Philip Seymour Hoffman Contemplates Happiness in New Animated Video

in Animation, Life | June 4th, 2014

The ani­mat­ed video series Blank on Blank returns with a pre­vi­ous­ly unaired inter­view with Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man, the tal­ent­ed actor who died of a hero­in over­dose ear­li­er this year. The audio, record­ed at the Rubin Muse­um of Art in Decem­ber, 2012, fea­tures Hoff­man in con­ver­sa­tion with philoso­pher Simon Critch­ley. The top­ic is hap­pi­ness — some­thing that Hoff­man is care­ful to dis­tin­guish from hedo­nis­tic plea­sure. “I would def­i­nite­ly say plea­sure is not hap­pi­ness, because I kill plea­sure.” “I take too much of it and make it unplea­sur­able. Like too much cof­fee and you are mis­er­able.” “There is no plea­sure that I haven’t actu­al­ly made myself sick on.”  Wrestling with the con­cept, the actor tells Critchely that he found hap­pi­ness in one thing — the time he spent with his chil­dren, “When I see them enjoy each oth­er in front of me, and then they let me enjoy them in turn, that brings a feel­ing which I would say is hap­pi­ness.” But that feel­ing, as pow­er­ful as it is, proves ephemer­al. It does­n’t last. So when it comes around, don’t miss it.

You can watch the com­plete unan­i­mat­ed inter­view below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

Hitch­cock on Hap­pi­ness

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

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Anyone Can Change the World: The Animated Wisdom of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Jody Williams

in Animation | June 2nd, 2014

Here’s a lit­tle ani­ma­tion for those times when the unlike­li­hood of win­ning pub­lic recog­ni­tion for your work has you deject­ed to the point of inac­tion.

Chil­dren are repeat­ed­ly told that they can change the world, and, in my expe­ri­ence, most of them seem to believe that this is true.

How is it, then, that so many adults are par­a­lyzed by feel­ings of pow­er­less­ness? Did some­thing hap­pen in mid­dle school, or are the prob­lems of the world so immense? (Both, prob­a­bly.) Why both­er, right?

Activist Jody Williams may have won a Nobel Prize, but she’s also a fan of start­ing small.

The Roy­al Soci­ety for the Arts enlist­ed ani­ma­tor Katy Davis to mine William’s lec­ture  “Any­one Can Change the World” for its nar­ra­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties. It’s a good argu­ment against suc­cumb­ing to the siren song of your flat screen TVs. It’s also a good argu­ment for engag­ing with your com­mu­ni­ty.

Williams cru­sad­ed against land mines, but her advice holds true for more mod­est endeav­ors, too, be it school lunch pol­i­cy reform or fin­ish­ing that nov­el or short sto­ry.

If a cou­ple of min­utes of dog­gies don’t set you to rights, her com­plete lec­ture is below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of “Out­ro­spec­tion” — A Way of Life, A Force for Social Change — Explained with Ani­ma­tion

Manuel Lima Visu­al­izes Knowl­edge in Our Inter­con­nect­ed World in a Brand New RSA Ani­mat­ed Video

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the long run­ning zine, The East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Thank You, Mask Man: Lenny Bruce’s Lone Ranger Comedy Routine Becomes a NSFW Animated Film (1968)

in Animation, Comedy | May 30th, 2014

If you ever real­ly want­ed to know what was the deal between The Lone Ranger and Ton­to, the above video of Thank You, Mask Man might answer a few ques­tions. Warn­ing: it’s seri­ous­ly NSFW.

The audio for Thank You, Mask Man is tak­en from a stand up rou­tine from Lenny Bruce, who ruth­less­ly, hilar­i­ous­ly takes apart the leg­endary crime fight­er. After years of get­ting saved by a masked hero on a white steed, the denizens of a small West­ern town cor­ner him into accept­ing some­thing, any­thing as a token of their grat­i­tude. The hero points to a near­by Native Amer­i­can and says that he wants him. He pro­claims that he wants “to per­form an unnat­ur­al act.” The towns­peo­ple are hor­ri­fied. “I’ve read a lot of expos­es on how bad it is,” the Masked Man explains, “and I want to try it, just once.”

