Tag: animation

Categories
Uncategorized

Visual White Noise Theater: One “Mad God” (2021)

Right when I saw the trailer for this it hit me right in my sweet spot, I was literally salivating with desire and pleasure. A whole movie of twisted stop motion, oh to the fucking yeah,  but when I saw the trailer I was wondering if it had already come out and searched around and realized, nope, it hadn’t and I’d probably have to wait a long fucking time before I’d see this or maybe not see it at all. SIGH. As we speak it is making its way through the festival circuit and then Nightstream came to the rescue. Luckily they are featuring some movies for streaming from festivals. I jumped all over “Mad God”. One hour and twenty minutes of awesomeness, a dark hellish world with stabs of heaven like brilliance.

Directed by Phil Tippett who did the effects for “Alien”, “Robocop 2”,  and “Jurassic Park” among a bunch of other movies, he started making this in 1988 while he was working on “Robocop 2”, after doing “Jurassic Park” he thought the art of stop motion was dead so he then shelved “Mad God” until the year 2000 when he really started working on the movie and just finished the movie not long ago. He worked on this project in between his other higher paying gigs, using volunteers and getting money through kickstarter. To sum things up, pretty much an assassin is sent by a pope like figure to “kill God”, as he descends in a weird ship into this post apocalyptic, hellish world that this god inhabits, he is shot at by cannons, and he lands in an area full of statues of different gods and faiths, not to mention brand name mascots of products.

Alot of what happens “Mad God” is metaphors. Some critics have described this as a movie length Tool music video but its more than that, I don’t want to give away too much. The world looks slimy, one crazy image after another gets thrown out at you  before you can fully recover from the last shock, in fact that is its major drawback, its almost sensory overload. Even taking that into consideration you’ll fall under its Bosch like nightmarish spell. This movie proves that art can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time.

In “Mad God” there is some live action actors filmed in stop motion style, like director Alex Cox and Niketa Roman, after “Mad God” ended my eyes were bulging out of my skull and my jaw was on the floor collecting flies. When and if this hits Blu Ray I am snapping it up. Full length stop motion movies are few and far between these days, getting this one from a special effects master is very rare treat, this is one I can’t wait to see again.

So where do you watch this? Well you can’t yet, unless you streamed it during its festival run.

Here is Phil’s web site where you can get the trailer and other info on the movie: https://www.madgodmovie.com/

Pretty cool vid on Phil designing his stop motion figures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLKxoo9hO84

Interview with Phil on “Mad God”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDVj0a9h8I4

Post Script: This is now on Shudder not on blu ray yet (cross my fingers) but you have to have a subscription, you know what to do *wink*wink*: https://www.shudder.com/movies/watch/mad-god/af7abd4d3ae6f0ad

Categories
Uncategorized

Visual White Noise Theater: Stop Playing Your “Mind Game” (2004)

I haven’t dropped acid or done mushrooms in years and I thought I was having a flashback, maybe I was falling asleep watching this movie and getting those flashes of dreams you get when you wake up quick and fall asleep repeatedly until you just give up and lie down. “Mind Game” from Japan (where else) will play mind games with you, it will toy with you, your emotions and mental state, it will always win.

 

This isn’t your traditional Japanese animated movie, which is what I liked about this one. Seriously, I kind of get burned out on the “big eyed anime” style that prevails in almost every Japanese animated movie. This one takes a wink and nod to “Belladonna of Sadness” (which I will review in the future) where various forms of animation are mixed together in an eye stabbing, mysterious brilliance.

