Halas & Batchelor cronological filmography

We're continuing our selection of Halas & Batchelor's short films.





Here's a cronological list of their non-commercial works:
1938 Music Man
1938/39 The Brave ‘Little’ Tin Solider (uncompleted project)
1940 Carnival in the Clothes Cupboard
1941 Pocket Cartoon
1941 Filling the Gap
1941 Dustbin Parade
1942 Digging for Victory
1943 Compost Heaps (Pathé trailers)
I Stopped, I Looked (trailer)
Model Sorter
War Bonds (Pathé trailers)
Look out in the Black Out (Pathé trailers)
Early Digging (Pathé trailers)
Nine Men (animation effects for Ealing Studios)
Jungle Warfare
1943/45 Abu series
1944 Cold Comfort (newsreel trailer)
From Rags to Stitches (Pathé trailers)
Christmas Wishes (Pathé trailers)
Blitz on Bugs (Pathé trailers)
Careless Talk (Pathé trailers)
Spending Money (Pathé trailers)
Anti-Personnel Bomb (Pathé trailers)
Early April (Pathé trailers)
Domestic Workers (Pathé trailers)
Mrs. Sew and Sew (Pathé trailers)
1945 The Big Top
1944/45 Handling Ships
Export! Export! Export!
Export or Die
Six Little Jungle Boy’s
Tommy’s Double Trouble
Britain Must Export!
Dead of Night (animation effects for Ealing Studios)
Road Safety
1946 Immunize Against Diphtheria
Old Wives’ Tale
The Keys of Heaven
Modern Guide to Health
1946/47 Charley series
1949 Farmer Charley
1947 Pattern for Progress (animation Inserts for Technic Films)
First Line of Defense
This is the Air Force
1948 Magic Canvas
Water for Fire Fighting
Heave Away My Johnny
1949 Tracing the Spread of Infection
A Better Spirit (Part 1 of series Start With What is Under Your Nose)
A Little Forethought (Part 2 of series Start With What is Under Your Nose)
A Well Kept Machine (Part 3 of series Start With What is Under Your
Nose)
The Shoemaker and the Hatter
Submarine Control
Fly about the House
Mortal Shock
Think to the Future
Television Opening
Passport to Pimlico (animation effects for Ealing Studios)
1950 Dollar Gaf (animated inserts for Crown Film Unit)
As Old as the Hills
1950/51 The Earth in Labour
1950 Fowl Play
Fowl Play
British Army at Your Service
1951 Catalysis
Moving Spirit
1951 Poet and Painter Series
1951/4 Animal Farm
1952 We’ve Come a Long Way
The Owl and the Pussycat
Linear Accelerator
Service: Garage Handling
Changing Face of Europe (animated titles)
Cinerama Holiday (Continuity sequences)
Power to Fly
Coastal Navigation and Pilotage
The Figurehead
1954 Martin Luther
Down a Long Way
Refinery at Work
Early Days of Communication
Know your Allies (animated titles)
Pilgrims Progress (not produced)
Conquest of Everest (animation effects)
1954/5 The Sea of Winslow Homer
1955 The World that Nature Forgot
Animal Vegetable Mineral
Basic Fleetwork
Sniffles and Sneezes (animation inserts)
Refinery at Work
POPEYE series
Private’s Progress (Animated titles)
1955/56 The Aluminum Story
1955 Mr. Finley’s Feelings (animated inserts)
1956 The World of Little
The Candlemaker
To Your Health
Speed the Plough
1956/7 History of the Cinema
1956 Think of the Future
To Open the Worlds to the Nations – Suez Canal
Some Diseases of the heart and Circulatory System (animation insert)
Invisible Exchange
1957 Midsummer Nightmare (uncompleted project)
Open Window (animated titles)
Legend of the Lost (animated effects)
Granada Television Symbol
All Lit
1958 The First 99 (animated inserts)
The Christmas Visitor
Dam the Delta
Speed the Plough
Follow that Car
Best Seller (for Shell Petroleum Company)
Paying Bay
Early Days of Communication
1959 Rude on the Road
ABC Television Symbol
Armchair Theatre Titles
How to be a Hostess (live action)
Man in Silence
Charlotte’s Web (not produced)
Piping Hot
The Energy Picture
