KOLLAPS:

More Russian animated goodness: I came across Moscow based artist Kol-Belov's animated series several years ago, and was impressed for the lack of a better word. My previous entry about Russian flash animation rekindled that impression and I plunged into the nets once more to see if I will be able to find it. Unfortunately I remembered neither the titles of his work nor his name.

"dark, industrial, creepy movies..."
I was lucky, after finding koms.ru ("namely Ideologically Distinctive Animation System, Koms is "a non-commercial community of artists, which presents the new wave of Russian flash-animation.") it was no trouble finding Kol-Belov since his work has very distinctive characteristics. In addition to these, the generic Orwellian feel, and almost abstract and somewhat Gigeresque design of his stories also add enough spice to complement the bitter sweet taste of mechanized desperation and modern futility.

Enjoy the links.

link to kollaps
link to Kol-Belov youtube channel.

Sita Sings The Blues

"Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by e-mail. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as “The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”"
-Reel13 blog

Not much more need be told. 20's jazz and 4000 B.C.'s epic narrative gets a bit annoying after a while but that is the fault of the century that we live in. Enjoy the link.

Michiko to Hatchin

Anime!

I will cut to the chase.
Michiko to Hatchin is produced by
Manglobe which also produced
Samurai Champloo and Ergo Proxy.
Hiroshi Shimizu, and Shinichirō Watanabe key character designer and music producer.

Just those two names should be about enough reason to watch it. Unfortunately I cannot say more about it without further ripping off from this very well written article from "Tim Maughan Books". Pay it a visit for more information about the series and other anime goodness.

Russian Animation

Russian Animation always hits the nail on the head when it comes to pinpointing human discomfort and despair even in the most lighthearted variations of its genre. Or so do the ones I have seen so far.

It is indeed rare in a sense. Except for the occasional anime which goes deep into human psyche but does not cut down on the giant robot battles and teen drama, and pseudo-artistic independent french animation that only gets the third place in international award ceremonies because it is french and artsy, we are only offered unadulterated ingenuity by the Russians much like in the previous centuries when the books were still cool.

So there you go, the link leads to an article with the latest examples of flash animations of Russian origin. Lucky for us it is not a variation of [#] [adjective] [noun] genre internet lists and gives a nice background story and critique of each animation it presents.

Black Thin King from Birdo Studio on Vimeo.

Do I know what Black Thinking is?

Yes I do, it is a sales pitch website for OCB, rolling papers I presume, trying to get people to buy more rolling papers. Also it sounds a lot like a porn movie starring an black person who does a lot of thinking about which of them bitc... nevertheless, my point is neither of those, but a promo for the company, a neat animation called Black Thin King, reminiscent of the very first cartoons with jerky characters and objects who cannot stand still for a second as if they have been popping some pills for the very first time.

So try not to smoke, but buy rolling papers, they seem to come up with neater promos than tobacco companies anyhow.