Editorial: Graffeg
This book documents the behind-the-scenes work that went into the animation of the award-winning short film Affairs of the Art by Beryl Productions. It includes a range of sketches, storyboards, final artwork and commentary from director Joanna Quinn and writer Les Mills.
It is often claimed that the French invented cinema. Dominating the production and distribution of cinema until WWI, when they were supplanted by Hollywood, the French cinema industry encompassed all genres, from popular entertainment to avant-garde practice. This Very Short Introduction opens up French cinema through focusing on some of its most notable works, using the lens of the New Wave decade (1958-1968) that changed cinema worldwide. Exploring the entire French cinematic oeuvre, Dudley Andrew teases out distinguishing themes, tendencies, and lineages, to bring what is most crucial about French Cinema into alignment. He discusses how style has shaped the look of female stars and film form alike, analyzing the "made up" aesthetic of many films, and the paradoxical penchant for French cinema to cruelly unmask surface beauty in quests for authenticity. Discussing how French cinema as a whole pits strong-willed characters against auteurs with high-minded ideas of film art, funded by French cinema's close rapport to literature, painting, and music, Dudley considers how the New Wave emerged from these struggles, becoming an emblem of ambition for cinema that persists today. He goes on to show how the values promulgated by the New Wave directors brought the three decades that preceded it into focus, and explores the deep resonance of those values today.Ver libro
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the timing appeared perfect to bring Sesame Street to millions of children living in the former Soviet Union. With the Muppets envisioned as ideal ambassadors of Western values, no one anticipated just how challenging and dangerous this would prove to be. In Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia, Natasha Lance Rogoff brings this gripping tale to life. Amid bombings, assassinations, and a military takeover of the production office, Lance Rogoff and the talented Moscow team of artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and puppeteers remained determined to bring laughter, learning, and a new way of seeing the world to children in Russia, Ukraine, and across the former Soviet empire. With a sharp wit and compassion for her colleagues, Lance Rogoff observes how cultural clashes colored nearly every aspect of the production—from the show’s educational framework to writing comedy to the new Russian Muppets themselves—despite the team’s common goal. Brimming with insight and nuance, Muppets in Moscow skillfully explores the post-Soviet societal tensions that continue to thwart the Russian people’s efforts to create a better future for their country. More than just a story of a children’s show, this book provides a valuable perspective of Russia’s people, their culture, and their complicated relationship with the West that remains relevant even today.Ver libro
Among the most interesting of the prehistoric eras is the Permian age, the most extreme period in the planet’s history. It spanned 47 million years, beginning with an ice age, warming, and ending with the most cataclysmic volcanic episode in the planet’s history. The great bulk of all life on the Earth was almost immediately snuffed out, barely crawling back over the following 10 to 30 million years, and it set the stage for the “Age of Dinosaurs.” What is termed by some as the “Pennsylvanian” or “Carboniferous” period prepared the emergence of the Permian age. Named for the abundance of rocks from the period found in the state of Pennsylvania, many prefer the term “Silesian” or “Carboniferous” era. In the preceding “Mississippian era,” warm, shallow seas disappeared causing serious upheaval to marine life in a tendency toward glaciation. “Significant glaciation” marks the beginning of the Carboniferous immediately preceding the Permian. Carboniferous glaciation began in the late Ordovician Period long before. The eventual Andean-Saharan glaciation, a minor ice age, occurred later in the Silurian Age. These were all remnants of the “Snowball Earth” period of the Cryogenian. The resultant sea level drop as the Carboniferous ice age set in produced conditions much like that of today, with ice on both poles, wet tropics near the equator and temperate regions in between. Despite similar conditions, the Carboniferous lacked the output of greenhouse gases produced by humans. Fragments of plates collided as continents were still fusing into the supercontinent Pangea. During glaciation, “latitudinal climactic belts were widespread.” Permian rocks have been found on all the continents and some have been displaced “considerable distances from their original latitudes” in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras that followed the Permian.Ver libro
The amazingly insightful, funny and brilliant record of Michael Palin's prime years as a member of the famed comedic group, Monty Python. “Charming and at times revelatory . . . A voice of (relative) sanity in the eye of a comedic storm, Palin paints so vivid a picture that the reader becomes a Python by proxy.” —The New York Times Book ReviewMichael Palin has kept a diary since newly married in the late 1960s, when he was beginning to make a name for himself as a TV scriptwriter, and Monty Python was just around the corner.This volume of his diaries reveals how Python emerged and triumphed, how he, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, the two Terrys—Jones and Gilliam—and Eric Idle came together and changed the face of British comedy. But this is only part of Palin’s story. Here, too, is his growing family, his home in a north London Victorian terrace, his solo effort as an actor, and his writing endeavors (often in partnership with Terry Jones) that produce Ripping Yarns and even a pantomime.Meanwhile Monty Python refuses to go away: his account of the making of both The Holy Grail and the Life of Brian movies are page-turners, and the sometimes extraordinary goings-on of the many powerful personalities who coalesced to form the Python team makes for funny and riveting reading.A perceptive and funny chronicle, the diaries are a rich portrait of a fascinating period.“It is terrifically good: funny, astute, and wonderfully written.” —The Boston GlobeVer libro
Focal Points is a new book series of essays, articles and reviews by acclaimed curator and critic Robert Storr. Expertly edited by art historian and curator Francesca Pietropaolo, and richly illustrated, it lends Storr’s illuminating insights into some of the critical themes across recent decades that are of timely urgency. Brilliantly scholarly, accessible and engaging, Focal Points offers fresh interpretations of the varied territory of modern and contemporary art. This third volume grapples with one of the most critical topics at the heart of culture in the United States: racial division. In the essay, originally produced in 1994 when Storr lived in the diverse neighborhood of Flatbush, Brooklyn and worked as a curator in the then predominantly white, male world of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the author vividly describes the role of the modern art museum and multiculturalism, and analyses issues of identity and representation explored in the works of a range of artists including David Hammons, Byron Kim, Glenn Ligon and Adrian Piper, among others.Ver libro
A follow up to their extensive and introductory painting book, Alcohol Ink Guide, which teaches all the beginning techniques for those exploring alcohol ink, artists and instructors Laurie Williams and Sherry Williams return with this instructional resource for creating truly realistic art using this versatile medium. Learn and master the four main alcohol ink painting techniques that include blending, masking, creating a barrier layer, and painting on both sides. From there, tutorials are provided for painting skin tones, fur, stones, rocks, and water, botanical effects, trees, and animals. Also included are 10 realism projects to practice and put together the skills learned into stunning works of art. The authors have years of experience working with alcohol inks, mastering the brushes, blenders, masking, control, and layering that enables artists to create magnificent realistic art, from portraits to landscapes, still lives to photo realism.Ver libro
