The ‘?’ Motorist is a 1906 British short silent comedy film,commonly called “The Mad Motorist” or “Questionmark Motorist” and directed by Walter R. Booth. Released in October of 1906, the film features a couple on the run from the police. While running from the police, they end up driving over the policeman, who magically recovers seconds after and continues to run after the car. Soon the couple comes to a building and their car magically drives up the wall, evading the stunned policeman and leaving an amazed crowd behind. The car drives past stars on clouds, around the Moon, and around the rings of Saturn before crashing through the roof of Handover Courthouse. The car drives through the courthouse and outside once more, interrupting the hearing. Outside on the road, a policeman and court officials stop the car which suddenly turns into a horse and carriage. The couple drives off in the carriage victoriously having escaped a ticket. The trick film is “one of the last films that W.R. Booth made for the producer-inventor R.W. Paul,” and, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, “looks forward to the more elaborate fantasies that Booth would make for Charles Urban between 1907 and 1911, as well as drawing on a wide range of the visual tricks that Booth had developed over the preceding half-decade.”
Booth later remade the film as The Automatic Motorist in 1911.
The film has also been compared to the work of Georges Méliès and “The Impossible Voyage.”
A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a 1902 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. It’s considered one of the first science fiction film.
The Impossible Voyage (French: Voyage à travers l’impossible) is a 1904 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. Based in part on Jules Verne’s play Journey Through the Impossible and modeled in style and format on Méliès’s earlier, highly successful A Trip to the Moon, the film is a satire of scientific exploration in which a group of geographers attempt a journey into the interior of the sun. Since the film is silent and has no intertitles, the proper names and quotations below are taken from the English-language description of the film published by Méliès in the catalog of the Star Film Company’s New York Branch.
Even with several details altered, Stoker’s heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. However, a few prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema.
The film was released in the United States on 3 June 1929, seven years after its original premiere in Germany.
The hands that once pointed in every direction Have failed to move since she gave it away, And though the band is much to tight, He still wears it every day. It helps him to remember that moonless night. That night he tried to make her stay. Losing himself in his own reflection, He remembers the words that she used to say, The sweet reverberation, Trembling from her lips in exasperation. Eyes lost in a distant fading memory, Like fog dissipating with the arrival of the day, He stares at his watch, Waiting, For those hands Hoping, To continue Stuck in the past, Their ritualistic dance. Those hands.
Frankenstein is a 1910 horror film made by Edison Studios. It was directed by J. Searle Dawley, who also wrote the one-reeler’s screenplay, broadly basing his “scenario” on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. This short motion picture is generally recognized by film historians as the first screen adaptation of Shelley’s work. The small cast, who are not credited in the surviving 1910 print of the film, includes Augustus Phillips as Dr. Frankenstein, Charles Ogle as Frankenstein’s monster, and Mary Fuller as the doctor’s fiancée.
For more information on this film visit http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/i…
The first-ever film version of Lewis Carroll’s tale has recently been restored by the BFI National Archive from severely damaged materials. Made just 37 years after Lewis Carroll wrote his novel and eight years after the birth of cinema, the adaptation was directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, and was based on Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations. In an act that was to echo more than 100 years later, Hepworth cast his wife as the Red Queen, and he himself appears as the Frog Footman. Even the Cheshire cat is played by a family pet. With a running time of just 12 minutes (8 of which survive), Alice in Wonderland was the longest film produced in England at that time. Film archivists have been able to restore the film’s original colours for the first time in over 100 years.
Music: ‘Jill in the Box’, composed and performed by Wendy Hiscocks.
This restoration was supported by The Headley Trust and The Pilgrim Trust.
To find out more about the film, visit http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/i…
Watch our new trailer shortfilm!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNsH0…
Watch the Making of!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ef6u…
PRIZES:
-Best Animation and Best in Event, Sound & Image Challenge 2014. Macau, China.
-Adult Jury Prize and Kid’s Jury Prize, YoungAbout international film festival 2014. Bologna, Italy.
-Audience award, Innersound international new arts festival. Bucarest, Rumania.
-Best script, Curtmiratges festival, Barcelona, Spain. Finalist “Jury prize” y “Best music”.
-Best animated shortfilm. FECLAC 2013. Santiago, Chile.
-Best animated shortfilm. Mecal Chile 2013. Santiago, Chile.
-Mention animated shortfilm. Unframe festival 2013, La rioja, Argentina.
-Special mention. Libélula Fest 2013. Barcelona, Spain.
-Honorable mention. Fam Fest 2014. South Carolina, EEUU.
-Special Mention, V Festival de Cine: Infancia y Adolescencia “Ciudad de Bogotá” 2014, Bogotá, Colombia.
Excerpt from a bizarre 1930 stop-motion animation piece featuring Charley R. Bowers, Lowell Thomas, and a metal-eating bird. The creature devours junk from an auto scrapyard, then lays an egg that hatches and grows into a brand new car! Very impressive effects for pre-CGI animation. Directed by Harold L. Muller.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film. The Adventures of Prince Achmed features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger had invented which involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera. The technique she used for the camera is similar to Wayang shadow puppets, though hers were animated frame by frame, not manipulated in live action. The original prints featured color tinting.
