Tag: animation

affirmations (“for your trials and tribulations”) -::- I am looking forward to it with some relief.

The Life of Death from Marsha Onderstijn.

More travel approaches. Nevada. California. Festivals of thought and music. The desert. The rich. The coast. More of the rich, though a slightly different kind. Lights. Action. Arduino. An experience in a large dark room underground, the entry the same as the cost of a plane ticket.

Tomorrow I’m going on an in-depth, insiders tour of the TRIUMF Accelerator Laboratory, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics and accelerator-based science, to learn how to use the world’s largest cyclotron.

Later, by a week, I’ll be at Future Forward, a Burning Man spin-off for the one percent run by Robot Heart. A double-date just outside one the most artificial city in North America. Google’s Eric Schmidt is the keynote speaker. Darren Aronofsky will be wandering around with a camera. I will recognize no one, both a weakness and a strength.

I write this while streaming Coachella live, a private concert projected onto a wall, Underworld and M83 and LCD Soundsystem, five feet tall and eight and a half feet wide. I write this while the man on screen singing is the same man who held the door for me at Michael’s funeral. How small, the world.

Later in May, I’m going to San Francisco for my birthday again, bracketed by Maker Faire. (I have never been.) There are secret plans afoot and a place to stay for ten days. The secret society is gone, but there will still be a party. I will still find my way.

do you want to watch a movie?

7:35 DE LA MAÑANA from Morituri.

7:35 in the Morning is a short from 2004 that I think Andrew found through StumbleUpon before it was nominated for an Oscar. We used to have little Found Media nights where people would bring DVD’s or drives with videos they had liked and downloaded from the internet, like YouTube parties before the social networks caught up with our habits and everything was given over to the cloud, and I remember this one making quite the impression when we put it up on the screen. A bit like when we found The Hire BMW films in early 2002. (Called The Hire, we found them stripped of their context and named them The Driver series and loved them all the same.)

The internet is interestingly timeless, insomuch that what is old can be new again, as new waves of people discover old art. It’s strange to think that 7:35 in the Morning is from a decade ago. I haven’t seen Andrew in months, I couldn’t name more than five people who used to come to those parties, but here I am, tracking it down and posting it to my LiveJournal, just like I did ten years ago when I was twenty:two.

It came up this evening because I’m sending some of my favourite short films to a dear friend who’s at home with anxiety. It’s not the hair-dye girly party we planned, but I’m still managing to help her with her gluey, uncomfortable head-yuck, so I’m a little disappointed, but not as much as I would be if I couldn’t find a way to help.

Other films I’m sending her that you might like as well:

Johnny Express, by Kyungmin Woo – A slightly shady delivery gone terribly wrong. Animated with a nod to disaster blockbuster tropes, it’s a sweet yet efficient bit of ha-ha ouch sort of slapstick.

Hotel Chevalier, by Wes Anderson – Partner short to The Darljeeling Limited, Jason Schwartzman plays the same character, but before he got his emo heart all ker-smashed by his ex-lover, played by Natalie Portman. More atmosphere than plot, but nice.

Marilyn Myller, by Mikey Please – From the description, “A year in the making, the full six minute stopmotion short features the voice of Josie Long, one zillion hand carved tiny things, literally tens of carved foam puppets, two eye fulls of in-camera, long-exposure light trickery and a pair of tiny dolphins, smooching.” It also pointedly makes fun of high art while being, at it’s heart, high art.

The Centrifuge Brain Project – Lies, damned lies, and mock documentaries about scientific experiments. Contains nearly believable amusement park rides and a touch of death.

This Is a Generic Brand Video, written by Kendra Eash for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency – Made entirely of stock footage, (excepting the custom narration), this short gleefully skewers the poisoned well of advertising conceits it draws from so successfully.

Oktapodi, by gobelins school of animation students – Two octopi in love. One is captured, meant for a dinner table, the other must get it free. Chaos, of course, ensues just as ridiculously it should.

Trois petits points, by gobelins school of animation students – Supremely stylish, a seamstress sews things back together during and after a war, while her husband is resentful. Thick with myth, this one, and darkness.

C’est la vie, by Simone Rovellini – Attractive and bewitching, this working girl is especially charming if you’re a fan of Amélie. Similar whimsy and cinematic style, though very different plot. I will love this one until I die.

a lot of cliches, but still awesomely impressive

ROSA from Jesús Orellana.

Via Wired, “Bunkered for months in his Barcelona basement, equipped only with computers and a vivid imagination, DIY filmmaker Jesús Orellana emerged after a year of solitary labor to deliver 2011’s most dazzling sci-fi short. […] The lush setting brings to mind Avatar’s Pandora, but instead of spending several million bucks on visual effects, 29-year-old comic book artist Orellana made the entire film for a grand total of $99.”

life is hard & then you die, and so on, and so, on

Poussière from Poussiere LeFilm via COILHOUSE.

Because of you, it seems, I do not exist. I only want to wear gray or white or black, blanched of colour like a uniform, an armband of mourning, but from head to toe, as in anticipation of a funeral or an ill concieved joke. I think of zippers, how their brassy teeth unlatched, your damp palm on my shoulder, the sunset painting the room gold and red. The scarlet zipper sewn onto my dress, the new one you’ve never seen. How that haven’t makes you a liar, “I would never”. And yet you did. You said, yet I remain waiting. Shattered. The worst evolutionary consequence of love. It is a thing. It is a situation. Already it has been longer than we were together. Still, I cannot sleep.