Promo for Animation Anthology on Etsy

Pun On the Run

Telephone Sketchbook @ SPACE Con 2012

The rules of this sketchbook are:  1) If you're looking at a drawing, turn the page and describe what you saw.  If your looking at a written description, turn the page and draw what you read.  2) Pass it on. Some have called it "The Paper Game" and apparently some call it "Eat Poop You Cat". 

The following sketches, made graciously by many of the artists and writers who attended SPACE  Indie Comic Con 2012 this past weekend, complete the sketchbook started at Homegrown Comic Jam in Saint Louis last year.(The first half of the book can be found here Telephone Sketch @ the Comic Jam)

Many thanks to all the artists who participated. And, let me know if you would like me to link back to your site.

  

ELM

 New animation forthcoming.  In the mean-time this post is to take care of some business. I used a number of public domain sound effects from SoundBible.com in the production of said animation "ELM". The following list is an attempt to credit each sound's source.

American Robin-SoundBible.com-2006486012.wav 
Backing Up-SoundBible.com-788937884.wav 
brush_fire-Stephan_Schutze-55390065.wav 
Builders Drilling-SoundBible.com-2062910629.wav 
Buzzard-SoundBible.com-1217359303.wav 
Camera Click-SoundBible.com-44806439.wav 
Car Drive By-SoundBible.com-442872434.wav 
Children Playing-SoundBible.com-591301488.wav 
City Traffic And Construction-SoundBible.com-257865182.wav 
Crickets At Night-SoundBible.com-174444778.wav
Dry Fire Gun-SoundBible.com-2053652037.wav 
Dump_Truck-Mike_Koenig-2078569453.wav 
Electricity-SoundBible.com-965518507.wav 
Fake Applause-SoundBible.com-1541144825.wav 
Faulty_Mechanics-Stephan_Schutze-279511784.wav 
Fire_Burning-JaBa-810606813.wav 
Freight_Train-Anonymous-1952084532.wav 
Gavel Bangs 4x-SoundBible.com-744905587.wav 
Hacksaw-SoundBible.com-1578105369.wav 
hawk_screeching-Mike_Koenig-1626170357.wav 
Horse Neigh-SoundBible.com-1740540960.wav 
Horses Galloping Off-SoundBible.com-438542134.wav 
horse_blow-stephan_schutze-1678740304.wav 
Lawn Mower Cutoff Sound -SoundBible.com-517647793.wav 
medium_rainstorm-Mike_Koenig-1134528361.wav 
Metal Pong From Pan And Pot-SoundBible.com-1588653020.wav 
More_Thunder-Mike_Koenig-889679068.wav 
Pickaxe-SoundBible.com-1937292892.wav 
Puppy Dog Barking-SoundBible.com-871302192.wav 
rainforest_ambience-GlorySunz-1938133500.wav 
Small Fireball-SoundBible.com-1381880822.wav 
Small_Crowd-Mike_Koenig-2101396541.wav 
Soldiers Marching-SoundBible.com-1108480953.wav 
stephan_schutze-anvil_impact_1x-894647867.wav 
Throw_Knife-Anonymous-1894795848.wav 
Train_Approach_n_Pass-Mike_Koenig-678807208(1).wav 
_sound_Indian_railways-Satish_Madiwale-1144754275.wav 
Train_Wheels_Grinding-Mike_Koenig-1959887153.wav 
Transfer Truck Driving Off-SoundBible.com-621328348.wav 
Transfer Truck Idle And Drive-SoundBible.com-1102977190.wav 
Truck Drive By-SoundBible.com-1324647645.wav 
Urban Traffic-SoundBible.com-1217469275.wav 
Walking On Gravel Bed-SoundBible.com-580013273.wav 
Walking On Gravel-SoundBible.com-2023303198.wav 
Water Splash-SoundBible.com-800223477.wav 
Wood Saw-SoundBible.com-1996255876.wav

CUP FOUND (The Hill/Southwest Gardens)

---

Date: 2012-03-15, 12:32PM CDT
Reply to: your anonymous craigslist address will appear here

---

This cup was found near the Schnucks on Arsenal. Cup has a green logo "The Green Hornet in 3D" and a "Hardees" logo in red/yellow and is approx. 32 oz.(possibly a collector's item). Cup still contains some Soda. If this is your cup, you will be able to correctly indentify the remaining soda.

If cup is not claimed by the end of the week I will have to throw out the remaining soda and recycle it as i have alot of cups and dont have room for another 32 oz. cup.

• Location: The Hill/Southwest Gardens
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Arcade Fire Trucks

EVERYONE JUST REMAIN CALM AND MOVE TO THE EXITS IN AN ORDERLY FASHION!...what?...wait!.....Sorry everyone, false alarm...it's just Arcade Fire again.

