Dixon, Dinosauroids, and We're Desperate for a Dub: Let's Watch the "After Man" Specials from Japan!

Boy, I really wish we had subtitles for this one, but I'm glad to get to watch it at all.  Here is the rare 1990 Japanese documentary based upon After Man:

This wasn't too hard for me to follow even though I couldn't understand the narration.  It mostly reiterates the big points in the book, like that no niche in nature stays empty for long and that the ancestors of the animals we know today would've looked very odd to us.  We get to see a lot of Phil Tippet's animation from "Dinosaur!"  Dougal Dixon gets to visit the real lands and animals that inspired his imagined ones, which are brought to life through some wonderfully Harryhausen-esque stop-motion animation.  This is all delightful to watch but I really long for an English-language version, especially so I can better understand the sequence where we encounter our old friend the Dinosauroid as well as Dixon's... different... take on the concept.

Fortunately, we do have English subtitles for the "After Man" music video.  This was part of a program of short educational music videos called "Minna no Uta", kind of the Japanese equivalent of "Schoolhouse Rock".  Understanding the lyrics doesn't answer that many questions, but I really like the designs for the creatures here.

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Art of the Day!

JuneFae isn't over yet!

Let's Ring in the New Year with "Along the Moonbeam Trail"

As a fellow admirer of crows once sang in a song that has been drilled in the tooth of my memory since high school, maybe this year will be better than the last.  God I hope so.  I at least intend to blog more, when I can; anything that strikes my fancy and is also too weird and/or wonderful NOT to post about.

Case in point: "Along the Moonbeam Trail".  This is a short silent film recently restored to the best of the editors' abilities (here's hoping they find the ending).  I'd like to thank Tyler Greenfield for posting a clip on Twitter because it's honestly astounding that I've never seen it or heard of it.  It has everything!  It is not my Entire Aesthetic (for one thing, I'd have more than one [1] major female character and she'd do more than being a Deus ex Machina), but it's about as close as a movie from this time period could hope to be:

Everything about this is great but I'm torn between the random witch, the "pterosaur" who's really one of the first movie dragons, and the stegosaurus and his cute skink-tongue.

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Art of the Day!

I painted this back in 2018 and I'm reposting it here to bring this wonderful magical energy into 2021.  Happy New Year!

The "Return to OZ" Tweetmentary

For this week's Tweetmentary, I have a movie that I find endlessly fascinating: 1985's "Return to OZ".  I had quite a lot to say about it: