Beijing animation studio 39°N presents a suitably creepy animated version of Neil Gaiman’s poem/short story Nicholas Was for their 2010 Christmas card. I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of the reading here but the look is fantastic.
Via Neil Gaiman
The holidays can be a trying time. Maybe you’re feeling frazzled after being bombarded for months by holiday advertising, holiday music, and various wars on holidays. Or maybe you don’t give two shits for these supposedly special days and are just feeling kicked around lately. Maybe you just want to chill out. If you find yourself in such a situation let me suggest sitting down and zoning out for two and a half minutes with the new song from Eskmo, a.k.a. Brendan Angelides, entitled “We Got More” which features a hypnotizing video by one Cyriak who has made a career of hypnotic animation. It may be the most relaxing two and a half minutes you have today.
Nathaniel Lindsay’s Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse addresses an almost completely overlooked subject in the world of informational videos: how one should go about daily life in a world ravaged by a nuclear holocaust when the remaining population has been reduced to a shambling band of mutants and/or have all resorted to cannibalism. I will admit I was skeptical at first, after all this video hails from Australia, a land populated by the worst England had to offer making its citizens decidedly untrustworthy, not to mention that their theories of what the world will be like after a cataclysm having a strange preoccupation with vehicular combat (no doubt due to the fact that when England founded this prison continent they made it illegal for citizens to own cars. Fact. (Editor’s Note: That is not a fact. What is it with you and Australia?)) Any worries I may have had proved unjustified as Lindsay makes sure to point out the real threat of post-apocalyptic civilization: killer robots. Killer robots with lasers.
Via The Daily What
The new live-action Yogi Bear movie is a thing that exists, of that fact there is no doubt and, unfortunately, no escape. Were it to end in the manner depicted here by Edmunde Earl, as a darkly humorous ode to the penultimate scene from 2007’s under-appreciated The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, it might have at least some modicum of value. This is, of course, not the case and we are left with the reality that, as previous mentioned, there is a live-action Yogi Bear movie. Starring Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake.
Goddammit.
Whaa…
Does anyone who watched Twin Peaks while it was airing on ABC remember this weird-ass stop motion bumper? So random.
…and now I’m craving pie and coffee (black as midnight on a moonless night). Good morning!
Michiel ten Horn and company bring us a hallucinatory video for “Put It Back Down”, order a phrenetic new song from Dutch musician Seymour Bits, online a.k.a. Bas Bron. Slightly not safe for work, sickness specifically: animated breasts, pudendum, and a bizarre approximation of sexual congress.
Via Super Punch
The PATH —– Launch Trailer from Tale of Tales on Vimeo.
Belgian avant-garde Game Developers Tale of Tales have made a name for themselves as an independent game development studio, creating genre defying art-games. Armed with ambitious vision and an unrelenting sense of artistic integrity, Tale of Tales co-founders Michaël Samyn and Auriea Harvey cater to an audience outside of mainstream gamers providing complex, meaningful gameplay experiences, and offering a “different kind of story” for “a different kind of people”.
One of their first offerings, The Endless Forest, is a multi-player game set in a soothing, bucolic landscape; there are no goals to achieve, or rules to follow – “just run through the forest and see what happens.”
The Graveyard, launched in 2008, is a short tale which places the player in control of an old woman traversing a straight and narrow path across a gloomy graveyard. It is described as “an icon” of the studio’s work as a result of the game’s “apparent simplicity and vagueness”.
Tale of Tales next endeavor, The Path, is loosely categorized as “adventure-horror” and was inspired from the classic fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood. There is one rule in the game, which needs to be broken. There is but one goal. And when you attain it, you die. It is “a game about playing, and failing, about embracing life, perhaps by accepting death.” The legendary SWANS member Jarboe, along with multitalented co-composer Kris Force, provide an dynamic, unsettling narrative and score.
Based on Oscar Wilde’s Salome, a play banished from the stages for over 50 years, Fatale is the studio’s latest gaming project. An interactive 3D vignette, it offers the same sort of “observational immersionist” approach that Tale of Tales has become known for. The player is encouraged to “explore a living tableau filled with references to the legendary tale and enjoy the moonlit serenity of a fatal night in the orient.”
2010 saw the release by Tale of Tales of Vanitas, an app for iPhone and iPod touch. Referencing the still life paintings from the 16th and 17th century, Vanitas presents one with a 3D box filled with “intriguing objects…to create pleasant arrangements that inspire and enchant”, and is touted as a “a memento mori for your digital hands.” The app includes random quotations on the topic of life and vanity and music by avant cellist Zoë Keating.
Michael and Auriea graciously gave of their time to provide a thought-provoking look into the passionate philosophies behind Tale of Tale’s creative projects. See below the cut for the full interview.
Today is the Friday after Thanksgiving here in the US, which of course means that once again the Salespocalypse has descended upon this fair nation. Even now the fields are being decimated by swarms of bargains and the rivers run red with savings. While we here at the FAM do not partake in this yearly consumer orgy, content to huddle in our cell deep underground, far away from the lamentations of the trampled, we understand that there may be some among our readership who cannot resist the primal, thrifty Siren call of Great Deals.
Should you be among those who make it out alive we invite you to sit down, relax, and put the images of that helpless little girl out of your mind. No need to revisit the scene. No need to remember her cries of pain or recall the look of horror and resignation that came across her face right before that obese woman’s Jazzy crushed her skull. Here, have a look at some wonderful cartoons. To ease your guilt we give you Don Hertzfeldt’s amazing animated short Rejected. Watch it; it’s pretty funny. There you go, you just forget about that poor girl. I’m sure her family will be fine and, after all, they did wind up beating you to that very cheap HDTV. They came out ahead really. I mean, they can always make another daughter but when are you ever going to be able to get a 52″ plasma for under $600.00?
Coming from such an educationally backwards country I appreciate this brief history of the USSR told with the aide of LEGO mini-figs which explains that much of the Soviet Union’s establishment was the product of a strong desire for kisses. Likewise, “Everybody was afraid of him because of his moustaches that were tickling.” really helps put the brutal regime of Joseph Stalin into perspective.
Update: So Nanna in the comments points out that Bon-Bon is not, indeed, Dutch but Danish which means that I’m an idiot and everything in this article is wrong. Everything except the part about Dutch toilets.
Above, dear reader, you will find a collection of five commercials, circa 1990, for candies produced by Dutch confectioners, Bonbon. These sugary delights have names like Ape Snoten and Smul-Tietjen which crude internet translation informs me is, roughly, Boob Feast in English. That particular treat features a nightmarish and considerable buxom, anthropomorphic cow milking another, non-anthropomorphized cow after which her heaving breasts explode from her shirt making for what must be a record holder for most fetishes in a television commercial. This is only one in a series of ads featuring a plethora of bodily fluids and functions. Please do not let these commercials affect your opinions of the Dutch, however. Yes this seems odd, but no doubt there are more than a few aspects of our culture that would confound the citizens of the Netherlands. No, we should instead save our condescending judgment for their bizarre and unholy toilets, equipped with “inspection shelf”.