Saturday, January 17, 2009

Two New Discoveries

There are so many good animated films that don't get enough recognition that it's absolutely tragic. Thanks to the timeline on the website Animation Podcast, I've discovered a couple gems, one relatively new and one old.
First is a Romanian live action/animation hybrid, Maria Mirabela which has some lovely if slightly zany songs which make me feel like a young child again. The film hasn't been released in English as far as I've been able to tell, but what a joy! Here's one of the song segments posted:



The other film is more dreamlike, a Spanish film from Miguelanxo Prado, a Spanish director with more experience in art outside of the animation industry. I'll let the visuals speak here, as they speak louder than any of my words.



More discoveries are going to come soon, I hope. Maybe some actual readers, too.

4 comments:

Elchinodepelocrespo said...

Hi, the Prado film must be De Profundis. I wrote a review (in spanish): http://esperantoapaulpot.blogspot.com/2008/06/de-profundis.html.
I have to say i didnt like it at all, despite the nice look. Miguelanxo does very well in the comic book field, he is a reputated artist, but no so good in animation.

Here to rare films you might be interested in: http://esperantoapaulpot.blogspot.com/2008/11/novyy-gullivyer.html

And a spanish one, stop motion with peanuts, entitled Gritos en el pasillo: http://esperantoapaulpot.blogspot.com/2008/08/gritos-en-el-pasillo.html

GW said...

Thank you, Elchinodepelocrespo, for your reply. You're probably one of the first people to read this blog whom I didn't self promote it. Of those two films you mentioned, I've heard of the former but not the latter.

Gritos en el pasillo seems quite interesting in concept, but the animation of the actual peanut characters could have been thought out much better.

I respect your opinion on De Profundis, though I'd like to see the film before judging it fully. As much as I'd like to read your review, I only speak a couple of words of Spanish.

When I started this blog, I'd figured that somebody might drop in from time to time, but I hadn't expected to get wrapped up in any sort of evolving animation scene.

An unrelated minor correction, Pelleas.net is just the hosting site for AniPages. The actual address is http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP. Swap the last three letters for BBS for the forums.

Time will show where this goes from here. I'll be posting more often now that I know somebody's reading.

Elchinodepelocrespo said...

Ever heard of this?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD71zpr6qp0

It seems to be a 90 m. film by Marcell Jankovics according to:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0176694/

GW said...

Yes, I've seen those clips on YouTube of The Tragedy of Man. It's a shame though, that so many clips are missing. It seems to be a television series that was started in 1989 according to Jeff Linburg's book: http://books.google.com/books?id=FVShFCjVzvIC&pg=PA160&lpg=PA160&dq=marcell+jankovics+the+tragedy+of+man&source=bl&ots=TZYcIfdYG_&sig=Uh7uwj0DkUZyOkWphW2tOmuKLVo&hl=en&ei=Si9JSq2YKIPMsgOH1cEo&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8

I need to start a few more blog posts. I've got a fair bit of catching up to do.