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liveblogging insanity

We’re watching as we speak the Czech, 1988 version of Alice in Wonderland, with the creepy stop-motion animation-holy jaysus is this movie weird. Has anyone else seen this?

There is a march hare spreading butter onto a pocketwatch. Oh right, he’s in a wheelchair contraption.

Now there’s a ferret-like thing the length of the table who’s licking all the cups!

OMG, Tom Petty! No, just kidding on the last one.

Mon, January 15 2007 » Movies/TV

9 Responses

  1. Meghan January 16 2007 @ 10:48 am

    you’re watching Alice! i wrote a paper on that movie! All about how they transitioned between spaces (5 pages on it, crazy I know). That movie is incredible. Have you ever seen any of the Brothers Quay’s work? Very much up the same alley.

  2. Jeff VanderMeer January 16 2007 @ 4:43 pm

    Yep! Seen all of Svankmejer’s stuff. Also the Quay’s stuff, as Meghan says, is very cool. Except Svankmejer has more of a sense of humor.

    One short-short involving a guinea pig and a punch-and-judy show we thought was great, and funny, but we showed it to a friend without knowing he had a phobia about both puppets and guinea pigs…and he, predictably, found it rather horrific.

    JeffV

  3. Paul Jessup January 16 2007 @ 5:17 pm

    If you like Svankmejer’s Alice, check out his Faust and some of his collected shorts. Amazing stuff.

  4. Alice Kim January 16 2007 @ 6:47 pm

    Yes! Is wonderful. I love/am terribly creeped out by the fact that the white rabbit is played by a real stuffed rabbit.

    Svankmajer’s “Food” short films are fabulous: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/07/jan_svankmajers.html

    It may or may not put you off your food.

  5. Tim Pratt January 16 2007 @ 8:09 pm

    I saw Alice in college, though I think I may have actually been on drugs when I watched it. Sounds like that was probably overkill. I’ll have to check out some of Svankmejer’s other work.

  6. Alan January 17 2007 @ 6:38 pm

    Thanks all-we have this movie called Blood Tea and Red String that seems to be Up the Same Alley.

  7. Ted January 19 2007 @ 5:49 am

    On the commentary soundtrack to _Blood Tea and String_, the animator says that seeing _Alice_ was what made her want to do animation.

  8. Alan January 19 2007 @ 4:33 pm

    Ted, what did you think of BT&S?

  9. Ted January 22 2007 @ 3:15 am

    I liked it. I think the pacing was a bit uneven — too slow in the middle, too fast at the end — but I think that’s easily forgiveable for a project that took a single person thirteen years to finish. I think the description “twisted Beatrix Potter” is apt; it’s like Cegavske took a step down the alley that Svankmejer and the Brothers Quay live at the end of.

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