Loving Vincent

We went to see Loving Vincent last night. If we hadn't gone, there would have been only one person watching it.

The theatre should have been full: this is a wonderful movie about Vincent van Gogh. It's not the greatest movie of all time - the script is a little undercooked. It's probably not even the greatest animated movie of all time, but it has a certain unique quality that sets it apart.

If you don't already know, the movie was shot with live actors in front of a green screen. There are a number of well-known faces in the cast, such as Douglas Booth, Jerome Flynn, Saoirse Ronan, Helen McCrory and Chris O'Dowd. Intriguingly they all speak with British accents rather than French or European ones, so that we hear Irish and Cockney amongst others. This takes a little getting used to, but it works.

Once the live action was shot, paintings by van Gogh were 'composited' into the background and the film was edited as normal. Then each frame was projected onto a blank canvas, and one of some 125  hundred artists painted - in oils - over the projection, using the techniques Van Gogh himself would have used.

The result is a movie rich in colour, with real depth and texture. None of the artists had worked on an animated movie before, so they brought a different sense of colour and animation to the screen.

Initially, the eye is almost overwhelmed with the movement - clouds never stay still, trees continually reform their leaves, even people's hair moves from frame to frame. It's a little disorientating. And it's wonderful seeing so many of Van Gogh's paintings coming to life during the course of the movie.

The story is more straightforward, almost a detective story. Armand Roulin, the son of the postmaster who was a friend of van Gogh (both of them appear in well-known van Gogh portraits), has been charged with delivering a one-year-old letter that Vincent had sent to his brother, Theo. It had gone astray. During the course of trying to get the letter to its rightful home, Armand discovers that things were not entirely as they seemed in relation to Vincent's death. Being impetuous, he often jumps to conclusions, and he's led astray by the variances in the stories people tell him about Vincent's last hours.

The audience is also led astray: one minute feeling that new revelations about Vincent's death have come to light, the next finding that another character contradicts what we've heard. It leaves the viewer with a kind of emotional confusion, and an increasing sadness at the shortness of Vincent's life, and the reasons behind his death.

I found the movie very moving for reasons I couldn't put my finger on. The reason for that doesn't matter. Both my wife and I were overwhelmed with the sheer beauty of it.

Krishna Shanoi

A wonderful online children's book about grief, fathers, sons, a book that will speak to any boy or girl who has lost their father at a young age and never known whether they were loved or not.   It's called Glasses, and it's by Krishna Shanoi

Make sure you view it on full screen....wonderful detailed drawings, and concise, moving text.

Krishna Bala Shenoi is a name entirely unfamiliar to me, and I was only alerted to this book by a tweet from Roger Ebert, the film critic.   Shenoi's website, Artistic Scrapyard. has a wide range of artistic work.  Glasses is finely finished, compared to some of the other material showing, but you might also like to check out the video, Tissue - a love story, which is a video using a combination of animation and live action.  (It also has a surprise ending - and is beautifully matched to George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.)

Kung Fu Panda 2

Went and saw the second Kung Fu Panda last night (in 2D, by the way, rather than 3D - it seems that the former might be a preferable way to watch it). It doesn't stand still for long (although that didn't stop a young child running up and down behind the seats at the back - where we were sitting from about three-quarters of the way through) and in fact there are times when the action is so fast-paced it's hard for the eye to keep up with it - at least on first viewing. I don't think my eyes have aged in this regard particularly, but movies do move very fast these days (just check out a 2000s action movie with one from the sixties, say) perhaps because those working on them get so used to what's passing before their eyes it seems slow to them. I think seeing the movie again on DVD would help clarify some of the action scenes which were often a blur in my mind.

It has some gung-ho humour and some tender moments (usually undercut by Jack Black's Panda character) and occasionally some wit. The story's not bad, though fairly uncomplicated, and even though it's as predicatable as the average cowboys and indians movie used to be, it's entertaining.

I think its greatest achievement however has little to do with the action or story. This is something that's quite subtle in its own way and something that's actually unnecessary. I'm referring to the design of the film, the look. From the outset this is a beautiful film with backdrops and scenery so finely executed and with such artistry that the movie is worth watching for these alone. Yes, of course, it's quite amazing to see the individual bits of fur on the Panda, for example, wafting in the breeze, but these are a textual feature that's been done well for some time in animated movies. What I found most striking was the sense of realness in much of the texture: the clothing hangs and looks like real material; daft items like the knitting wool that sits on the Ping the goose's head is tangible - even more than the creature it's sitting on. The water dripping in the Shifu the Master's first scene has the look and feel of real water. The roofs on the houses look like real tiles. And there are dozens of other examples.

