This is rather good, the BBC have produced a new radio play, ‘Darkside’, written by Tom Stoppard. He apparently wrote his dialogue over Pink Floyd‘s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, using it as a kind of “emotional underscore.” It’s going to be broadcast at 10pm next Monday on Radio 2 and Aardman Animation have created this trailer for it.
Film
Terrible film but great poster and animated film intro. Theme tune sung by Julie Driscoll.
How cool is this? An animated version of the Micronauts toy and comic franchise that looks pitched somewhere between Transformers Animated and Tron: Uprising.
These are concept drawings, posted by Dave Johnson aka @Devilpig666 via his Twitter account after reaching 10k followers.
The pitch ultimately failed and it looks like it won’t be made because Hasbro bought the rights but he revealed that they would have got original Micronauts comic artist Michael Golden in to do some designs too.
Regardless, it’s just nice to see this modern day re-imagining of an old classic although this does look like it would be a bit less brutal than the old comics.
From the Heritage Auctions sale site where these two original Jack Kirby pieces are due to be auctioned this weekend:
“Jack Kirby Lord of Light/Argo “Pavilions of Joy” Illustration Original Art (1978). This incredible Jack Kirby illustration, loaded with the kind of style only “King” Kirby could provide, has a very interesting story connected with it. Originally conceived as production pieces for a proposed film, based on a Roger Zelazny Science Fiction novel, the commissioned art was stored away when producer Barry Geller lost his funding. It was later picked up by the CIA for use in a daring covert rescue mission of six Americans held in Iran. A fake film production company was created, with offices set up in Hollywood, and permission to film scenes in Iran was obtained, all as a ruse to spirit the Americans out. The Ben Affleck film, Argo, is based on these true events, and this piece of art played a pivotal role in that astounding and successful mission.
The art is in ink on paper, with an approximate image area of 22.25″ x 17″, matted to an overall size of 26″ x 20″. The art is in Excellent condition, and even without the fascinating story behind it, this is Classic Kirby as you love him.
Incidentally, this piece and the other “Lord of Light” piece we’re offering have spent the last 20 years in the collection of star artist and DC Comics co-publisher Jim Lee.”
* post script: in the end these two pieces sold for $16, 730 and $23,900!
Looking better and better…
shinjuku from robert valley on Vimeo.
More beautiful animation and design from Robert Valley, not sure what this is for exactly.
I should have written about Pacific Rim over last weekend but didn’t find time, but I’m happy to report that it was excellent for a big summer sci-fi blockbuster. Whilst not perfect, it certainly lived up to the promise all those posters I’ve been putting up. As far as giant robots fighting giant monsters goes, it will take some beating (no pun intended). The Jaegers (the bots) looked incredible, with each one having its own distinct visual personality to tell them apart and they had weight when they moved even if the science behind them was shot through with holes. In fact, don’t even try to start picking apart that side of things as the film would just fall down immediately. The Kaiju (the monsters) are also not your run of the mill brainless city-destroying cannon fodder, they have a few tricks up their sleeves that you don’t see coming along with a reason why they’re there in the first place.
Character-wise it was full of stereotypes with some seriously clunky dialogue at times, my main gripe being that we didn’t need two kooky scientists, one straight man to play against the oddball would have been more effective. Sometimes I wanted it played a little more seriously than it was, Ron Perlman hammed it up for all he’s worth which, along with the aforementioned scientists, made it seem a lot less terrifying in light of what was happening. Idris Elba was very good though as the first in command with a couple of great lines.
The 3D was decent 99% of the time, not forced like the Star Trek: Into Darkness trailer I saw some months back where it was so unnatural as to be virtually unwatchable. Compared to it’s nearest rival – Michael Bay’s Transformers trilogy – it beats all three with a rocket-powered punch, and that’s just in the first 20 minutes. This is how to do big budget mech movies, less of a hasty, blurry washing machine battle, Del Toro brings something more visually coherent. It’s been said that this could start a new franchise as there’s enough scope before and after the storyline here, let’s hope he’s on board if they do continue (and that he somehow slips in Hellboy 3 along the way).
Not much of a deconstructive critique I know, but I got exactly what I was expecting and loved it although I did feel a little shell shocked as the credits rolled in the IMAX, watching it at that size is really the way to do it. Next films I’m looking forward to are the sci-fi epic Elysium, then Gravity which I’m told has some of the most ground-breaking sequences and cgi ever seen (and this comes from someone who worked on it at the Framestore).
The ever-brilliant Cyriak takes his Photoshop scalpel to Bloc Party for his latest piece, combining footage from two existing videos apparently. As with all his work, he just keeps going, long after most people would have stopped and repeated an earlier clip again, he takes it another step further. Incredible.
If you missed any of the showings of my full dome show at Dome Club UK earlier this year then the second batch of dates has been announced. First one this Thursday!
There’s been a tidal wave of posters for Pacific Rim this week, particularly like that they’re doing city-specific ones like these for London and Tokyo.
There are now some mighty banner ads too.
Also the Kaiju monsters are getting in on the poster action.
Lastly there are some very nice fan posters cropping up – lots over here as Blurppy.
