Just a quick update today as I wanted to point out another excellent youtube video. This is a music video extracted from the documentary Playing For Change: Peace Through Music.
Aside from some wonderful performences here there are some brilliant faces; just take a look at the character inherent in someone like Grandpa Elliot.
If you’d like to know more you can click the link above or visit BIll Moyers podcast to see the documentary’s producer interviewed, his segment begins at about four minutes into the video. Thanks to Mark Evanier ofnewsfromme.com for pointing this out.
It struck me recently that my MSN contact list has finally dwindled down to about ten people who are regularly online. I mostly use the program at home at night or during the day when I’m at work as a way of either contacting folk and having genuinely interesting chats or as a method of procrastinating, usually the latter, but now it almost seems as if the application is coming to the end of its useful life.
There was a time, probably around four or five years ago, when literally everyone I knew who was of a similar age group used MSN on a daily basis. It was how we got in touch after school, how we sorted when we were going out and not so frequently how we had fights. MSN was where I first asked my girlfriend out (Cowardly, I know). Those were the days of ten or twelve people to one conversation window, a jumble of half finished jokes, misplaced smilies and generally uninterpretable waffle. They were fun nevertheless.
I guess now everyone is at work, and for a lot of people this means sitting in front of a computer all day so perhaps an evening spent online doing exactly the same isn’t exactly an enticing prospect. Still it feels like the end of something, perhaps the realization that those carefree sixth form days have come to an end and the that the real world is beckoning us towards a lifestyle which forces us to be more careful with how we choose to spend those precious free moments.
A quick plug today forEntertain! DVD Magazine. Issue 5 of this publication, which can be purchased online or in places like WH Smiths now contains amongst other goodies, an hour long documentary of the puppet shows of Gerry Anderson, Stand By For Action that I worked on some time ago. Here is the proof.
I don’t make a penny from any sales of this magazine so you can trust me (sort of) when I say that the doc is well worth a watch. The one downside here is that the video quality of the DVD leaves a lot to be desired. A low bit rate means the image is very compressed and blocky. (A request to the lovely folks who produce the magazine; please don’t use DVD 5s!) On the plus side this means that there is an awful lot of good stuff crammed onto this DVD. For £3.99 (Or €5.50 if that floats your boat) you get of clips, trailers and feeaturettes from the latest blockbusters, game demos for upcoming PC titles and several other neat things like footage from The Simpsons Universal Studios ride that I haven’t seen any where else. It is also the only place that you can legitamatley get your hands on Stand By For Action anyway.
‘Don’t be silly Moon Man! You can’t sleep during the day!’
I just wanted to give a quick heads up to a new and very worthy outlet for both vintage and contemporary animation. So far Cartoon Brew TV have posted three animated shorts; one i hated, one a liked and one I loved. Here are the ones I liked and loved.
The Pumpkin of Nyefar is just plain fun. I can’t think of much more to say about the film beyond what has already been said on Brew TV but I highly encourage you to take a look.
Dinner Time is an awful cartoon; slow, clunky and unappealing. So far this isn’t the greatest plug I have ever written but again I suggest you take a look at the link if only for the excellent commentary to the film as provided by Jerry Beck and John Foster. Beck is well known for his excellent animation audio commentaries on DVD sets like the Looney Tunes Golden Collections and now he generously provides the same service to more obscure faire like this early Paul Terry effort and for free to boot!
Apologies are due for the lack of a major update as promised. I’ve been a bit under the weather this week and, as anyone who knows me can tell you, when I am ill I become somewhat of a winey, demanding man-child who cares only where his next ice cream is coming from.
There are a bunch of things I’d like to type up and stick here if I had the time. I had plenty of time today but unfortunately the television made me watch it. More soon, I promise…again.
Conned into buying Empire again. Enjoyed the articles, looked at the pretty pictures but once more I'm left feeling empty and unchallenged. 2 weeks ago