Jeff Hale, who lat­er went on to ani­mate that groovy Pin­ball Num­ber Count­down bit on Sesame Street, made the short in 1968, two years after Bruce’s death. The movie had a hard time get­ting booked into the­aters report­ed­ly, in part, because Bruce ruf­fled more than a few feath­ers in the film indus­try. Ulti­mate­ly though Thank You, Mask Man became a sta­ple at gay and cult film fes­ti­vals.

Bruce was, of course, the orig­i­nal bad boy com­ic. He laced his free form, light­ning quick per­for­mances with frank dis­cus­sions of sex, social issues and lots of swear­ing. Nowa­days, F‑bombs are par for the course in a come­di­an club but, back dur­ing the Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion, they were shock­ing. And they got him thrown in jail on sev­er­al occa­sions. You can lis­ten to anoth­er (unan­i­mat­ed) Bruce rou­tine below. It’s com­plete­ly NSFW.

You can find Thank You, Mask Man in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lenny Bruce Riffs and Rants on Injus­tice and Hypocrisy in One of His Final Per­for­mances (NSFW)

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Watch William S. Burroughs’ Ah Pook is Here as an Animated Film, with Music By John Cale

in Animation, Literature | May 29th, 2014

The work of William S. Bur­roughs can be by turns hilar­i­ous, opaque and pro­fane – filled with images of drugs, insects and oth­er odd­i­ties. Though it might be fas­ci­nat­ing, if dif­fi­cult, on the page, his work real­ly comes alive when read aloud, prefer­ably in Burroughs’s sig­na­ture dead­pan drawl. And if it’s accom­pa­nied by some trip­py visu­als, then, all the bet­ter.

The above video is exact­ly that. In 1994, ani­ma­tor Peter Hunt made this appro­pri­ate­ly grotesque stop motion ani­mat­ed film, Ah Pook is Here, with audio tak­en from Burroughs’s 1990 album Dead City Radio. (You can read along to the video below.) John Cale pro­vides the music. The win­ner of 10 inter­na­tion­al film awards, the short film has been archived in the Goethe Insti­tut.

Ah Pook is Here start­ed in 1970 as a col­lab­o­ra­tion with artist Mal­colm McNeil. Orig­i­nal­ly it was slat­ed to be a mag­a­zine com­ic strip but when the pub­li­ca­tion fold­ed, Bur­roughs and McNeil decid­ed to turn it into a book. Ah Pook is Here and Oth­er Texts was final­ly pub­lished in 1979, though with­out McNeil’s illus­tra­tions. You can see them here.

When I become Death, Death is the seed from which I grow…

Itza­ma, spir­it of ear­ly mist and show­ers.
Ixtaub, god­dess of ropes and snares.
Ixchel, the spi­der web, catch­er of morn­ing dew.
Zooheekock, vir­gin fire patroness of infants.
Adz­iz, the mas­ter of cold.
Kock­upock­et, who works in fire.
Ixtah­doom, she who spits out pre­cious stones.
Ixchun­chan, the dan­ger­ous one.
Ah Pook, the destroy­er.

Hiroshi­ma, 1945, August 6, six­teen min­utes past 8 AM.

Who real­ly gave that order?

Answer: Con­trol.

Answer: The Ugly Amer­i­can.

Answer: The instru­ment of Con­trol.

Ques­tion: If Control’s con­trol is absolute, why does Con­trol need to con­trol?

Answer: Con­trol… needs time.

Ques­tion: Is Con­trol con­trolled by its need to con­trol?

Answer: Yes.

Why does Con­trol need humans, as you call them?

Answer: Wait… wait! Time, a land­ing field. Death needs time like a junkie needs junk.

And what does Death need time for?

Answer: The answer is sooo sim­ple. Death needs time for what it kills to grow in, for Ah Pook’s sake.

Death needs time for what it kills to grow in, for Ah Pook’s sweet sake, you stu­pid vul­gar greedy ugly Amer­i­can death-suck­er.