For Better for Worse
1959-60 Foo Foo (series)
1960 SNIP AND SNAP (series)
History of Inventions
The Brides of March
Road Hog – Don’t Be Rude On The Road
Wonder of Wool
Once More with Feeling (animated titles)
Guns of Navarone (excerpts, map effects)
1960-61 The Thief of Baghdad (animation effects for Titanus Film)
1961 The Monster of Highgate Pond (live action)
Lees Bar
Hamilton the Musical Elephant
Hamilton in the Music Festival
1961/69 8mm CONCEPT FILMS: BIOLOGY (series)
1961/69 8mm CONCEPT FILMS: MATHS (series)
1962 Barnaby – Father Dear Father (1962) 5min
Barnaby – Overdue Dues Blue (1962) 11min
The Showing Up of Larry the Lamb
The Romance of the Juke Box
1963 Weave me a Rainbow
Automania 2000
The Axe and the Lamp
Red Spotted Ball
1964 The Tale of the Magician
Ruddigore (feature)
Living Screen: Is there Intelligent Life on Earth
Paying Bay (for Shell)
Follow That Car
THE TALES OF HOFFNUNG (series)
MARTIAN IN MOSCOW (series)
DODO (series)
1966 ICOGRADA Congress (live action)
CLASSIC FAIRY TALES series
Matrices
Dying for a Smoke
Deadlock
Flow Diagram
Linear Programming
1966/67 LONE RANGER (37 episodes)
1967 The Question
What is a Computer?
Girls Growing Up
Mothers and Father
Colombo Plan
The Commonwealth
1968 Bolly: A Space Adventure
Functions and Relations
1969 Small World: Henry & Henriette
Henry & Henriette in The Seven Stages of Marriage
Measure of Man
To Our Children’s Children’s Children
1970 Short Tall Story
The Five
Wot Dot
Flurina
TOMFOOLERY (17 episodes)
This Love Thing
The Five
1971 Children and Cars
Football Freaks
The Condition of Man (series)
1972 THE ADAMS FAMILY (17 episodes)
THE JACKSON FIVE (17 episodes)
THE OSMONDS (17 episodes)
1973 Children Making Cartoons (live action)
BRITAIN NOW (series) (live action)
Contact
Making Music Together
1973-74 Kitchen Think
EUROPEAN FOLK TALES (series of 33 films from different countries)
1973 The Glorious Musketeers
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix
1974 Carry on Milkmaids
Butterfly Ball
1975 How Not to Succeed in Business
Life Insurance Training Film
1976/78 Max and Moritz (feature and separate episodes)
1976 Skyrider
1977 Making it Move (live action)
Noah’s Ark (project not completed)
The Three Musketeers
1978 WILHELM BUSCH ALBUM (series)
1979 Bravo for Billy (Sport Billy)
Ten for Survival
Autobahn
Dream Doll (directed by Bob Godfrey)
1980 Instant Sex (directed by Bob Godfrey)
BioWoman (directed by BobGodfrey)
Bible Stories
1981 Heavy Metal (“Grimaldi” and “So Beautiful and So Dangerous” stories in feature film)
A Cat is A Cat
Dilemma
First Steps: Caring For the Very Young
1982 The Adventures of Blip: Mechanical Dog
1983 King Rubic: The King’s Cold
1984 Growing Up: A Guide to Puberty
Doctor in the Sky
Great Masters: A New Vision: Botticelli
1986 Great Masters: A New Vision: Leonardo da Vinci
Great Masters: A New Vision: Toulouse-Lautrec
1987 The Players
Masters of Animation (series)
1990 A Memory of L. Moholy-Nagy
1996 Know your Europeans project
1996 Know your Europeans UK (directed by Bob Godfrey)
1996 Know your Europeans Germany (directed by Christoph Simon)
Quartet
Up
Let it Bleed
It Furthers One to Have Somewhere to Go
Xeroscopy
Discovery of America
This Love Thing (includes Pilot version)
Together for Children
Tide Tables
The Big Sneeze (project not produced)
Elementary Physics: The Action of
the Lever I, II, III., The Inclined Plane, The Screw
Animal Behaviour series (film loops)
The Mussel
The Sea Urchin
The Kittiwake
Animal Conference
Captain Cook’s Travels
The Choice
First Aid: Bleeding, Scalds
The Way to Security
Think of the Future
Alice in Chinaland (not produced)
Water Safety
Seagram

