maxcelcat: (Badtz Maru)
Woo! Survived the 2011 Melbourne International Animation Festival. As has been my habit for the last few years, I went to about twenty sessions over eight days. The maddest day was this last Saturday, where I was in the cinema from 3PM till about 11.30PM. I was quite mad by the end!

Every year, they award a best of the festival. This year it went to this film, "Love & Theif". I recommend watching it in full screen - if you click on the title in the top left corner of the below it'll take you to Youtube (or you could click here).


More to follow - I have yet to calculate exactly how many films I've seen, that'll be in a later post!
maxcelcat: (Dancing Kitty)

When Humans Ruled the Earth from Stephen Ong on Vimeo.



The Melbourne International Animation Festival started on Sunday afternoon. I was there then for over four hours, and have been back every night since! I've seen about one hundred and ten films in that time! *twitch twitch* The madness will probably kick in tonight, when I'm off there again - any will no doubt start seeing Weasels etc. where there are none to see!

This below has probably been the best film I've seen so far. Note: those who don't like spiders (Deb, this means you!) would be best to not watch this:

Loom from Polynoid on Vimeo.


See youse on the other side!
maxcelcat: (Agent Smith)
Hey all, I've had a slightly insane couple of weeks.

I took the few days after the queens birthday off, and headed down to see my niece (and by extension my sister!) down in Jan Jac. She is a very cute baby, seems to be growing teeth and being very very interested in solid food.

Deb and I took off from Jan Jac, and headed down to the Otways - which is further than it looks on the map. Almost two hours of driving on the Great Ocean Road. We stopped off in Lorne and did a couple of short walks, and I reminisced about the Falls Festival I went to there in 1997.

Eventually we ended up in a cabin out in the Otways. It was a nice bungalow thing, all alone in the woods - we didn't see another sole while were were there. Which sounds a lot like the plot of a bad film full of axe murderers! :-)

It was a bit damn cold while we were there, blowing a veritable gale the first night we were there. We consoled ourselves with a dip in the two person spa... Hmmmm.... middle class...

We went home the very long way, via the Cape Otway light house (very pretty, very freaking wind swept) and the twelve apostles. Or eight apostles, or however many are left by now. There were a few hundred cold, cold looking tourists there. Here's a tip for international visitors: It's winter now, and that is the part of Victoria that gets the most rain!

We decided to drive back to Jan Jac via the inland route, which worked well enough but damn was also a lot of driving. Stupidly big country this. I think it eventually took us two and a half hours to get back to my sisters place.

Anyway, whilst I was driving a long windy road through the Otways, my boss called. Which I'd kind of expected, except not that late in the week. He was trying to finish some work I hadn't quite finished when I went on leave. Which normally wouldn't be a problem, except other parts of the business demanded that it absolutely utterly had to be done before Monday. I said I'd see if I could pop in on Saturday afternoon and have a crack at it. Then... my boss's boss called me up and asked if I really could possibly go into the office on the weekend. Stupidly, I said yes. Then I turned off my phone!

So at 7AM I got out of bed in Jan Jac, and drove into the city - actually Deb the girlfriend drove. She deposited me outside my office at 10AM, and I worked like a slave for a about six hours. My boss and one of my co workers were there, as well the project manager and my bosses boss! It wasn't that important folks... Also meant there was me doing the actual work, while being managed by three people!

Then... that Saturday was the first day of the Animation festival (more on this later). So I went straight from my office to ACMI for two sessions of animation. In the end I didn't get home from my trip till after 9PM.

Amusing side note: We'd sent Marvin the bitey cat over to stay with some friends around the corner. So we were planning to go get him that night. But as we approached our place, there he was! He'd brought himself home! Looking at Google maps, all he really had to do was walk down a laneway (probably well within his territory already, he gets around) and jump over one fence to get to places he would recognise. So he saved us some time!

And on the Sunday, I got up again at 7AM and went into my office. I drove in, which took almost no time at all. Worked until about 4PM, then went into the city for three sessions of the animation festival. Needless to say, by Monday morning, I was a bit fucked.

Anyway, I got a couple of days off in lieu last week, which was nice. Fiddled with my bike, did some sleepy. Nice.

Took stacks of pictures while I was away, will post them soon.
maxcelcat: (The Dynamism of a Dog on a Lead)
For five days last week, I more or less lived in ACMI Cinema 2 during the Melbourne International Animation Festival.

This is at least the fourth year running that I've gone to as many sessions of this thing as I physically can. It actually started on Monday, but I didn't start going till Wednesday. My schedule was roughly:

Wednesday: two sessions
Thursday: three sessions
Friday: two sessions
Saturday: five sessions
Sunday: four sessions

For a total of sixteen. They averaged somewhat more than an hour each, in fact closer to an hour and half, so that's, what, about 22 total hours in the cinema in the space of a week. I also did loads of bike riding and staying up late on Friday and Saturday. Then on Sunday I came down with a cold. Funny that!

The last sessions every year are the "best of the festival", which includes some of the best films, and a "winner of the festival" film, plus the best Australian film. This year, on the Thursday, I saw a film in the Puppet Panorama, which I knew straight away was going to win the festival. It was called Madame Tutli-Putli, and really defies description. And I was right, it won!

The Canadian Film Board run an amusing online contest with the film - for every unique visitor who watched the film, they'd ad one more frame to the length shown online. Since several hundred people have now done so, you can watch the whole film. And try and work out for yourself what the heck it is about... I have to say, it's the best, smoothest, marionette/puppet animation I've ever seen. The solved one of the puppet animators major problems - how to do eyes - by the (seemingly) simple method of editing in real eyes onto the puppets. Gave the whole thing a really uncanny look.

The best Australian film was a really clever computer animation called The Passenger which is the charming story of a fish on a bus...! Man, read the blog, the dude spent eight years making a seven minute film. Even "Eraserhead" took less time!

I can really only measure how many festivals I've been to (almost) in their entirety by remembering the winning films from each year. In 2007 it was a hand-painted master piece called My Love. In 2006 it was, as I mentioned in a previous post, Jona/Tomberry. 2005 must have been the brilliant animated and very touching Ryan. The year before that, 2004, I can't remember, which probably means I wasn't at that festival for much of it.

Next year I should demand to be a judge :-)

Actually, next year I'll probably be overseas when the festival is on.

One of the hazards of seeing so many session is one tends to see the same film two or more times. This year I saw "The Passenger" three times. In 2006 I say "Jona/Tomberry" four times in three days (or it might even have been two days) which twisted my brain far more than it was already!
maxcelcat: (Bike)
Ever had one of those nights were you watch three hours of animation, then ride your bike in the rain through Fisherman's Bend to a party with a bonfire under the westgate bridge, and then you end up eating brie with some randoms and talking about Jackson Pollack? I've had one of those nights...
maxcelcat: (Lamington)
Starting Wednesday evening, I will more or less be living at ACMI. The Melbourne International Animation Festival is on again, as as I have done for the last three or four years, I will be at almost every session! Well, not quite, but at least two or three sessions at day from Wednesday to Friday, most of Saturday and about six hours of Sunday! So, don't expect to see me for most of the next week.

And when you do, I'll probably think I'm a weasel and expect to be able to crawl up the walls.

A couple of years ago, the winning movie was the rather awesome Jona/Tomberry Please don't ask me to explain the title or I'll cry. And that streaming rendition of it leaves a lot to be desired... By a mad Dutchman called Rosto. Now I find myself needing to order it from the internets...!

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