Nishi, aspiring Manga artist encounters an old flame on the subway, Myon who is running from a yakuza member/football player Atsu. Nishi finds out she is getting married and is still in love with Myon but is too much of chicken to actually say it, he says it in his imagination but not out loud. Over all, you get the feeling Nishi lives most of his triumphs in his own head, he is dreamer but it doesn’t help him in the real world. However, they go to Myon’s father’s Sushi restaurant, her sister Yan is at the bar making sushi and serving beer while their dad drunkenly talks about his sexual conquests, Nishi gets pissed off and goes off on him talking about this in front of his own daughters, in this scene you can’t tell if this is in Nishi’s head or if he is actually telling the father off, Myon’s soon to be husband Ryo shows up and its awkward. Two yakuzas walk in, one is Atsu who I just mentioned was chasing Myon. The yakuza are looking for Myon’s father who is hiding because he screwed Atsu’s girlfriend. They start threatening everybody, Ryo tries to punch out Atsu and Atsu fells him, he goes to rape Myon and Myon shouts for Nishi who is curled up in a ball in fear. Atsu disgusted by his behavior shoots him through his asshole. Nishi dies and ascends into some strange afterlife where God mocks him for being a loser, Nishi pissed off and wants another chance so instead of running to the gate way of the afterlife he runs towards the life tunnel and God chases him, he gets back in his body and kicks ass.

Or are we sure he actually gets back in his body kicks ass? What happens next is insane, Nishi, mad at wasting his life with Myon and Yan in tow, leads the Yakuza on an insane car chase where they are swallowed by a whale. Inside the whale they come across a ship and an old hermit who is an ex Yakuza, he turned his ship into a toy, food, comfort laden pleasure palace. From there it gets even more crazier, on the surface you may see non sense but beneath it, if you really drink it in it has got a lot of layers religious, philosophical and spiritual. The movie uses different types of animation to express different emotions and thoughts. Weebs who want “traditional” anime aren’t gonna happy and there isn’t probably enough stupid action for their “Bleach/Sailor Moon” ridden brains. This movie will have you questioning everything. Is this all in Nishi’s head? Is he in the after life? Did he really come back to life and start to kick ass? Can you really survive being swallowed by a whale? On that last note there is a lot of religious iconography in this movie, both Western and Eastern. To all of you people who don’t want to think about your movies this one isn’t for you.

The music is pretty strange to and goes with the mood, some are Broadway type musical numbers and some are Bossa Nova numbers. Overall this movie has a dream like logic but when you fit the pieces together like a puzzle most of it will fall right into place. This piece of visual art noise is a must have for people who want something different in their Japanese animation.

So where do you want to play the “Mind Game”? Well this isn’t going up on my bitchute channel, while I upload stuff over there because copy right is pretty much non existent I don’t want to push it too far by putting this up there and also these film makers are still in existence and need your support, so just get your favorite search engine and put in “Mind Game” and “Streaming”, Amazon, Youtube, Apple etc. have it pretty cheap or you can always visit that Pirate in the Bay you super cheap, cheatin’ bastid.

Categories
Uncategorized

Its Show Time!!!: “Cartoon Sushi” 1997-1998

This is a new feature where I watch a TV show that is visual white noise, not static but noise to people who don’t get it. “Cartoon Sushi” is one of those shows. Made in 1997-1998, the period when Mtv was slowly being eaten by its own uncreative stupidity via shitty fucking shows like “The Real World” and other “reality shows”. “Cartoon Sushi” was the awesome “Liquid Television’s” retarded step brother to some, to me it had a lot of promise. When I found out that Mtv was gonna attempt to put out another animated short compilation type show back on TV I was overjoyed. Sadly, it didn’t last too long, it got eaten by the “Reality TV” juggernaut and soon all of Mtv would be completely devoured by it.

Mtv in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s looked around and realized they had to keep their edge. Sure they were on top playing music videos and back in the day they played anything and almost everything to see what would stick to the wall. The 1980’s zines and underground independent comics were bubbling underneath the mainstream surface, the public to a bigger extent and Mtv to a lesser extent ignored that bubbling through most of the 1980’s. But the sheer amount of kids who listened to rock and metal music were buying “Heavy Metal Magazine”, “Weirdo”, “RAW” and other like minded magazines, they were also ordering xeroxed zines. The underground was like a festering infection that was about to explode so Mtv wanting to remain on the cutting edge took the initiative and in 1989 put “Liquid Television” on Mtv, and the festering boil popped and geyser of puss erupted into pop culture consciousness. Now as a junior high kid “Liquid Television” blew my eyes out and skull fucked my brain, at least on TV it was unlike anything I’d seen up until that point.