Again all these things may not be new to modern animation, but they're done with a finesse here that's quite extraordinary. (They were a distinctive feature of another animated feature, one that didn't become a big hit - Fantastic Mr Fox - but I don't remember them being as vivid as these ones are.)

This movie also makes a feature of telling two backstories in different visual styles (as the tale of the three brothers is told in the second-to-last Harry Potter movie). Near the beginning it fills us in on the way in which the Peacock (voiced by Gary Oldman) became a villain; this section has the look of Chinese paper puppetry rather than animation, and is a delight to the eye. The other story tells how Po came to be adopted by the Goose. This is done is a sketchier style, somewhat more akin to the approach used by Japanese animation artists.

I'd be happy to see this movie again, just for the breathtaking look of it all.

Up

My daughter went to see Up today with some other members of the family, old and young, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd heard it was good too, so tonight my younger son and I went. He's great to go to a funny movie with: he just gets on and laughs uninhibitedly, which makes everyone else relax.

And there's plenty to laugh at in this movie. As with all Pixar productions, it's full of detail, and the storyline is satisfying. And it has its emotional moments too. Apparently my nearly-three-year-old grandson said when the main character's wife died very early in the piece: that's very sad, isn't it, Mum? Now this young fellow's astute, but it's still interesting that at his age he picked up on what happened since it's not spelled out.

Most movie buffs will be familiar with the story, even if they haven't seen the movie yet. An old and lonely man, Carl Fredricksen, decides that rather than have his house torn down - and himself carted off to a 'retirement village' - he will tie hundreds of helium balloons to the house and sail off to Paradise Falls in South America, the place where his childhood hero, Charles Muntz - a famous explorer - was last known to have gone. Inadvertently he takes along with him a little boy, a seemingly annoying child looking to get his final Wilderness Explorer badge. Incredibly, they find their way to Paradise Falls, and discover the explorer still alive - but not quite the hero he's been made out to be.

Of course there's humour in such an odd couple, and even more humour when the various dog characters make their appearance. It would spoil the movie to tell any of the jokes, but suffice to say there are plenty of them to suit all sorts of tastes.

The animation is more in line with The Incredibles than the Toy Story series (a third episode of which was being advertised at this movie). The various humans are human enough, but also strongly caricatured (and the bit 'players' have faces very similar to those of bit players in The Incredibles). The dogs are wonderfully done, full of dogginess, and true to their natures. Only the bird, Kevin, seems a little out of tune with the movie. Perhaps it's because it's the brightest creature on the block (colour-wise that is, not intelligence-wise), it stands out against the mostly muted background colours. This is hardly a flaw in the movie, however, and most likely the strong difference is intentional.

When I first saw The Incredibles I was rather disappointed: it seemed overlong, and lacking in humour. Subsequent viewings from our hard drive copy has shown that the pleasures in it grow with each viewing. Hopefully Up, which appeals much more readily on first viewing, won't lose the flavour on further viewings.

I mustn't forget to mention the short film that accompanied Up. Partly Cloudy takes a wonderfully simple idea - storks delivering babies (all kinds of babies, human, animal and scary) - and shows how these babies are produced by some delightful cloud beings up in the sky, including one who seems only able to produce slightly off-the-wall creatures. His stork is constantly in danger of being damaged by whatever new 'baby' arrives. And that's pretty much it. But it's a wonderful idea superbly executed, and if your cinema isn't showing it along with the main feature, complain to the management.

Betty Boop on Boing Boing

I've heard of the blog, Boing Boing, before, but never really investigated it. It's certainly quirky, and seems to be full of odd things that you wouldn't find elsewhere.

I watched a video yesterday of a very early sound cartoon with Betty Boop as the 'star' - it's full of details and takes careful watching to see everything that's going on. Betty herself has a rather peculiar style of walking, and in this cartoon she meets up with the Old Man of the Mountain, who, in the comments, gets credited with being something to do with hashish. And yes, he also seems to have invented moonwalking decades before Michael Jackson came up with it.

I think the version below is the same as the one of Boing, Boing - if not, you can always click on this link
and catch up with the comments as well.



The video also stars Cab Calloway and his black (African-American) band, who sing some very odd stuff on the soundtrack.

What Facebook is

Graham Murkett has produced a delightful outline of 'what Facebook is' from the perspective of his alter ego: some grey bloke, or somegreybloke, if you want to be more precise.
This is a very basic cartoon showing a guy sitting in front of his computer, and the only thing that changes is his expression as he narrates his relationship with Facebook.
Beautifully done, simple, and quite hilarious.

