CONTORTED PASTA

Groundhog Day

Sun, 02 Feb 2014 06:20:07 GMT

I worked on Paperman, I love Paperman, but my all-time hands-down full-stop favourite animated short film is Wild Life. If you haven't seen it already, please do so now, so the rest of this entry doesn't spoil you. It's thirteen minutes and change; watch it in the dark with headphones or good speakers, if you can.

I'm pretty sure the filmmakers weren't aware of it at the time, but they made it just for me. I felt this when I first saw it, and I felt this whenever I watched it with my lights out at lunch at Disney, or on my laptop late at night at home, or on my iPod on a windy autumn night on the Canadian prairie when I was up in Edmonton for my grandmother's funeral. I had thought it was on account of the polar parallels, identifying and perfectly portraying iconic Alberta imagery and atmosphere, and just being so darn Canadian in ways both trivial and profound, but recently I discovered the thoughtfulness extended to embedding a significant detail that has passed under my radar for years. Toward the end of the short, the protagonist writes a letter home, which is delivered in voiceover before it's revealed onscreen:

Tradition has it that if February 2nd is cloudy, spring is on its way, but if the sun shines, there will be six more weeks of winter. Americans have added a groundhog and its shadow to this superstition, but it seems to date back through Candlemas to Imbolc in pagan Europe. If the end of the film took place on the evening of February 2nd, the day on which E.T.W. wrote the letter, then the starry sky indicates it was a clear day, and the implications thereof may have influenced his actions.

I LOVE IT WHEN FILMMAKERS THINK ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING. And even more when they don't make a big deal of it, just leave it there for you to pick up, even if it takes you a while.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch it again. I may be some time.

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Radio Time(s)

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:38:42 GMT

It's the last episode of satirical show Tonight! Its run was brief but I loved it all. More, more!

The pain of its passing is lessened by the return of one of may faves, Listen Against! I am ambivalent about sharing: on one hand, it brings me great joy, and I want to spread the love, but on the other, if you're enough of a Radio 4 fan to get most of the jokes then you probably know about it already. Radio 4 rewards the faithful simply by existing, but Listen Against practically encourages fanaticism. All the same, everyone can enjoy the idea of chasing Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time Machine through time and space in Simon Schama's time-travelling Delorean ... right?

When I was in college, and shortly after, I was deeply interested in serious authentic fairy folklore, which in its original form is creepy and weird and bears far more resemblance to Miyazaki films than A Midsummer Night's Dream. That interest had more or less subsided once I got all I could out of it, but it was rekindled a little by the new episode of Off the Page – it claims to look at the evolution of fairy lore from folk tradition to pink sparkles, but mostly it's just people with different expertise sitting around a table talking.

And this week's representation from the CBC:

Jason Siegel talks about The Muppets, why they are so universally appealing, his own career, and other interesting things, on CBC's Q. Mostly I'm pointing it out because he reiterates my big point about 'family entertainment' and 'kids' entertainment' not necessarily being the same thing, but it's just interesting in general. I can't link directly to she show, so if you want to hear the whole thing: go here, find October 27th, and click 'Listen'. This interview starts at about 26:00.

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More Radio

Sun, 02 May 2010 19:52:26 GMT

Lots of work = lots of radio, not much of anything else.

Charles Augustus Milverton – Possibly the only Holmes radio play that could be called a 'romp' – the scene where Watson demonstrates his skill at arts and crafts is enough to justify listening in itself, but there are so many other priceless scenes besides.

Red As Blood – One of the positive side effects of the recent popular fixation on vampires is this rerun of a take on Snow White that totally blew my mind, and successfully overrode the warbly milquetoast ingenue image ingrained by Disney. It only lasts till Tuesday, though, so if you're going to listen, do it soon!

The Caesars: Nero – I've never been much interested in classical history but these dramatized biographies are really compellingly done. Nero's is my favourite, though a significant factor in that may be that it's told by a Nero watching his grave being dug. ... and then I wonder why I seem to have a different threshold for 'dark' than the people who run Disney. Of course, being Nero, it has, erm ... 'adult concepts.' But it comes with a Kate Beaton comic!

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