65th Golden Globe Award Winners

BEST MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA

Atonement

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA

JULIE CHRISTIE

Away from Her

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA

DANIEL DAY-LEWIS

There Will be Blood

BEST MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

MARION COTILLARD

La Vie en Rose

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

JOHNNY DEPP

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Ratatouille

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
– FRANCE AND USA

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE

CATE BLANCHETT

I'm Not There

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE

JAVIER BARDEM

No Country for Old Men

BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE

JULIAN SCHNABEL

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

BEST SCREENPLAY – MOTION PICTURE

ETHAN COEN & JOEL COEN

No Country for Old Men

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – MOTION PICTURE

DARIO MARIANELLI

Atonement

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – MOTION PICTURE

“GUARANTEED” — Into The Wild

Music & Lyrics by: Eddie Vedder

BEST TELEVISION SERIES – DRAMA

MAD MEN

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION SERIES – DRAMA

GLENN CLOSE

Damages: The Complete First Season

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES – DRAMA

JON HAMM

Mad Men

BEST TELEVISION SERIES – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Extras

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION SERIES – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

TINA FEY

30 Rock

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

DAVID DUCHOVNY

Californication

BEST MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Longford

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

QUEEN LATIFAH

Life Support

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

JIM BROADBENT

Longford

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A SERIES, MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

SAMANTHA MORTON

Longford

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A SERIES, MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

JEREMY PIVEN

Entourage

Halas & Batchelor at Future Film Festival

Tomorrow the 10th edition of Future Film Festival begins. If you can't watch the screening dedicated to John Halas and Joy Batchelor, don't worry!
In these days I'll show you some of their best short films!




Here 's the list of Halas & Batchelor's short films you can watch at Future Film Festival:
The Owl and the Pussycat by John Halas, Brian Borthwick, 1952; Figurehead by John Halas, Joy Batchelor, 1953; The History of the Cinema by John Halas, 1957; FooFoo The Stowaway by Harold Whitaker, John Smith, Tony Guy, Terry Harrison, Regno Unito, 1960; Cultured Ape by John Halas, Harold Whitaker, Tony Guy, 1960; Snip and Snap, Top Dogs by John Halas, Tock, 1960; Snip and Snap, Snap Shots by John Halas, Tock, 1960; Hamilton in the Music Festival by John Halas, 1961; The Symphony Orchestra by Harold Whitaker, 1964; Autobahn by Roger Mainwood, 1979; Butterfly Ball by Lee Mishkin, 1974; Dilemma by John Halas, 1981.

Online film critics' society award 2007

On December 24, 2007 the Online film critics' society announced the 2007 nominees. The final ballots of OFCS awards go out on January 1-7, 2008. The winners should be anoounced on January 8, 2008, instead the ceremony was held on January 11, 2008:

Best Film: No Country for Old Men

Best foreign Language Film: The Lives of Others by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Best Documentary: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters by Seth Gordon

Best Director: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will be Blood

Best Actress: Ellen Page, Juno

Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem - No Country for Old Men

Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There

Best Ensemble: No Country for Old Men

Actor of the Year: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Charlie Wilson's War, The Savages

Breakthrough Film Artist: Sarah Polley, Away from Her

Best Screenplay - Original: Diablo Cody, Juno

Best Screenplay - Adapted: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men

Best Animated Film: Ratatouille by Brad Bird

Best Cinematography: Óscar Faura, The Orphanage

Best Score: Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, Once

Best Overlooked film: Air Guitar Nation by Alexandra Lipsitz

Who I Am and What I Want (2005)

Who I Am and What I Want is a 7 minute animated short directed by Chris Shepherd and David Shrigley in 2005. It's based on the David Shrigley book of the same title.

The quirky funny black and white animation was commissioned in 2004 by the Animate! project. It was co-directed by David Shrigley and Chris Shepherd and animated by Alan Andrews, Siren Halvorsen, Ellen Kleiven.

David Shrigley's book of the same title had a story which featured a narrative and a fictional autobiography. No aspect of his insignificant life, as he deems it, is spared: Pete shares his deepest and darkest wishes, fears and thoughts. It is the story of a man who bares his emotions, history, hang ups and desires in all of their dysfunctional absurdity and then leaves us to assemble not only his identity but to question our own. Despite his eccentricities, a very strange paternal relationship and a spell in the nuthouse, Pete’s really one of us.

A psychoanalitical story which won more than ten short film awards.

It's a unique, weird and short film.Who I Am and What I Want will surprise you, because you're not sure what's going to happen: you could be scared of it, or you could really connect with it!