Death needs time for what it kills to grow in, for Ah Pook’s sweet sake, you stu­pid vul­gar greedy ugly Amer­i­can death-suck­er… Like this.

We have a new type of rule now. Not one man rule, or rule of aris­toc­ra­cy, or plu­toc­ra­cy, but of small groups ele­vat­ed to posi­tions of absolute pow­er by ran­dom pres­sures and sub­ject to polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic fac­tors that leave lit­tle room for deci­sion. They are rep­re­sen­ta­tives of abstract forces who’ve reached pow­er through sur­ren­der of self. The iron-willed dic­ta­tor is a thing of the past. There will be no more Stal­ins, no more Hitlers. The rulers of this most inse­cure of all worlds are rulers by acci­dent inept, fright­ened pilots at the con­trols of a vast machine they can­not under­stand, call­ing in experts to tell them which but­tons to push.

You can find Ah Pook is Here in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Junky’s Christ­mas: William S. Burrough’s Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

William S. Bur­roughs Reads Naked Lunch, His Con­tro­ver­sial 1959 Nov­el

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

 

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Six Animations of Stories and Poems by Shel Silverstein

in Animation, Education, K-12, Poetry | May 22nd, 2014

Shel Sil­ver­stein, beloved poet, song­writer, children’s author, and illus­tra­tor, per­fect­ed an instant­ly rec­og­niz­able visu­al and lit­er­ary style that has imprint­ed itself on sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions. We remem­ber the heart­felt whim­sy of sto­ries like The Giv­ing Tree (1964) and poet­ry col­lec­tions like Where the Side­walk Ends (1974) and A Light in the Attic (1981) as we remem­ber child­hood best friends, first crush­es, and sum­mer camp exploits. Many of us raised on his work have gone on to have kids of our own, so we get to revis­it those books we loved, with their weird, irrev­er­ent twists and turns and wild imag­i­na­tive flights. Our kids get a bonus, though, thanks to the web, since they can also see sev­er­al Sil­ver­stein poems and sto­ries in ani­mat­ed form on Youtube. Today, we bring you six of those ani­ma­tions. Sate your nos­tal­gia, share with your kids, and redis­cov­er the utter­ly dis­tinc­tive voice of the pre-emi­nent children’s poet.

We don’t get to hear Silverstein’s actu­al voice in the ani­ma­tions of “Runny’s Hind Keart”and “Run­ny on Rount Mush­more,” above, two of many poems made almost entire­ly of spooner­isms from the book and audio CD Run­ny Bab­bit: A Bil­ly Sook, posthu­mous­ly pub­lished in 2005.

Instead, Sil­ver­stein sound-alike Den­nis Locor­riere—for­mer lead singer of the band Dr. Hook—narrates. (Sil­ver­stein wrote a num­ber of songs for the band.) The poems are as fun for kids to read aloud as they are to untan­gle. Read full text here.

Just above, we get vin­tage Sil­ver­stein, read/singing “Ick­le Me, Pick­le Me, Tick­le Me Too” from Where the Side­walk Ends. Accom­pa­nied by an acoustic gui­tar, Sil­ver­stein turns the poem into a folk bal­lad, his voice ris­ing and crack­ing off-key. You may know that Sil­ver­stein wrote the John­ny Cash hit “A Boy Named Sue”—you may not know that he record­ed his own ver­sion and sev­er­al dozen more songs besides. The video above offers a fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his musi­cal style.

Sil­ver­stein pub­lished his award-win­ning col­lec­tion of poet­ry Falling Up in 1996, three years before his death and many years after my child­hood, so I didn’t have the plea­sure of read­ing poems like “The Toy Eater” as a kid. The poem is an excel­lent exam­ple of what Poets.org calls Silverstein’s “deft mix­ing of the sly and the seri­ous, the macabre, and the just plain sil­ly.”

Hear Sil­ver­stein above read “Back­wards Bill,” a poem I remem­ber quite well as one of my favorites from A Light in the Attic. His raspy sing-song nar­ra­tion turns the poem into a fun­ny lit­tle melody kids will remem­ber and love singing along to.