Eventually I will do a “Its Showtime!!!” on “Liquid Television” but I watched this successor because the external hard drive my buddy gave me had a bunch weird and strange shorts and when I saw that “Cartoon Sushi” was on that hard drive, I jumped out of my seat. This, along with “Beavis and Butthead”, re runs of “Ren and Stimpy” gave me hope that Mtv would stomp down on all the reality shows that were starting to inundate TV. Of course I turned out to be dead wrong. “Cartoon Sushi” only lasted two pilots none of which I ever saw, eleven episodes, and two specials. It lasted one year and the experimental part of Mtv had a stake put through its heart, had its head cut off and the corpse was burned. Soon all music would be gone too. Fuck Mtv.  However, both “Liquid Television” and “Cartoon Sushi” reminded me of the comics compilations I had picked up in my small hometown candy, booze, magazine, comic’s store, George’s Liquor or visits to comic book stores in bigger towns and cities. As I’ve said before, unless the super hero comic was done differently and creatively (like the original, violent and sexual “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Spawn”) I wasn’t interested, “Heavy Metal”, “Weirdo”, “Blab”, “Zero Zero”etc. were more up my alley. Both shows embodied that anarchic, insane, creative streak.

“Cartoon Sushi” was made up of shorts either made for the show or shorts that appeared in various animation festivals, like “Liquid Television”. The show keeps your interest because various animators use different forms of animation, some will use stop motion, some will use computer animation, some will use puppetry, regular animation etc.  The show was created by Danni Antonucci, (Danny did the title animation for “Cartoon Sushi”) who would do go on to do “Ed, Edd and Eddy”, Keith Alcorn who would do the “Lil’ Puss” character featured in “Cartoon Sushi”, and developed by Eric Calderon who still develops and produces animation til this day.

Various animators and people who worked on “Liquid Television” ended up doing work on “Cartoon Sushi”. People from “Cartoon Sushi” would end up using it as a spring board to do bigger things (realize I didn’t type “better”). Dave Hughes who did the “anime satire” segment on “Cartoon Sushi” entitled “Ultracity 6060” would go on to develop, produce and create a bunch of shows for “Adult Swim” chief among them “Off the Air”, a collection of shorts centering on one concept or idea an episode, Hughes has given credit to “Liquid Television” and “Cartoon Sushi” for this inspiration, Matt Harrigan who also worked on “Ultracity 6060” would also go on to work for “Adult Swim” mainly creating and developing “Fish Center” they both worked for Mtv’s animation department back in the day.  Christy Karacas whose awesome ink and paper, crazy ass animation short “Space War” blew my mind when I first watched it went on to do “Superjail” for “Adult Swim” you can see the rumblings of the insane and off the wall antics that would prevail in “Superjail”.

John R. Dilworth who did the “Dirdy Birdy” shorts for “Cartoon Sushi” would go on to do various projects, chief among them “Courage the Cowardly Dog” for “Cartoon Network”. Paul Berry whose short “Sandman” would be showed in various festivals and in the “Cartoon Sushi: Halloween Special” would go on do animation for “Nightmare Before Christmas”, “James and the Giant Peach”, “Monkey Boy” and Primus’ awesome stop motion video for their cover of Charlie Daniel’s “Devil Went Down to Georgia”. Lorne Lanning would contribute a computer animated short “Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey” and would expand the world in his “Oddworld” video games. Michael Dougherty would contribute “Season’s Greetings” a animated short that showed the first appearance of his Halloween character, Samhain, would feature in his live action movie “Trick R’ Treat” (2007) and he’d also do the Christmas themed horror movie “Krampus”. Eric Fogel’s “Celebrity Death Match” would be featured first in “Cartoon Sushi” with a match between Charles Manson and Marilyn Manson, the refree would be voiced by real life boxing referee and judge, Mills Lane who would get his own court type show eventually, the popularity of the segment would lead to “Celebrity Death Match” getting its own show and showing more celebrities demolish, mutilate, burn, kill and slash each other. 

