Endicott Redux

Coraline Trailer

The trailer for Coraline is now online! There's also a DivX version (which has more visual detail but requires you to download the DivX plug-in) on Neil Gaiman's website.

Persian Carpet

Persian Carpet is a film made up of fifteen short films by acclaimed Iranian directors, each of whom explores the history and art of this famous textile. The films vary widely in how they treat the subject; some are documentary, some are quite poetic.

My favorite segment was "The 3-D Carpet" by Rakhshan Bani Etemad, which tells the story of an enormous three-dimensional carpet representing Isfahan's Naghsg-e-Jahan mosque. The carpet is amazing -- 6.2 meters high and 6 meters wide, with a crown of 3.7 m, made up of 83 colors and more than 33 million knots, but lives wrapped up in a closet instead of being displayed where the world could enjoy it.

Also lovely were "The Carpet and the Angel" by Darius Mehrjui, about a young woman who has lost her family in the 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran, and "The Little Prince" by Nourodin Zarrin Kelk, which adds a magic carpet to the story of the boy and his beloved rose.

Learn more about Persian carpets here. And go here to see more amazing views of the 3-D carpet.

Dali

   

I recently discovered a film made in 1986 about Salvador Dali, and am quite captivated by it. I'm used to learning about artists through other people's interpretations of their work. This film, though, has lots of interviews with Dali himself, as well as footage of him painting and narrated readings from his writing. There's an odd earnestness about him as he explains what he thinks he's contributed to art...

"To art, nothing, absolutely nothing. Because as I've always said I'm a very bad painter. Because I'm too intelligent to be a good painter. To be a good painter you've got to be a bit stupid. With the exception of Velazquez who is a genius..."

...and a troubling belief in what he considers to be Surrealist acts, as he proudly tells of having kicked a blind man because "for me there's nothing worse than those blind men who walk like this down the street." (He mockingly imitates using a cane.)

The film traces Dali's life from his beginning to paint through to his living, old and extremely feeble, as a recluse. Along the way I learned much that I didn't know, like that Dali was formally expelled from the Surrealist movement in 1934 (after an actual trial) because of his "deviant political views," and that he had a studio assistant, Isidoro Bea, who painted the backgrounds of Dali's large religious paintings. And that neither he nor his agents kept track of his work, leading to questions about the authenticity of a number of pictures (let alone the sheets of paper that have his signature on them but are blank). Plus, there's nothing quite like this commercial, where Dali explains the workings of Alka-Seltzer.

And in other Dali news... while I was writing this post, Midori told me of Disney's plans to release a six-minute Dali cartoon. Evidently, according to this NPR article, in 1946 Walt Disney and Dali planned a cartoon called Destino. But the plug was pulled after it was concluded that the cartoon probably wouldn't make any money. And now Walt Disney's nephew (who heads the animation division) has revived the cartoon. Here's the description:

"Destino is a six-minute film set to a Spanish song, devoid of dialogue and without a clear story line. It follows a dark-eyed ballerina on a journey among strange objects through a desert landscape in a dreamlike atmosphere."

Look for it at festivals around the world before Oscar-nomination time, or on DVD next year (along with a documentary that tells the inside story). Or go here for a preview.

Inspiring the next generation....

Here's a snippet of a talk given by illustrator/film designer Alan Lee (who worked with director Peter Jackson on The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong) discussing filmmaking with schoolchildren as part of a young filmmakers project in Devon, England. (You might want to fast-forward past the beginning. You'll find Alan's comments about half way through.)

Feathers to Fire

Our Monday Morning Video to kick off the week: "Feathers to Fire," from Gregory Colbert's gorgeous Ashes to Snow "nomadic museum" exhibition.

My apologies for my general absence from this blog of late -- which is likely to go on for another week or two for I'm in the chaotic middle of a house move. Yet it's also a pleasure to leave the blog in Midori's capable hands, for I too am delighted and amazed by the treasures she comes up with...

Marquez and Rulfo in film

Keep your eye our for two terrific looking films based on the novels of two masters of magic realism. The first is a film version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's beautiful and melancholy novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, directed by Mike Newell and starring Javier Bardem (what a face!). I've added the trailer below -- but if you check out youtube, you can also find some interesting short films on the making of the movie. It's due out over the holidays.

