Happy International Women's Day....

...for I am of that age and generation of women who do remember having to have our consciousness raised.
Well.... I did not have to... as such... but as I recalled things what made me feel gloomy and stuck... I found that attending workshops and reading certain magazines and books do help me move my depression into plain old satisfying stroppiness.
Magazines such as Spare Rib and Women's Review (about which I can find nothing on Google except ebay ads!... and I do still have some issues lying around because I am that kind of girl.)
The workshops invariable involved sitting in circles, celebrating the moon and spelling WOMEN in as many interesting ways as possible...Womin, Wombin, Wymin, Womyn... you name it, bless us, anything to reinvent. Sorry. That's a patronising thing to say (wash my mouth out with soap). It is understandable. It is valuable. Some of this stuff was like water to a woman dying of thirst.
I mean, you try sitting in a student seminar while some idiot male fellow student tells you that you should not be here... being educated... cos there be no point... cos you is only capable of having babies and looking after babies and MEN (what be big babies).
In my case, being a nicely brought up, polite girl, I didn't say anything. Nor did I say anything when a table full of lechers... sorry "lecturers"... do tell me that I am really "quite intelligent". No dear, I smiled on... until I fell down, struck all of a heap. And after some time I did have my consciousness raised and got very, very, angry... as did a lot of other ladies.
One time... in the 1980s, The Old Man do recall, ... he went into a Women's Bookshop to buy me a present and got told that this was not the place for him! He be wounded by this.

A lot of people get angry about discovering who they are... or who they think they are. It happens now... as lost young people find their "identity" and their "anger" and "who is to blame for it all".

Anyway.... for those of you who are women... or would like to be... may I wish us a very happy day... all of our own.

The Old Man Grows Philosophical About Bagel-Filling

Sunday breakfast is bagel breakfast.
As I do sit and hoh-hum a bit... The Old Man do ask what the problem is.
I do say that I never know what to put in my bagel.
"No... we do not have any Gestalt Fish," he do muse.
"Er... Gefilte Fish?" ask I.




Hmmmn... but what be "gefilte fish" if it be not "a whole greater than the sum of its parts"?

Animated Discussions: David Elwell & Gareth Hughes: Gloam

Re-blogging a post and video from Animated Review. Animated Review: David Elwell & Gareth Hughes: Gloam: In this atmospheric short from David Elwell & Gareth Hughes we see a wonderfully animated CG character wandering a dark forest alone....."



So this is a spur of the moment share.... because..... I did just consider this "dark forest"  thingy in the the 12 year old Judderman ad. And then too Mrs D have just read John Connolly's "The Wrath of Angels" set in Maine and therefore rabbiting on to me about the mythy, supernatural, age-old thing about forests.... Brothers Grimm, Twin Peaks, ya-da-ya-da....

So Animated Review have happened to pick out "Gloam" - a little short from David Elwell and Gareth Hughes about something in the Dark Woods. Have a look-see.

Animated Discussion: Svankmajer's "Surviving Life"

Hem. Hem. My GreyDoll tribute picture here... after watching Jan Svankmajer's feature length animated film "Surviving Life" which is a mix of live-action and cut-out animation....

....Sorry, distracted here by reading a Guardian review of the film in which the writer said that the film be "reminiscent of  Terry Gilliam"... Scuse me!! I think that be the other way round. Huh? Well OK I think maybe Gilliam be not discovering Svankmajer until after he had done his "Monty Python" animating... but still a bit uneasy about the suggestion that Svankmajer's style be influenced by Gilliam's..... twiddle, twiddle, nit-pick goes I. Anyway here is a nice piece from the Independent (1997) where Gilliam interviews Svankmajer.

As you do know I be also fascinated by dreams and... animation... so this film be for me... funny, dark, dreamy and technically lovely. I have mentioned Svankmajer before but maybe not done him justice cos he be so important in world-cinema, adult/art type animation.

As you can see I have just posted the trailer for this film. The DVD gives extras including a behind the scenes view of the painstaking process (not least for the actors methinks) of making the cutouts and incorporating the animation and live action.

Dreaming the Dream

"Last night I dreamed I was in Manderley...."
What? No.
But I do wake up with a dream...
that I be in a cottage somewhere in Cornwall... small rooms... and a dinner party with Edita Grubarova as guest. She be smothered in glittering diamond necklaces and stuff but do in fact look like Lilian Gish. I have to go and fetch a doctor for her. This be a doctor who is somewhat disgraced and be regarded as a quack. When I look in again he have wired up "Grubarova/Gish" to some electrode type thingy and The Glittering One is exclaiming that she can move her fingertips again....

What can I say?
When it comes to a dream interpretation... clearly my Inner Diva be being treated by my Inner Quack.
Still, at least they are both being kept occupied for now.
Happy Dreams, my dears.

The Woo-Woo of Jung's Synchronicity

So here we are. I'se finally viewing my DVD of Czech animator Jan Svankmajer's film "Alice"... very weird and wonderful. Knowing full well that Mrs D is still trying to make out that she will be animating again soon.

And this, in turn, causes The Old Man to uncover my DVD of animations by the Brothers Quay, that enigmatic pair of identical animating and film-making twins who paid mucho homago to Svankmajer.

Now The Brothers Quay also made a live action film called "Institute Benjamenta" which was in turn inspired by a novel called "Jakob von Gunten" written by Swiss writer Robert Walser.

And Mrs D be struck all of a heap whilst reading a novel for review in which the lead character quotes details of The Institute Benjamenta from Walser's novel.

Meanwhile I is also reading my new graphic novel purchase: "Pyongyang" by Guy Delisle which turns out to be his account of working in North Korea as... as... an ANIMATOR!!

All roads currently lead to animation.

It's that Swiss thing innit? Carl Jung - Swiss psychiatrist and analyst.... with his theory of synchronicity.