So? Adventure in the Univerphone

This is an Italian animated TV series about an inventor who gets sucked into the virtual world inside his cell phone. You know… like most Americans do… while they are driving at 75 mph on the freeway and they smash into a concrete pylon, spattering their dull brains across five lanes of traffic. And most deservedly so. But this little animated preview looks inviting. I like it. The series is made by Marco Bigliazzi and Fabrizio Bondi of Toposodo Episodic Productions.  The series has its own web site.

Animation by Evan Mather: The Patron Saint of Television

Filmmaker Evan Mather made this beautiful animation about the life and visions of St. Clare of Assisi.  I had no idea that television was divinely protected.

Makes me miss that old cathode ray.

Evan Mather produces films for his Hand Crafted Films company.

This is a very sly and clever filmmaker who seems to enjoy thinking about what makes certain film genres tick.  He works with language as easily as he works with images.  There’s lots more to post from him but you can go and explore his work on his Vimeo page.

R. Crumb and the Corporate Mono-Culture

Cartoonist Robert Crumb gets interviewed by a Los Angeles Times writer and talks about his living in France and his hatred for the pervasive corporate mono-culture that Americans seem unaware of.  He can’t stand it and chooses to live outside of it.

Really good perspective.

In a culture where you’ve got a Supreme Court actually giving corporate entities the rights of individual human beings, you’ve got total corporate control of every single living man, woman and child.  You can see this complete robotic control on very prominent and horrific display in the current president of the United States.  He a corporate hologram who moves only when commanded to by his boardroom overseers.  The entire country is oriented around cop/lawyer shows on television which are specifically designed to make you feel close and personal with the state/corporate stooges who work for police departments and gleefully lay disadvantaged people out on their faces on subway platforms and slaughter them with bullets fired straight into their backs from six inches away.  ‘The Mentalist’ is probably the supreme example of this attempt to make the corporate/police control mechanism seem odd and quirky and just a little cutely but intelligently eccentric.  ‘Medium’ is another.  The individual with oddball abilities or perceptions is entirely consumed and controlled by the state apparatus.  All cop shows are meant to make as many viewers as possible feel completely comfortable being visited by and talking to the police.  That is the entire truth of American television.  It’s message is simply this: when we come knocking, open the door.

That is the true subtext of every single show ever produced by American broadcasting companies.

R. Crumb is totally right.