The second film is based on Mexico's brilliant magic realist novel published in the 1950s, Pedro Páramo, by Juan Rulfo. (A novel which Marquez credits for having inspired his own 100 Years of Solitude.) In the novel, a young man returns home to his mother's village to find his estranged father.  But when he arrives, he soon learns that the town is inhabited only by ghosts. I've posted a longer review of this amazing novel here.  Eugenio Caballero, who won an Oscar Award for Pan's Labyrinth, will serve as the art director for the film, and the very dreamy  Gael Garcia Benal (of Motorcycle Diaries) has been signed on to play the role of the young man.

"Instructions" and more...

Midori has been valiantly covering this blog solo while I've been down with a truly nasty flu -- and as I'm still shaking the last of a rattling cough out of my lungs, my posting may be a bit sporadic over the next week or so.

This post is to let y'all know that there is now an "Endicott Studio Channel" on YouTube, where we'll be putting videos that we think will be of interest to fans of mythic arts -- such as the Mythic Journeys documentary from the good folks at the Mythic Imaginations Institute, Ben Okri discussing his approach to writing, an A&E biography of J.K. Rowling, a little film on artist Paula Rego, the great June Tabor singing Child Ballad #191: "Hughie Graeme,"  and more. (f you come across other good videos on YouTube, send us a note and let us know.)

The video above is of Neil Gaiman reading his fairy tale poem "Instructions" at Cody's Books in Berkeley, California. Considering his voluminous output of work over the last several years, Ellen Datlow and I will forgive him for forgetting that he actually wrote the poem at our request for our children's fairy tale anthology A Wolf at the Door, where it was first published in 2000. It's my favorite of all his poems, and a real treat to hear him read it.

(While you're on YouTube, if you're a martial arts fan, check out this little video that Howard Gayton made of a tournament/demonstration of our Kung Fu teacher's school, The Dragon Temple, in our village hall in rural Devon.)

A night of stars....

I'm back home again after a journey up to London to attend the UK premier of Stardust, the film based on the book by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. Howard Gayton and I were there by the kind invitation of Charles and his wife Karen, who I don't see nearly often enough now that I live in the UK. Neil and his extended family were there too, though Neil was much in demand over the evening and we saw him for about a nano-second.

It was truly a star-studded event (forgive the pun), and a surreal experience to walk down the famous red carpet (which in this case was actually green) while paparazzi snapped photographs and wondered who the heck we were. But what a wonderful way to see the film for the first time, sipping champagne, cheering, and celebrating our friends' big night.

The video above is the UK trailer for Stardust. You can watch a video interview with Neil about the creation of Stardust here. (I hadn't known, before this, that the story was inspired by a falling star above my winter house in the Arizona desert...how nice!) More informaton can be found on the Stardust movie site. Photos: (above) Howard, Karen, Charles and me at the premier (photographed by our companions in the Young family); (left) Neil at the premier; (below) pages from The Stardust Visual Companion, a new book that mixes film imagery with wonderful art by Charles, along with text by Neil and others.

Many thanks to C & K for a truly memorable night.

Mermaids and Levis

Here's another example of fairy tales and advertising colliding in new and pretty hip ways: a short film for Levis jeans directed by French indie video filmmaker Michel Gondry. I think the mermaids are pretty interesting...sexy and a little scary.

Make Fake Rain and Sew A Superhero Costume

Occasionally the Wall Street Journal leads me to some pretty interesting sites. Over the weekend they featured a very functional and funny site dedicated to independent filmmakers and aspiring directors. IndyMogul offers instructional videos on basic filmmaking, and the creation of BFX (backyard special effects) on a budget. Best part, if you are looking for help with a specific problem, you can write in a request for information -- which host Erik Beck is delighted to answer. So for all you out there who've always wondered how to get rain into your film, here's the video:

The Silent Nick and Nora: Magic Realist Noir

Lisa Stock, author and collaborator for Through the Cobweb Forest, has been making a number of short myth-related films, the trailers for which you see on her website. Her latest film endeavor, The Silent Nick and Nora, is a magic realist noir film "that reimagines the detectives Nick and Nora Charles in a world of tattoos, compulsions, and murder." Lisa wrote this screenplay in 2004, "compelled by the idea of maintaining the fast paced, wise-cracking relationship of this famous couple without them saying a word to each other -- thus placing them in a mostly "silent" world."

