adventures in the random

Tim Watcher

2006-06-08T07:50:00.000+01:00

Marvellous subbed movie released under the creative commons all about a sort of fantasy figure who simply witnesses people's lives (mostly misfortune) amazing debut for the director and a film i would have paid to watch, enjoy it in Divx :)

Can I Gen An Amen Brother?

2006-06-08T07:48:00.000+01:00

Amazing little gem of a documentary all about the origins of 'that' beat... If you are into sound at all check this out -now-,even if you know all about it - tis a damn good 20mins :)

Voyage to the Moon

2006-06-08T07:45:00.000+01:00

Brilliant short film from 1902 that blows my mind every time I see it. It is 104 years old! ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR! Amazing.What is real nice is that there is a Divx of it on archive.org, god that site rules :)

Draw Me a Picture

2006-06-08T07:37:00.000+01:00

Entitled "Pencilmania" this is a great, crazy, surreal and odd b/w cartoon. Seemingly influenced by the Fleicher brothers... contains a great song about banana's sung by 3 large fruit! *grin* - enjoy :)

The stop-motion godfather...

2006-02-07T13:46:00.000Z

Mother Goose Stories
Wow this made me happy when I found it! This is Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animated take on the mother goose series of stories (Little Miss Muffet et al) - out of (c) and available for d/l - grab the MPEG2 this is certainly worth it. Great animation, music & stories! For those who dont know who Harryhausen is - check this link, he is one of the people that pioneered stop-motion animation and made films like Jason & the Argonaut's and the Sinbad series special effects possible! :)

Love Letters

2006-02-07T13:42:00.000Z

L'AUTRE TEMPS
Surreal and strange animation with great use of text, all about a man (made of rusted metal no less) attempting to write a love letter to his lady - very cool... No subtitles but its french and about love - do u really need subs for that *Grin*

All Just a Part of the Process?

2006-02-07T13:31:00.000Z

LE PROCESSUS
Wow. this one is great - super stylized, weird slow D&B soundtrack - for some reason its quite disturbing :) hehe very odd animation style and movement in this one... check it out, and don't forget your hat!

Windows

2006-02-07T13:26:00.000Z

L'ENFANT DE LA HAUTE MER
French language short animation about a little girl living alone on the edge of the sea...
Brilliant. No subtitles - but it doesnt really matter - even with my terrible French I could still understand what was going on *GRIN*.

and it Burns, Burns, Burns...

2006-02-07T13:20:00.000Z

...Media Burn
Completely mad - watch a JFK look-a-like perform a speech on the evil's of television while a massive pyre made out of TV's is set up to be ignited by people driving into it with cars!
hehe - just watch it... about 24mins long - the mp4 is okay but if u have the b/w grab the higher qual version...

Pistols At Dawn!

2006-02-07T13:16:00.000Z

Quick Draw El'Kabong
Wicked little short by Cartoon Network - with music by one of my fave bands -> Calexico... Great! :)

I am Legend...

2006-02-06T11:34:00.000Z

Last Man on Earth
Great Vincent Price film just came outta (c) - check it out. Based on Richard Matheson's book - I am Legend (GREAT BOOK!) its all about a guy holed up in a house who really is the last man on earth alive, and his being attacked by Vampiric/Zombie like creatures... Really brilliant; you can see some ideas that George Romero plucked out of this film for his Night of the Living Dead film (scroll down for a link to download this too :)

American Look...

2006-02-03T12:36:00.000Z

Part I, Part II
Widescreen 2 part Populux documentary on design in the late 50's- really cool if you are into design at all. Some brilliant shots of crazy sofa's, buildings and groovy car designs... Watching this u begin to wonder why current commercial design is so boring... Plus the colors are great!

Animation Fun!

2006-02-03T12:23:00.000Z

Walk (2001) {IMDB}
Nice little short animation with lots of humor and a groovy Funky soundtrack - check it out - some of the jokes are damned funny *grin* plus the animation style is proper crazy like :)

Work In Progress (2001) {IMDB}
Great short fantasy animation by Industrial Light and Magic - really really really worth a download. Grab the MPG2 of it. Featuring the vocal talents of Richard Wilson who plays Victor Meldrew in One Foot in the Grave in it heh... :)

More stuff

2006-02-03T10:07:00.000Z

Here's a few more out of my archives that i've enjoyed watching... Hope ya like em'...

Hobo Life
Part I, Part II
'I went out for a loaf of bread, saw the train going past, grabbed a hold of it and never came back'
Amazing short clips of a documentary on American Hobo culture - Great!

The Good Times Are Killing Me
Part I, Part II
"If it's not mine, I don't want it"...
Touching 2 part documentary about Nathan Abshire - "Mr. Accordion", a cajun musician. Amazing window into the past... and very sad... Worth a watch if you care at all about real folk music.

Garden of the Metal (2001)
Interesting abstract 3d animated film from SIGGRAPH 2001, really odd ambient/noize soundtrack - check it out.

