Mar
10
2010

Mark Linkous, Sparklehorse (1962-2010)

I’m very sad to read about the death by suicide (he shot himself in the heart with a rifle) last week of musician Mark Linkous, founder and primary member of the band Sparklehorse. I’ve been listening to Mark’s strange and compelling music for over a decade now. He didn’t play pop music or follow trends in the contemporary rock music scene. He was his own man and used music as a form of intense self exploration and expression. His creativity and desire for unique sounds led him to use a variety of unusual instruments and recording techniques. In addition to some incredible albums (Good Morning Spider is a personal favorite) he was much in demand as a record producer and championed the music of Daniel Johnston, an outsider artist who shared some of Mark’s notions of music as poetry. I think someone once described Sparklehorse as making music that sound like “psychedelic Appalachian folk-slop” which fits it’s pretty well. I find it haunting and moving like a musical counterpart to the films of Lynch or Bunuel.

Mark apparently struggled with depression for most of his life according to interviews I’ve read with him. I guess it finally got the best of him. He wasn’t the same man after overdosing in 1996 during the first Sparklehorse tour with Radiohead. His body was fucked up and I think his heart was broken at the same time.

I know something about severe depression having survived it myself, but it looks like Mark couldn’t battle the beast anymore and gave up. I’m sorry for him and for his wife, 3 brothers and his mother and father. I’m not going to judge him for taking his life, but I wish I could have been there to talk to him. Standing at the abyss and looking down you start to think that it might be better for everyone if you just jumped; at least you wouldn’t be hurting yourself and everyone else any more. But this is just a foolish lie you tell yourself (part of the depression) because the truth is that you hurt your loved ones more by taking your life. They end up blaming themselves for your death and wondering what they could have done to save you.

My heart goes out to his family and friends. At least we have his magical music to remember him by.

Mark Linkous website and wikipedia entry. Here’s one of my favorites among his music videos:

 

 

By ricky | Posted in Blog, Music | Tagged , | Comments (0)
Feb
19
2010

7-Hour MaMachinima Festival 2010 To Start Tomorrow (February 20th) in Second Life

The second annual MaMachinima International Festival will begin screening films tomorrow at 10AM (Pacific Time) at 4 specially designed locations in the virtual world of Second Life. With over 50 machinima films screening, the event will run for 7 hours with a 2-hour after event party. For those who can’t make it to Second Life, the event is being screened live in Amsterdam (at PLANETART Medialab Artspace) and online at the MMIF site. The festival is non-competitive (no awards will be given) and is instead devoted to bringing machinima to a wider audience and to celebrate this new artform. Founded by Chantal Harvey and many, many volunteers, this festival has a wonderful spirit and is a not-to-be-missed event. In addition to screening films, many of the filmmakers will be discussing their work and answering questions.

Here is the basic information on the festival as provided by MMIF.org

MMIF 2010 info, promo video, full programme, live streams, contact and latest updates and changes at http://MMIF.org

MMIF 2010 ARTISTS:
Gala Charron – Ogogoro – Lainy Voom – Draxtor Despres – Bryn Oh – Rohan Fermi – Toxic Menges – Tara Yeats – Phaylen Fairchild – Pooky Amsterdam & Russell (Rosco) Boyd – Poid Mahovlich – CodeWarrior Carling – Evie Fairchild – Graham Miami – Kronos Kirkorian – Osprey Therian – Chaffro Schoonmaker – SaveMe Oh – Dulci Parx – Chatnoir Studios – Paisley Beebe – Rysan Fall – Sol Bartz (phil Rice) – Rocksea Renegade – Cisko Vandeverre – Nitwacket (Pyewacket Bellman) – Chantal Harvey – Lowe Runo – Pia Klaar – Al Peretz – Halden Beaumont – Kolor Fall – Binary Quandry – spyVspy Aeon – Animatechnica – Miles Eleventhauer – Lizsolo Mathilde – Delgado Cinquetti – L1aura Loire – Iono Allen – Pyewacket Kazyanenko – Fort Knight – Luca Lisci – Larkworthy Antfarm – Beans Canning – Gtoon Jun – Tutsy Navarathna – Hadji Ling – Colemarie Soleil – Xineohp Guisse – Lorin Tone – Ian Friar – Suzy Yue – Claus Uriza / Emily Hifeng – Meta Lord, and others.

MMIF 2010 HOSTS:
Blue Linden, Toxic Menges, Pooky Amsterdam, Draxtor Despres, Chantal Harvey, Poid Mahovlich, Paisley Beebe, Evie Fairchild, CodeWarrior Carling, Lauren Weyland, Phaylen Fairchild, Starshine Halasy and others.

MMIF 2010 TIMES:
Saturday 20th of February
19:00 CET (= SL 10 am PST) – DOORS OPEN
20:00 CET (= SL 11 am PST) – Opening ceremony + Machinima film screenings
03:00 CET (= SL 6 pm PST) – THE END + After party online in SL

PHYSICAL LOCATION:
PLANETART Medialab Artspace
Wibautstraat 150
1091 GR Amsterdam (NL)

VIRTUAL LOCATION:
MMIF 1, 2, 3, 4
Second Life®

Teleport links via http://live.MMIF.org

The full schedule is available at MMIF.org.

Katy Fosk’s film “The Vampyre“ will screen at 11:30AM. I voiced the main character and created a new sound edit for the film. Unfortunately, I won’t be on hand to discuss the work as I have to be at work. But I believe Kate will be and I hope to attend later in the afternoon.

See you there!

By ricky | Posted in Blog, Machinima | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
Feb
03
2010

LOGORAMA – Oscar nominated short film

LOGORAMA, created by the amazing French animation company H5, gets my vote for the best short animated film at the Oscar’s this year. It’s very funny and twisted parody of the Hollywood style action movie with a lot of satire on the American consumer culture thrown in. Wonderful style and faaaaantastic acting. Check it out here:



You can also watch 4 of the 5 nominated films at various sites online. They are all very, very good. I saw FRENCH ROAST at Siggraph in August, but the other three (LADY AND THE REAPER, LOGORAMA and GRANNY O’GRIMM’S SLEEPING BEAUTY are all new to me). Here is a central link at Twitchfilm.net

By ricky | Posted in Blog, animation | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
Jan
31
2010

OLD FANGS, a superb animated short from Sundance

 

Background tests for OLD FANGS from the offical website

 

First time in over a decade I’ve followed anything that happened at Sundance. Perhaps the change in the the leadership there and their huge effort to provide free screenings of lots of festival content on YouTube and their site has made a difference. I know there was a thoughtful article in the New York Times today about “exploding the Indie film world” and starting over again (with lots of micro content published and distributed by the creators themselves). I think this bodes well for Machinima both as an art form and as an viable technique for professional animation. Only time will tell.

After watching many excellent short animated films at the Sundance site, this one (OLD FANGS, directed by Adrien Merigeau) has stayed with me and since the Sundance site offers the ability to embed the video, I thought I’d put it out there for the machinima community. It’s not machinima, but the quality of the story and the visual style is certainly something we can do in several different machinima engines. And the serious effort in creating a story with real feeling is impressive. Coupled with an excellent sound mix and very good acting and you have a truly excellent short animated film.

The director, Adrien Merigeau, has been blogging about the film for months now and there is a lot of excellent and interesting posts at the film’s official site. It’s worth the time to read through the entries.

I hope you like OLD FANGS as much as I do.

 

 

By ricky | Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)