Critics' choice awards 2007

On December 11, 2007 the BFCA members announced the Critics’ Choice Awards nominees. The final ballots go out to the BFCA members on January 3, 2008. The 13th annual Critics’ Choice Awards ceremony was held on January 7, 2008, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium:

Best Picture
No Country for Old Men

Best Actor
Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will be Blood

Best Actress
Julie Christie - Away from Her

Best Supporting Actor
Javier Bardem - No Country for Old Men

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Ryan - Gone Baby Gone

Best Acting Ensemble
Hairspray

Best Director
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen - No Country for Old Men

Best Writer
Diablo Cody - Juno Best Animated Feature
Ratatouille

Best Young Actor
Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada - The Kite Runner

Best Young Actress
Nikki Blonsky - Hairspray

Best Comedy Movie
Juno

Best Family Film
Enchanted

Best Picture Made for Television
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Best Documentary
Sicko

Best Foreign Language Film
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Best Song
"Falling Slowly", Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova - Once

Best Composer
Jonny Greenwood - There Will Be Blood

The Cartoonist and the Cat

Davide Zamberlan is an Italian cartoonist. So far he has issued the graphic novel Intermezzi (Tumuè, 2005) and the collected issues of his strip Il vecio della montagna: Bhè... sempre meglio che lavorare... (Lilliput, 2004), Fumettisti si diventa... fumettari si nasce! (Lilliput, 2005) and Fumettista sull'orlo di una crisi di nervi... (Lilliput, 2005). He won the Italian comics competition Otto tavole per Mondo Naif with the short comic Il viaggio, which revealed his classic and soft style to the world.

The cartoonist and the cat 3

The Cartoonist and the Cat 4

Un dimanche après-midi à l'Ile de la Grande Jatte

One of the most famous of Seraut's paintings. It's very important because it's the first experiment which invokes opticals principles in support of his technique: the dotted brushwork. This technique creates a visual shimmer through partial optical mixture while the border of this canvas creates a contrast to the scene

What's a pixilation?

The Bolex Brothers' The Secret Adventures Of Tom Thumb and Norman McLaren's Neighbours are famous pixilations. I showed you a pixilation right in this blog, then a friend of mine asked me "What's a pixilation?". I answered him, then I browsed on the web where I found Wikipedia's definition of pixilation which I don't like. According to Wikipedia "pixilation" is a stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in a film, repeatedly posing while one or more frames are taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor becomes a kind of living stop motion."

I'd like to clarify that time lapse, pixilation and stop motion are different techniques!

While it's true that pixilation is a form of stop-motion, pixilation has its origins in the "trick films" famous for their use of special effects (George Meliés) which marked the early years of film-making. Pixilation is often used to save time, instead of making a series of drawings, humans are placed in a series of postures by repeating each frame three times.
In this technique the interaction of actors and objects in a three-dimensional setting which introduces a series of references to reality is very important . This has an influence on the choice of subjects dealt with in films that use this technique. The final effect is that of an unnatural movement like in an old movie.
While a stop-motion object usually doesn't alter our film perception, pixilation and time lapse do. The difference between the last two techniques is that while in pixilation the filmmaker records occasional frames, in time lapse, instead, every frame is exposed at predetermined intervals. The last technique alters our perception of time by collapsing it.

The Hat Squad

I'm not a big fan of Jay Faerber. He's a good writer, but I can't stand his Noble Causes, another super-hero comic where the focus is on character interaction rather than fight scenes, and it's got murder, betrayal, intrigue, humor, and sex. I begin to think that many comics writers imitate Busiek, Miller and Moore only to sell more copies. There are so many new stories out there to narrate!
I read The Hat Squad only because my girlfriend gave it to me as a gift. It was a good idea!
The Hat Squad reminds me of the Bendis' Torso Graphic Novel. Like the characters of Torso, The Hat Squad exist in real life too. They were a group of four policemen who went to great, often illegal lengths to keep the mob out of L.A., as in Chandler's LA romances.
A 1950s B-movie starlet approaches the Hat Squad and asks for their help, but they dismiss her concerns. But when she turns up dead not long after their encounter, the case gets personal, and Sgt. Jake Thurman and his men tear through Hollywood looking for the killer. They'll break bones and split lips to find the truth. They're the kind of police officers, who though honest to a fault, may arreste someone out of principle like Elliot Ness (one of the real characters of Torso) did.
Jay Faerber is very good at characterizing the personalities of the characters, from the guilt-ridden leader Jake to the new guy Danny. The mystery of who killed Sheila provides an interesting plot.
The influence of Curt Swan is evident on Yonge's work. The art is presented in black and white with a attention to detail and anatomy, Yonge tends not to use heavy inks to achieve the atmosphere. Each panel is perfect.

