liveblogging insanity
We’re watching as we speak the Czech, 1988 version of Alice in Wonderland, with the creepy stop-motion animation-holy jaysus is this movie weird. Has anyone else seen this?
There is a march hare spreading butter onto a pocketwatch. Oh right, he’s in a wheelchair contraption.
Now there’s a ferret-like thing the length of the table who’s licking all the cups!
OMG, Tom Petty! No, just kidding on the last one.
you’re watching Alice! i wrote a paper on that movie! All about how they transitioned between spaces (5 pages on it, crazy I know). That movie is incredible. Have you ever seen any of the Brothers Quay’s work? Very much up the same alley.
Yep! Seen all of Svankmejer’s stuff. Also the Quay’s stuff, as Meghan says, is very cool. Except Svankmejer has more of a sense of humor.
One short-short involving a guinea pig and a punch-and-judy show we thought was great, and funny, but we showed it to a friend without knowing he had a phobia about both puppets and guinea pigs…and he, predictably, found it rather horrific.
JeffV
If you like Svankmejer’s Alice, check out his Faust and some of his collected shorts. Amazing stuff.
Yes! Is wonderful. I love/am terribly creeped out by the fact that the white rabbit is played by a real stuffed rabbit.
Svankmajer’s “Food” short films are fabulous: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/07/jan_svankmajers.html
It may or may not put you off your food.
I saw Alice in college, though I think I may have actually been on drugs when I watched it. Sounds like that was probably overkill. I’ll have to check out some of Svankmejer’s other work.
Thanks all-we have this movie called Blood Tea and Red String that seems to be Up the Same Alley.
On the commentary soundtrack to _Blood Tea and String_, the animator says that seeing _Alice_ was what made her want to do animation.
Ted, what did you think of BT&S?
I liked it. I think the pacing was a bit uneven — too slow in the middle, too fast at the end — but I think that’s easily forgiveable for a project that took a single person thirteen years to finish. I think the description “twisted Beatrix Potter” is apt; it’s like Cegavske took a step down the alley that Svankmejer and the Brothers Quay live at the end of.