Tag Archives: animation
Funky Spidey
So I saw the new Spider-Man film at a preview in Nashville tonight. I’m not sure when the review embargo gets lifted, but I’m not going to offer any judgments or spoilers here. If you saw Tom Holland’s turn as the web-slinger in his extended cameo in Captain America: Civil War you’ve got a good [...]
Nashville Film Festival #4
Wednesday afternoon I headed to the fest to check out the Animating Reality short cartoon docs block. During the introduction before the program it was explained that so many documentary entries came in as animated films that the fest decided they deserved their very own section. Lately documentaries use animation a lot. It’s a trend, [...]
Cartoon Crime
I spent some time at the Nashville airport last week where I discovered a paperback copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov sitting on a sectional near one of the gates in a bustling concourse. There was a boarding pass inside the book so I took to them both to the nearest gate in case [...]
Le Break Up
I love animation, and recently I’ve featured more than one Blank-On-Blank project here, bringing archived audio to life with moving drawings. This is a new series I just discovered that promises to document some of the biggest feuds in the world of philosophy. Here’s a bit about the first installment which covers the great friendship, [...]
Buk Toons
For some reason the fall always seems like the most poetic season — the best season for writing and reading verse. I think it has something to do with darkness. I think it has something to do with the cold and the damp that begins to creep into the coming Southern winter. I think it [...]
Banned in Russia
Growing up during the second half of the Cold War, when I was a child the Soviet Union was notable for two reasons: nuclear weapons and censorship. That’s about all I really knew: the Russians and citizens of their satellites can’t read or watch or print what they want. Also they have enough warheads to [...]
Last Words
After being mortally shot in a restaurant urinal, German-Jewish American gangster Dutch Schultz slipped into fever and hallucination before dying. Schultz’s surrealistic screed of last words has since become a thing of literary legend. Here’s the Wiki… Schultz’s last words were a strange stream-of-consciousness babble, spoken in his hospital bed to police officers who attempted [...]
Tom Again
I love the Blank on Blank project’s animated takes on archived interviews. In this episode Tom Waits waxes on Stonehenge, Hawaii and everything in between. Here’s the lowdown… Waits had just released the concert film, Big Time, when he was interviewed by Chris Roberts at a London recording studio; you can hear music playing softly [...]
Vintage John Lennon Cartoon
Recently, I was browsing through stories via Flipboard and I came across this delightful piece about a vintage animated short film based on John Lennon’s instantly recognizable cartoon doodles. Here’s a bit from the Brain Pickings site… …six years after the beloved Beatle’s assassination, Ono commissioned independent animator John Canemaker to create a short animated [...]
Nashville Film Festival Part I
I’ve been spending the last few days checking out various selections at the Nashville film festival. My assistant, Antonia Oakes, came up with a preliminary itinerary of films to which I’ve added a few of my own choices. The flicks I’ve seen so far highlight various countercultures and outsider aesthetics in one way or another. [...]