Prepare to read hardboiled dialogue!

About film theory

Usually people tend to confuse film theory with film interpretation. They 're making a big mistake!
The use of technical language doesn't transform the interpretation of individual films into theory. "Theory involves evolving categories and hypothesizing the existence of general patterns" (Noell Carroll).
Film theory should be a comprehensive instrument that is able to answer virtually every legitimate question about film. I doubt we have a legitimate instrument to study film. We have had so many different film theories, that we might come to think of film theory as a field of activity where many different projects at different levels of generality and abstraction coexist without being subsumed under a singular general theory.
Theories are framed today in specific historical contexts for the purpose of answering certain questions. In the 1970's we saw the emergence of film-based semiotics, psychoanalisis, textual analysis and feminism; in the 1980's post-structuralism, post-modernism, multiculturalism and the so called "identity politics" (gay/lesbian/queer studies). If we have so many approaches to film studies I would like to know why an inter-theoretical debate is so rare in the history of film theory !
How many film theorists can you name, who are noteworthy for their careful consideration of previous research? I can think only of Christian Metz. I hope you can prove me wrong soon!

Yellow-Red-Blue

I think many critics have talked about Wassily Kandinsky's Yellow-Red-Blue. Look at it!



Do you know why I enjoy this painting? Because Kandinsky, with this painting, exemplified an aspect of color theory: the creation of red from the "augmentation" of yellow and blue as described in Goethe's Theory of Colours

Comic belief

A documentary about Dan Pirraro's life.is a digital production company based in New York City, specializing in narrative and documentary.

They completed a documentary profile of the cartoonist Dan Piraro. I think it's interesting, I hope you enjoy watching it!

NFPF need your support!

The NFPF is a grant-giving public charity, affiliated with the Library of Congress's National Film Preservation Board.
It was created by Congress in 1996 at the recommendation of the Library of Congress.
Congress asked the Library to find a fresh approach to preserve motion pictures most at-risk, such as documentaries, silent-era films, avant-garde works, ethnic films, newsreels, home movies, and independent works, for future generations.

Their top priority is saving American films that would be unlikely to survive without public support. Over the past ten years, they' ve developed grant programs to help libraries, museums and archives to preserve films and to make them available for study and research.
They also organize, obtain funding, and manage cooperative projects that enable film archives to work together on national preservation initiatives. Published through these collaborations are the first-ever DVD set of film treasures preserved by American archives (2000), a new critically acclaimed 3-DVD box set of films from the first four decades of the motion picture, The Film Preservation Guide: The Basics for Archives, Libraries, and Museums (2004), and the international database for locating silent films.

Today the NFPF needs your help. The NFPF depends on contributions from individuals, foundations and corporations to support film preservation activities across the United States.
You can support the national film preservation work of the NFPF by sending donations to:

National Film Preservation Foundation
870 Market Street, Suite 768
San Francisco, CA 94102


You can also support them, by buying their dvd collections: Treasures From American Film Archives, More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931 and Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934.

Cerebus, and after? Glamourpuss!

Don't trust everything you read in the vanity publishing world!
Dave Sim is still active, Dave Sim continues to write comics and he'll continue to write for a long time.
After the 300th number of Cerebus was published, the comic author continues to produce occasional guest work, goes to conventions and regularly attends city council meetings and provides interviews and art for a Texas-based magazine called Following Cerebus. Many thought he would never issue new comics again, but, at the beginning of 2006, Dave Sim began publishing an on-line comic book biography of the Canadian actress Siu Ta titled "Siu Ta, So Far".
Last week, Dave Sim announced an upcoming women's-fashion-related comic called
glamourpuss.
What can we expect by an author who sparked one of the major controversies in the comic book industry? He had, in fact, expressed views contrary to feminism in issue No. 186 of Cerebus.

One Hundred Years

Max Andersson is a Swedish comic artist who emerged in the mid-1980’s and made his mark originally as a talented film animator.

Max Andersson's debut animation film won 1st Prize at Melbourne's International Film Festival, 2nd Prize at Los Angeles' Animation Celebration and a special prize at Berlin's Film Festival.

Writer/Director/Camera/Animation: Max Andersson
Producer: Lisbet Gabrielsson
Music: The Cure



I like this video very much . The emptiness of life, a society of "zombie" people who don't allow to be yourself.
Happy New Year to everyone!