Visit Silent Nick and Nora's MySpace page and have a peek at the trailer. And check out the synopsis in the Gotham headlines below.

             

Carlos Saura: Fados

Carlos Saura has long been one of my most favorite directors, creating gorgeous films of dance, music, folklore, and literature. His flamenco version of Lorca's Blood Wedding is a knockout. He has finished a film on the history of Portuguese fado, that beautiful and oh so heart rendering music. I thought everyone might enjoy seeing the trailer for the new movie coming up -- just the line up of singers alone leaves me breathless.

Stardust in your eyes

All right gang: Here's the Stardust trailer, just in case you didn't know it was out. Take a crowd and go see it! It's a splendid time for all.

And then check out the cool Stardust website where you can play games, download ring tones and wallpapers and a whole lot more. Also, check out Charles Vess' blog, where you can see photos from the west coast opening along with images of the signed limited prints and the sculptures. Very cool.

Canadian magic...

Madame Tutli-Putli is a "metaphysical adventure" by the Montreal-based film-makers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski. This gorgeous work of stop-motion animation picked up two prizes at the recent Cannes film festival. Go here to see a short trailer for Madame Tutli-Putli, and interviews with the film-making team. (With thanks, once again, to Alan Lee for the link.)

The Spiderwick Chronicles

At long last, we have a trailer and poster for The Spiderwick Chronicles, the forthcoming movie based on the books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi.  The movie stars Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, Nick Nolte, Andrew McCarthy, David Strathairn, Seth Rogen and Martin Short and is slated for a February 2008 release.

The trailer is positively breathtaking.  You can watch it on the movie MySpace page (be sure to friend them for updates), or watch it a little bigger at the official movie site.

The Last Knit: Rapunzel with knitting needles.

I know this little CGI film has made the circuit, especially of knitters' blogs, but after posting recently on Disney's new Rapunzel Unbraided, I was completely entranced with this bizarre and wonderful film by Finnish filmmaker Laura Neuvonen. In addition to being screened all over the net (and viewed by some accounts around 900,000 times) it also has appeared in over 40 film festivals and won the 2005 award for Best Film for Adults at the International Festival for Animation in Riga.

Since I have been posting about the move away from traditional styles of animation (all those hand drawn cells) I thought you might get a kick out of this hilarious spoof from Cal Arts Animation School -- which recently moved to an all "motion capture" style of animating. Glen Keane (of Rapunzel Unbraided fame) is briefly interviewed. The film is a riot.

Rapunzel Unbraided

I have been following with interest the long struggle by Disney Studios to bring an animated version of Rapunzel to the big screen. This film was slated to come out sometime in 2007, but after multiple set backs, different scripts, different directors, and a change in animation style, it appears the film is finally back in production and scheduled for 2009.

Almost as interesting as the prospect of the film has been the struggle to bring it about. Glen Keane, Disney big-gun animator, was the original director of the film. His early concepts were to keep the story close to the Grimms' version (and without the more contemporary slapstick treatment of say Shrek) and the art was to have a hand-drawn richness and painterly style as opposed to computer generated (CG) figures. Keane looked to artists like Rococo painter Jean-Honore Fragonard ("The Swing") for visual inspiration.

Along the way Disney purchased control of Pixar, Disney's CEO changed hands, and John A. Lasseter, newly in charge of Disney's projects, made a number of changes  -- including requiring the film be produced in CGI and adding a new co-director, Dean Wellins. Keane relented on his stand for traditional animation style when he saw the test films done to reproduce in CGI the visual lushness he was looking for in his original concept of the film. (It has also helped that technology has finally caught up in CGI to make it look...well, retro again!)

