Found this couple of days ago. Eerie but nice short, directed by Christian Simmons for a project of the Savanna College of Art and Design. It has a feel that I can only describe as, well, very slipstream.

Check their SCADshorts site for more info, high quality version and links to their earlier monthly releases of short films.

Now for that request: I’m looking for the title of an animated short, and I haven’t been able to feed Google with the right combination of words. It’s probably best described as a cut-out/stop-motion hybrid centered on a train, made by folding and cutting printouts from classic live action films (which then play on the created objects). It was made by a German group.

I got to see it during the two week introduction course to traditional animation which was one of many things I got to do at art school this last year, and it would be fun to see it again.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

I watched Renaissance last night, which for those who don’t know it is an animation feature co-produced by British, French and Luxembourgian interests. Set in Paris in the year 2054, it plays as a sci-fi noir thriller about a jaded police captain, Barthélémy Karas (viced by Daniel Craig in the English version), on a mission to find the kidnapped Ilona Tasuiev, a researcher for the ubiquitous health and beauty corporation Avalon. With the aid of Ilona’s sister Bislane, he gets further into a mystery with roots reaching back to 2006.

The story might be a bit thin, and not very original, but it’s a solid one and does its job of keeping the film together. The theme is simple but comes with a twist that adds a bit of depth at the end to make it more a little worthwhile.

Now, what really makes Renaissance stand out is the visuals. Its graphic novel style is brilliantly executed. I think it’s as close to bringing the black ink style alive as anyone has come. There’s a minimal use of grays for lighting effects, but otherwise the appearance is very graphic. The result is very vivid, so much that I first thought the characters were live actors animated with some sort of rotoscoping technique, but it appears they are digitally created, with motion capture recorded movements. Even facial expressions work well, and that’s something that often makes the illusion fail. In short, it’s a film that would be worth seeing only for the style. If I get an opportunity to see it in a theater, I would gladly pay the admission just to see how it works that way.

While it was animated for English voices, I was recommended to watch the French version with English subs, and it worked well. Maybe because it is set in Paris, but maybe there’s something else to seeing animation in a language you don’t understand. I’ll watch the English version later.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. If I should rate it, I’d say its an 8/10. There are aspects that aren’t perfect, but the overall experience is great. Maybe it isn’t something for anyone, but that’s true for all films.

And here’s a bit of links and shopping information:
Imdb entry
Official US DVD site
Rennaissance DVD at amazon.com
Rennaissance DVD at amazon.co.uk

Occasionally, there’s a commercial spot so good that you don’t mind having your show interrupted even if you don’t need to go to the bathroom or refill your coffee.  I think Saab’s latest is one of those. Great “spot the Scandinavian design icons” concept, and wonderful music in the form of Nina Kinert’s  “Through Your Eyes”.

Though I have to say the Swedish captions were a bit better, along the lines of “Form is nothing without function” (a bit simpler than the international version)  and “Introducing a new design movement”.

Just watched the trailer for Grindhouse, the sleaze-horror double feature that includes Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof and Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez. I really, really hope it won’t take several months after the US release for this to show up here in Sweden. The stuff looks hilarious. I hope Tarantino and Rodriguez have the skill to re-create the… uh… the magic of the genre, because it’s pretty damned near rock bottom as far as quality goes – and that’s a big part of what makes it so charming.

Update: It seems it will open here a week after the April 6th US release. I really don’t like it when movies lag behind so I have to struggle to ignore the buzz online until I can see it myself. As a fan of Philip K. Dick I’m for example still waiting for A Scanner Darkly to show up. I could order the dvd now since I’m planning to get it anyway, or I could download it now, and see it in the theater later and then get the dvd, but I’m sort of old-fashioned and like to see anticipated movies on the big screen first, while knowing as little as possible about them.

So, what about the movie? I think the best way to describe Transporter 2 it is that it is the kind of movie that has a top of the line German sedan – armored to the outer coat of paint. And Lola, a heroin chic-type who considers the best accessories to pink lingerie to be a pair of laser-sighted sub-machine guns. And a latino mercenary practicing Kendo, as well as a few russians, including thugs and a scientist. Oh, and high-tech vials containing cartoonishly bright substances. You get the idea.

I don’t think there’s much to say about the acting – Frank Martin might not be the deepest of characters, but Jason Statham plays a good enough anti-hero, and the rest of the cast does a good job of providing various sterotypes. The script (by Robert Mark Kamen and Luc Besson) won’t win any awards. Some bits are way over the top, but it’s good enough to last the duration of the movie and provides for plenty of action.