Las Vegas Film Critics Society 2007 Awards

Last week the Las Vegas Film Critics Society announced their annual Sierra awards for the best films of 2007.

"Old Men" proves to be alive and kicking as the Las Vegas Film Critics Society announces its winners for it's 11th Annual 'Sierra Awards.' The Coen Bros' No Country for Old Men received three prize including Best Picture and Best Director.

Best Actor is Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will be Blood.

Both films are widely predicted to go up against each other at the Academy Awards.

Ellen Page won Best Actress for playing a 16-year-old pregnant girl in Juno. Diablo Cody, the stripper turned screenwriter, wrote the screenplay and also won for Best Screenplay.

Best Supporting Actor is Javier Bardem, playing the oxygen tank killer with a penchant for making his victims decide their fate on the toss of a coin in No Country for Old Men.

Best Supporting Actress is Cate Blanchett


Best Director
Joel & Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men

Best Screenplay (Original or Adapted)
Diablo Cody, “Juno”

Best Cinematography
Robert Elswit, “There Will Be Blood”

Best Film Editing
Christopher Rouse, “The Bourne Ultimatum”

Best Costume Design
Colleen Atwood, “Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street”

Best Art Direction
“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”

Best Visual Effects
“Transformers”

Best Score
Jonny Greenwood, “There Will Be Blood”

Best Song
“Walk Hard” by Marshall Crenshaw, John C. Reilly, Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan
Performed by John C. Reilly

Best Animated Film
“Ratatouille”

Best Family Film
“Ratatouille”

Best Documentary
“Sicko”

Best Foreign Film
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”

Youth in Film Award (Male)
Ed Sanders, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Youth in Film Award (Female)
Saoirse Ronan, "Atonement"

Best DVD (Packaging, Design and Content)
Blade Runner Ultima edition(Warner Home Entertainment)

William Holden Lifetime Achievement Award
James Hong

Tales from the Farm

Jeff Lemire’s first book in his three book trilogy, Tales From The Farm (Essex County), is one of the best comics I read last month. I waited a long time to buy it because my comic book store usually discounts only less recents comic books.

Lester, a young boy without a father, is taken in by his uncle Ken following his mother’s early death from cancer. At every attempt of contact from Ken, Lester retreats to his fantasy world of comic books: fighting aliens, building forts, and generally living in a make believe world. Both of their lives, although they share the same house, are spent in isolation and sadness, being affected by the death of a loved one in different ways. Even so, when Lester first reaches out for a father figure, he does not look to Ken, but to Jimmy Lebeuf, a one time professional hockey player who is now a gas attendant after a career ending injury.

The story is all set in a fictionalized version of Jeff Lemire's hometown. The character of Lester is not directly based on the author's childhood , but the themes are the same. Jeff Lemire grew up on a farm just like the character did, but was raised by parents. He added the death of character's mother only to heighten the character’s isolation.

The flashbacks show Lester’s mother in the hospital and reveal the conflict between Ken who didn’t want to become a father and Lester who has been ripped from all he knows and thrust into life on a farm. Lemire doesn’t make any obvious judgments when it comes to the decisions that Lester makes about love and friendship. His narrative is more about Lester’s well being and self-discovery.

The artwork of Tales From the Farm is distinctive black and white. Jeff Lemire’s style is straightforward and stark.

A touching story about self-discovery, growing up and loss.

How does cinematic fiction render the ordinary world intelligible?

Narrative is one of the fundamental ways in which we organnize the world. In recent years the study of narrative has acquired a new and prominent role in theorizing film theory.
How do you study narratology?

• You should study theories about the nature of those patterns and structures, which are created while consciuonsly reading a text;
• You should look at the concept of causality, space and time and how they have been perceived as data in an imagined story world;
• You should ask yourself how to represent a particular event within a narrative schema;
• You should also expand the concept of the spectator's knowledge beyond immediate seeing to include other influences: cultural expectations, memory of previous scenes and the sound track;
• You should create a hierarchy of roles or levels which describes the typical ways in which a reader participates in a novel.

It isn't a simple task, but Edward Branigan has done it in his Narrative Comprehension and Film. His principal references are Todorov's causal-transformation theory of narrative and Stephen Heath's theory of displacement.
Edward Branigan offers us a great deal of substance and a range of attractive speculative insights. The book explain us how to relate the double argument about narrative in film and human perception as interpretive construals.

