House in Potsdam

 

Happy New Year

St Nicholas Day

Happy Birthday Mr Gaiman

Put The Graveyard Book on your list. Even if you don't have time for it right now, the next time you're in a bookstore pick it up for the illustrations.

More XKCD

Stitchpunk

I really like animation for two reasons: 1) the director has the ability to construct every frame, 2) it is really hard to tell a good children's story. Both of these things take an extraordinary imagination, which can make for really great film.

Shane Acker makes a good attempt in 9. He certainly has imagination. The post-apocalyptic world is stunning, and its few characters are compelling. The technology is interesting, the chases are thrilling, and the escapes are narrow enough to be satisfying. The film will inspire a host of young boys who have not yet given up make-believe games to new adventures in the backyard. But when I turn away from nostalgia, it is easy to see that the plot is not tight as it could be, and dialogue too often falls flat, primarily because the characters' motivations are a bit predictable. Still, none of this kept me from enjoying the movie.

You can find reviews at Metacritic, but the best one is at the Onion's A.V. Club, which has the wonderful word humunculus. The reviewer at Slate, who posted today, also thought so.

Even if you don't see the feature film, Acker's original short is pretty good.

On the Set

The upcoming Fantastic Mr. Fox makes five Wes Anderson films for the wonderfully deadpan Bill Murray. The workload is obviously taking its toll.

That lout Everett Reed, who has managed to totally disuade anyone else from posting on the blog, has also recently wormed his way into becoming an administrator on the blog. Kelly and I'll do a big post soon on the CSC at Lipscomb.
JKE

Happy Birthday Father Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

O Frabjous Day!

Johnny Depp has taken up yet another top hat for director Tim Burton. Alice in Wonderland, their seventh collaboration, incorporates live action, motion capture, and stop animation. Vanity Fair and Wired have a few production pictures, and the first teaser trailer debuted just a few days ago at Comic Con. In addition to the standard format, it will be released in IMAX 3-D so Burton's imagination can be both ridiculously large and incredibly close.

Which reminds me -- Jonathan, Melody, and I saw Coraline in 3-D on a snowy day in Ann Arbor this past winter. It is now available on DVD. Put it in your Netflix cue.