Another animator, Bill Plympton” who still does tons of stuff would do the ridiculous “Sex and Violence” segments in “Cartoon Sushi”. Like “Liquid Television” there was some continuing segments like “Ultracity 6060”, the “Robin” segments done by Magnus Carlsson who did music videos for Radiohead,  “Science Facts”, “The Many Deaths of Norman Spittal”, “Celebrity Death Match”, and the aforementioned “Sex and Violence”. The majority of the material isn’t connected, the breadth and difference in material keeps this show interesting. Some of the material was taken from “Spike and Mike’s Twisted Festival of Animation” and other places.

So in closing, “Adult Swim” and a lot of off the wall and absurd, nonsensical humor came straight for the rotting, stinking womb of “Liquid Television” and “Cartoon Sushi”.

So you ask yourself, “Where the hell is the Sushi bar? I can’t seem to find it anywhere, no proper physical bar, a couple of dishes on youtube, what gives?” I’ll tell you what gives here and sorry, couldn’t get episode five up, the file was completely corrupted and is nowhere to be found anywhere, the pilots and two specials weren’t on there and I can’t track them down. There is one place that sells bootlegs and looking at the list they don’t have complete episodes, take it or leave it here:

Episode 1: https://www.bitchute.com/video/u1y2GhwozrIt/

Episode 2: https://www.bitchute.com/video/pSMZBDMjFBy9/

Episode 3: https://www.bitchute.com/video/WGGcnSULO7Ar/

Episode 4: https://www.bitchute.com/video/DYiRAJcHRjTr/

Episode 5: Sorry file corrupted and can’t find it anywhere.

Episode 6: https://www.bitchute.com/video/MyjWiI5YFkhz/

Episode 7: https://www.bitchute.com/video/irhuT8wQNHAA/

Episode 8: https://www.bitchute.com/video/4n3Js5U4dSBF/

Episode 9: https://www.bitchute.com/video/8dQWxbdGSfRi/

Episode 10: https://www.bitchute.com/video/bQlYXMlvve1d/

Episode 11: https://www.bitchute.com/video/fe8iCX7YpX7G/

Categories
Uncategorized

Visual White Noise Theater: Take the unholy Sacrament…”Religion Sauvage” (2004)

Did your blotter acid go bad? Does your stomach not like shrooms? Are you still pissed at your parents for making you go to church instead of playing video games on Sunday? Are you fucking sick of these questions? I am and here is the white noise remedy.

“Hopital Brut” only kicked you in the head, “Religion Sauvage” breaks your nose and kicks you in the nuts so hard they go up into your throat. The French art collective, Le Dernier Cri, put together another collection of animated shorts based on another one of their comics “Religion Sauvage”, which is critical of religious belief, that not only includes Jesus, Satan, Allah, Krishna etc. It also includes being critical of people who worship sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, like Gods.

Featuring underground artists from around the world doing animated shorts like on “Hopital Brut” people like Mike Diana, Stu Mead, Tochka, Melted Men, Valium etc. this smorgasbord of degeneracy will make your head spin and your mouth water. Most of these artists don’t ever do animation, they do paintings, comics, and drawings. This collection rapes you, cuts off your head and has sex with it and it isn’t pleasant.

This is “Liquid Television” for adults, and “Liquid Television” was made for adults!!! There is piss, shit, sex, useless violence, dumb racism, sacrilege, Lolita complexes etc. This will piss off every person of every stripe. This white noise doesn’t give one fuck about your sensibilities or feels. “Religion Sauvage” cuts your feels into tiny, bloody pieces, devours them and shits them out. The gif above was taken from the Stu Mead segment, Stu normally paints and draws and this is one of his paintings put into animation, the dude has been crippled from the day he was born and has a Lolita Complex, his short is like something from a 1920’s stop motion film made by the people who manufacture nightmares.