Echo, Terry Moore's new creator owned series

Terry Moore has won the prestigious Will Eisner Award for “Best Continuing Series” and the National Cartoonist Society’s Reuben Award for “Best Comic Book” with his graphic novel series, Strangers In Paradise . He' s currently under contract with Marvel Comics, where he writes Runaways, and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. I wouldn't think he had any free time, but instead he's working on a new creator-owned series, Echo, which will come out in March 2008.
Echo is a black humor thriller comedy drama which narrates the story of Julie Martin, a photographer taking pictures in the desert who finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. It seems that Julie lives in the same world and time of the SIP characters. The setting of the story takes place in Yosemite National Park, near Lake Mono. Her marriage is going bad and her credit has been cut off.
Echo #1 will be in stores March 5th. It will be 24 pages long and in B&W. The first printing of issue one, and only the first printing, will feature a silver foil cover.
It should be about the lenght of three trade paperbacks.
If you want to read a preview, click here.

Pulsazioni (Beats, 2006)

Original editing, the use of close-ups, great photography. Antonio Ansalone, a virtually unknown filmaker has directed this obsessive short film about headache pain and the abuse of medication. Ansalone entered his film in an Italian film competition but it didn't win any prize.

Is art dead?

Since Hegel, the idea of the end of art has become a staple of aesthetic theory. Will postart be the end of art?

The concept of “postart” was developed by the happening artist Allan Kaprow, based on his idea that life is much more interesting than art, at the expense of art. Postart is not a point of no return and in fact there are many fine artists who continue to make important art. But it was perhaps inevitable that “postart” would be attacked as non-elitist (aristocratic). Marcel Duchamp called it “intellectual expression” over “animal expression”. This can be seen in art with the split between minimal-conceptual art and expressionism.

In his book The End of Art, Donald Kuspit promotes the idea that fear and ignorance of the unconscious have created a climate of creative superficiality in which artists are unwilling to break trhough the surface of their minds to the uncomfortable waters that lie beneath. Militarism and materialism, authoritarianism and capitalism, are more devastating than anything in the unconscious, even though they have roots in unconscious.
Artists are scared of the inner truth about themselves, more particularly, about acknowledging psychic conflict and trauma as well as the primary creativity evidenced by fantasy (especially dreams).
Kuspit traces the genealogy of the postart aesthetic from Duchamp through Warhol’s commercialism to Hirst’s installations (and his preoccupation with banal objects and everyday life situations).
Whereas modern art consist of revolutionary experiments motivated by a desire to express aspects of the newly-discovered “unconscious mind,” postart, Kuspit argues, is shallow, unreflective banality motivated by the desire to become institutionalized.
The End of Art will appeal to anyone who has ever felt bamboozled by the productions of the postmodern establishment.

Kim Duchateau wins Bronzen Adhemar 2007!

Kim Duchateau is one of the most inventive and most productive Flemish strip-makers of the moment. He's also active as a painter and musician, and makes animated films .
He combines an efficient, accurate story line with an absurdist, sometimes painfully sharp feeling for humor. His style reminds one of Tex Avery and Jan Svankmajer.


Duchateau won the ` Stripschappenning 2006 ' award in the adventure and recreation category for the third part from the ` Esther Verkest ' range. He has made comics for the small-press magazines Incognito, Zone 5300 and Beeldstorm. He has created one panel cartoons for severals newspapers. His comics 'Verhaaltjes voor het Slapengaan', parts 1 & 2, and 'Unne' were self-published. In 2000, his POCKET was chosen as daily strip for a morning newspaper. His` Esther Verkest ' was issued in p-Magazine, his ` Aldegonne ' in Stripgids and other illustrations were published in Knack. Other works also appear in the popular French booklet L'Echo of the Savanes and in Dutch newspapers and illustrated magazines. Five albums of ` Esther Verkest ' were realeased, the last (`Verschwunden ') in 2006. His new character 'Aldegonne' is published in the Zipp-addition of the newspaper De Standaard.

Blinding light

The Blinding Light Cinema existed as North America's only full time underground cinema, operating 6 nights a week for five years from 1998 to 2003. An archive of these years can be found on their website.
Blinding light helped underground cinema grow more and more. Now the foundation needs your help. As a non-profit society its financial status has always been rather shaky even though they did pretty well with what they had. Still, they do have an ongoing debt which needs to be shaken off. It runs around $4000.00. If you can give them a financial donation of $30, they'll send you a special "grab bag" of goods from their archive of materials.
Visit http://www.blindinglight.com/ or contact info@blindinglight.com them for more information!

