Denro, #1 Monkees fan, says Peter Tork has announced he has a rare form of cancer. The story is in the Hartford (CT) Courant, and it was picked up by the BBC.
Month: March 2009
Motion Picture Funnies
Rotoscoping is an animation technique that’s been around since 1914, when it was patented by Max Fleischer. It’s done differently today, of course, but the underlying idea — taking live action footage and making it look like a drawing — remains the same.
I can’t think of an instance where the Disney studio used it while Walt was alive (the integration of live action and animation doesn’t count), although film was often used as an animation guide by Disney artists. Disney was wise to stay away from rotoscoping, because, like anything, it can be overdone and/or misapplied as was the case with Ralph Bakshi’s mostly awful version of Lord of the Rings.
The distinctions between comics and cartoons and live action movies with digital effects are now so blurry as to be indistinguishable. In the future will still picture comics even exist as anything other than a niche, and for movie storyboards?
The Peanuts Motion Comics I talked about a couple of posts ago were done in Flash animation that obviously required no live action for reference. (They’re fun, by the way, and were based on 1964 comic strips that were some of the best material Sparky Schulz ever wrote.) Marvel Motion Comics are done in a similar way, but they’re much more detailed, of course, and they display the darker tone that everybody now associates with Marvel Comics.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/MAR/MarvelMotionComics.flv 480 360]
The first serious full-length movie to go all-out with Flash animation is Waltz with Bashir, which is brilliantly realized, but was obviously based upon live action source material, despite claims to the contrary that I’ve read. I’d also suggest taking a look at the clip from “Men in Black” (not the Will Smith movie) that I posted a couple of years ago.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/MAR/WaltzwithBashir.flv 480 270]
As I said, rotoscoping and its variants can be overdone. The ad agency that produced the new series of Charles Schwab commercials seems to have jumped on the Flash animation bandwagon, but it’s a misuse of the tool. This creepy image is supposed to make nervous investors feel more confident in a brokerage firm? Yuck!
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/MAR/CharlesSchwab.flv 480 270]
What was good for GM was bad for America
People who have known me for a long time know that for many years I’ve said General Motors is doomed. I based that conclusion on having rented many nearly-new GM cars at airports during my past years of business travel. They were uniformly awful. The Chevy Lumina was a particularly loathsome vehicle. The times I got a Toyota Corolla or Camry, the difference was striking. Year after year the American cars didn’t get any better, and even if they did, the improvements were lost on me in comparison to the Japanese cars I rented.
I think quite a few men my age have always owned American cars solely because their WWII veteran fathers would have had a fit if any son of theirs bought a “Jap car.” But we’re in our 50’s now, and if that prohibition still applies to any of us, it certainly doesn’t apply to our kids.
My father’s ’65 Falcon was rusted out by the time I started driving it in 1972. His ’69 Galaxy was junk by 1977. In those days, you were pushing your luck keeping a car more than six years. Odometers only went to 99999 miles before lapping back to 00000.
The first warning shot that U.S. auto makers had, telling them that the Japanese were making planned obsolescence obsolete, was 30 years ago. Chrysler was in crisis, and Lee Iacocca had to beg to get a loan guarantee from the federal government. Who was President then? Oh, right. Democrat Jimmy Carter.
Michael Moore is as despised by the Right as Rush Limbaugh is by the Left, but 20 years ago, in Roger & Me, Moore tried to raise awareness that something was rotten at GM. It seems he wasn’t wrong, and the day of GM’s demise appears to be at hand. Part of me would like to say good riddance, because it was so inevitable for so long, but the fallout from GM’s failure could tip the scales in turning a clearly defined economic Recession into a less identifiable Depression.
Good Grief! More Roku
Back in November, I expressed an interest in the Peanuts Motion Comics, done in Flash animation (like South Park and Spongebob), and available on iTunes. I don’t have iTunes, but today, Roku added Amazon Video on Demand to its streaming digital player, and for $8.99 I bought all ten of the Peanuts Motion Comics. I’ve taken my first step — well, my second — into a larger world of streaming video, on TV, free of the computer.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/MAR/MotionComics.flv 320 212]
BTW, I have my WiFi glitch with the Roku all fixed. It was a DHCP problem with the FiOS/Actiontec router. I tried adjusting the lease period, etc., but ultimately the solution was to use the WiFi access point of a spare router — a D-Link DI-624 — and it’s now working AOK.
Meet the Beaver, and Wally, and Eddie, and Lumpy too!
Recently, I said that I consider Leave it to Beaver to be one of the best, if not the best, TV series ever produced. By happy coincidence, this Wednesday, JERRY MATHERS, TONY DOW, KEN OSMOND, and FRANK BANK will appear together on Shokus Internet Radio.
“STU’S SHOW” AIRS LIVE ON
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4!This week’s guests:
The Cast from “Leave it to Beaver” –
JERRY MATHERS (Beaver)
TONY DOW (Wally)
KEN OSMOND (Eddie)
FRANK BANK (Lumpy)At posting time, all four cast members are scheduled to appear. We’ll finish covering Jerry’s career post “Beaver”, including a stint in the air force, working as a banker, and touring the country in a stage play with co-star Tony Dow before coming back and doing the sequel to the original series in the 1980s. Plus, all four will share their favorite episodes from both series, and we’ll invite the listeners to call in and share their favorites too!
THAT’S THIS COMING WEDNESDAY,
MARCH 4, 2009
LIVE FROM 4-6 P.M. PT
CALL IN WITH YOUR QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS
TOLL-FREE – (888) SHOKUS-5!
REBROADCASTS DAILY
Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow in the final scene of Leave it to Beaver, June 20, 1963