; but there's your title significance). Some of the rest of the clothing I made for the occasion can be seen here.
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Oh, hey, is that a Drawgasmic button at right? The party happens on July tenth! That's only days away! If you're in the St. Louis area, please go!