Greenwich Village Sunday (1960)
Lovely docu-short about Greenwich Village at the turn of the 60's - really great footage of hippies and beatnik poets! Wish I could take a time capsule back in time with my missus to visit it... :)

Georg Thomann, Artist

2006-02-02T12:57:00.000Z

Wonderful Art Hoax Joy
(website) (boing boing) Do check the Funeral Video here its bloody good :)

Thanks Twoflower... :)

Digging... :)

2006-02-02T12:34:00.000Z

Wintergreen - Up
Go to http://www.keithschofield.com/ grab the video for Wintergreen - Up and watch it. it made me INSANELY happy. Thanks to Twoflower for the link :)

Nothing?

2006-02-02T11:09:00.000Z

The Art of Nothing 2002
Absolutely wonderful short documentary (?!?! hehehe) about Hans Freeberling's art show in San Francisco which was about nothing. Various gallery goer's and lady's who lunch debate the concept of nothing, as we try to get an idea of Hans's reasoning... Bloody brilliant :)
(small version - quicktime) (internet archive page - rename to mp4) (IMDB)

SIGGRAPH Animations

2006-02-02T08:40:00.000Z

Here are a few really great animations from SIGGRAPH provided by Archive.org for free!!

KAMI (2001)
Great little short from - A piece of paper trying to make friends in a world constructed out of origami :) - great!

BODY STORY (2001)
A nice showreel - displaying the work done by the animation company for a UK tv channel (channel4) for a biology program. Absolutely amazing visuals in this one ;) Very demoscene, plus a nice soundtrack...

PANSPERMIA (1990)
Amazing (quite famous) short all about alien plant life and its dispersal - really cool! I remember seeing this a few years back on the TV and it blew my mind... Great feeling of motion too - I found myself moving my head along with the screen :) hehe

PASTA FOR WAR (2001)
Great take-piss of war propaganda/news b/w footage reels - as the pasta declare war on the world :) The "Where are you from?" bit is classic :)

PRIMORDIAL DANCE (1991)
Nice video of abstract textures evolving thru a computer simulation - very interesting hehe - some of the FX are quite demoscene like; plasma type things, particles and twists. Cool... :)

Free Art Mag Alert :)

2006-02-01T17:45:00.000Z

It's Art Magazine
Sign up to recieve this nice little PDF downlooadable magazine - Issue #1 featured some demoscene stuff on State of the Art / Spaceballs (Which is a bloody good demo if you hav'nt seen it :) hehe anyway - follow the URL for more info... Great little magazine - especially for free!! (vid link to state of the art)

Epinal Jumping Jacks!

2006-02-01T17:28:00.000Z

Jacks!
Just ran across this earlier! :) Totally wicked - Print em out - and fix em' together and attach some string and a bit of wood and boom!! - You got a toy & they are pretty... hehe BTW - the rest of this french guys site is bloody great too - I dont understand a word of it (babelfishing later) but theres some real interesting stuff he's scanned in there, especially the font things - check it out :)

Komposition in Blau

2006-02-01T15:31:00.000Z

Composition in Blue
Oskar Fischinger has to be one of my favourite artists/animators but he isnt as well known as he should be! An amazing film made up of Animated Card folded into 3D shapes synchronized to Nicolai’s 'The Merry Women of Windsor' - absolutely amazing for its time (1935!!!!) and pretty impressive and really fun to watch as a piece of film now. This piece is one of his best and here are a few links about it... (IMDB) (Homepage) (Detail)

Zombie Attack!!

2006-02-01T15:26:00.000Z

Night of the Living Dead
Yep, you read right - due to some sort of cock-up in the (c) department this film is actually in the public domain. Here is a link. Enjoy. It bloody-well rocks!

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

2006-02-01T15:00:00.000Z

UBI IWERKS Cartoon Joy
This is great - the things that are falling into PD are getting better and better - check out this from UBI IWERKS: a company made up of early Walt Disney staff who defected. This is a great little color cartoon loosely based around the story of Aladdin and the Lamp. Crazy animations and loads of imagination :) Grab the VCD mpg of this - tis good quality...

The Towers

2006-02-01T14:45:00.000Z

One man's obsession
Quote from Archive.org

Simon Rodilla, born in Italy and long-time inhabitant of Watts, had it in his mind to do something big. He became a "builder of defiant towers", gathering up discarded materials over the years and reassembling them slowly into structures looming high above his neighbors' homes.

