It’s beautiful when an artist manages to present their life works, their magnum opus, their artistic love child piece, and finally after 30 years of on and off graft Phil Tippett was able to, with the help of Shudder , unleash Mad God onto the world and it hit the scene gaining nothing by admiration and rightly so.
Continue reading Mad God (2021)Hello and welcome to a new Short Sunday list! I’ve been trying to find ways to catch up with my ever growing short movie list and I might have cracked it. Despite the many hours catching up with the Euro 2020 matches, my terribly intensive movie schedule I have managed to watch a handful of short movies also! And I’m delighted to say I’ve added in a lot of stop motion and claymation this week.
I’ve still got my soft spot for Claymation and Stop Motion and I was uber happy to find this amazing channel, Joe Blandamer Claymations. This 3 minutes escapade investigates a vivisection lab, but with the tables turned and the animals, in this case an evil Mr Chimes is testing on a dim human, despite being a peta wet dream, it’s creative, moody and gory, what a delight.
Continue reading Short Movie Roundup 20 June 2021CLASSIC ANIMATION (ON 4) STOP MOTION AND WTF SHORTS VOL.2
It’s been a long while since I last caught up with this *series* but here we go with another volume, part 1 can be found here.
Harpya
This induced a few nightmare and is certainly one of the vivid animations that I have never been able to shake off or forget. A man is walking home when he hears violent cries as a woman is being drowned in a public fountain, on saving her he realises he’s a Harpy and his life is never going to be the same again. This dimly lit mix of stop motion and clever cinematography bring to
life an ancient creature with all it’s vivid horrors and mysteries.The erratic movements and unique language really give a crazy edge to an already claustrophobic movie.
Baggage
This film isn’t necessarily one of the most inventive but it’s a great story but what i really love about this clip is it’s actually from the Four-Mations show!! I used to get all excited about life when I used to see that vivid intro!
This black and white piece by Ruth Lingford deals with a woman’s perspective of love sex and death ultimately. The basic drawings shouldn’t be mistaken for a basic story in the slightest,instead the fluid concepts tend to grow on screen as life morphs and progresses, at times it’s frightening but with beautiful overtones.
The Black Dog – Alison De Vere
I’m adding all of my favourites in this edition as I’ve lost a lot of links since posting the first story but The Dog was a life changer for me, this came on Fourmations but I had seen it before with a series of animations about insomnia, something I was experiencing at the time and lived with for years.
A woman is woken by a Black Dog, he takes her to a mysterious area called Complex Fatal which hosts a shop, restaurant and disco, the woman is drawn into the boutique and experiences the finest goods that the mythical creatures can conjure up for her as the expense of many animals and expensive materials but the payoff is a life changing lesson for her, I adore it’s creativity and blend of nightmare and dreams. There’s something rather sinister about it but for a long while I got as drawn into it all as the main character, it’s easy to get lost in this much imagination. Continue reading CLASSIC ANIMATION (ON 4) STOP MOTION AND WTF SHORTS VOL 2
After reading this title, I believe a short Introduction is an well growing up in the 90s I was rudely introduced to stop motion and bizarre animated shorts through the Channel animation on 4. Obviously as a child and young teenager I’ve seen lots of animated films series and feature length films, but nothing could quite prepare me for the onslaught of dark mechanical don’t like creatures from the insipid creative minds of the Quay brothers Paul Berry’s and the claustrophobic social construct of Phil Mulloy.
While it frightened and unnerved me it did also, open my eyes to unlimited dreamscapes and nightmares!? I would sit up late at night transfixed to the mirage of movement and curious situations which eventually started to warp my art, thinking, and most facets of my life. I suppose it was truly influential, but it’s take me this long to get back into that niech groove and present my all time favourite classic animations, mostly from Animation on 4, stop motion shorts and everything else that fits in between.
Continue reading Classic animation (on 4) stop motion and WTF shorts Vol.1
Duration 11:40
Director Justin Nixon/USA/2016
http://www.justinanixon.com
A short stop motion sci fi story, written and directed by Justin Nixon that tells a warming story about a family of robots living in a desert dystopia. After a tragedy in the family they go to their local “church” to get help but ACCESS DENIED this spurs the family to discover the truth behind dark secret of the faith. On a small budget of $5000 raised by a Crowdfund, Nixon has created an extremely poignant story that displays strong will that doesn’t follow the the crowd and questions dogmatic views. It’s incredibly detailed and what stands out is that this futuristic robotic story is based in a wild west background with a strong theological core.
Rating : 7/10
R – Blackwater Gospel, TARBOY, Invention of Love
Duration 4.19
Dir: David Firth /UK/2008
Link: www.fat-pie.com
You can also view this in reverse here http://youtu.be/SLp3tyCacxU
Life, sex and death? Or just an unusual imagination.
I’ve been a long admirer of David Firth for a quite a long time now and have enjoyed a lot of his flash based animations like the heroic bass playing Burnt Face Man, ultimate creepy guy Salad Fingers and other random sketches that he has lovelingly produced. A sort of young hero in the world of modern surreal animation and definitely a cult figure. Crooked Rot doesn’t come as a surprise! Although I wasn’t aware of David doing a lot of Stop Motion Animation (Call myself a fan huh).
I’ve never really tried to make sense of David’s work it has a dreamlike.. no scrap that.. nightmarish ambiance, David has a talent for getting a lot of people out of their comfort zones. to try and make sense of this fully I think I’d need therapy but it does suggest interesting themes about relationships, birth, death and communication, this is purely if you look at the symbolism.
You could stretch it to suggest it tells about relationships, birth, life and death. The symbolism of the male and female head, the egg and the halo could represent offspring and god, or alternatively it could just be an experimental piece while David tested out a new camera?! Who knows?! Either way it’s a quirky little animation that you can watch either forwards or backwards. Not entirely sure why but give it a go, you might get something out of it. then again you might not.
Duration 5.06
Dir: Adam Rosenberg /USA/2009
Link : http://www.mradamrosenberg.com/
An eerie stop motion short from American filmmaker Adam Rosenberg, argued to be very similar to a short called Crooked Rot from David Firth, but as much as it had a similar creepy feeling to it, the message and sentiment is entirely different. The film starts out with an innocent looking mannequin head. Nothing too strange about that. Then a peculiar $1 appears and all hell breaks lose
y personal take on the film is that a person no matter how innocent can become corrupted by money and greed and that in turn it does indeed change a person dramatically. As soon as the money appears “Manny” changes in order to pursue it, the dollar gets ingested and goes up in smoke possibly an indication to how long the wealth lasts. The head is emptied and the mouth silenced, the Manny has now become a slave to the wage, one of the mindless single voiced consumers, as soon as the money is gone the “Manny” changes again, wanting to speak out it gets engulfed in flames.. The poor rarely have a voice..
It’s a cold and unnerving tale that could be interpreted in many ways. This is obviously just my take on it, obviously a great favourite as it’s dark accompanied by uneasy soundtrack and made me think Adam seems to have a lot of black humor about him and an impressive catalogue of work under his belt already, someone to look out for, although don’t expect too much like this, as the style had changed dramatically but still very surreal.
R:9/10
Kisha
Admit One Film Addict 