The Places You Will Go

Salman Rushdie's Luka fires up animation imaginations | Children's books | guardian.co.uk

A children's novel by Booker prize-winning author Sir Salman Rushdie has inspired animation students at London's Kingston University to create short films based on the book.

Luka and the Fire of Life tells the story of 12-year-old Luka Khalifa who, along with his two loyal companions, a bear called Dog and a dog called Bear, is on a quest to steal the fire of life to revive his beloved storyteller father Rashid who has fallen into a deep sleep. The book was written by Rushdie as a gift for his son Milan on his 12th birthday.

It inspired students Han Byul Lee, Sam Falconer, Irsiz Heathershaw, So Hewi Lee and Dawn Smit to create this short film, which was judged the winner.

Shaun Tan Wins an Oscar | Herald Sun

Directors Shaun Tan (right) and Andrew Ruhemann win the Oscar for best animated film for 'The Lost Thing'. Picture: AP/Matt Sayles Source: AP

MORE than a decade ago Shaun Tan was an unemployed illustrator not sure where his life was headed.

In the end, life has worked out nicely for the 37-year-old born in Fremantle, Western Australia, but now a resident of Melbourne.

Tan, you could say, is an accidental Oscar winner.

"I started off as an illustrator with no formal training other than high school," Tan said, stunned as he stood backstage at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood with his gold statuette for short animated film The Lost Thing, won with British co-director Andrew Ruhemann.

The 15-minute computer generated and hand-painted movie was only supposed to be a picture book.

"I originally wrote this story in 1998," Tan said.

"I was an unemployed illustrator. I wrote it on the kitchen table of my share house, worked on it for a year, developed it as a picture book, which was then published in Melbourne around 2000. "

The story is set in Melbourne and is about a boy who, while collecting bottle caps near a beach, discovers a strange creature that seems to be a combination of an industrial boiler, a crab and an octopus.~ AAP

via heraldsun.com.au

Posted via email from daphnelee's posterous

 

N.B. View the film of The Lost Thing here.

An Oscar for Shaun Tan?

An Oscar for Shaun Tan?

By Chelsey Philpot --> February 24, 2011

Shaun Tan Photo by Inari Kiuru

Shaun Tan may have to make room on his shelves for an Oscar. The award-winning author and illustrator best known for his wordless graphic novel, The Arrival (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Bks., 2007), has been nominated in the Best Short Film (Animated) category for The Lost Thing, where he makes his directorial debut along with co-director, Andrew Ruhemann.

Based on Tan's 2005 picture book of the same name, The Lost Thing (Simply Read) tells the story of a curious boy who discovers an odd-looking creature on the beach—and learns about cruelty and indifference while trying to help it find its place.

We caught up with Tan at home in Australia before he headed to Los Angeles to attend the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony on February 27.

The Railway Children: Forever Young | Film | The Guardian

Heartbreaking ... The Railway Children. Photograph: Allstar/EMI/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

via guardian.co.uk

Posted via web from daphnelee's posterous

The Railway Children will always be remembered for that scene at Oakworth station, the one where Roberta's father emerges through the steam of a departing train. "Daddy, my Daddy!" Plenty of people will admit to weeping when the young Jenny Agutter is reunited with her father. But watching it now, 40 years after it was first released, I find myself welling up long before then: at the birdsong, the music, the Yorkshire countryside, the lost Edwardian world.

Truly Wild

By DAPHNE LEE

THE Malaysian release date for Where the Wild Things Are keeps getting postponed, but I managed to magically view it (don't ask!) and, two days later, am still stroking my chin and going "Hmmmm..."

I think the trailer has all the best bits. This is true of many movies - the funniest or scariest or most poignant or beautiful (depending on the film's genre) parts are shoved into the one minute teaser and when you watch the actual movie you have to sit through all the yawn-inducing, belief-suspending and mind-numbing stuff in between.

The movie wasn't boring, but I think I had a bit of trouble separating it from the picture book I so love. You can't watch it expecting it to make you feel the way the book does, but it's hard not to expect to experience the same magic - hard for me anyway.

Twilight: New Moon review

From Page to Screen
Twilight: New Moon

by Claire E. Gross

The second cinematic installment of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire romance series The Twilight Saga is best left for only the most devoted fans. Both book and movie follow the deepening friendship between heroine Bella and Jacob. A sweet, younger-brother type in the first movie, he’s suddenly bulked up to become a romantic counterpart to Edward: warm to Edward’s cold, present when Edward disappears without a trace (having been convinced by a paper-cut that Bella is better off without him). Meanwhile, Jacob is a werewolf, his tribe sworn to protect humankind from vampires — sorry, Edward — and vampire-with-a-grudge Victoria closes in on Bella. Oh yeah, and Bella’s depressed a lot.

Wild Wild World

Two items of interest for fans of Where the wild Things Are:

1. Spike Jonze's blog, We Love You So, about the upcoming film and its influences.

2. Terrible Yellow Eyes, a blog about an exhibition of art works inspired by the picture book.

Here's a sample from the second blog: Alan Cook's contribution, entitled Wild.

Books to Film

By Daphne Lee

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

AS Maurice Sendak fans know, Spike Jonze's adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are is scheduled for release in October this year. The trailer looks quite promising as far as the wild things go. They are actors in furry suits - like Bird Bird from Sesame Street - but their expressively monstrous faces are, so it's been reported, the work of computer graphics. As far as I can tell from the official trailer (watch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--N9klJXbjQ), they look just like the originals in the picture book.

Wild Teaser

I still haven't figured out how to embed videos so here's the link to the trailer for the Where the Wild Things Are movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RowGJtytQRE

I love the Wild Things - they're just so perfectly like those in the book. Max doesn't look or "feel" like Max, but I may get used to him over the course of a whole movie.

I'm not sure how I feel about the scene where Max spies his mother kissing someone ... his dad, her boyfriend? I don't know if that's a necessary addition to the story. We'll have to see.

"Shoes" Misses The Pointe

I bought the DVD of the 2007 ITV dramatisation of Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes. Watched it last night and was rather disappointed.

It was just totally not what I "see" when I read the book. Neither was the BBC version that was released in 1975 (I have that on video). I guess that happens when you really love a book.

Emma Watson was wrong for the part of Pauline, and so was Yasmin Paige as Petrova. Lucy Boynton who played Posy was quite good though.

Theo Dane, the dancing teacher, was portrayed quite scarily - always shaking her behind and sweeping her arms about. And I really disliked her moping because she was manless and lonely. The way they had a man appear at the end to sweep her off her feet, and her desperate delight when she realised that she wouldn't die a dried up old spinster was ridiculous and offensive.

I would much rather be an old spinster than someone like Theo, and so I loved the old Drs Smith and Jakes, played brilliantly by Harriet Walter and Gemma Jones respectively.

I felt that the movie focussed more on the Sylvia, the children's guardian, than the children. There seemed too much emphasis on her loneliness and struggle to support the children. Of course they killed off Mrs Simpson and had Sylvia fall in love with and marry Mr Simpson!

Almost nothing was shown of the running of the Academy and the children's education and life as performers. So the title, Ballet Shoes, didn't really fit the story that told.

I give it 4/10.