I'm sure every other art/animation blogger and their mum has blogged about 'The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore' (as well as an iPad app...) but when something showcases the love of carefree imagination and fantasy within literature, how can I not? Hailing from the roots of Louisiana, William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg bring together inspiration from Hurricane Katrina, Wizard of Oz, Buster Keaton, and the love of books and literature. And the combination of it all is too precious to not love.
Backstreet Boys - Larger than Life (1999) and g.o.d - Observation (2000)
(Note: Youtube doesn't have the music video for Larger Than Life; wonder why?)
What was up with the sci-fi theme? Was it an overgrown post-obsession from the 80s in which the world was fascinated with galaxy adventure and universe expansion discovery? Or was it just the ideal staple for all things laughable, crazy, and unexplainable?
Take Korean boy band, g.o.d's video (acronym for Groove Over Dose) for Observation, which is definitely a low-cost production. It starts with all of the boys hopping and bopping in space with a mission to take down some anonymous villain who may or may not be after a beautiful anonymous woman. They pop into the Earth's ozone and hop and bop around to save beautiful anonymous woman (includes a great mannequin scene that reminded me of N'SYNC in It's Gotta Be Me...) After some stalking and obtuse spying, the boys discover that the anonymous villain was just a crossdresser! Oh my! Devastated, the boys return to their spaceship, which promptly runs into Santa Claus and his host of reindeers and explodes, leaving their wiggly bodies floating in the wide expanse.
Larger than Life in comparison, was more of a high-cost production with all of the insanely intricate yet ugly robot suits, huge spaceship model, detailed tech gadgets imitating an early protocol of Tony Spark's work interface, and hover boards. Everybody in the group starts out in their little sleep pods and then float around in their own sphere (Ken in the control pod, Nick with his army of dancing robots, Brian playing racquet ball with a virtual person on the hover board, AJ in a dark room connected to pipes, and Howie, the only one not in a spacesuit of some sort) until the dance ensemble. In which AJ rocks out the tiniest midriff cut-off. Then Kevin is fighting off missiles that is coming from a woman invader but all are successfully avoided and the boys all return to their sleep pods.
It's not about the possibility of comprehension and belief in any of these videos--only and purely all-out crazy fun shenanigans, super catchy music, great funky dance moves, and the excuse to 'be' in the wide expanse of the universe, the unknown frontier, the unmarked territory, doing whatever you want with hardly any consequences. Unless you happen to run into Santa Claus that is. :)
If anybody has any other space/sci-fi music video with another boy or girl band, please let me know. Britney Spears not including.
Three months ago, I collaborated with Chinatown Community Development Center in San Francisco to make a video for them--for them to use something fun and interactive and interesting for their fundraising kick-offs or special events. I screened this on Chinatown CDC's Fundraising Kick-Off on April 28th:
Yesterday night, I screened my last short narrative, Walt Mack & Gatz, at the ATA with the rest of my 16 mm class and Motion Graphics. If I had $350, a crew of 15 people, I would have done it on 16 mm but alas, I don't have that luxury. Walt, Mack & Gatz is inspired by the ever awesome Misery Bear (which I've blogged about a month ago or two), following three little fellows unsupervised and up to no good. Enjoy!
Two weeks ago, I added my own contribution to the Exploratorium's monthly After Dark event. December showcased sugar and after much misery and failure on my part and lots of help from the museum staff, I managed to finally put up my installation of a dual film presentation on two monitors. On the left was the Snow Fungus and Papaya and on the right, Sweet Potato. Each dessert parallels each other and through film that was edited to the millisecond, I wished to portray mirror images of sugar within these soups.
First public artwork, the whole event wiped me out, but it was a good feeling when things finally started rolling!
When I saw this video on Kitsune Noir, the first thought that came to my head bounced back to the theme of my experimental cinema course: the exploration of film and landscape. For OK Go, director Geoff McFetridge explores moving images on hundreds of toasts to create an amazing stop-motion video. I love the fact that he utilized bread as a canvas for moving images as well as replacing the eye of the camera to the pieces of bread instead.
First off, here were the following four after 'describe your day in detail':
day 26 → your week, in great detail day 27 → this month, in great detail day 28 → this year, in great detail day 29 → hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
ARE YOU FOR SERIOUS? I could not even write substantially for a day; can you imagine the horror a week/month would be and the complete failtasm FAIL a year would be? And I am not particularly in the mood to be expressing my hopes, dreams, and plans at this moment, particularly the idea of keyboard smashing it on blogspot is not exactly appealing, so I'm just going to let it fly by the radar.
But I will leave you all with this from Dirty Tackle, which never fails to make me guffaw to myself in the office; talk about unprofessional work etiquette! *Guffaws*
"The people who make Legos decided to get in on the World Cup spirit by recreating the goals scored in certain matches - in this case, Saturday's 1-1 draw between England and the U.S. - with their product. There really isn't too much you can say about this delightful bit of nonsense.
I do like how they interpret every person involved in the match as being so happy, even though almost all of them have the same exact hairstyle (Lego Heskey may want to get that gaping hole on top of his head looked at). I'm also not sure why they have the goalkeepers wearing caps - must be some form of Lego revisionist history. But Lego Clint Dempsey's ball control is just as amazing as real Clint Dempsey's. And I would definitely pay good money to see Lego Clint rap."
- Brooke Pecks
So that's it guys, no more of this ridiculous sharing meme. Does this mean I will disappear completely, leaving behind a follow-me trail to my wordpress, which is intended for China purposes? No, not really. I might finally find the guts to post that argh-I-got-a-cute-tumor-in-me-brains curtain fic without falling off my chair and rolling into the side of my bed.
Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert, and Jon Stewart in an EPIC DANCE OFF on the Conan Legally Prohibited Tour in New York City, 1 May 2010. Here's an alternate link.
Rebecca, 22. intended to be a more comprehensive, organized place for insights and thoughts on: films, music, travels, the occasional slip of comedic intervention, and maybe half-interesting quibbles of real life.
