For fans of relatively offbeat animation, 2008 seems to have been a banner year. Pixar produced perhaps their most acclaimed effort yet with Wall-E, which is drawing considerable heat for a best picture nomination. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashirthrilled and horrified audiences in Competition in Cannes with subject matter and personal introspection not usually broached by animated films. Yet the most satisfying animated film that surfaced in 2008 may well have been Nina Paley’s delightful Sita Sings The Blues, which marries the tunes of obscure 30’s blues songstress Annette Hanshaw to a retelling, by three hip, Gen-Y Indians, of the Indian myth Ramayana and a mildly autobiographical story of a Seattle-based female cartoonist loosing her husband to his job in India. The film, a nominee for this year’s Gotham Award for the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You after an impressive festival run that began at this year’s Berlinale, screens at MoMA on Thursday and Saturday. Clearly a dedicated postmodernist, after the jump Paley discusses Sci-Fi channel’s Eureka, Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture and the strange ambiguities of influence.
While much of the Spout team is across the country covering Comic-Con (and what a great job they’re doing), I’m staying home and relaxing. Sure, it looks like a lot of fun out in San Diego, but I bet it can get really stressful, too. I hear yesterday there was a little problem with Hall H collapsing early in the morning. I can do without that kind of excitement.
Maybe this weekend I’ll just lounge around the house in a Batman costume while my brother (who alerted me to the amusing ‘toon above) comes over and hangs out in a Spider-Man costume. Or, should I have said Baman and Piderman? Watch the clip and be inspired to have your own lazy Comic-Con in the privacy of your own home. And if you don’t think it’s the quite same, since you don’t get to attend the panels and what not, just keep checking back to SpoutBlog for all your liveblogged updates. It’ll be just like the real thing. I pwomise.
For those who may have been out of town last week, it’s time to catch up on the first episode of Italian Spiderman, a wacky new series that spoofs Italian action films from the ’60s and ’70s (while pretending to be a forty-year-old print salvaged from the Atlantic Ocean). It premiered online last Thursday, but it’s more interesting today, since the Internet was all abuzz yesterday with the rumor (started by Latino Review) that Sony’s looking at both Patrick Fugit or Michael Angaro to replace Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 4and 5.
But I say, why go for either of the kids from Almost Famous(Fugit and Angaro both portray the young Cameron Crowe character at different ages), when there’s Italian Spiderman? In fact, why bother making more Hollywood Spider-Man movies, when there’s Italian Spiderman?
After watching the above episode, be sure to check out the trailer for the series and head over to the film’s MySpace page to hear the theme song and other groovy songs from the Italian Spiderman soundtrack.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