Rankin and Ratatouille

Finished Ian Rankin’s Set in Darkness whilst¹ on holiday, all 463 pages of it. Admittedly that’s the mass market edition, but it’s quite a read still, and fairly convoluted. In spite of all the plots and sub-plots (it’s never easy to tell which is which in a Rankin story) Rankin keeps a firm grip on things, and the detail in the interrogation/interview scenes is smartly worked out. The story, amongst many other things, concerns a nasty couple of blokes who chase and rape women walking home alone; a skeleton found during the excavations of an historic building; the suicide of an apparently homeless person; and the murder of an up and coming MP. All four connect eventually (one of them not until almost the end) but the murder takes some figuring out, it takes a lot of time to find out who the skeleton ‘belonged’ to, and the suicide doesn’t turn out to be who we expect - and neither does the skeleton. Rankin has surprises up his sleeve throughout - even when it comes to making us feel sympathy for annoying characters.
As always the writing is top quality, the humour occasional but sharp, the characterization excellent, and the ongoing gloomy picture of Edinburgh consistent.

We watched Ratatouille again last night on DVD - we saw it first in Northampton, in the UK. It’s an odd (animated) movie in terms of story. It takes a pretty unlikely premise and for the most part makes it work (a rat with superb abilities to create cuisine is a kind of puppet-master to a young man who has no apparent abilities at all). The human characters are superbly delineated, the rats also. The vividness of the ‘scenery’ is often amazing, as it is in all Pixar films. The vocal characterizations are as always, excellent, though Lou Romano as Linguini, gets a little annoying with his constant self-deprecating tone; it may be more a fault of the script than Romano himself.
Overall it’s not a Pixar that I’d rate as the best - mostly because of the story - (at present my favourite is The Incredibles) but it’s certainly not at the bottom of the pile either.

¹ Use of the word, 'whilst' in favour of 'while' encouraged by number one son.

Ratatouille

Finally caught up with the movie, Ratatouille, at the cinema. We’d been going to see it in London, but missed the showing. However, it was on in Northampton, when we got there, so along with twenty other people we went to see it.

I think my only criticism of it is that it isn’t particularly funny – certainly not laugh-out-loud funny. It’s entertaining, and the storyline is fine, and there’s quite a bit of subtle humour, but you never kind of get caught up in a great laugh at any time.

That aside, the animation is brilliant, and the story takes a rather strange idea and manages to deal with its problems successfully. A rat who’s a self-taught cook? And who’s ability in the kitchen surpasses most other cooks? Okay. It’s totally improbable, but you manage to suspend belief and let it happen.

Overall, though, the thing that impressed was the technical excellence of the movie. The characters are wonderfully drawn, even those who exist primarily as caricatures. The backgrounds have a depth and warmth not always seen in modern animation, and the cast voicing the characters are top notch too.

I missed seeing most of the actors’ names when the credits were rolling, and didn’t realise Peter O’Toole had played the nasty food critic, Anton Ego. Janeane Garofalo, an actress I enjoy seeing in movies (but haven’t very often) played the only female cook in the kitchen, and someone called Patton Oswalt was the main character, Remy. I don’t know Oswalt’s name but he’s obviously done a lot of voicing for tv. Lou Romano, who plays the boy who pretends he’s a cook, is another actor who’s known more as a vocal artist than one who’s ‘seen.’ The gyrations his character goes through in the movie probably provide the biggest laughs.

I’d like to get a copy of the movie on DVD in due course: it’s one that would repay watching again, I think, to catch up with the details.

Not playing the victim

A friend sent me a classic piece of computer cartooning called Animator vs. Animation by Alan Becker. It’s about what happens when an artist draws a little man, regards him as a ‘victim’ and then discovers that the victim doesn’t want to play ball. It’s so well animated that I’ve watched it several times and am still only picking up on the detail. Check it out!
Alan Becker, it appears, is no elderly artist working at the top of his game. He’s only just graduated from high school and is still deciding what he‘s going to do with his life.
He’s working on a game version of Animator vs. Animation with a young programmer who creates games for fun.
He was planning to attend a spiritual workshop in Korea this (northern) summer and then get involved with a missionary youth group with his church. They were aiming to travel the USA raising money to fund leadership training programs.
In spite of saying he’s wondering what he’s going to do with his life, he’s already planning to go to the Columbus College of Art and Design for four years, and find a career in art after that. Sounds like he’s got himself fairly well sussed out!