The story apparently is still getting some work...and not all the actors have been cast. (I keep reading conflicting rumors that Reese Witherspoon was originally signed on to the project, left after she thought it was turning into a different film, but maybe has returned? as she is listed in the 2009 update.) For more updates on the film, I recommend checking into either Jim Hill Media (which hosts a wide range of guest bloggers) or Tag Blog (thoughts from The Animators' Guild) for more information on this film and all things Disney. Also, check here to see more of Glen Keane's art concepts for the film.

It should be interesting to see what Disney and Keane come up with as Rapunzel has so many edgy little moments in it that ought to make it hard to translate it into a charming musical fairy tale. On the other hand, violence, imprisonment, and cruel parents have never stopped Disney before.

But before you go, do have a look at Terri's recent article on the history of Rapunzel -- it's fascinating.

(All the images in this post are copyright 2005 Disney Enterprises Inc.)

Stardust

You can now see a trailer for the forthcoming Stardust movie, based on the Mythopoeic Award-winning book by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. The film stars Clare Danes, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfieffer, Sienna Miller, and Charlie Cox. It's directed by Matthew Vaughan, and looks gorgeous.

Hollywood Animation Archive Project

Be still my heart!! What a fabulous blog! Stop by and pay a visit to the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive Project. Here's a brief description of the purpose of this amazing site: "The International Animated Film Society: ASIFA-Hollywood has embarked on an ambitious project to create an animation archive, museum, and library for the benefit of the animation community, students and general public. The first phase of this project involves the creation of an ANIMATION DATABASE which will house images, movie clips and sound files pertaining to the art of animation."

In the meantime, the blog delights with found treasures. Check here to see fabulous fairy tale illustrations from Gustaf Tenggren, like the one above from a rare 1923 edition of Grimms Fairy Tales, or here to see the splendid illustrations of Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun, West of the Moon and here for his Twelve Dancing Princesses. In fact, read The Top Ten Reasons to Contribute and scroll down to Reason number 6: Golden Age Illustration. Gorgeous, gorgeous!

Tex Avery: The "Other" Animated Fairy Tales

Gary Morris at Bright Lights Film Journal has a spectacular article on Tex Avery and his wonderfully wild and raucous versions of well known fairy tales. While Disney was producing sweet versions of "The Three Little Pigs" and "Snow White and The Seven Dwarves," Tex Avery was at M-G-M and Warner making hilarious and very modern versions of fairy tales with titles like "Swing Shift Cinderella" and "Red Hot Riding Hood." Avery had a much more down-to-earth take on fairy tales than Disney. Morris states: "Avery's fairy tales jettison the whole idea of morality, along with other troublesome concepts like logic, sense, and sexual repression. He brings the 'big bad wolves' and 'red riding hoods' out of the sanctity of the linear narrative and into the service of the gag, creating in the process a unique world of self-conscious 'cartoon actors' who know they're in a cartoon and freely comment on their status as fictional creations, undercutting the story at every turn."

Stop by Bright Lights and have a glance at the whole article. Now, if I could just find a way to see these cartoons. Anybody know if they've been re-mastered on some DVD somewhere?

Rape of the Sabine Women

Lisa Stock sent me a notice about a new film premiering at the end of this month in New York from filmmaker Eve Sussman entitled The Rape of the Sabine Women. The film is a "re-interpretation of the Roman myth, updated and set in the idealistic 1960s. Filmed with a cast of hundreds, and shot on location in Athens and Hydra, Greece, and in Berlin, Germany, this eighty-minute video was directed by Eve Sussman with an original Score by Jonathan Bepler, choreography by Claudie De Serpa Soares, and costumes by Karen Young."

Creative Time will present the free public screening of The Rape of the Sabine Women for one week during the Armory Show, February 22-27. For show times and more information on the film production check their website.

Eve Sussman is a very interesting filmmaker. She produced a gorgeous and unusual film 89 Seconds at Alcazar, in which she imagined the moments before the staging of Diego Velazques' famous painting Las Meninas (1656). Click here for more information on Sussman and this 2004 project.

(Photo credit above: Benedikt Partenheimer)

Children's Book Writers and Film

Saturday's post on Beatrix Potter has got me thinking about two other children's book writers whose lives got the movie treatment, turning them into men rather different than the men they actually were.

