Computer Animation Arts

Tonight, at 10pm, Channel 4 will be showing Dreams of a Life . It looks to be a powerful and emotive documentary about life, death and everything in between  I haven't had the chance to watch the film but when it came out in 2011 it received superb reviews and looks like an extremely interesting watch. Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life– not even a photograph. Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties—the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how li...

Courtesy of The Guardian . A visual history of Dracula film poster's to coincide with the publication of previously unreleased Bram Stoker written material. Way too many to pick from so here are my choices with the full selection in the link below. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/gallery/2012/dec/15/bram-stoker-dracula-in-pictures#/?picture=401087259&index=8

“In a small-town hairdressing salon, a young barber, Joe (Uno Henning) is trying to court Sally, the beautiful manicurist (Nora Baring) and asks her out. She rejects him in favour of the security offered by an older, wealthier farmer. In a jealous rage Joe slashes the farmer with a razor and is sent to Dartmoor prison for attempted murder. He escapes over the moors to find Sally, who does not know if he has come to kill her or ask her forgiveness, and it's at this point that the film begins. The rest of the story is told in flashback.” (BFI Filmstore 2008) “...though many filmmakers, Asquith apparently included, believed that silent storytelling had reached such a high level of refinement that mere chatter would never be enough to extinguish it. This, of course, was not to be, but “A Cottage on Dartmoor” provides ample illustration of how elegantly and assuredly expressive silent film had become, and how hard it must have been to believe that this magnificent medi...

I haven't seen this film yet but I stumbled across the opening animation when I was browsing a blog called Animation Tidbits . It is a truly elegant and fluid way of portraying a narrative, and you can tell by its visual style that it's by Ben Hibon , director of ' The Tale of Three Brothers ' from the penultimate Harry Potter film.  It's just so fluid and aesthetically lovely that I thought I had to share it, and hopefully you'll all enjoy it too!

I thought the latest comments from Cameron on film funding would provide for some interesting debate. He recently stated "Our role should be to support the sector in becoming even more dynamic and entrepreneurial, helping UK producers to make commercially successful pictures that rival … the best international productions." He seems to be suggesting that the country should back big budget, commercial success, as oppose to any intelligent narratives or important social comments. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jan/11/cameron-speech-funding-box-office This could be a big problem for the future of the British film industry. It is already near impossible to get a film made, and with this new strategy it seems even less likely. These comments suggest to me another failing of the Conservative party to understand the importance of art in society. They continue to demonstrate that they have no wish for a more intelligent nation, filled with critical thinkers and un...