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!