The film Hans Christian Andersen, made in 1952 and featuring Danny Kaye in the title role, turned this difficult, enormously complex man into a gentle, simplistic character. Andersen did indeed live a rags-to-riches story straight out of one of his own fairy tales; he was born to a poor family in Odense and died a wealthy man celebrated around the world (acclaimed, during his lifetime, for his adult novels and travel writing as well as his fairy tales). But his rise was not a straight-forward one, nor was his character. He lived at a time when wealth and achievement could not entirely erase the stigma of his working class origins; he also lived at a time when his sexual passion for men could not be openly acknowledged. Had Andersen been alive today, his life — and thus his art — would have been very different. As his biographer Jackie Wullschlaeger commented: "Without the enormous repression of his time, he could have declared himself to be a homosexual. Many people have asked me what would have become of him today. He might have taken anti-depressants and been happier, but then he would not have written his fairy tales"  -- for his fairy tales, with their distinctive strain of tragedy, were drawn from the pain of Andersen's own experience.

To read more about Andersen's life, here's a short article from the Endicott archives. And I highly recommend Wullschlaeger's book, Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller.

Finding Neverland, a film inspired by the life of J.M. Barrie (creator of Peter Pan), is a charming but heavily fictionalized concoction, playing fast-and-loose with the facts of Barrie's life in order to tell a simpler, more romantic story. The biggest change is that handsome, charismatic Johnny Depp plays the part of the Scottish playwright, depicting him as a gentle, fey, unworldly man, rather than as the odd little sharp-edged man that he actually was.

There seems to be a desire on the part of filmmakers to turn children's book writers into dreamy characters who spin dreamy sorts of tales -- neglecting the fact that the tales themselves aren't dreamy at all. Go back to Barrie's original text for Peter Pan and you'll find that it contains a razor-sharp strain of humor entirely absent from the Disney cartoon -- which is, sadly, still the version of Peter Pan best known around the world today.

For a proper film treatment of Barrie's life, seek out the DVD of Andrew Birkin's docu-drama The Lost Boys, which was made for British television. Birkin worked with a vast array of Barrie's surviving journals, correspondence, manuscripts and photographs, as well as conducting extensive interviews with those who had actually known James Barrie. The last of the real-life "Lost Boys," Nico Llewelyn Davies, read and advised on Birkin's script — and when the final production was broadcast, he phoned up Birkin in tears, "undone," he said, by the way actor Ian Holm had turned into his Uncle Jim.

You can read about Barrie's life in a short article in the Endicott archives, in a New Yorker article by Anthony Lane, and in two Barrie biographies: J.M. Barrie: The Man Behind the Image by Janet Dunbar and J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys by Andrew Birkin. I also recommend Birkin's web site, where he generously makes a treasure trove of Barrie material — journals, letters, story notes, photographs, etc. — freely available to fans and scholars.

Another children's book writer with a fascinating life story is E. Nesbit (1858-1924), author of The Railway Children and other classic fantasies. She was an early socialist and founder of the Fabian Society, and she lived an adventurous, bohemian life full of art, politics, and love affairs with men like Bernard Shaw. If a film is ever made of her life, let's hope that she, too, isn't turned into a twee figure lost in the mists of childhood. To learn more about her, seek out Julia Brigg's biography A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit. There's also a short article on Nesbit's fiction by Gore Vidal, of all people, on the New York Review of Books website.

The Real Miss Potter

When I heard that a film was being made about Beatrix Potter, it seemed like a terrific idea to me -- for this famous children's book writer (and early environmentalist) led a fascinating life. The finished film, Miss Potter, is a disappointment, alas...and Anthony Lane has nailed the reasons why in his wonderfully acerbic review in The New Yorker. The film, he says, "lapses, during the longueurs, into glorious views of the Lake District, without noticing that Potter herself, though steeped in the countryside...took care to parcel it out in tempting glimpses on the page, in the crannies of her industrious narratives. The hills and fells led her not into Wordsworthian rapture but into a social comedy as concise, and often as acidic, as Jane Austen's." (Read the full article here.)

