WELL, BLOGGER ME!

It was odd to come across this blog about me (sort of) but not by me...


But odder still to find that the blogger (one 'Jawara') also blogs about...


A hint, perhaps, that's time to dispense with the beard!

SNEAKY SNAPS

In a short-lived series of blogs (there was just the one!) I wrote about how I arrived at a particular photograph. Having temporarily run out of blog ideas I'm reviving the idea to discuss a picture (left) that I included in one of my New Year blogs from Venice.

We noticed the couple in a box at the New Year's Day concert at the Teatro de Fenice and then, afterwards, in the crowd milling around outside the theatre.

We were fascinated and intrigued by them. Who were they? What were they? Mother and son? Patroness and artist? Mistress and toy boy?

I photographed them first looking at graffiti on the wall of the Church of San Fantin...


And, wisely or not, converted the image into black and white...


But whilst I liked their silhouetted forms against the scarred white wall of the church, I wanted to capture their striking facial features.

The trouble is, I lack the blatant confidence to photograph people on the fly, so we had to resort to a ruse we've used on numerous occasion: one of us pretends to pose for a picture, while the other shoots over the shoulder at whoever we're really trying to capture on film. Cowardly, I admit, but occasionally successful!

Shooting over David left shoulder I got this picture...


I liked the expression on the woman's face and the fact that they were looking in opposite directions but it was cluttered by the distracting presence of other people and too much background...

So, I cropped the picture quite ruthlessly tight which had the effect of appearing to draw the couple closer together while accentuating the fact that they were not looking at one another. I then tinkered with the exposure and contrast and put the whole thing (again) into black and white which, I think, intensifies the silhouetted profiles as well as the textures of the fur coat, the hats and the leather handbag.

They still intrigue me and I wonder what lies behind their confident, imperiously disdainful way of looking at the world.

One day, I shall put them into a story...


Images: Brian Sibley © 2009

REVIEWING THE SITUATION

When did people start using the word 'situation' so strangely?

I hear it all the time and on Woman's Hour (BBC Radio 4) this morning, during a discussion about an exhibition of hats at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the presenter commented that "we're all of us familiar with the bobble-hat situation."

Personally, I'm not - or, at least, I don't think I am - but maybe these guys are...


...at least the one in the middle seems to be - I'm not sure about the chap on the right!

SPORTS BRIEFING

In case you missed Bentos' comment on my blog about those naked rugby players, check out the Italian rugger stars who're currently doing their bit for Dolce & Gabbana...


Here's what the Press Release said...

Paris, Jean Bouin Arena, a symbolic place for Rugby.

It's in this "temple of Sport" that Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana created the new D&G Underwear Advertising Campaign, with five Italian champions and photographer Randall Mesdon.

Sergio Parisse, Denis Dallan, Ezio Galon, Andrea Masi e Gonzalo Canale are the athletes D&G chose to represent the contemporary man, and his lifestyle.

The impressive bodies sculpted through dedication, discipline and physically strenuous trainings, make them the perfect models for a new ideal of beauty that is healthy, clean and masculine.

Randall Mesdon enhanced the statuesque lines of their body, the very same body which is that of real-life gladiators, scarred by strong encounters with worthy opponents. Because it's the fight, but also the utter sportsmanship with which it is carried on, that makes Rugby one of the most fascinating and captivating disciplines out there.

Yeah, right! If I were you, I'd just watch the film! Follow this link and click on video.

SHORTS BRIEFING

On Oscar eve (or 'day', depending which side of the Atlantic you live on) I went with Irascian to a screening of this year's Academy Award nominated animated shorts...

As always watching a bunch of disparate animations is a curiously disorientating business requiring the viewer to instantly adapt - chameleon-like - to the different looks and tones of the films.

The top favourite among the five finalists is undoubtedly...


Presto was the supporting short on the release of WALL.E (also in the running for an Oscar in the feature animation category) and is the story of a Magician, a Rabbit and two magic hats...


True, it's a one-joke story, but it's delivered at a furious, break-neck speed and crammed with zany, non-stop, Loony Tunes-type gags that come thick and fast, mount to an untoppable climax whilst knowing precisely when to stop...


Presto is, unquestionably, a mini-masterpiece. Whether it can pull the Oscar out of the hat remains to be seen...

'This Way Up' is a wacky saga by British animators Smith & Foulkes about two undertakers whose hearse is written off and have to endure all kinds of agonies - in fact they go, literally, through hell - in order to deliver a body to its final resting place...


Whilst not consistently satisfying, 'This Way Up', has many moments of deliciously black humour. Equally amusing but far more subtle, is Lavatory - Lovestory, a touching tale of romantic longing from veteran Russian animator Konstantin Bronzit.


Told in black-and-white line animation (with occasional, significant, dabs of colour) it tells how a love-lorn lavatory attendant eventually finds emotional fulfilment.

