Another deliciously dark work from the Valencian comic artist. Like Ocultos, it consists of several “stories”, or, rather, fragments of stories. This time, however, they are not named. So they make you to wonder how to name them as well as how they could end (or start, for that matter). The one where a man has “the same dream” reminded me the part of Finn Family Moomintroll where the exotic plants start growing from the Hobgoblin’s Hat.
For a second day in a row, I went to Teatro Guiniguada, this time to watch a selection of winning animated shorts of Animayo Gran Canaria 2020. Some good, some not-as-good, and some strange. Like the Citizen Watch ad. Or much longer and much less palatable ad for Diablo IV. Or Cross Me by Ryan Staake, featuring the dancer Courtney Scarr — a very impressive music video for a godawful song of Ed “Is he ever off the air?” Sheeran.
My favourites were Maestro by Illogic, Mémorable by Bruno Collet and Узы by Dina Velikovskaya.
Animayo 2020: Proyección del Palmarés InternacionalTeatro Guiniguada, Las Palmas de Gran CanariaWednesday, 20 January 2021, 19:00 |
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We first saw a bit of this documentary two years ago while staying in Belgium. I think it was sort of Planet Earth II “greatest hits” for we’ve seen sloth a-swimming, widowbirds a-jumping, bears a-dancing, and, of course, a fox snow-diving. Now, during these Christmas/New Year/Reyes Magos holidays, Timur expressed a wish to watch it. And so we watched all six episodes.
I would not call it “a sequel” but rather “an update” to the fantastic Planet Earth. A stunning update, though. We’ve got a DVD, not a Blu-Ray, and we don’t have a 4K TV, but still, the quality of the picture is astounding.
In this series, we’ve noticed, BBC gets too soft on prey animals (at least, where there is a chance of a viewer developing emotional attachment to them) which, naturally, results in predators staying permanently hungry. And, bar the aforementioned dancing scene, not nearly enough bears — or so our teddies thought.
Таких людей на самом деле не бывает. Они из книг, из сказок — никак не из нашей реальной жизни. Серёжа был на самом деле. |
People like him do not actually exist. They are from books, from fairy tales, but by no means from our real life. Seryozha actually did exist. Yuri Demin
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On 11th June 1997, I received an email with a header: “Your friend is dead”. The body of the message was not much longer. That’s how I learned of the death of Sergey Valkov1.
I met Sergey for the first time in 1978 or 1979, can’t be more precise, at the Cine-Photo Section of the Moscow Young Pioneer Palace, of all places. I was in the animation group, he was with the camera operators.
Apart from our love of cinema, we were both interested in guitar. Sergey was a poet and a singer, a self-taught cantautor. He was dreaming of making his own film. He wrote script and songs, found actors (well he himself planned to play a role), but he didn’t have any equipment on his own, and it proved to be impossible to shoot in the Cine-Photo studio without the approval of худсовет (“arts council”) of MYPP.
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| Performing at the Cine-Photo Section of the Moscow Young Pioneer Palace, ca. 1980 |
27 July 2008. While sifting through the piles and piles of schoolwork that kids brought home, I found this poem. By some reason, I took care to type it up. And a good thing too, since we didn’t keep most of those papers. Not a single character was changed.
21 December 2016. On the longest night of the year, found this poem again.
The Black FoxSlipping over the rocks, |
By some reason, we did not go to see Fantastic Mr. Fox when it was in the movies. Now kids have borrowed the DVD from the library and I got to watch it with them. I’ve enjoyed it a lot. I think Roald Dahl would also approve of it. Somehow, stop-motion animation seems to be the ideal medium for the story. And the dialogue is great.
Mrs. Fox: Why is he wearing that bandit hat?
Mr. Fox: His ears were cold — he’s not with us — go back to bed!
A quick opinion poll has revealed that Kylie the opossum (voiced by Wallace Wolodarsky) is my and kids’ favourite character. Yes I know there are no opossums in the book, or in England, for that matter. So what? Maybe he is a skilled migrant.
As weird movies go, Gumiho gajok (The Fox Family) is actually quite enjoyable. The “fox” of the title is not a surname: we are dealing here with a family of horrifying charming kumiho. Definitely worth checking out, even especially if you can’t stand horror movies, circus, musicals and breakdance.
Bamba was the first record of Orchestra Baobab I came across — in Saffron Walden library of all places. I never heard any Senegalese music before that and had a very vague idea where Senegal was. But I liked the name of the band, and a picture of a strange fox-like creature.
Bamba is a re-release of two records of Orchestra Baobab on one CD: Mouhamadou Bamba (1980) and Sibou Odia (1981). Now I got about half dozen of Orchestra Baobab albums, but if you want to invest in just one, this is the one.