Like “Hopital Brut”, “Sauvage” will make your heart race and make you confused, beware, this visual noise can be disorienting, and I am telling you drug heads out there right now, DO NOT DO ANYTHING WATCHING THIS. Seriously, I don’t do substances like that anymore (only caffeine) and I can tell you watching this on anything will be really unpleasant.

Some shorts will make you laugh, some will make you angry, some will make you want to scour your eyes out with a Brillo pad, some will make you cry and some will make you break the device your watching “Religion Sauvage” on. These are all good things when any piece of art will make you feel that way. Do I agree with the message? I don’t talk politics or religion on my blog unless its part of the content of the piece of noise I am reviewing. So yeah none of your damn business, I could be a frothing at the mouth atheist who thinks all the digs at religion are great or I could be a closet Jesus Freak who bristles at the content but loves the art. But I am not telling you which one I am.

With this collection you get every variety of animation: Stop motion, regular cell animation, claymation etc. as well as live action segments, all meant to provoke. This thing spits in your face and wants you to punch back hard, it provokes but it also makes things interesting. Two hours is the run time of this thing and I wasn’t bored for one second, my jaw was on the floor for almost all of its running time. Again, like “Hopital Brut” which I reviewed prior (review of “Hopital Brut” and link to watch it here https://www.noisepuncher.net/2020/11/29/short-s-hit-list-hospital-brut-1999/), it sometimes gets into “pretentious up its ass” art snob territory but than it pulls itself back from precipice of art student assholery.

The nightmare logic of this collection drifts in and out of beauty, ugliness, hilarity, brutality and the unbelievable. This is one of these collections that if I drifted off to sleep during watching it and woke up I’d wondered if I’d actually dreamed or actually saw it on this compilation. Is that a plus for this visual noise? Maybe, depends on you as a person. I found this on a external hard drive my buddy gave me of weird short films, holy shit, isn’t the right word.

So should you dive headlong into this visual noise? Will you drown in it? Will you drink it up and have your tastes satisfied? Or will you spit it out in disgust? This thing isn’t for the squeamish, watch at your own risk.

To watch this go to:https://www.bitchute.com/video/kkgzSpSyJIKB/

There is physical copies with artwork and I urge you to actually support this art collective Le Dernier Cri and buy a copy, I am and they actually have one more hour of footage on the DVD version:http://www.lederniercri.org/prod/sauvages-religions-820,4.html

My review on “Hopital Brut” and where to watch it:https://www.noisepuncher.net/2020/11/29/short-s-hit-list-hospital-brut-1999/

BEWARE!!! OFFENSE AHEAD!!!

Categories
Uncategorized

Short (S)hit List: Double Feature!!! “Electric Flesh” and “Joanna Died and Went Hell” (1996), what a Brummer!!!

Time to get disturbed, so disturbed you end up in a padded room with a special jacket. It will be a “Brummer” but you will enjoy every fucking minute of it.

Both these twisted shorts are directed by Eric Brummer, this stop motion ain’t for kids. Eyes pop out, clay gets shot, women go topless, industrial metal music screams in the background, winged skulls cackle in glee and you know your in for it. It looks like these shorts were shot back to back.

First off, “Electric Flesh” is shot in color, it has a semi plot of clay zombies attacking live action women, the rest is skull fuck imagery of robots, heads coming apart on stakes, and skulls with wings.

It is short and sweet, if this had carried on for an hour it would’ve made me angry and want to pour water all over my external hard drive. This is the type of stuff my generation, Gen X, used to churn out in the 1990’s, a lot of them tried to be “edgy” and “nihilistic”, of course a majority of experimental “underground” shorts were up their own ass, pretentious, uninteresting, puerile garbage but there was shorts like these also, the more coal there is, the more diamonds your likely to find which is why I didn’t mind this proliferation of underground stuff back in the day.