If you'd like to know more about Beatrix Potter, forget the film and read Linda Lear's engrossing new biography Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, which Elizabeth Hand has reviewed in The Washington Post. "At her death in 1943," writes Hand, "the elderly Mrs. Heelis, nee Potter, left an estate valued at today's equivalent of 7 million pounds -- more than $13 million. Her influence on children's literature is almost incalculable and can be seen in works by Alison Utley, Margaret Wise Brown, Tasha Tudor, Robert Lawson and Margery Sharp, to name just a few. Not bad for an empire built on what her editors called 'the bunny book'.

"Yet Potter herself remains something of a mystery -- not surprising, perhaps, for someone who for 16 years kept a diary written in code and whose work dealt almost exclusively with the doings of small creatures whose fictional lives and homes were cunningly hidden in hedgerows, wainscots, woodlands, farmsteads and floorboards." (Read the full review here.)

Once Upon a Time, Walt Disney

 

Once Upon a Time, Walt Disney: The Disney Studios' Artistic Sources is the name of an extensive exhibition running until January 15th at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais in Paris. The show examines Walt's literary, artistic, and cinematic sources, his improbable collaboration with Salvador Dali, and the influence of his studio on the 20th century art world. It should be noted that it is highly unusual for the Galeries nationales, a bastion of French high culture, to mount an exhibition of this nature -- presenting Disney's work without condescension or apology. In March, the show will move to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Montreal, where it will run until June 24, 2007.

If you are neither near Paris nor Montreal, an exhibition catalog is available here. And I highly recommend Anthony Lane's insightful article on Disney published in the latest issue of The New Yorker, available on-line here.

Christiane Cegaveske: Blood Tea and Red String

I have been a huge fan of the bizarre and grotesque stop animation films of Jan Svankmajer, and so I was delighted when Chandra Cerchione-Peltier brought the work of animator and artist Christiane Cegavaske to our attention. Christiane has spent the last thirteen years painstakingly creating and animating the characters in her dark fairy tale story Blood Tea and Red String. Visually the film is a stunning marriage of Beatrix Potter and E. A. Poe: beautiful red-eyed mice dressed in velvets; cups of tea that spill blood; a spider with a woman's face; and a strange human doll created by the "Creatures who Dwell  Under the Oak." The feature-length film has recently garnered an impressive collection of awards, including Silver Public's Prize for Best Animated / Stop Motion Film: FanTasia Montreal Genre Film Festival; Best Director: SpudFest Family Film Festival; Best Animation: San Francisco Independent Film Festival.

Horror film reviewer Heidi Martinuzzi describes the film as "set in a dark, twisted fairy tale world, Blood Tea and Red String is a sad and disturbing dreamscape of ugliness, fear and extreme beauty that causes uneasiness and pain. It also brings back the fears we all had as children; the knowledge that death, obsession, and decay lurked inside all the fairy tales we knew and loved. Blood Tea and Red String is a groundbreaking example of surrealism in modern fairy tales and a testament to the dedication of the driven female visionary, embodied by Cegavske."

The film has been released in a DVD format and can be ordered here. And while you're waiting, take a moment to have a look at the promotional trailer. The eerie and lovely soundtrack was composed by Mark Growden and seems a perfect accompaniment.

Greek Myth and Music

Eleni Karaindrou is a Greek composer best known for her haunting scores for theatre and film -- particularly the mythic films of director Theo Angelopoulos. All of her CDs are gorgeous, but her exceptionally beautiful CDs Trojan Women and Ulysses' Gaze are of particular interest to mythic arts fans. About the latter, music critic Michael Walsh has said: "If Homer had written music, it might sound something like this: dark and brooding, redolent of rich red wine and the salty brine of the sea. At once plaintive and erotically lyrical, it would sing of love and loss, of the passion that motivates humans to achieve great things." (Read Walsh's full review here.)

Karaindrou was born in an isolated mountain village in central Greece. In an article by Steve Lake, Karaindrou recalls the sounds of her earliest childhood: "the music of the wind, rain on the slate roof, running water.The nightingale's singing. And then the silence of the snow...I remember too the high-pitched voices of the women singing beautiful polyphonic songs as they stripped corn all through the night while we children lay on our backs on the threshing floor, counting stars. And I still have a strong memory of the Byzantine melodies I heard in church and the continuous voices of the men accompanying the chanter."