Compared to the original Transporter, it feels like a combination of sequel and remake. The story, with Frank Martin working as a family driver, feels like standard sequel-seasoning, and the overall feel is, well, more American than European.

As a mindless action movie, I think it was quite entertaining. If you’re in the mood for something in that direction, but can’t decide if you want to watch Die Hard or something with Jackie Chan – then Transporter 2 might be what you want. There’s plenty of gunfights, car chases and clever Hong Kong-ish fight sequences. But if you’re looking for more than an hour and a half of simple entertainment, look somewhere else. Rating? 8/10 on the roundkick scale, 5.5/10 on the regular.

Some convinient links:
amazon.com: Transporter 2 | The Transporter (Special Delivery Edition)
amazon.co.uk: Transporter 2 | The Transporter

Now it seems fans have decided to take matters into their own hands, and started Browncoats Rise Again, a campaign to raise enough funds to finance a new series. I don’t know if it’s possible to raise the kind of money such a project requires – and I’m personally not sure about giving money to a website that lacks any information about who’s behind the initiative, but hopefully that’s just information lost in the burst of enthusiasm that created the project.

But it did get me thinking about how far off using the web as a medium for productions of that size is – to simply produce a series and sell the episodes online. Something like Firefly, that already has a dedicated fan base, may be a good starting project. If people pay $29.95 a month to get access to naked ladies doing naked things, maybe it isn’t impossible to find a large enough audience that is willing to subscribe to something with the quality of a tv-series. And since I guess that many Firefly fans are in the more tech-savvy demographics, many probably have what is needed to take something from the net and comfortably watch it on a TV. (Personally I’ve never been really comfortable watching anything but short clips on my PC, I prefer to be more active when I’m in front of this screen.)

Based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, A History of Violence tells the story about the mild-mannered family man Tom Stall, who becomes a local hero after defending his diner from a pair of fugitive criminals. But the following media coverege attracts attention, and Stall’s diner is visited by a scarred mobster who greets him as Joey Cusack and claims to know him from Philadelphia…

I havn’t read the graphic novel, but I think David Cronenberg presents the story in a gritty, mundane tone that could be true to the atmosphere of the original medium. The whole film feels quite unspectacular – and that I mean in a positive sense, as I think that solid, straight-forward films are becoming too few and far apart in the main stream.

The cast is overall good, Maria Bello plays the part of Stall’s wife very well, as well as Ed Harris as Carl Fogarty, the aforementioned mobster. And then there’s Viggo Mortensen, who hasn’t made any particular impression on me, just an actor among others – until now, that is. I found this performance absolutely remarkable, but I can’t really put it in words. The same goes for the story, which I feel is of the kind that is hard to discuss unless I’m talking to someone who also has seen the film. I think much of its effect lies in the impression on the viewer, rather then in the plot itself.

There has been a few remarks regarding the violence and sexual content, but personally I don’t think it was any excessive amounts. In comparsion titles like, for example, Sin City and Kill Bill, had much more of that, but perhaps the mundane atmosphere of A History of Violence gives it a stronger, more realistic impact. Or maybe those complaints were from people who thought “Oh, I loved Viggo in LOTR and Hidalgo, I have to see this!”

In conclusion I have to say this is one of my favorite movies of the year, in close competition with Oldboy and Million Dollar Baby (I know those were originally released in 2003 and 2004 respectively, but they didn’t open here until this year so they’re on my 2005 list)

This is the alluring story of Danny Boodmann T.D. Lemon Nineteen Hundred, or simply 1900 (brilliantly played by Tim Roth), who lived his whole life on board a trans-atlantic liner, having been left there by an immigrant mother in hope that any of the first-class passengers would be able to give him a better life. Instead he is adopted by Danny, one of the ship’s stokers, and is raised in the engine rooms. As he grows up, he becomes fascinated by the grand piano in the first class ballroom, and proves to posess great talent. He becomes resident pianist of the ship’s band, composing music inspired by the world as he sees it pass by in clumps of passengers, and earns himself a reputation – big enough to be challenged to a duel by Jelly Roll Morton, bigmouthed piano virtuoso and “the creator of jazz”.

The Legend of 1900 is a quite mellow, laid-back work, and one of those too rare films that show how far you can go with the key elements of a good, original story and an intriguing dialogue performed by talented actors. Wrap that up in good cinematography and add a load of good tunes, and you end up with a delightfully captivating film.

And you can of course get The Legend of 1900 at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk.