“Depending on your outlook, upbringing and thoughts on religion, the meaning of life will have various interpretations. Purpose in our existence is something we’re all searching for and despite the diverse conclusions on how we should spend our time, many seem to agree that kindness, compassion and companionship is the best route to contentment. For the protagonist – a planet-hopping catstronaut – in Neeraja Raj’s energetic stop-motion musical, Meow or Never, she’s also on the hunt for meaning and as is often the case, she finds it in the most-unexpected of places.”
Describing her short as “a kooky amalgamation of my existential angst and my happy-go-lucky spirit”, Raj combined these qualities with a love for musicals to create a truly unique film -S/W Curator, Rob Munday
Phil Tippett (born September 27, 1951) is an American movie director and Oscar and Emmy Award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design, stop-motion and computerized character animation.Over his career, he has assisted ILM and DreamWorks, and in 1984 formed his own company, Tippett Studio.
spacetime coordinates: far future in the depths of the planet a new ecosystem has sprung up
Junk Head is a 2021 Japanese stop motionscience fiction animated film written and directed by Takehide Hori, based on his 2013 short film Junk Head 1.The film comprises some 140,000 stop-motion shots, and runs for 101 minutes. The story is set in a distant future world where humans have received longevity but lost their fertility, and are nearly extinct by population decline. (wiki)
Just wanted to post these (and I will come back to add some more juice). This is one of the most incredible animations (or SF materials in general) I have experienced recently (thx to Tomaso Mainardi for suggesting it!). The perfect embodiment of “キモカワ Kimo–Kawa” orGurokawa (グロカワ) uncomfortable cloying and creepy-cute aesthetics. It is also a good occasion to discuss its biological aspects, since it is a sort of biopunk stop motion animation. The ‘what if’ of Junk Head extrapolates from current demographic fears and panics about fertility and a decline in libido, especially prevalent in Japan with its low birth rate and 2006~ “grass-eating men” talk, actually a good development about men who shun sex, don’t spend money and have long walks. It is a pleasure to discuss some of the details and what an impact it left. For now just suck on these (even if they do not convey the sense of space and labyrinthine happenings):
A Town Called Panic (French: Panique au village) is a 2009 internationally co-produced stop-motion animated adventure fantasy comedy family film directed by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar.
The film is based on the TV series of the same name and stars Aubier, Jeanne Balibar, Nicolas Buysse, Véronique Dumont, Bruce Ellison, Frédéric Jannin, Bouli Lanners, and Patar, among others. It premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and was the first stop-motion film to be screened at the festival.
Empire magazine were very positive awarding the film 4 stars, summing it up as “Toy Story on absinthe” (wiki)
timespace coordinates: 1920’s (filmed over a period of about 3 years) – urban life in the Soviet cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa.
The film Man with a Movie Camera represents
AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE CINEMATIC COMMUNICATION
Of visual phenomena
WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES
(a film without intertitles)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCENARIO
(a film without a scenario)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF THEATRE
(a film without actors, without sets, etc.)
This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature.
Man with a Movie Camera (Russian: Человек с кино-аппаратом, romanized: Chelovek s kino-apparatom) is an experimental 1929 Soviet Ukrainian silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov and edited by his wife Yelizaveta Svilova.
Man with a Movie Camera was largely dismissed upon its initial release; the work’s fast cutting, self-reflexivity, and emphasis on form over content were all subjects of criticism. In the British Film Institute’s 2012 Sight & Sound poll, however, film critics voted it the 8th greatest film ever made, and it was later named the best documentary of all time in the same magazine. (wiki)
The Thing was released in 1982 to very negative reviews. It was described as “instant junk”, “a wretched excess”, and proposed as the most-hated film of all time by film magazine Cinefantastique. Reviews both praised the special effects achievements and criticized their visual repulsiveness, while others found the characterization poorly realised.
The film found an audience when released on home video and television. In the subsequent years it has been reappraised as one of the best science fiction and horror films ever made, and has gained a cult following.
Dark Horse Comics published four comic book sequels starring MacReady, beginning in December 1991 with the two-part The Thing from Another World by Chuck Pfarrer, which is set 24 hours after the film. This was followed by the four-part The Thing from Another World: Climate of Fear in July 1992, the four-part The Thing from Another World: Eternal Vows in December 1993, and The Thing from Another World: Questionable Research. In 1999, Carpenter said that no serious discussions had taken place for a sequel, but he would be interested in basing one on Pfarrer’s adaptation, calling the story a worthy sequel. A 2002 video game of the same name was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, and Xbox to generally favorable reviews. The game’s plot follows a team of U.S. soldiers investigating the aftermath of the film’s events.
In 2020, Universal Studios and Blumhouse Productions announced the development of a remake of Carpenter’s The Thing. The remake was described as incorporating elements of The Thing from Another World and The Thing, as well as the novella Who Goes There?, and its expanded version, Frozen Hell that features several additional chapters.
Although released years apart, and unrelated in terms of plot, characters, crew, or even production studios, Carpenter considers The Thing to be the first installment in his “Apocalypse Trilogy”, a series of films based around cosmic horror, entities unknown to man, that are threats to both human life and the sense of self. The Thing was followed by Prince of Darkness in 1987, and In the Mouth of Madness in 1994. All three films are heavily influenced by Carpenter’s appreciation for the works of Lovecraft. (wiki)
When announced in a press release by Adult Swim in May 2017, The Shivering Truth was described as “a delicately crafted, darkly surreal anthology comedy, a miniature propulsive omnibus cluster bomb of painfully riotous daymares all dripping with the orange goo of dream logic. A series of loosely-linked emotional parables about stories within tales that crawled out of the deepest caverns of your unconscious mind and became lovingly animated in breath-slapping stop motion – in other words, it is the TRUTH”.
The characters in the show are 10-inch (250 mm) puppets with wire-based armatures, created with silicon, wool, polystyrene, and resin. Chatman has noted several inspirations for his work on the show, including Terry Gilliam‘s work on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, stating that “I saw it when I was very young, so it scared me. I didn’t know when the animation was beginning or ending.” He also explained that “A lot of my influences are non-animated, primarily in short films, novels, even radio shows. A recent one is David Eagleman‘s books on the brain. He’s a neuroscientist and he gives you 40 different versions of the afterlife, and none of them can co-exist.” Solen has spoken on her inspirations as well, saying that “I loved the movie The Wizard of Speed and Time, which is a cautionary tale about making movies. Another film that I loved as a kid was Nicolas Roeg‘s [film] adaptation of Roald Dahl‘s The Witches, which featured both Anjelica Huston and Jim Henson‘s puppets. It scared me so much!” (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 