Computer Animation Arts

More Death Of The Author fun and games here as the seemingly irreconcilable worlds of Breaking Bad and Frozen are mashed together to comic - and strangely moving - effect.  In a previous post, I suggested how Disney might be 'queered' in terms of the meanings ascribed it by audiences , and here, the original intent of two distinct texts are again re-enscribed for parodic effect.

Saw this, was nearly tempted to write something clever about postmodern culture, mash-ups, death of the author, imprisonment in the past, hyperrealism and capitalism... but it's Friday, so I'll leave the clever stuff up to you...

Postmodernism has been and gone (or has it ?!?!) but this remix of the Planet of the Apes gave me a hearty Saturday morning chuckle. Appropriation aplenty! There's not much more to say!

Okay, so, back in 1982, John Carpenter (dir. of horror smash, Halloween ) remade The Thing From Another World (1951), and so unleashed some pretty amazing non-cg special effects set-pieces in which dogs turned inside out and disembodied heads sprouted legs.  This was the film that got the playground buzzing in terms of its extreme gore and 'out there' creature design.  A prequel to the film is due for release very soon, but it appears to this jaded viewer, that The Thing 2011 is just the The Thing '82 all over again - but with cg augmentation probably undoing all that was properly visceral and grisly about Rob Bottin's extraordinary puppets...   Anyway, this postmodernism-themed post could be about the continuing slow death of the avant-garde in terms of film-making as Hollywood stagnates in a perpetual 'nostalgia mode', as it seeks only to remake and revisit its own back-catalogue, as the levers of capitalism demand bums on seats over...

Summary: An extravagant visual and musical spectacle. Moulin Rouge! is an ode to Broadway and the grand musical era of Hollywood. Featuring unconventional mash-ups of modern pop songs and culture, which embody the key postmodern concept of Death of the Author. Analysis: “It's been called 'postmodernist' in the way it compacts numerous contrasting styles and disparate strands, in the manner of a garbage machine crushing everything it receives into a neat package.” (French, 2001) “Everything about Moulin Rouge!, is in fact avowedly pointless except for spectacle itself. But the spectacle is dazzling... Still Moulin Rouge! Is a quintessential postmodernist film, epitomizing both Guy Debord’s notion of the “society of the spectacle” and Jameson’s view of postmodern culture as flat and superficial.” (Booker, 2007:60) Booker, M. Keith. (2007) Postmodern Hollywood: what’s new in film and why it makes us feel strange Conneticut: Greenwood Publishing Group Inc. French, P. (2001)...

Today, I was browsing internet, when I came across this - the famous film, The Shining , but told differently. With the footage from the film and some editing, the mash-up trailer changes the plot of the film. This may be of interest for the 2nd years as they step on the interesting grounds of Post-Modernism. Enjoy!!

A 'Premake' trailer for Pixar's UP , which seeks to suggest that the 2009 animated film you know and love was 'originally' made in 1965 with Spencer Tracy...  How postmodern (but more on this later!).