There’s a new mix available by Doug Shipton from the Finder’s Keepers collective that was recorded for the Cinefamily gig in LA recently (or it may be a recreation of his set). It’s a half hour mix of spacey New Age electronics, the new love of the digging set it seems. Great poster here too, featuring Suzanne Ciani with a head full of wires, presumably by the man Votel, he really should do a book of his work some day.
And here’s another for an event coming up, a Hocus Focus night featuring Andy’s missus, Jane Weaver, re-scoring ‘Belladonna of Sadness’ live as well as a screening of ‘Vali The Witch of Positano’ (no, me neither). Love what these guys are doing, wish they would do more down South but then we’re pretty spoilt anyway.
This week I decided to put down some of the set I made for ‘A Few Old Tunes’, the Boards of Canada-inspired night we did on June 20th. Because I’d edited so much video to go with it, I thought I’d finally get round to my first solo video mix too, so here it is.
(UPDATE: Vimeo closed the Solid Steel account that hosted this mix after three copyright strikes so it’s currently offline but some kind soul has uploaded it to their own ‘Solid Steel’ account here but I can’t embed it here)
‘O Is For Orange’ is the sound of weathered tape saturation, detuned analogue synthesisers, vinyl crackle and machine hum. It’s also the look of unfocused, flickering lenses, mirror image filters and blurry grain embedded into film. Unofficial fan films sit alongside experimental animation, public information shorts and even the odd official video. Material that BoC took inspiration from blends with their own work as well as many that they inspired.
I make no apologies for the quality of the vision here, some of it is only available via the web at frustratingly small sizes. In a couple of instances I’ve actually downgraded the look and quality of the image to make it blend in better and in others, even my best attempts at filtering can’t disguise the low quality of the source material. No HD or widescreen here, I’ve gone back to 4:3 for this one even though some of the clips were originally 16:9 or wider.
On the Vimeo page I’ve endeavored to list as many of the videos and their respective directors as possible alongside the track list. When we’ve done video mixes in the past we’ve repeatedly found that some film makers take exception to having their work used like this, whereas few artists would email you requesting that you take their track out of a mix. I can see why, especially if a promo they’re done for one group ends up being re-edited and bolted on to a completely different track.
Anyway, enough guff, thanks to everyone who inspired this mix, especially Boards of Canada, and everyone who requested that we recorded our sets for ‘A Few Old Tunes’ last week. Josh from Posthuman‘s is already up in audio form (here) and I’m reliably told that Tom Central has his waiting in the wings for next week.
A Field In England – They’re over here Devil! from Rook Films on Vimeo.
Not sure how I missed this so far, looks great though. I detect the animation techniques of Julian House there. Interesting that this debuts on all platforms, including cinema, Channel 4, DVD and Blu-Ray, on July 5th.
Above: Ltd. poster by Sergio Grisanti given to people who attend IMAX 3D theatres.
Below: One of three variant posters by Gabz for Odd City Entertainment, one of which will be printed on metal. Love that typeface.
http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/BOC-Semena-Mertvykh-2-web.mov
I decided that the imagery in the Boards of Canada video I made for ‘Semena Mertvykh’, in the post before, was all wrong. Whilst both being excellent clips, the tone was over-bleak with too much grey and black and there wasn’t any warmth in the film. This track has really captured me from the new ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’ album – it’s dark and bleak but there’s warmth, hope and beauty there too, an incredibly hard thing to pull off. I thought it deserved a different approach and decided to make a new edit using the opening scenes from Richard Stanley‘s 1990 film, ‘Hardware’.
http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Semena-Mertvykh-web.mov
This Thursday is a special one-off night that Josh from Posthuman and I came up with called ‘A Few Old Tunes’. This is a Boards of Canada-inspired night of music and visuals that we’ll be doing alongside Tom Central and Mach V at Catch on Kingsland Road. It’s free and we’ll be playing BOC and various things that either inspired them or that they inspired from 8pm until 2am.
The video above is something I edited up this morning using footage from Mischa Rozema‘s ‘OFFF Barcelona 2011 Main Titles’ and a film called ‘Forgotten Places’ by Zac Boyet, both sourced from Vimeo, over the final track from ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’, ‘Semena Mertvykh’.
Josh from Posthuman put this excellent little compilation of clips together for to Boards of Canada-inspired night we’re doing next week. Attack magazine have just posted a feature with quotes and anecdotes from Josh, Tom Central, Mach V and myself about why we’re doing it and what we find so special about the world BOC have created and, in turn inspired.
Here’s a trailer I put together to give a flavour of what’s in ‘The Search Engine’ full dome show, of course you can’t get the real surround sound feel of the dome but you get the idea.
To celebrate the release of the new Boards of Canada album and – purely because Josh from Posthuman and I would really love a space to play their kind of music all night long – we bring you ‘A Few Old Tunes’. We’ll be joined on the decks by Tom Central from Keep Up! and Mark Van der Vord on visuals.
The premise is simple: occupy the upstairs room of Catch on June 20th for a night of music and film by or inspired by Boards of Canada. Don’t worry, it won’t be back to back BOC, we want this to be more than a 1 band love-in. Expect plenty of Ghost Box, electronica and hauntological material with a fine set of suitably degraded visuals to go with it.
Beautiful new video and song by The Heliocentrics from their new album, ’13 Degrees of Reality’ on Now Again. The video reminds me of old Len Lye animations, make sure you watch it in HD for the best quality. It was done by Plastic Horse apparently.