There are more emotional reflections in Kunio Katō's Japanese short with a French title, La Maison en Petits Cubes, which is about an old man living in the 'house of little boxes' each of which have been built on top of an older one as the surrounding water-level rises and past homes sink beneath the waves.


When he drops his beloved pipe, he goes diving to recover it and, on the way, many long-forgotten memories. If Presto misses out on the Oscar (and Pixar haven't always won in the shorts category) then Katō's film with its affecting message and arty direction is tipped to be the alternative nomination which could snaffle the Academicians' votes.

Finally, there's Oktapodi, a mere three-minutes long, this brilliant, digitally-animated short from France that recounts the attempts of an octopus to save his soul-mate from ending up as a dish on Greek menu.


For its economy of story-telling and sheer dynamism this might just give Pixar a run for its money.

To see why, go and view the film on the Oktapodi website.


And if you're going to be sitting up to watch the Oscar ceremony itself - enjoy!

Personally, I'll wait for the morning to discover this year's winners...


And the Winner Was...

7:50 am update - 23 February:

In case you miss it in the midst of the Slumdog Millionaire euphoria, the Oscar for Best Animated Short went to Kunio Katō's La Maison en Petits Cubes. So, Presto didn't make it; bu, as predicted, WALL.E took the Award for Best Animated Feature, possibly prejudicing Pixar's chances of picking up two Oscars in the animation category. An interesting result: I'm not sure the best film won, but devotees of 'old style' (as opposed to digital) animation will be pleased...

The film is - for the moment at least - being screened on YouTube, but I won't embed it here as it may have been illegally uploaded. Two other nominees (Presto and Lavatory - Lovestory) have recently been removed from YouTube, following complaints from the film companies.

I wish it was as easy to get YouTube to remove the 13 hours of my radio dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings!!

HEAVEN OR BUSED

It's the way with buses, isn't it? You don't see one for ages and then five come along at the same time...

Responding to those atheist/humanist bus ads the other day, a few readers have sent me their experiments with the Bus Slogan Generator and, as promised, I pass them on.

LISAH had two goes, firstly with a variation that the Humanists seriously ought to take 'on board' for their next campaign...


And, secondly, with a slogan that is, I'd suggest, spot on for The Nihilist Association*...


EUDORA designed a bus (and without the aid of the gizmo, either) to take her home from hospital after having an endoscopy...


Good luck, Eudora: here's hoping the tests are clear and you'll soon be able to take your bus to the nearest chocolatiere - or whatever the Spanish equivalent is.

GLORIA created a bus ad for thespians...


Appropriate since Gloria has a blog devoted to the great Charles Laughton.

And finally, BOLL WEAVIL, ever the wit, came up with a great gag that ought to make even Richard Dawkins smile...


* I've just remembered that The Nihilist Association doesn't actually exist because nobody thought there was any point in setting it up...

DOWN AND DIRTY

I've never been even remotely interested in rugby --- until now...




You can see more about the making of these posters here - although, curiously, nobody felt the need to tell us why rugby players are getting their kit off to sell an upmarket version of Lucozade.

Obviously, however, they are all jolly good sports...

TAKEN FOR A RIDE

Yesterday's blog - as you obviously guessed - was a JOKE... You did guess, didn't you...?

You may remember, sometime last year, I wrote about how humanists were taking bus side advertisements with the (to some) controversial slogan...


Well, my friend Irascible Ian came across a fun little device - the Bus Slogan Generator - which allows you to create your own topical advertisement.

The only trouble is the example they give is a rather difficult act to follow...


But why not have a go for yourself - here?

Send me the results (c/o webmaster@briansibley.com) and I'll publish the best.


Image: The photo used by the Slogan Generator was taken by John Worth of the Atheist Bus Campaign and you can read more about that organisation on their official website.

GOD KNOWS

You see some strange things on the streets these days...

SPRING FEVERISH

Just seen Spring Awakening, the eight-times Tony Award-winning musical based on Frank Wedekin's 1891 play Frühlingserwachen which was originally banned from being produced (and remained so until 1906) because it contained scenes of implied homoeroticism, masturbation and suicide as well as references to abortion.

Now it's had a rock-musical make-over and, laden with plaudits (and more five-star ratings than the grandest of grand hotels), has opened in London's Lyric Hammersmith.

Spring Awakening has a great set; fantastic lighting; and a talented, tirelessly energetic cast, but...

Well, here's a sample of how the show injects a decidedly unsubtle dose of 21st Century shock-of-the-new into Wedekin's once radical 19th Century drama...

There's a moment you know you're f***ed,
Not an inch more room to self-destruct...

Hmmm... My Fair Lady it ain't!