To be a photographer

Many people think that photography isn't an art because things are depicted as they are. This simply isn't true! The work of a
photographer also entails choosing what he shall describe.

Photographers shoot all they see. It seems an easy and cheap task. How can a mechanical process be made to produce artistic pictures?
This has been one of the aesthetic questions of the eighteenth century. Photography is the product of knowledge and sensibility, trial and error and empirical experiment.
"Will the industry invade the territory of art?" Baudelaire asked himself. Today we could answer him "No, it won't. Look at some photographs. The variety of their imagery is prodigious: the light, the viewpoint, the change in print tonality."
Shooting a photo is less simple than it seems. You can study photo, you can learn as a photographer does. Photographers learn in two ways: from an intimate understanding of their tools and materials and from other photographs. If you can't go to a photography exhibition, you can study John Szarkowski's The Photographer's Eye, a visual history of photography.

Peter the Pirate Squid

I usually enjoy Roman Dirge 's artistic creation; this work, however, fell below my expectations. The text has a few outright mistakes, the story is nice, but a bit too vague: the comic follows the story of a mini-pirate squid and his crew of sea-creatures in search of treasure and their own tortured pasts. All this in only thirty-two pages!?

The drawings are what I really enjoyed most in this comic book, and they're by Stephen Daily.

Many reviewers tend to judge Peter the Pirate Squid too harshly. If you' re still interested in this comic, get it now. It costs just a few bucks and remember that every artist can go through a negative period.

Webcomicsnation

Are iconic, are underground, are free. What more can you ask for?

I guess they're too do goody for my standard, but I like their storyboards and their use of color. If you want to read them, please visit webcomicnation website

Film spectatorship

Yesterday my copy of Projecting Illusion by Richard Allen arrived at my home. The critic disscusses the concept of "illusion" (obviously!) and the aesthetic experience of visual representation. His books touches on fundamental issues in cinema theory, it borrows many concepts from Husserl and Althusser , and invokes Deridda's theory, while the general tendency of film theory seeks instead to exemplify Lacanian theory and embrace Althusser's ideological pparatus theory. The logical incoherencies of contemporary film theorists clearly emerge frome the pages of this book. Allen concurs with Noel Carrol's conclusion that contemporary film theorists's characterization of the impression of reality in cinema is wrong, but while Noel Carroll rejects the applicability of the concept of illusion to the cinema, Allen, on the other hand, gives the concept of illusion renewed significance through a detailed investigation of the ways in which illusion may be experienced and the kinds of beliefs that illusion entails.

Bits and pieces (2007)

Towards a universal theory of color?

Is it possible to accept a universal theory of color?
In the early 20's some Bauhaus painters faced the following problem: was it possible to generate a value scale of equal perceptual steps between black and white? Itten answered in the affirmative. He proposed a scale of seven steps. In the same period the German theorist Wilhelm Ostwald and the American theorist Albert Munsell proposed their color system, which became the most widely used in twenty century color. I 'd have liked to ask them: what do you think about De diversibus artibus?
De diversibus is a book of twelfth century, in which the German monk Theophilus introduces his scale of color with a discussion on painting the rainbow.
"Neither man nor nature could afford to use a mechanism that would provide a special kind of receptor or generator for each color shade" (Rudolph Arnheim).
"A semiotic theory of color universals must take for significance exactly what colors do mean in humans society. They do not mean Munsell color chips" (Berlin and Kay)

Slapstick comedy

If in early avant-garde cinema, one of the tendencies was abstract film, the other was slapstick comedy. It may seem a bit of strange, but Maya Derenherself admitted that her cinematic style was influenced by the Keystone Cops comedies. The use of slapstick comedy allowed film-makers to use stop-frame motion and opened the route to an irrational comic style.

Is it possible to screen film art today?

Such films have had just one screening. Diagonal Simphony by Viking Eggeling was screened for the first time in 1925 and then more than twenty years went by before anyone could see it again. The same thing happened to Tusalava by Len Lye: it was screened for the first time in 1929 followed by thirty years of silence.
I don't think it's any easier today to watch film art as it was in 20's, unless we illegally download these films by using emule!
I believe in film art. Today journalism must be as energetic as it was in 20's, if we want continue to watch film art. Hence the importance of film clubs and film blogs, too.