Showing posts with label Yellow Submarine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yellow Submarine. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Speed Clips
'No York City' by Rick Liss is a sped up stroll through NYC of the '80s. There are many things of note in the flick, which seems to represent the coke binges of the time as much as it does the fast-paced nature of 'the city that never sleeps' - the Twin Towers, the Lower East Side as burnt out shells and hulks of empty buildings, mimes in Central Park, street fairs and vendors...
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Meaning of Life (2005)
Some movies leave little explanation and cry out for interpretation. The Meaning of Life, a 35 mm animated short film both directed and written by Don Hertzfeldt is one of those. The plot, if you could call it a plot, is quite simple.
We begin with grey and white abstract forms that immediately call to mind chaos, in the Genesis sense: 'tohu vavohu." The world begins. A stick figure of a supine man comes into the scene, bathed in white. He gently falls down to the bottom of the scene as his body withers and decays - life, into death, we are too think. The title of the film comes to mind - what is the meaning of life? All we are, after all, will simply rot and fester into nothing.
Meaning cannot be found in the nothingness that is death, so Hertzfeldt shows us life - perhaps we may find our answer here. But life, according to Hertzfeldt, is apparently empty, at least superficially. He depicts life in a magnificent way. Stick figures pace back and forth, muttering to themselves and each other the same phrases over and over again. A woman walks by, vapidly repeating, "I want it. I want it." People get in fights. People worry. People fret, people smile. Most people are distraught in some way. The ones that aren't seem to be either faking their joy or are too foolish to know differently. And recall - these are complicated emotions being portrayed magnificently with scribbles and stick figures.
We begin with grey and white abstract forms that immediately call to mind chaos, in the Genesis sense: 'tohu vavohu." The world begins. A stick figure of a supine man comes into the scene, bathed in white. He gently falls down to the bottom of the scene as his body withers and decays - life, into death, we are too think. The title of the film comes to mind - what is the meaning of life? All we are, after all, will simply rot and fester into nothing.
Meaning cannot be found in the nothingness that is death, so Hertzfeldt shows us life - perhaps we may find our answer here. But life, according to Hertzfeldt, is apparently empty, at least superficially. He depicts life in a magnificent way. Stick figures pace back and forth, muttering to themselves and each other the same phrases over and over again. A woman walks by, vapidly repeating, "I want it. I want it." People get in fights. People worry. People fret, people smile. Most people are distraught in some way. The ones that aren't seem to be either faking their joy or are too foolish to know differently. And recall - these are complicated emotions being portrayed magnificently with scribbles and stick figures.
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