Animating Apothecary - Perpetrations by Jim Middleton

Sunday, July 25, 2021

Post 432 - More GIFs for a Sunday Night

ca 2004, for an uncompleted Flash-based website. In retrospect, just as well...

Post 431 - A Memory from September, 2008 - The OIAF

The OIAF: A Provocation of Joy

Once a year, I am physically moved to a foreign land of ambulating masses, where the most revolutionary of gothic jaywalkers performs her disobedience with civility, and where the creamy foam head of a Guinness pint is measured in centimeters.

Aside from my home in Michigan, I have spent more time in Ottawa over the past decade than practically any other city on this planet. I find myself giving directions to places along Elgin Street, knowing the hours of the Rideau Centre, and even knowing that Centre is French for Center. I have even sampled the gravied cheese curd comfort food called poutain, although it still remains under the category of “acquired taste” to others in the party.

The draw has never been Parliament, although their sessions are lively and drip in delicious sarcasm, and while the museums are striking and the scenery evocative of lost forests in central European, what pulls me to the most civilized of North American capitols is the OIAF. Some of this is purely force of habit: before video and DVD, and even before KAFI, the OIAF is where you had to go to see international animation on a large screen, or absorb the latest 90-second test film from that upstart bunch at Pixar. Even once the novelty was diluted by the expanding availability of animation on video and cable, there remained the sense of community-- first of old-school animators, then of increasingly-earnest afficionados. And now of a new generation, able to create and share their work quickly and electronically, can converge and experience what the internet can only emulate–human contact.

Chris Robinson has grown into his role as master of these ceremonies, from his hesitant and seemingly hostile beginnings to that of – dare one use the word congenial? – young fogey who delights in the occasional outrage while poking at the perimeter of propriety. He certainly seems to be using his time efficiently while on his ship of state–this visit served to premiere not one, but two books on animation (a biography of the late Ryan Larkin and a collection of interviews with Canadian animators).

To this setting, this sense of community, and its inherent enthusiasm, add a series of astonishing films and programs. This OIAF was a case of delicious sensory overloads. The feature films in competition included two created in Flash– Waltz with Bashir, a blend of documentary and Apocalypse Now surrealism by Ari Folman, and the astonishing Sita Sings the Blues, presented in multiple stylistic forms by Nina Paley, who bankrupted herself to create this five year labor of love.

The short films ranged from the stark Dark Years to the utterly giddy Lollypop to the bloodfest Super Jail. I made it to five sets of films, indulged in only moderately overpriced popcorn and soda, and relished the generally great weather for the walk between theaters. Even the picnic, with its ritualized pumpkin carving competition, left participants unscathed and winners with prizes that will soon show up on Ebay.

Morning meetings with the animators became increasingly bleary-eyed as the festival continued, catalyzed by late screenings and parties. “War stories” of producers and educators continued on panels ranging from animation software to curricula, culminating in an evening with Richard Williams moderated by John Canemaker, in itself worth the journey to Canada (I am so petitioning my school to get the DVD series by Williams, budgets be hanged!). And in a performance redefining old-school techniques, Daniel Barrow related his life in manually-moved overheads, creating a 19th century animated magic lantern show.

Concerns surrounding sliced budgets have made the OIAF subject to the generosity of strangers, but this year remained a celebration. Let’s hope for more projected light from Canada in 2009.

September 24, 2008

(from 2024, proving the tradition carries on!)

Friday, July 09, 2021

Post 430 - Fishy for Freitag - updated to July 26

Haiku! Haiku! Gesundheit!

When a koi is coy

Secreted stranding seaweed

Conceals cautious koi

Cartilaginous

Splitting water, running hares

Gnathostomata

Ichthyology

Not icky, but not sticky

Investigate carp

Fish founder, flounder

Worms, flies, baited hooks and lines

Sticks, scales, but no whales

Blurb, bubble, blubble

Kissed in brine, aloof, resigned

Friday night feasted

Four crystalline walls

Inhaling air wet with life

Finely floating fins

Dovetailed carpentry

Corporeality bound

Minds beyond, expand.

Eat our consumption

Spicèd, spikèd, balls of red

Hello, my vaccine.

Chronometers tick

Communicate the passage

Time enough for tock.

A catapult purrs

Spring paws to pausing spring

Tails tickled, top tales.

Where are my watches?

Bells sound, but no appointment

(Naps nicely) needed.

Inside holding breath

Puckered, tuckered epiderm

Shaking fears of fear

Thankful for tankful

Superficial aquatic depth

Neighbors wave silence

Food and light above

Things larger than they appear

Breathing my own sweat

Wednesday, July 07, 2021

Post 429 - Another in the Cereal City Canon of films - Cereal Symphony (1986) - Light Restoration

I truly admire these digital restorations of films of 30-40 years ago. Mine have had a tough journey but still persevere...2 minutes, 19 seconds

Tuesday, July 06, 2021

Post 428 - Wack-a-Doodle Timing - Evolving Sequence - Fall From Gracefulness

Post 427 - Thirty Years Ago in Battle Creek - One Quick Summer

This 1991 artifact has been posted before, but I had the chance to play with the colors a bit from the ancient transfer from super 8mm film. Two and one-half minutes you'll never get back!

Filmed 1991, Edit and Restoration 2021 Jim Middleton - feel free to share

Sunday, June 27, 2021

Post 426 - Edit Test - Sequence One with Random Soundtrack

"War of the Worlds," 1938 Mercury Theatre production - clip from archive.org

Saturday, June 26, 2021

Post 425 - He Faw Down Go Boom - Color Balance Tests

And after having some fun with PD material...