Karaindrou studied piano and music theory in Athens, ethnomusicology in Paris, then returned to Greece where she founded the Laboratory for Traditional Instruments at the ORA Cultural Centre. Her film-work began with music for Chistoforo Christofi's Wandering in 1979. ""It was a new beginning for me. Wandering opened up a world I've been traveling ever since. The directors I've worked with have allowed me great freedom, and their images have given me a fantastic pretext to express my deepest sentiments and feelings."

In her theatre work, according to Steve Lake, Karaindrou "has chiefly been associated with contemporary playwrights but has also written music for adaptations of, for example, Aristophanes. Her ethnomusicological background and her work with radio have equipped her to proselytize for the preservation of the old instrumental and vocal forms, and Greek tradition seems to be confirmed in her music by the presence of the dulcimer-like santouri and the clarinet as lead voices."

"Sometimes the santouri will take the role of the piano," says the composer. "Or vice versa. I don't mix up folk music with my own concepts. The sounds and colours of some of the instruments have a part to play -- that's all -- because they've been ringing in my head my whole life. I use them to paint pictures as my imagination dictates.' "

You'll find a full discography of Karaindrou's work here, and a YouTube video that will give you a taste of her music here. (The painting above is by Alan Lee, from his book The Wanderings of Odysseus.)

The Gnomon Workshops: Design and Visual Effects Techniques: Dec 2-3

If you are interested in the world of digital animation and design, consider enrolling in the Gnomon Workshop of Hollywood, Dec 2-3, for a weekend of "Entertainment Design and Visual Effects Techniques." The weekend promises to be a rewarding experience with a "stellar line up of instructors, featuring speakers in and out of the Gnomon Workshop library. These artists will present on subjects including character and concept design, storyboarding, comic book penciling, modeling, game production pipeline, and texturing. In addition, you'll also get a chance to meet some highly accomplished artists who will take you inside their own personal projects and processes."

For more details on how to register, the full schedule, and what to bring (your portfolio is a must!) check here. (In fact, if this is an area of interest for you, check out the whole site. Gnomon offers an amazing array of instructional DVD's for purchase as well as free video tutorials online for those already acquainted with the basics of computer animation and design.)

Among those slated to instruct is long-time Endicott contributor Iain McCaig, who was a principal designer for Star Wars: Episode One, Two, and Three, designing characters, creatures, and costumes in his bustling studio at Skywalker Ranch. His other principal design credits include Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Peter Pan, Charlotte's Web (coming out Christmas 06), and Outlander (coming out 2007), as well as Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter of Mars, which Iain tells me, "film studios have been trying to bring to the screen for almost eighty years, and which I and my team have now designed--twice." Iain also directed an award-winning short film, The Face, currently distributed theough Spiritual Cinema Circle.

Iain currently has four instructional DVD's on Gnomon that explain some of the principle techniques of visual storytelling. His gorgeous fairy drawings from his sketchbooks can be seen in the Journal of Mythic Arts, Summer/Autumn Issue, and you'll find an archived gallery of his illustrations in Telling Stories: the Art of Iain McCaig.

Dreaming of elephants...

   

Back in August, we posted information on Gregory Colbert's "Ashes and Snow" art exhibition, featuring dream-like images exploring contact between humans and animals in far-flung locales around the world. Last night I had the opportunity to see Colbert's "Ashes and Snow" DVD in which his remarkable photographic images are brought to life, accompanied by an enigmatic narration and an equally dream-like soundtrack. If the exhibition isn't headed your way any time soon, then I highly recommend the "Ashes and Snow" DVD despite it's rather hefty price. If you're not familiar with Colbert's work, visit the "Ashes and Snow" website, which will give you a taste.

I left Colbert's film with the wistful desire to sleep in the arms of elephants...which in turn reminded me of Barbara Gowdy's extraordinary novel The White Bone. One reviewer dubbed it "the Watership Down of elephants," but it's a deeper, sadder book than that, beautifully written and full of fascinating elephant observations and lore. I consider it one of the great works of contemporary mythic fiction, and wish it were better known. As Joy Williams (another fine writer) has said, "This sorrowful novel does holy work because it engages us in that holiest of acts -- empathy."

