Let's start the week with some wonderful weirdness (start as you mean to go on, after all). John Cusack, guest blogging on BoingBoing, celebrate the work of the 'Prague alchemist of film', Jan Svankmajer, a truly remarkable, artist who has been one of my favourite animators for many years. From Cusack's post: " They call Svankmajer a surrealist, but his visions make as much sense to me as escalators or velcro. It's hyperreality, and after all, it exists because he made it, so there it is —just like styrofoam and Fresca. Absurdism is the logical extension of the truth— or of current trends. Surrealism is true becouse it unearthers the subconscious, the stuff of fever dreams and fractured memory. It exists if one has the guts or madness to bring it to be... ( combine Surrealism and Absurdism and mix it with Dada, you get the Sex Pistols)."







(a clip from Svankmajer's Alice in Wonderland)



I've been in love with the cinema of Svankmajer for a couple of decades - like Cusack I can't remember where I first saw his work, probably a short piece somewhere, but it got under the skin and into the brain, seeping, trickling, dripping slowly into the subconcious where it lived and moved, casting strange shadows on the screen of the mind... I sought out his feature works in the arthouse cinemas and anywhere else I could find them - and as Cusack notes in his article, one of the wonderful things about today is that you can now find huge amounts of his work easily online through YouTube. When I first found Svankmajer's works I had to look about arthouse cinemas for a screening or a retrospective at a film fest, now you can go and explore it whenever you want - god, sometimes I love the web... His work is fascinating; often mixing live action with various forms of animation; it can be funny, it can be creepy, it can be downright disturbing, combining the seemingly everyday then watching the unusual, the odd, the downright weird and surreal bleeding through that everyday, a world where logic can melt and flow like a Dali timepiece.



And since I'm on a Svankmajer kick, here's a clip from Dimensions of Dialogue, which many of you have quite probably seen a bit of without knowing who it was by as it has been used frequently in a number of programmes over the years and spawned countless imitators:







As with all the most interesting artists in any medium I've found developing a fascination with one artist has lead me to others that I might never have come across otherwise, which is one of the remarkable qualities of any good art, be it animation, comics, books, music, film, you never take it in isolation, other works you've seen feed into your experience of the new work and the new work sparks ideas and images in your imagination that lead you on paths to other works and those lead you to more... Here's the Brothers Quay (huge admirers of Svankmajer) with their famous Street of Crocodiles:







and part 2:







Considering how easy it is to find some of this work nowaday you owe it yourself to go exploring for more - especially if you love work by people like Tim Burton or Edward Gorey or Neil Gaiman, or you devoured the disturbingly weird old Doom Patrol strips. Go look; if you haven't seen them before, you'll thank me later, if you have seen them you'll be delighted to find it is so simple to rewatch them now. And you'll have strange dreams...

Android 207

While exploring for some completely unrelated animation work I came across something else, as is the way with such searches, which sidetracked me because I thought it was a cracking wee bit of animation and finding it by accident made it a nice surprise:

Easter zombies

The Easter holiday weekend, when we remember Jesus Christ who died then rose from the grave, walked out of the tomb as an Undead, munched on some passing disciple's brains and so gave birth to the zombie genre and set the scene for the horror messiah Saint George of Romero. And praise also to the Catholic Church who took time out from buggering young children to create the myth of Transubstantiation where they held that the wine and the Host wafer literally became the body and blood of Christ when taken at services, giving life eternal, thus also promoting both the cannibal horror sub genre and of course the vampire. Where would modern horror be without Jesus and the Catholic Church, eh?

Spring time in Scotland

It's, Scotland, it's Easter, it's spring time... So, plenty of snow then... Walking in the Pentlands today, snow left from the dreadful weather earlier this week which dumped snow over a lot of Scotland and storms that have made a mess of a lot of bits of the coastline. Some of it has melted away but in the Pentlands on the edge of Edinburgh it's still lying there, from light dusting on some spots to seriously deep snow in other spots, coming up our shins almost to our knees.







Walking up the hill the skyline gave a great effect, making it look like the clouds were rising up from below the horizon:










Walking through snow is tiring, time for a breather; this also means time for Bruce the dog to scrounge a biccie from his master:






You can see Edinburgh spread out in the background here (click for the larger version on Flickr):

Looking for some movies over the Easter break? Here's the Woolamaloo Gazette handy guide to some recent releases:

Your Woolamaloo Gazette holiday movie guide

Looking for some movies to watch over the Easter break? Here's the Woolamaloo Gazette handy guide to some recent releases:

Mick-Ass: the tale of one Irish superhero and his forbidden love for his donkey


Butter Island: Intense psycho-drama as Leonardo DiCaprio suffers an allergic reaction to dairy products and takes a dark trip through his deepest fears

Splash of the Fountains: Anita Ekberg digitally reanimated and fighting monsters from Greek mythology in the Trevi Fountain. All now in 3D, including Anita's enormous knockers coming right out the screen at you.

How to Drain Your Flaggon: a delightful 3D CG animated romp of a young lad's first foray into drinking mead in his viking village.

Alice in Underwear in 3D: a now grown up Alice escapes a planned loveless marriage by travelling back to Underwearland and becoming a lingerie model.

Treen Zone: Matt Damon joins classic British hero Dan Dare to fight off an invasion by the evil Mekon of Mekonta's Treen army during the second Gulf War.

a damned date

I've been trying my best all day to distract myself with music, comedies on the radio and work, trying to keep my mind off the damned date. I've grown to loathe this date, I'd cut it from every calendar on the planet if it would make a difference, but it wouldn't. It's exactly two years since mum was ripped away from us, just like that and nothing's really felt right since.