Friday, June 25, 2021

Post 424 - And Other Extended Giffiness

Bad Westher,

Sharing Cookies,

...and Flying Fish. All in a day's sketching...

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Post 423 - Falling for Spirals - More from the Never-ending Work in Progress

And, after some twiddling...

A bit more bounce.

Post 422 - Greetings, Fellow Humans!

Friday, June 18, 2021

Post 421 - Oh NO! I Read a Grown-Up Book! "A Swim in the Pond in the Rain" by George Saunders

Musings on A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders.

First of all, this is an author worth following. He does write the sort of sentence that compels you to read the next one. That’s something I always liked about Kurt Vonnegut, whether or not he was a “junior” on the dust jacket.

Speaking of dust jackets, the book has the waxiest dust jacket I have ever felt. Almost a dust magnet. But then, most of the dust around here is my old skin, so I’d just consider that an act of repurposing. Maybe the layer of my discarded DNA will someday clone me a new pancreas, or even a replacement for my ruptured ear drum (from a misadventure involving a horse I was feeding, nicknamed for my brother, in a barn remodeled to baby sit this lumpy equine, who thought he’d taste my right ear when I ran out of sugar cubes).

There - a digression already, just like Chekhov. Or was it Turgenev? Anyway, the analysis of Turgenev’s The Singers seemed to overlook the fact that the wretched, smelly little mudshack of a pub would aspire to call itself “The Cozy Corner.” It jumped out at me, since little Edmore, now sporting its second “provisionary” will hold a grand opening for its satellite business on Monday - a neighboring deli to be called.... wait for it... “The Cozy Corner.” I should stop in next week and ask if they’ve ever read this book.

The Darling seemed almost like a robotic, Heinlein-like character. The context of the time makes me wonder if this was a completely new spin on a Victorian-era character; certainly, she seemed like the sort of a woman we’d meet in college seeking her “M-R-S degree,” in the unenlightened environment of the early 1970s - but in the waning days of the 19th century?

Gogol’s The Nose was something I read back in high school, and it was a good prep for Kafka, in a “oh, hell, let the guy spin a tale and see where it’ll go” sort of way. Like Vonnegut, it seemed to give permission to just be flat out weird when the typewriter stared at you too long. It also reminded me (now) of Terry Gilliam animation, which was still a couple of years in the future the first time I read it. Saunder’s discussion made a casual mention of someone’s head falling into his soup as a random way to begin a tale, and that certainly grew in my subconscious to a fairly well-rounded dream that night: a Duke, at a royal dinner, looks down at his soup, and his head slides off his shoulders into the bowl. The servants don’t approach him, because they are beneath his station, the chef wonders if the Duke liked his soup, and a dowager, his aunt sitting to his left, gently guides his hand to his sputtering head in the bowl so he may retrieve it, ultimately returning it to his shoulders, all drippy with soup. “How nice of her,” remarks another dinner guest, “she has always been fond of the Duke,” and the dinner proceeds as if nothing had happened. But then Sparrow began barking, and I had to wake for my own morning ritual of animal rodeo around the house.

I also thought it clever that Saunder’s “universal pronoun” was not he or him, but she or her. That made me stop and think for a moment, since it was unusual in the context of my understanding of grammar until 15 June, 2021.

Chekov’s men in Gooseberries clean up for each other, but not for the housemaid, for whom they express delight at her beauty. Nobody appears to flirt, or behave in manners that one would expect of the gentry toward a female worker - perhaps they were too old? But then, Chekov died at 44, so what would he know of “too old”? Did his medical background keep him impervious to a beautiful maid’s charms? Was he projecting a cool professionalism to these older men, one of whom likes to go skinny dipping, in the pond, in the rain?

Chekov’s one-act comic plays (five of them are in a Dover collection) seem to predict Neil Simon’s humor of frustration emerging from annoying characters - and I suspect that cool professionalism of his found an outlet in having some of his patients appear as characters. One had a single-minded middle aged lady constantly interrupting a bank official because she was sure he could get her husband’s job back at a military hospital. It is a ten page exercise in frustration.

Another digression - my mind is full of them. The other thing about Gooseberries is how stubborn the parsimonious brother is in eating his bitter gooseberries. By gosh, he sacrificed everything so he could be a wealthy landowner and have gooseberries, so he was going to eat these nasty things and live a delusion that he made the right decision, even though he has to lie to himself to appreciate it.

I thought one word at the end of that story - Rosebud.

In the analysis of Alyosha the Pot, there was the statement about Tolstoy’s Resurrection that gave me a double take: “The aspiration, then, is to never fail in love.” I was so consumed with the split infinitive that I misread it first as, “The aspiration, then, is to never fall in love.” And then I was thinking - when I read that Tolstoy novel years back (well, I should say, tried to read it - Russian names give me a headache, and referring to a spreadsheet didn’t help maintain any focus), did I misread a similar statement then as well? And does that explain my entire life? Or am I just in need of more coffee? My takeaway from Alyosha the Pot is something I found typewritten by my great-grandfather’s cousin some 110 years ago. Rufus Middleton wrote that if a worker is so good and quiet, “he eventually takes on the role of furniture. And nobody misses a chair until he wants to sit down.”

Or as Saunders would say today, “...until she wants to sit down.”

Or as Washington Irving would say in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:

“Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody’s debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him; the school was removed to a different quarter of the hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.”

In any case, it was a fun read, and it succeeded in firing off some too-dormant neurons.