Claymation Chess

I might just be a sucker for claymation, but I found this great movie of a claymation chess (Digg it here) game after watching Best of Youtube (subscribe here). It reminds me somewhat of the old Battle Chess game from the pre-Windows days, I still remember playing it for hours on my first IBM computer, running on DOS.

Enjoy

Dany

Chainsaw Maid – The World’s Most Graphically Violent Claymation

After watching the short claymation film Chainsaw Maid from The Digg Reel (subscribe here), I knew that I had to share it. Claymation has always had a place in my heart starting with Gumby and Penny (from Pee Wee’s Playhouse) and more recently with Knox toons, but this is quite different… and much more violent.

Enjoy the short film, but remember, I warned you.

Dany

JibJab is Back to Crack You Up with Time for Some Campaignin’

I think most of you remember the hillarious JibJabers from their amazingly funny hit from the 2004 election season: This Land! Well, they’re back for this year’s presidential election with Time for Some Campaignin’… JibJab never really went away, they’ve actually been making videos since 1999 way back in the dial-up days and before the dot-com bubble burst.

Thanks to Net@Nite (subscribe here)for interviewing those funny JibJab founders. Hopefully soon, those crafty JibJab guys will set up their videos as a podcast to make them even easier for people to watch and keep up to date on their latest funny videos.

Enjoy

Dany

As an added treat, here’s the This Land! video below, just in case you forgot what I was talking about.

Pixar’s First Short Film from 1984: The Adventures of Andre and Wally B

After reviewing Pixar’s most recent success in Wall-E, it’s only fitting that I present the very first Pixar short titled: The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. It’s hard to believe that Pixar’s origins go all the way back to 1984, since they burst onto the scene over a decade later with Toy Story. What’s also interesting is that along with presenting the short film, The Experience Project also chronicles the early history of Pixar.

Thanks to The Digg Reel (subscribe here) for highlighting this early work.

Enjoy

Dany

Jessica Rabbit and Stewie Griffin untooned by Pixeloo

After finding out what Homer Simpson and Mario Mario would look like if they weren’t cartoons by Pixeloo, I knew I’d have to see what was the next projects were.

I really enjoyed Pixeloo’s rendition of Jessica Rabbit:

and Stewie Griffin:

Also, here is the ~10 minute video going through the Jessica Rabbit untooning process.

Enjoy

Dany

WALL-E Review

Before Wall-E came out, I thought the robot was a ripoff of Johnny 5 for kids too young to remember Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2. After seeing the movie though, I can admit that I was wrong… the good thing is that I am not usually this glad to be wrong about something. There were also some great nods to classic science fiction and technology fans, with callbacks to 2001: A Space Oddyssey and the classic Mac startup chime,

to just name a couple.

I consider myself a jaded New Yorker and that’s why I was so surprised to be emotionally knocked on my ass for many scenes in this film. I even teared up during some of the scenes between Wall·E and Eve (the slick white robot that resembles ASIMO), which was the most surprising thing for me. I was NOT expecting to be hit so hard by the love story and the ability of Pixar’s animators to imbue that much emotion into robots that say less than 5 words to one another.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film though was the first 40 or so minutes of the film on Earth, first with WALL·E alone and then with Eve. This was some of the best pantomime since Charlie Chaplain and what really moved me was the interaction between WALL·E and Eve reminded me of Chaplain’s City Lights. I liked the juxtaposition between Fred Willard’s live action scenes from the past and the animated humans who are now blubberous blobs of laziness and a shell of their ancestors, played to a tee with voicework from Jeff Garlin John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy.

This movie is a definate must see, even the silent animated short with a hungry bunny and an obnoxious magician was entertaining to watch and I know I’m going to be looking for this movie when it is finally released on dvd. Thanks to MoviePatron for the above pic.

Dany

Kung Fu Panda review

After what I thought was a TERRIBLE marketing campaign during the runup to Kung Fu Panda’s release, it took me a while to actually bring myself to the theater to see it. It wasn’t until I saw some of the previews for Tropic Thunder, another movie starring Jack Black, that I got excited to see this film. Below is that promo. 

Now that I’ve seen the film, I wish I had gone sooner. This was easily the best Jack Black film to date, with King Kong and School of Rock trailing behind. One of the best moments comes right at the beginning of the film where the first style of animation we see transitions to the film’s main animation style. The way it was done was stunning. It made it very hard to tell that the style transitioning to was animation at all! I was very impressed.

The story was a lot of fun, a definite winner of a kids movie. There really weren’t any adult wink wink nudge nudge moments, but the movie was hilarious so I didn’t mind at all. There were some reviewers *cough* Filmspotting.net (subscribe here)*cough* that thought it was unwise to portray the Chinese villagers as yellow buck toothed bunnies, but I didn’t find it to be offensive or in bad taste in any way. When I was looking for this, I found that in actuality, the villagers were really represented by a few different animals: bunnies, pigs and birds. So I felt this was a real non issue. Seriously though, if you want some great movie reviews, check out Filmspotting.

I really think that if you want to just go in to see a film and spend the majority of the time laughing, this is an easy choice for a film to go see.

Dany

Attempting to Break the Civil War Map

I know it is a gross oversimplification to say that the South votes Republican, while the North votes Democrat here in the US, but the New Yorker has an interesting video in their Naked Campaign series (subscribe here), called Map Quest, where they talk about which states Obama could win to get the magic number (270) in the electoral college, while also pointing out which states McCain could swoop in and take himself.

It’s quite interesting to watch, especially for a political junkie, like myself.

Dany

Sebastian’s Voodoo – 3D Animation

I love finding interesting short films, especially those made by enthusiasts. This short is called Sebastian’s Voodoo and was created by Joaquin Baldwin and scored by Nick Favola at the UCLA Animation Workshop. I found this video because of Boing Boing TV (subscribe here).

Watch as a brave voodoo doll tries to save its fellow voodoo dolls from harm. If you can, try and check out the high quality version to get a feel for some of the amazing detail work that went into this!

Enjoy a visually stunning 4 minutes created using Maya and After Effects.

Dany

The Onion Strikes Again

The Onion (subscribe here) reports on the newest, laziest and most slovenly solution to anyone’s fast food needs in their recent report: New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less.

If I didn’t think this was so likely to become a real product option, I’d find this funnier, but as it is, I’m a bit afraid that it isn’t too far from being a viable option sometime in the near future, especially after seeing the World of Warcraft South Park episode!

Enjoy what is, for now, a hilarious farce.

Dany