2011 in Film: Epic Failures and Modest Successes

Culture is graded on the curve. Attention is a resource parceled out minute for minute and year for year. And, it's not always a hot minute. Each year will have it's winner, sure, but when you line up each year's winners you tend to see a pattern of the undeserved and the missing. That's not to say there weren't a few great movies this year, but a few, i think, is all we got.  That being said,  I didn't get around to seeing everything I wanted to, namely: Turin Horse, The Skin I Live In, We need to talk about Kevin, Young Adult, Troll Hunter, The Artist, Certified Copy, A Dangerous Method, and a few others.  So, my data set is far from complete.

For me 2011 is the year of "Epic" Failures. I'm talking about Terrence Malick's Tree of Life and Lars Von Trier's Melancholia. While both films show just the kind of ambition that I love to see, neither of them meet that ambition at it's lofty height. Failures only by their own standards.

Tree of Life is the finest character work I've seen yet from Malick, perhaps due to it's autobiographical nature. His little post-war family is well drawn and acted to near perfection. With them, Malick says everything he needs to say about the dual nature of man. And, had the movie stopped there, it would have been flawless, however less ambitious. The human side of the story contains all the Malickesque touches we've come to expect and appreciate from the swooning sun bent cinematography to the heart felt existential voice-overs. But, despite lofty intentions, Malick's eye(and ear)-popping nature montage doesn't convey the raw wonder and epic feeling it reaches for.

In small doses in his other films a brief walk through nature seemed more an attempt to create atmosphere, suggest the pettiness of humanity, or was simply a nice poetic caesura.  Here he attempts to work a full blown abridged history of the universe directly in the psyche of his nuclear family in a single cut, or perhaps through osmosis.  It's stunning and beautiful at times, but falls short of the "sea contained within the fish" wisdom it portends as well as the Kubrickesque art/specticle it mimics. Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void is another film that attempts to unite the worlds of the avant garde and the traditional narrative to about as much success.

Melancholia takes some beautiful ideas about family, depression, apocalypse, and the process of art and sinks them into characters I couldn't make myself care about.. The depressed learn to deal with loss, art is a doomed process, beauty cannot function without pain and sadness. His themes are solid and provocative. We know Von Trier is a filmmaker capable of telling a captivating story with iconic characters. Yet, here he lets his ideas get the best of his story and the characters and dialogue are at times clumsy and forced.

Von Trier's assumption that the apocalypse is much more interesting when shown in the micro as opposed to the macro is dead on.  That's why it worked so well in John Hillcoat's The Road and Micheal Haneke's Time of the Wolf and a litany of other films before them.  What those movie's have that this one doesn't are characters worthy of empathy.  I really wanted a grasp on Justine and to lesser extant Clair, that I couldn't find.  I'm willing to take on sociopaths and depressives.  I think Anne Hathaway's Kym in Rachel Getting Married is one of the best characters in movies in the past ten years.  Is Justine a self-destructive infant, or a heroic savant?  Von Trier's wisdom seems to be that the two aren't mutually exclusive, and that when the shit hits the fan, it's the more cynical that can  keep it together.  I'm more than ready to believe this thesis, but Melancholia never really took the time to convince me. On the other hand, every bit of film containing his titular rogue planet Melancholia is haunting, beautiful, and conveys the emotional depth his characters don't. I loved the film for it's ideas before I had to sit through it's characters for 2 and 1/2 hours.

I was really expecting at least one of these films to rock my world.  Perhaps if one film had Malick's family and Von Trier's planet, 2011 would have had the masterpiece I'd hoped for.

In spite of their flaws, ambitious failures are still more interesting than a hedged bet. A few slightly less ambitious films, however, hit the nail right on the head and, more importantly, drove it all the way down.

First and foremost: Le Quattro Volte is a story told from the perspective of an old man, a goat, a tree, and a pile of ashes. Just how these four elements come together to tell the story of a sleepy mountain town is a wonder to behold. Much like the Hungarian masterpiece Hukkle the town goes about performing its well worn rituals while the vantage widens to a point where all is trivial, comic, and endearingly human.

The Future is the second feature from Miranda July. It's a film that will charm you in spite of whatever cynicism you may or may not have for it's twee director and her whimsical nature. Miranda July proves that she is not a fluke, that she is not going to bring the touchy-feely artsy shit down a notch, and that she is quite capable of expressing her real if peculiar genius through lovable fops and talking cats.  

Shame is the follow up to Steve McQueen's powerful debut Hunger.  And, like Hunger it earns it's stark moniker.  It's a deeply felt story of troubled characters in a flawed world on a path to redemption. McQueen seems to be on track to rival Kieslowski for dark, gritty parables.

A few great adaptations: Jane Eyre, Norwegian Wood, and The Descendants all get a proper cinematic treatment.  Some striking originals:  Drive, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives , and Meeks Cutoff  bring style and mood in spades.  The Interrupters and The Bully Project are a couple of powerful docs that attempt to take on violence in middle America.

Perhaps I saw all the right movies last year, 2010 seemed to me like another watershed year like 1999.  This year big audiences rightfully tried to embrace two films that were unabashedly artsy on the merits of previous directorial work, and in my opinion both films, while still definitely fine films worth seeing, missed their own mark.  I hope audiences are willing to take those big risks in the year to come.