Commentary 04 Feb 2012 07:04 am
Oddities and Endities
- Thanks to its Oscar nomination, Chico & Rita, the 2D Spanish, animated feature film will play in New York & Los Angeles. The distributor, G Kids, will bring the film to the Angelika Film Center starting Friday, February 10th for a week.
Directors Fernando Trueba & Javier Mariscal will be doing Q&A’s following the 7:40 PM shows Sat & Sun, Feb 11-12.
Angelika Film Center (18 W. Houston Street, 212-995-2570)
Friday, February 10, daily at 11:00, 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, and 7:40.
Screenings in Los Angeles will be Mon, Feb 6 at 2 PM (Linwood Dunn Theater), and Mon, Feb 13 at 9:20 PM (Samuel Goldwyn Theater). These are designated as Official Academy Screenings.
Annies Live
- The Annie Awards will take place tonight, Saturday, in Los Angeles starting at 7pm (Pacific Time) which is 10pm (Eastern). The awards will be available on line via streaming through a number of different sites. These include: Animation Guild site, Hans Perk’s A Film LA, Tee Bosustow’s Animazing site, and of course Cartoon Brew. If one has problems, go to the next.
- The brilliant abstract animator, Paul Glabicki, is going to have an exhibition of his art March 15 to April 14th. I’d encourage you all to see this show; his work is always smart, exciting and worth the little effort it would take. He’s also an East coast animator and deserves our support. Here is the press release for the exhibition:
ORDER
- We are pleased to announce Paul Glabicki’s second solo exhibition at the Kim Foster Gallery. His new ORDER series explores expressions of “order†as image, concept, construct, and language – and the organization and potential ambiguity of information, communication, and language within complex and concurrent data systems.
Each drawing begins with an Internet search of the word “order.†Hundreds of images, interpretations, demonstrations, and associations are generated by each search, arranged in a hierarchy of relevance determined by the search engine. Each search becomes increasingly customized to the searcher, often branching off into intricate or obscure expressions of the word, its multiple meanings, or practice (specific arrangement, sequence, command, rank, importance, by discipline.) Each drawing is a selection and orchestration of these hierarchies of order systems and applications, filtered through the artist’s response to the information collected in each search.The process engages the artist’s own creative compulsion to organize and compose images. The first element of each drawing is deliberately placed at random, initiating a process of response, modification, and overlay. New imagery/data is added in a sequential chain, and in response to the placement of each previous element. Each drawing is rotated as new imagery and information is considered and assigned to the developing space; with its final viewing orientation established as the accumulated imagery satisfies the artist’s own personal impulse to impose “order†and closure – but only momentarily, until the process is carried on to the next piece.
Each drawing is a result of a chain of events, choices, and decisions generated by the initial, specific, finite fragment of data. The process plays with notions of causality, the desire/impulse to find, recognize or impose organization, response to (and interpretations of) vast sources of available data, and the complex interactions of image, language, communication and meaning in the representation of information.
- The work of Paul Glabicki continues to be involved with time and sequence, and an obsessive process of evolving images and complex compositions generated by an intimate examination of a finite word or found object.
All of the imagery in his work is drawn by hand (Graphite Pencil, Prismacolor Pencil, Ink, and Acrylic on Paper.)
- Paul Glabicki is best known for his experimental film animations that have appeared at major film festivals, as well as national and international museum exhibitions. His animation work in film has been carefully crafted by means of thousands of hand-drawn images on paper – each drawing representing both a frame of film and a unique complete work on paper. His film works have been widely screened at such prestigious sites as the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, the Cannes Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of Art in New York (Whitney Biennial), and the Venice Biennale. He has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, and several grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
KIM FOSTER GALLERY
529 West 20th New York, NY 10011 212-229-0044
www.kimfostergallery.com
info@kimfostergallery.com
- Paul Glabicki
ORDER
March 15 – April 14, 2012
( Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm)
Reception: Thursday, March 15, 6 to 8 pm
Just prior to the opening, I’ll remind you of the dates.
- Gene Deitch has hit another home run on his blog this week. He posts a piece about the great puppet animator and artist, Jiřà Trnka. Deitch tells intimate stories that make me feel closer to the man, Trnka, than I’ve gotten from many other books about the master’s work. (Just look at the image to the left from Deitch’s site. We see not only that Trnka was left handed, but that he couldn’t stop smoking even in the middle of painting during a photo shoot!) We learn about an aborted collaboration between Deitch and Trnka and several of the drawings Trnka did are posted on the site.
Deitch also gives us a good report with photos on the recent memorial in Prague celebrating the 100th anniversary of Trnka’s birth. This is a fabulous read.
Of course, there are many other articles equally as good on this site. Another recent post is on the artist, Jiřà BrdeÄka. He was just as great a force, in many ways, as was Trnka. This is a wonderful site and should be regularly followed.