Several famous avant-garde animators worked on this film with Lotte Reiniger, among them Walter Ruttmann, Berthold Bartosch, and Carl Koch.
The story is based on elements taken from the One Thousand and One Nights, specifically “The Story of Prince Achmed and the Fairy Paribanou” featured in Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book.
I have recently had the pleasure of reading Richard Adams’ 1978 novel Watership Down, and have decided that it is now among my top-three favorite novels of all time. I highly recommend reading the novel and then watching this beautifully done animation. Thanks for watching!
Richard Adams was an English novelist and writer of the books Watership Down, Shardik, and The Plague Dogs. Adams originally began telling the story that would become Watership Down to his two daughters on a long car trip. They eventually insisted that he publish it as a book. He began writing in 1966, taking two years to complete it. In 1972, after four publishers and three writers’ agencies turned down the manuscript, Rex Collings agreed to publish the work. The book gained international acclaim almost immediately for reinvigorating anthropomorphic fiction with naturalism. In 1974, two years after Watership Down was published, Adams became a full-time author.
Watership Down is a survival and adventure novel set in southern England, around Hampshire. The story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in burrows in their natural wild environment, they are anthropomorphized, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.
The British animated adventure-drama film adaptation of Watership Down was released in 1978 and was written, produced, and directed by Martin Rosen and based on the 1972 novel by Richard Adams. It was financed by a consortium of British financial institutions and was distributed by Cinema International Corporation in the United Kingdom.
It features the voices of John Hurt, Richard Briers, Harry Andrews, Simon Cadell, Nigel Hawthorne and Roy Kinnear, among others, and was the last film work of Zero Mostel, as the voice of Kehaar the gull. The musical score was by Angela Morley and Malcolm Williamson. Art Garfunkel’s hit song Bright Eyes was written by songwriter Mike Batt.
Animation Supervisor: Philip Duncan
Animation Director: Tony Guy
Senior Animators: Arthur Humberstone, George Jackson, Tony Guy, and Philip Duncan
Animators: Edric Raddage, Bill Littlejohn, Ruth Kissane, John Perkins, Ralph Ayres, Brian Foster, Chris Evans, Marie Szmichowska, Alan Simpson, Colin White, Doug Jensen, Bill Geach, Spud Houston, and Barrie Nelson
Following an unsuccessful yacht robbery, Harley Quinn is sent to Arkham Asylum; though she firmly believes that her boss and lover the Joker will break her out. A year later, her best friend, Poison Ivy, gets her out during a prison break and tries to convince her that he does not love her. Despite Ivy’s support, Harley’s attempt to break up with the Joker fails after he sweet-talks her into staying with him. The Riddler, who also escaped Arkham, provokes the Joker into sending Harley to kill him. The Riddler captures her and Batman before giving the Joker the choice to save one while the other dies. When Joker ultimately chooses Batman, Harley finally realizes she never meant anything to him. After learning Ivy and Riddler devised the death trap to drive that point home and she was never really in any danger, Harley undergoes a costume change and officially breaks up with the Joker and declares her intention to make a name for herself in the criminal underworld.
The series follows Harley Quinn’s adventures after she breaks up with the Joker and her attempt to join the Legion of Doom, forming her own crew consisting of Poison Ivy, Clayface, Doctor Psycho, King Shark, and Sy Borgman. When she finally achieves this goal however, she inadvertently distances herself from her newfound friends and continues to face problems from the Joker, who refuses to accept the idea of Harley becoming a supervillain on her own.
This Saturday, August 9, we can all sing “Happy Birthday” to our favorite cartoon sweetheart, Betty Boop! Created by legendary animator Max Fleischer, Betty Boop made her first appearance in the 1930 animated short called “Dizzy Dishes,” which was part of Fleischer Studios’ Talkartoon series. Set in a nightclub, the cartoon introduces Betty Boop as a cabaret singer. She only makes a brief appearance, but it is long enough to captivate Bimbo the waiter and the big star of the film.
Interestingly, Betty never speaks in her first appearance. Instead, she sings I Have to Have You.
You will need:
– A drawing board
– An easel
– Pastel paper
– Hard pastels
– Soft pastels
– Conte pencils
– White liquitex gesso
– Black or dark grey acrylic paint
– A wide paintbrush
– Fixative
– Masking tape
– A selection of props
All of the materials are available online or at your local art supply shop.
“I think that if you do pictures, they’re about what’s inside you as much as what’s outside you.”
Paula Rego
Artist Paula Rego, is known for her paintings and drawings based on folk tales. Her work often reshapes traditional stories to reflect personal experiences, and focuses on female roles within the family.
In 1994, she began to experiment with pastels and has continued to use them ever since. She describes working in pastels ‘like painting with your fingers’. The scenes in her drawings almost always take place in domestic settings and are filled with mystery.
“As you are drawing something, it very often turns into something else, and you can go with it. It develops in a completely different way. It’s organic and it’s done with the hand.”
Paula Rego