Ignore the often silly narration (It's quite sweet really) - this is a crazy film about a man with a desperate need to express himself in an artistic way - its incredible what he achieved all on his own. Check it -now!- // Here is some more info my pal DVS provided (thanks mate :)

Great Free Film-Noir

2006-02-01T14:18:00.000Z

D.O.A. (1949) (IMDB)
Quite frankly - this film is utterly brilliant - directed by Rudolph Maté it's all about a guy that finds out he is fatally poisoned with Radium and has a few hours to find out who did it to him. Remade in the 80's this is the original B/W film (the remake is pretty good - but not a patch on this :) This is a link to the full film - which is now in the public domain... Grab the MPEG2 and shove it on a DVD :) or if you are in a hurry the MPG1 (VCD) format file is nice quality

Starring: Edmond O' Brien, Pamela Britton and Luther Adler

Great Short Film Producers

2006-02-01T11:46:00.000Z

Here's a little random post on some film-makers whose work I have enjoyed over the years - all in all I think you should check out these folks work :)

Jan Svankmajer
Notable random moments of brilliance;
The Death of Stalinism in Urban Bohemia
Jabberwocky
Alice

The Brothers Quay
Notable random moments of brilliance;
Stille Nacht I, II, III, IV
Anamorphosis
The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer

Raoul Servais
Notable random moments of brilliance;
The False Note
Chromophobia
To Speak Or Not To Speak

Demoscene #01

2006-02-01T11:09:00.000Z

Semi-regular post of good-shit from the demoscene:

Fairlight;
ReReCycle // Death and Taxes // Che Guevara
Grab the vids if your computer cant power these properly - they rock...

Triad;
Beatnik (my c64 music disk) // Sphaeristerium // the throckmorton device // borderline
C64 Demoscene Joy from my group... Get VICE emulator to run these on PC (make sure u turn on true drive emulation!)

RIP Nam June Paik

2006-02-01T11:03:00.000Z

Nam June Paik - One of my fave artists died on the 29th of January - only just heard about it.
Amazing guy, amazing art - RIP...
:(
Website

Hamonica Joy!

2006-02-01T10:49:00.000Z

1x beatboxer + 1x Harmonica...
This is frankly nuts & f*cking cool, all at once :) Check out this guy beatboxing with a harmonica!!!!

Social Seminar's

2006-02-01T10:16:00.000Z

Detail/Description:
Filmed in a fly-on-the-wall almost reality-tv style in the 60's. Created by the University of California, Extension Media Center as a guide/useful insight into people's behaviour (for Psychologist and Sociologist use) this is like time-travelling back into the world people were living in at that time...

Tom
This is about a guy and his girlfriend who are into mind-altering substances :) They come across as really really nice people and say some wonderful things *grin*

Bunny
This details a young independant woman living around the LA area in the 60's - some wonderful scene's of people sitting around with great hair smoking copious amounts of pot *Grin*

Changing
Pretty moving film about a couple who are not comfortable with themselves being seen as 'hippies' - really insightful and interesting

Guy
Upsetting portrayal of a local area overun with gangs, crime and downer's thru the eyes of 'Guy' a 15 year old drug abuser - very sad, wish there were more of these...

Evolved Virtual Creatures

2006-02-01T09:56:00.000Z

Check this out! :)
Short film with narration all about virtual creatures - pretty damned cool hehe

Anjuu

2006-02-01T09:47:00.000Z

Anjyu by Yasuo Ohba (2001)
A lovely short film that was part of SIGGRAPH in 2001 - amazing interaction between the motion in the video and the nice ambient music track. It's crazy what you can grab for free in the public domain these days...

Fun things I have found...

2006-02-01T08:42:00.000Z

Well it's my first blog-post so I may as well give you some random links to some wonderful copyright free video files I have found during my travels around the web (when I should have been working :) hehe

The Rythm and Blues Review
Hosted by Archive.org - this is a wonderful B/W movie showcasing talent from musicians like Cab Calloway, Count Basie and Nat King Cole. Its amazing what you can find *grin*. Grab it in MPG-1 format and shove it on VCD its great!

Various Betty Boo Cartoons from the 30's and 40's

Created by Fliescher Studios these cartoon's were often quite naughty and contained some material we'd even think was questionable now in cartoon's :) drug references, sexual innuendo - not to mention dubious racial steriotypes. One this is for sure though, the Fleischer Brothers were some of the only people at the time to have used black-american musicians in these types of productions and the music is AMAZING...

Minnie the Moocher
Cab Calloway Sings in this award winning short - spot the various drug references :) hehe - this has INCREDIBLE animation for its time, check out the negative image special fx and transparancies, madness!

The Old Man of the Mountain
Snow White
Cab Calloway again -Amazing- animation's from the Fleisher brothers...
I'll be glad when you're dead - you rascal you
Louie Armstrong sings in this short from the 30's (warning - some dubious cultural depictions)

Gullivers Travels (1939)
Charming 75min film from Fleischer brothers - now in the public domain, really nice animation in this - I think I first saw it when I was a kid on TV in the 80's. Lots of nice memories of this one hehe. I think it has some primitive rotoscope style animation on Gulliver himself - very interesting. Hope ya like it...

Public Domain Movie Torrents
Some notable stuff on here includes:
Plan 9 From Outer Space (classic, so-bad-its-good film) + The Streetfighter (starring Sonny Chiba - Tarantino was deeply influenced by this film for Kill Bill) plus lots of Sherlock Holmes and Random Kung-Fu joy :)