Robot Puppet Porn
Michael Sullivan photographed by Tom Hachtman
- Michael Sullivan is a New York animator/effects wizard/actor/artist who gets little attention.
He’s amassed years worth of puppets, dolls and small artifacts which he develops into his characters for the eccentric films he produces. Currently, he’s been making a film about robots – actually, a pornographic film about robots. This has been chronicled into a short film documentary that ran at the recently completed Sundance Film Festival. Titled, The Meaning of Robots, the doc is by filmmaker, Matt Lenski. There’s a trailer for the doc here and articles about the film here and here.
Watch part of Michael Sullivan’s work here.
Thanks to Tom Hachtman for the good word..
- Finally, the news that Don Cornelius had died this week, as a result of suicide, made me want to take another look at the opening title animation to Soul Train. There are no good quality copies on YouTube, but I found this small sampling of the show and felt that something was better than nothing. The titles were produced by Jim Simon with his company, Wantu Animation. I think I remember Dan Haskett telling me that he had done some animation on it. He did do a lot of work for Jim Simon, so it’s likely. Regardless, the titles are worth a nod. I haven’t seen any other animation site point it out.
Jim Simon/Wantu Animation for Don Cornelius Productions
on 04 Feb 2012 at 2:30 pm 1.Paul Fierlinger said …
A small correction; Jiri Trnka was not left handed but famously ambidextrous. I clearly remember a film interview he once gave in the late fifties for the theatrical newsreel Tyden ve Svete (A Week in the World). While answering the interviewer’s question he kept on drawing in two places of a wall size backdrop while simultaneously using both hands held far apart on either side of his considerable girth. He had to keep turning his head to look first at one hand and then the other while never ceasing to draw with either of them. (This was harder to write down than I thought).
on 04 Feb 2012 at 2:54 pm 2.Tom Minton said …
This version came later than the original, somewhat looser, blue engine titles, which were animated by Floyd Norman and Leo Sullivan. Jim Simon is a very talented designer, living in San Diego, last I heard.
on 04 Feb 2012 at 4:57 pm 3.Michael said …
Thanks Paul and Tom for the corrections. This blog is a never-ending learning experience for me.
on 04 Feb 2012 at 5:40 pm 4.The Gee said …
I, too, looked on Youtube for what I thought were the original titles. I found the same one.
There was a routine updating of the opening title. I only know this because I vaguely recall the last version, which is based on a graffiti like style and is not as dynamic as the original ones. I’m almost certain it was produced using CG…almost certain. But, I didn’t seek it out to verify it.
on 06 Feb 2012 at 3:52 pm 5.Jeffrey Gray said …
The one you posted wasn’t done by Jim Simon – I think it was done by Sam Pal at CPC (formerly Cascade). Harry Moreau was involved in it because his name showed up in the end credits.
I think Jim Simon did the sketchy one with the yellow background and the engine smoke forming the words.
on 06 Feb 2012 at 4:22 pm 6.Jeffrey Gray said …
As for the famous bending train with the colored smoke, the show’s art director John Koelle designed it, and in the “TSOP” era when it debuted, the “Animation” credits were for Koelle and John McGuire, who I assume was the actual animator. No idea what studio it was done at (Murakami-Wolf?), but it had sketchy, gritty, watercolored backgrounds that remind me of Gary Lund’s designs for the Flip Wilson specials.
on 06 Feb 2012 at 5:21 pm 7.Jeffrey Gray said …
A correction – the intro you posted wasn’t the one Harry Moreau was involved in. I think Tim Landry contributed to the animation of that intro – he was credited under “Animation” when they used it
on 06 Feb 2012 at 5:40 pm 8.Jeffrey Gray said …
Sorry for the large amount of comments. During the era of the open you posted, the credits listed John McGuire, Tim Landry, Sam Pal and John Koelle. I’m guessing that McGuire animated the train again, and Tim Landry did the FX animation. (McGuire moved to the UK in the mid-80s, where he worked on When the Wind Blows.)
When Centric started rerunning the show I was taking down the closing credits to find out who animated the intro(s), that’s why I know so much about who was credited when they were using which intro.
on 07 Feb 2012 at 2:32 pm 9.Tom Minton said …
Here are Floyd Norman’s words, recently posted on Facebook to commemorate the passing of Soul Train creator/host Don Cornelius:
Some years ago, ( I honestly can’t remember how many) my partner, Leo Sullivan and television director, Mark Warren were taping a new television pilot at a Hollywood production studio. The show was called “Soul Train,” and the host was Don Cornelius. Once the marathon taping session was over, we sat in an upstairs office wondering whether the show would be a success.
I’m sadden (sic) to hear of the passing of Don Cornelius this morning. He was a cool dude, and it was fun creating the animation for the first funky choo choo train so associated with the successful television show.
Fortunately, Floyd is still with us and can provide more information to nail this one down. Are you reading this, Floyd?