Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Today, in New York, Amid Amidi will receive the Theatre Library Association Award for his book, Cartoon Modern.

Congratulations to him for the well deserved award.

John Canemaker will be presenting the award. I’ll be there to watch (and give some notes tomorrow.)

- Last year the NY Times featured monthly reports by artist/illustrator Maira Kalman.
I waited monthly for those visual diaries. The art was stunning. But she left off doing it several months back.

Now, the NY Times has started an animated series on its website done by animator/artist, Jeff Scher. His first piece went up on the Times and is called The Animated Life:L’Eau Life. The piece is one of Jeff’s best works, beautifully scored by Shay Lynch. (note that it loads slowly.)

Unfortunately, you might have to be a subscriber of the TimesSelect to see the work.

However, I suggest you get in touch with someone you know who subscribes to the TimesSelect to see it.

– Let me tell you about Paprika. A small group of us went last Saturday to see the film. The trailer seemed interesting and the reviews were over the top, so I was hell bent on checking it out. I’d also enjoyed Tokyo Godfather and Millenium Actress by the same director, Satoshi Kon.

Paprika more resembles Millenium Actress than any other. It’s a head trip of a film that intermixes the internet with movies with dreams. I’m sorry to say, I also didn’t think it worked very well.

Right at the start of the film, we’re ushered into a dream – this is the first and only time the same, repeating dream has a beginning. The dream is interrupted as we learn that a red-headed nymph of a character, Paprika, is sharing dreams with a hard-boiled detective who is trying to solve a murder mystery. His time is up, and Paprika runs off to the lab where she turns into a scientist, Chiba. The doppelganger Chiba cum Paprika doesn’t work at all, since we don’t really know who or why one is the other.

The dream machine is stolen by someone within the company – we’re never quite sure why though somehow he’ll control the world with it – and the remainder of the film is 90% dream repetition. You remain engrossed spending two hours trying to unravel the story, but in the end you’re not quite sure who is what and where you are or why?

The film definitely needed less dream and more reality. I would have liked to have known more about the real characters and why they’re so intently pursuing this dream machine. I’m not sure I understand the value of sharing my dreams with anyone. (Copyright infringement?)

Not my kind of movie. Though, I have to say, it works only on an adult level (note I didn’t say adolescent), and that’s something that probably can’t be said about any other animated feature yet screened this year. (Only Persepolis holds out hope for adding to that roster.)

Ultimately, I can say that if you’re an Anime buff, go see Paprika; if you’re not go see The Golden Door, an excellent and beautiful French/Italian film about immigrants coming to America at the turn of the 20th Century.

- I have to admit that there are finally a couple of animated features I’m interested in seeing. They sound adult, intelligent and thought provoking. No, I’m not talking about Surf’s Up with it’s tedious, jerky, completely unoriginal style of animation. I shouldn’t comment so negatively about a film I haven’t seen. But the point is I won’t see it; there’s nothing about this film that attracts my interest.

However, Persepolis has my hopes flying, and Paprika allows me to hope for the best.

Persepolis just opened at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, and it will hit the US later this year. Read the opening paragraph from Lisa Nesselson‘s review in Variety:

Any stragglers still unconvinced that animation can be an exciting medium for both adults and kids will run out of arguments in the face of “Persepolis.” Like the four-volume series of graphic novels on which it’s based, this autobiographical tour de force is completely accessible and art of a very high order. First-person tale of congenitally rebellious Marjane Satrapi, who was 8 years old when the Islamic Revolution transformed her native Teheran, boasts a bold lyricism spanning great joy and immense sorrow. In both concept and execution, hand-drawn toon is a winner.

Sounds good enough to get me excited about animation again. It’s been a long time.

The film had already created a political stir when Iran, this week, officially protested the screening of the film at Cannes. This made for a very heated Q&A for Marjane Satrapi, the film’s creator and co-director, at Cannes. She refused to speak to the “irate Iranian journalists” and defended herself by saying, “I simply didn’t want to nourish this dispute. It has blown up out of proportion and I don’t want to add fuel to the fire. I accept criticism. I believe in freedom of expression and speech.” There’s a fuller article about this controversy at Bloomberg.

I’m a bit surprised that I didn’t read about this incident on any of the big animation news sites I visit.

See part of the press conference here.

See the trailer for the film here.

By the way, Marjane Satrapi wrote an Op Art/editorial for the NY Times in November, 2005. You can still read this on the Times’ site.

The Japanese film, Paprika, has an enticing trailer, and I’ve liked the two other films I’ve seen by the director, Satoshi Kon. Three Godfathers and Millennium Actress both were thoughtful and mature, and both were entertaining enough to make them more riveting than the average Anime. They both felt a bit too wedded to live action films for me to be completely satisfied with them, but they represented a clear voice whose work I want to follow.

The film’s reviews today are sterling. All of the New York papers glowed with praise. Here are a few quotes:

NY Daily News‘ Elizabeth Weitzman writes: Whatever it is you’re looking for – comedy, horror, parades of singing frogs and dancing kitchen appliances – you’ll find it in Satoshi Kon’s anime adventure, a jaw-dropping feat of imagination.