Final­ly, we bring you an ani­mat­ed excerpt from Silverstein’s beloved 1963 fable Laf­ca­dio: The Lion Who Shot Back, Silverstein’s first book writ­ten exclu­sive­ly for chil­dren. He is so well known as a writer and illus­tra­tor for kids that it’s easy to for­get that Sil­ver­stein first made a career in the fifties and six­ties as a car­toon­ist for adults, pub­lish­ing most of his work in Play­boy. Sil­ver­stein nev­er for­mal­ly stud­ied poet­ry and hadn’t con­sid­ered writ­ing it until his edi­tor at Harp­er & Row, Ursu­la Nord­strom, urged him to. With­out her inter­ven­tion, he’d sure­ly still be remem­bered for his icon­ic visu­al style and song­writ­ing, but mil­lions of kids would have missed out on the weird­ness of his warped imag­i­na­tion. Sil­ver­stein showed us we didn’t have to be sen­ti­men­tal or schmaltzy to be open-heart­ed, car­ing, and curi­ous. His work endures because he had the unique abil­i­ty to speak to chil­dren in a lan­guage they under­stand with­out con­de­scend­ing or dumb­ing things down. See sev­er­al more short ani­ma­tions at Silverstein’s offi­cial web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Studs Terkel Inter­views Bob Dylan, Shel Sil­ver­stein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Gaiman

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law, and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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David Bowie Remembers His Ziggy Stardust Days in Animated Video

in Animation, Music | May 21st, 2014

When you think about Zig­gy Star­dust this week, you’ll prob­a­bly think first about the sto­ry mak­ing the rounds — that Cana­di­an astro­naut Chris Had­field­’s cov­er of Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” has dis­ap­peared from the web, thanks to a copy­right claim by David Bowie. Bowie gave Had­field per­mis­sion to use the “Space Odd­i­ty” track for a year. The time is now up. The viral video, gone. We mourn. But not for too long. Yes­ter­day, Blank on Blank released the lat­est in its series of ani­mat­ed videos. Based on an inter­view record­ed by Joe Smith in 1988, the video (above) ani­mates Bowie’s reflec­tions on his Zig­gy Star­dust days, from whence “Space Odd­i­ty” came. He recalls how Zig­gy was “half out of sci-fi rock and half out of the Japan­ese the­ater.  The clothes were, at that time, sim­ply out­ra­geous. And sim­ply… Nobody had seen any­thing like them before.” We have much more on Bowie’s Zig­gy Star­dust peri­od in our archive. See the posts below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

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World War I Unfolds in a Three Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1914 to 1918

in Animation, History, Maps | May 19th, 2014

As time places us ever fur­ther from the event, our knowl­edge of (and—generally speaking—interest in World War I) has shrunk pre­cip­i­tously.  That trend is revers­ing as the cen­ten­ni­al of Arch­duke Franz Fer­di­nand’s assas­si­na­tion draws nigh.

The Atlantic’s Alan Tay­lor launched an excel­lent 10-part series on World War I, which thus­far explored the role of tech­nol­o­gy and ani­mals.

Car­toon­ist Joe Sac­co doc­u­ment­ed the Bat­tle of the Somme’s first day in The Great War, an aston­ish­ing twen­ty-four-foot-long panora­ma.

The UK’s Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um is invit­ing the pub­lic to con­tribute pho­tos and fam­i­ly anec­dotes to Lives of the First World War, an inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal data­base.

It’s a good time to play catch up.

Before I start­ed study­ing this game-chang­ing cat­a­stroph­ic event with my young son, one of my few ger­mane pieces of infor­ma­tion was that a lot of sol­diers lived and died in trench­es dug along the West­ern front. Even with­out pho­tos, sta­tis­tics, or per­son­al sto­ries, this defin­ing aspect hits home hard in Emper­or Tiger­star’s ani­mat­ed map of the Great War’s chang­ing front lines in Europe and the Mid­dle East, above.