JOURNEY INTO THE THIRD DIMENSION

Mentioning View-Master 3D slides the other day set me thinking about the toy that was so much a part of my '50s/'60s childhood and, in particular, those recreated scenes from Disney animated features that I loved almost as much as the films themselves...

Of course, that probably seems rather childish, but it should be remembered that we are talking about a time that was not only before DVDs, but before videos!

As a Disney-nerd, I could only see the studio's classics when they were re-released at the cinema (at roughly seven years intervals) or when clips were occasionally screened on TV (in black and white) on compilations shows.

Being obsessed, I collected books and records that had still photographs from the films and - once I'd discovered shops that sold them - sets of the advertising lobby cards that used to be displayed outside cinema marques.


The View-Master slides were the next best thing - and, in a way, better even than stills from the films because they were in 3D!


The story of View-Master is a fascinating one dating back to it's launch at the 1939 as a souvenir of the New York World's Fair and, quaint though it now seems, there really was a time when seeing a 3D image of a giraffe on the African veldt projected onto your living room wall was quite a thing...

Click on image to enlarge

I yearned for - but never had - one of View-Master's 'Give-a-Show Projectors', [and, as you'll see from the comments below, they weren't called 'Give-a-Show' (they were something else) and they didn't actually project in 3D], but I did spend a lot of time viewing my Disney movie slides and those of Disneyland: the Californian Never Never Land that, at the time, I could only ever dream of visiting...


Just like being there...

Well, no, not quite! After all, none of us would have taken a photo of the castle with the spires chopped off and the scene generally cluttered up with an ice-cream cart and a load of bloody tourists!

However, the addition of Disney titles to the range of slides undoubtedly helped popularise View-Master by widening the repertoire of subjects from the instructional and educational to pure entertainment. And where Disney led, others followed and there were soon numerous popular sets featuring most of the top TV shows (The Munsters, Flipper, Batman and so on) as well as other cartoon characters such as Yogi Bear and The Flintstones...


And yes, I did buy The Flintstones set (well, it had dinosaurs in it, didn't it?) although it was chiefly the Disney sets that made a monthly dent in my pocket-money.

Some, like Jungle Book (left) accompanied newly-released movies, others were based on the back-catalogue of Disney classics such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, and Peter Pan.

But, as a Disney completist they all had to be collected!

These are just a few of my favourite slides...








What was so remarkable about these slides based on animated films and TV series was that the selected scenes were built as models based on stills from the originals and then photographed with 3D cameras.



Much of the art work in the early years was by and Florence Thomas, whose models were carefully hand sculpted and painted and who appeared on many TV shows in response to public interest in View-Master.

Here she is working on a scene from Walt Disney's 1963 film, The Sword in the Stone....


The attention to detail is exceptional - the books and paraphernalia cluttering Merlin's cottage, the miniature tea-things and the fact that Wart is in mid-fall from the hole in the thatch to a chair at the tea-table!

Florence Thomas' assistant was Joe Liptak who went on to be one of the best View-Master artists, creating the models for most of the the Disney sets. Here he is posing with one of his scenes from the 1953 feature Peter Pan which - like a lot of scenes from that film - included flying effects...


And here is Joe again, some years later, constructing a set based on a scene from the animated version of Robin Hood with the leonine Prince John and his sibilant, serpentine sidekick, Sir Hiss. One gets an idea from this photo of how much work went into creating just one of the twenty-one slides from a particular set...


And here's the finished scene (revealing that the above photo has, in fact, been flipped!) courtesy of Tim Hodge of Bald Melon who left a comment and link below...


There are a couple more View-Master slides (this time from Jungle Book) on a post blogged by Tim last year along with the following instructions on how to see them in 3D without the aid of a viewer...

"To view them in stereo, you will have to use the 'cross-eyed' method. That is, cross your eyes until you can see three images instead of just two. Then the center image should pop out in 3D. It takes some practice if you've never done it before."

Thanks, Tim! I got it! What's more it works on those earlier Disneyland castle photos!

So, there you have my unashamed paean to View-Masters! Of course, like all nostalgia items, the appeal of the View-Master slides is less to do with what they are than what they were --- once upon a time...

***

Apart from using Tim's cross-eyed system you can get a sense of how good (or not!) the View-Master 3D effect was by visiting What My Dad Saw: scroll down to 'Labels' on the right-hand side-bar and click on 'View Master' which will allow you to view Batman and Flintstones slides --- with movement effect!

And you can find out lots more information about all kinds of 3D from the 3D Center of Art and Photography in Portland, Oregon, which city was, for many years, the home of View-Master.

Images: 'Ode to View-Master' (top left) by iloyd; Captain Hook and Tink slide from Kerry Callen's Blog; Flintstones slide from What My Dad Saw; all other slides from various contributors to flickr

BIG HEARTS - SMALL PARTS

Someone's Valentine card---


---had the following, curious, warning on the back...


Well, at three years old, what can you expect?!