Pan's Labyrinth

I am a huge fan of  Guillermo del Toro, director of Hell Boy, which I loved for its dark humor, its rich symbolic imagery. He has a new film, Pan's Labyrinth, that is currently rounding out the New York Film festival and will be in general theatres this December. It is in the tradition of dark fairy tales -- not intended for children -- and set in Fascist Spain. There is a terrific review of it by Stephanie Zacharek here. She describes it as a "beautiful and harrowing adult fairy tale" that "blends nighttime monsters with the everyday horror of Franco's Spain."

And then check out the trailer. Oh my, oh my...so on my list.

Wolves in the Wall

This autumn, England's Improbable Theatre is touring their show Wolves in the Walls, a "Musical Panedemonium" based on the children's book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean (the writer/artist team behind the deliciously magical film Mirrormask). Wolves in the Walls will be performed in Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Malvern, and Oxford in October and November. Click here for tourting dates, here for reviews, and here for a little animation to whet your appetite for the show.

Speaking of Neil, here at Endicott we're all looking forward to forthcoming release of the new movie based on Stardust, the fairy novel he created in collaboration with Charles Vess; and to The Blueberry Girl, a new children's book with text by Neil and illustrations by Charles. Fans of Neil and Charles' work should be sure to look at the lastest "fairy" issue of Endicott's Journal of Mythic Arts, by the way -- where there's a fairy poem contributed by Neil, and fairy sketches from Charles. (Thanks, guys!) 

Stardust Blog

Fabulous! Charles Vess now has a blog to chart the making of Stardust, the new film project with Neil Gaiman. There are photographs, journal entries on the experience, links, and tons of insider info. Pop in from time to time and catch the latest.

One of my favorites from the blog is a link to The Friends of English Magic that is currently featuring some gorgeous samples of Charles' new illustrations for Susanna Clarke's Ladies of Grace Adieu, due out in October.  Click on the images to really see them. Then preorder the limited edition of the book. You know you want it.

Musical Nomads

        

Yesterday's post about Gregory Colbert's nomadic art exhibition got me thinking about another couple of nomads: musicians Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman, and their project 1 Giant Leap. As explained on their website, Catto (best known for his work with Faithless)and Bridgeman (music director for The Spirit of the Rhino Drum show created by Endicott's own William Todd-Jones) "embarked upon a global journey that included Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, India, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, America and Europe, equipped solely with a digital video camera, a laptop and a vision -- to capture and weave together a unique fusion of sound, image and spoken word from some of the world's most exciting musicians, authors, scientists and thinkers and to explore 'The Unity in the Diversity'.Their treasure hunt brought many unexpected collaborations with such inspirations as Michael Stipe, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, Dennis Hopper, Brian Eno, Asha Bhosle, and Baaba Maal. The resulting double-Grammy nominated DVD consists of 11 short films: Inspiration, Money, Faith, Sex, Death, Confrontation, Time, Blasphemy, Unity, Masks, and Happy."

I highly recommend the DVD, which contains a captivating fusion of dance music, global music, philosophy, and some beautiful filmmaking too. I also recommend the CD of music from it, which has been in regular rotation on my stereo ever since its release. (Both are available from Amazon.com.) Last year, Catto and Bridgeman traveled around the world again, this time in a different direction, and they're currently in the post-production stage of the CD and DVD created during that trip. I had the good fortune to see some of the unedited film from the journey last winter in London, and it looks absolutely terrific. In the meantime, you'll find more information on 1 Giant Leap's website. There's also a German website for the project which has a good gallery of pictures from the journey (and some really annoying pop-up ads. Be warned!) 

Art as Myth, Myth as Art

Gregory Colbert is a photographer, filmmaker, writer, installation artist, educator, and myth-maker who is traveling the world with an on-going multimedia exhibition, "Ashes and Snow" (housed in the Nomadic Museum created by architect Shigeru Ban). Consisting of luminous, dreamlike photographs, an epistolary novel, a bestiary, 35 mm films, and much more, "Ashes and Snow" creates a world as magical as any found in the pages of a fantasy book, yet rooted in all that's most