The trench­es were built fol­low­ing the First Bat­tle of the Marne in Sep­tem­ber 1914. Even­tu­al­ly they cov­ered over 25,000 miles. Hun­dreds of thou­sands met their ghast­ly ends there, via bombs, ill­ness, and poi­son gas attacks, but these loss­es result­ed in very lit­tle geo­graph­ic gain for one side or the oth­er.

If you’re look­ing for change, keep your eye peeled for the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. The West­ern Front was a dead­lock.

An ani­mat­ed time­line of World War II can be found here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The BBC’s Hor­ri­ble His­to­ries Videos Will Crack You Up and Teach You About WWI (and More)

British Actors Read Poignant Poet­ry from World War I

World War I Remem­bered in Sec­ond Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How Vi Hart Makes Her Viral Videos: A Look Inside Her Creative Process

in Animation, Film, Math, Writing | May 15th, 2014

Spend some time pok­ing around on the Khan Acad­e­my, or this site for that mat­ter, and your chances of run­ning into math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart are extreme­ly favor­able. 

I’ve tried—and failed—to keep up with her high­ly digres­sive, rapid fire, doo­dle-based expla­na­tions on such top­ics as net neu­tral­i­ty and the space-time con­tin­u­um. I had bet­ter luck fol­low­ing her direc­tions for turn­ing squig­gles into snakes, a math-based par­lor trick that seems more like mag­ic to me.

What I real­ly want­ed to know is how does she make those fun­ny lit­tle videos of hers?  Doubt­less, any sev­en-year-old who’s logged two or three hours in an after-school pro­gram devot­ed to stop motion ani­ma­tion would have the chops to explain how to make sim­ple draw­ings ren­dered in Sharpie on a spi­ral bound note­book come to life, but what if I still did­n’t get it? I would­n’t want to give the short­ies the impres­sion that the lay­men and women of my gen­er­a­tion are too dim to keep up with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy.

Then on a whim, I typed “how does Vi Hart make her videos” into a search engine and voila! The video above, in which the doyenne her­self reveals exact­ly how she does just that.

Actu­al­ly “exact­ly” might be over­stat­ing things a bit, giv­en that she does so in her imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able style. If I under­stand cor­rect­ly, she starts with a script, which she pares to the essen­tials, before shoot­ing the seg­ment with a team of interns, some of whom serve as body dou­bles for her hands, their arms encased in funky, detach­able sleeves. Then she speeds things up by delet­ing the frames in which the mov­ing hand obscures the page. I’m pret­ty sure she wings it when record­ing her voiceover nar­ra­tion, but I could be wrong.

She also seems to have a thing for pin­ning her long brown hair up with a turkey feath­er. Even so, I’ll bet the deci­sion to give her ador­ing pub­lic a glimpse of some­thing beyond mere hands cement­ed many a celebri­ty crush. She’s a Tina Fey for the geek set. (Not that Tina Fey isn’t already serv­ing that func­tion for the same demo­graph­ic.)

As win­some as she is, I have to say, I pre­ferred her 14-year-old intern Ethan Bres­nick’s con­sci­en­tious behind-the-scenes look at how these things come togeth­er. Have a look above if you’d like some straight dope on soft­ware, cam­era posi­tions, and the like.

(Depend­ing on how much work you’ve got to get done today, you may also enjoy the extreme­ly infor­mal, hour-plus inter­view Ethan con­duct­ed via Skype, dur­ing which Hart eats her din­ner and invites fans to join them via Twit­ter.)

The only thing lack­ing is the nit­ty grit­ty on how and where Hart stores her enor­mous video files. With­out a benev­o­lent Khan Acad­e­my to over­see my work, such tech­ni­cal specs would def­i­nite­ly come in handy for a begin­ner such as myself. The Sharpies on spi­ral bound I can fig­ure out on my own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Mag­ic to Demys­ti­fy Stravin­sky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Com­po­si­tions

Vi Hart Explains & Defends Net Neu­tral­i­ty in a New Doo­dle-Filled Video

Math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart Explains the Space-Time Con­tin­u­um With a Music Box, Bach, and a Möbius Strip

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, a cou­ple of which have mor­phed into ebooks. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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