So with “Electric Flesh” I was driving at 100 mph, now time to shift into super fucking HIGH GEAR.

“Joanna Died and Went to Hell” starts out with this “There once was a young girl from Nantucket who took too many pills and kicked the bucket”. This girl descends into hell and is kidnapped by “Dark Strangers”.

Shot in black and white this thing is actually effective. I remember first watching this years ago on video tape, it was late out and dark. I was a little high and drunk but it creeped me the hell out, of course watching it now I am not as creeped out. It looks like “Hell” was filmed in Brummer’s one bed room apartment.

Again Brummer mixes live action with stop motion. In Jack Sargeant’s “Cinema Contra Cinema” book Eric Brummer said this about set design, “You can take any space and make hell out of it by sprinkling body parts all over the place and writing “Hell” on the wall.” HA! HA! Yep that sums up the set design of “Joanna Died and Went to Hell”.

Joanna gets loose from her bonds and finds a gun on one of the corpses and shoots the S and M leather demons who don’t die but become clay zombies. I love this fucking short, you get to see Joanna’s tits at the beginning, the horny thirteen year old in me loves that. Stop motion and tits make everything better.

The winged skull from “Electric Flesh” makes an appearance as a demon who wants a special box, he tells Joanna if she gets the box for him he will transport her soul to another realm and… watch the damn thing I don’t want to ruin it for you. Experience it for yourself and move down the page to the link.

“Joanna Dies and Goes to Hell” is a more cohesive short than “Electric Flesh”, in fact, Brummer later went on to do a full length of his “Joanna” short called “Debbie Does Damnation” (see it here: https://www.noisepuncher.net/2021/06/07/debbie-does-damnation-1999-and-i-wish-she-would-do-me/ ) it was produced by Donald G. Jackson who did “Hell Comes to Frogtown”. Brummer did one more “regular” short before plunging dick deep into porn, what a Brummer (sorry I can’t help myself I know you are wanting to punch me in the throat for my puns). Guess the tits weren’t enough, in fact, there is rumors there is a hardcore version of “Debbie Does Damnation” but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere. Anyways, there is really no online info on Eric, he doesn’t have a site that sells stuff but he still directs, produces and acts in porn. Anyways to watch both these disasterpieces go to:

https://www.bitchute.com/video/3OOGMduzFnCy/

   Don’t get Brummed out.
Categories
Uncategorized

Short (S) Hit list: Hospital Brut 1999

Don’t want to fry on acid? Afraid your gonna do a Diane Linklater dive off a skyscraper thinking that you can fly and the only “scraper” you’ll get is when they peel you off the pavement?! Look no further than the semi short “Hopital Brut”!!! Grrrrr…

Made by the French outsider artist collective, Le Dernier Cri, featuring outsider artists from all around the world from what I can tell “Hopital Brut” is taken from a actual art magazine the collective publishes with numerous contributors.

Some of these artists that are featured in this thing have only painted or drawn pictures and comics, this the first time that I’d seen their art work animated. People like Stu Mead in the gif above and Mike Diana.

As you can see keep kids far away from this, unless you want your kids traumatized for their rest of their short, miserable lives. “Hopital Brut” is visual white noise that may cause epilepsy in some. Every type of animation is utilized in this thing, as well as live action segments, it jumps around a lot and has a loose theme of a insane asylum, the thing is very VERY loose with the theme. The jumping around can be very disconcerting, that is a warning to you.

I found out about this thing because a buddy of mine who collects weird short films gave me a external hard drive full of them. I watched this thing and my jaw dropped, at times it veers into the dangerous “pretentious up its ass” territory but then it cuts right back into horrifying you and making you laugh so hard milk squirts out of your nose (or whatever other liquor your drinking at the time).

If you want to trip balls without windpanes here you go: https://www.bitchute.com/video/scTXDDtdinX4/

Give Le Dernier Cri some love and buy some of their bat shit insane art: http://www.lederniercri.org/catalog.html