Manohla Dargis in the NY Times wrote: A mind-twisting, eye-tickling wonder, this anime from the Japanese director Satoshi Kon bears little relation to the greasy, sticky kid stuff that Hollywood churns out, those fatuous fables with wisecracking woodland creatures selling lessons in how to be a good child so you can grow up to be a good citizen. Model behavior isn’t on the menu in “Paprika,” and neither are dinky songs and visuals.

and Gene Seymour of Newsday & AP wrote: Whether viewed as science-fiction in the manic, shape-shifting tradition of Philip K. Dick or as a hyperbolic analogue to the movie industry, “Paprika” is like little else you regularly experience in animated or live-action movies. Those for whom the pictorial style of Japanese anime holds no charm won’t care about its densely layered narrative or about how clever it is with its cinematic references. The rest of us can once again wonder why so few animators in this country even try to take their art to such exotic extremes.

The story about manipulating wild dreams isn’t something I’m interested in, but I’ll take the leap for the sake of this director.

Perhaps someday I’ll be enthusiastic about the opening of an American film in the same way.
Shrek 3 was one I chose to pass, despite the invitation I’d received to a screening. (Shrek #1 was ugly albeit funny; #2 was uglier and not funny; I’ve wasted enough time on this franchise to see #3. Sorry.) They’ll make enough money off it – always a positive thing when an animated film is successful – even if I don’t want to see it.

The aforementioned Surf’s Up looks like a bad blend of Madagascar and Happy Feet.

Ratatouille is probably the only one of the Hollywood films I’ll see in a theater. I do like Brad Bird‘s work. The Incredibles actually had a couple of fine acting performances that Bird had pulled from some animators. (I wish I could name the animators, but the system in cgi just doesn’t allow us to connect any hand, other than the director’s, to animated acting.) However, the nine minute clip I’ve seen from Ratatouille looks entertaining and obvious and completely impersonal in its construction. I won’t judge it, though, until I’ve seen the whole film. I do also have to say that it’s going to take some doing for me to sympathize with a rat as the lead character. (I am amused by a film, whose marketing feels compelled to tell you how to pronounce its title. That doesn’t read big box office to me.)

If you’d like to see the recipe for Ratatouille success, go here.

– The Museum of Modern Art has a big schedule of films and artwork upcoming:

On Tuesday, Apr 17, 2007 at 6:30 PM, they will host an “Artists Speak” session:

Conversations on Contemporary Art with Laurie Anderson and William Kentridge as host by MOMA’s Glenn D. Lowry.
Performance artist Laurie Anderson and William Kentridge – director and scene designer for BAM’s spring production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute – discuss how they bring their creative process to performance.

To reserve tickets go here.

Kentridge‘s The Magic Flute will play at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for four performances beginning April 9th. Kentridge directed and designed it and has animated pieces in his signature style throughout the program.

To see a video trailer for the opera go here.

To buy tickets to the Opera go here.

The Museum also has what it calls Projects 85. You can see Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi draw his “spontaneous” art on the walls of MOMA.

“For two weeks prior to the official opening, April 19, Perjovschi will draw on the wall during public hours, allowing visitors to observe the creation of the work.” This work will then be exhibited from May 2 thru August 27, 2007.

Of course, one of the earliest 20th Century quick-draw artists was Winsor McCay. He performed on Vaudeville stages with a large pad telling his stories which he illustrated live. Eventually, he added the animated backdrops of his cartoon characters.

Finally, regarding MOMA, I wanted to point out that they’re just starting a complete retrospective of the films of Rainier Werner Fassbinder. If you don’t know his films, you should. If you do know his films, you get to see them again in excellent projected format. Check the museum schedule for times.

– Enough about art. Let’s talk Popeye. Warner Home Video has announced a July 31st date for the Popeye dvd: Popeye the Sailor – Volume 1: 1933-1938.

The package will include 60 cartoons plus 5 hours of bonus material: retrospectives such as “The Story of Popeye the Sailor Man” and “The History of the Fleischer Studios”. There are also “behind-the-toons” featurettes, bonus shorts, and commentary tracks by animation historians and other experts. Greg Ford directed one of the documentaries. He spoke on camera with every notable animator in New York. As one of those interviewed, I have particular reason to be interested in seeing the docs.

The Popeye shorts, themselves, will be uncut, unedited cartoons that are authorized and come from the original masters. The fact that it’s labeled volume 1, gives us good hope that other volumes will follow.

Of course, real Popeye aficionados will go back to E.C. Segar’s original strip. There’s another Popeye there that is beyond even the Fleischer shorts.

- While we wait for Satoshi Kon‘s most recent feature Paprika to open in theaters, (opens in NY May 25th/in LA June 1st) his last film Tokyo Godfathers was just released on dvd. His other features, Millenium Actress and Perfect Blue.

Tokyo Godfathers is another version of that John Ford classic, Three Godfathers. This same story was reworked to make Three Men and a Baby (both American and French versions) and Ice Age.

The John Ford version was a remake of the Richard Boleslawski film of the same title done in 1936. That original film, Three Godfathers, got a lot of reworking.

If you haven’t seen the trailer for Paprika watch it here.

(This is the box for the Japanese dvd.
I like it more than I do the US version.)