September 28, 2019

Dutch touch on Amazon’s ‘Undone’ by Amsterdam’s Hisko Hulsing

Filed under: Comics,Film by Orangemaster @ 12:51 pm

Versatile artist Hisko Hulsing from Amsterdam, known on this blog and from Rotterdam-based comic magazine Zone 5300, has directed ‘Undone’, co-created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg (creator of Bojack Horseman) and Kate Purdy (a writer on Bojack), released by Amazon Studios and co-produced by Michael Eisner’s company Tornante, Submarine Productions Amsterdam, and Minnow Mountain Texas. It premiered on 13 September.

Exploring the elastic nature of reality, the series centers around Alma (Rosa Salazar), a 28-year-old living in San Antonio, Texas, who discovers she has a new relationship to time after nearly dying in a car accident. She learns to harness this new ability in order to find out the truth about the death of her father (Bob Odenkirk).

For Undone, Hulsing used rotoscoping together with actual oil-painted backgrounds giving the animation an old school cinematic feel – a fresh change from all of you bored to tears with the Cal Arts style dominating the last decade of animation.

Here’s the trailer:

(Link: dutchcultureusa.com, Image: Hisko Hulsing)

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March 2, 2016

Painstakingly made animation about Vincent Van Gogh

Filed under: Art,Film by Orangemaster @ 9:34 pm

van-gogh-harvest-detail

An animation film entitled ‘Loving Vincent’ directed by Polish director and painter Dorota Kobiela tells the story of the last days of Vincent Van Gogh’s life. Every frame of this 80-minute film features an entire painting, each made by about 100 painters in Gdańsk, Poland, which adds up to about 56,800 frames.

The team of painters are learning to paint in Van Gogh’s expressionist style for three months, and need to paint 12 paintings for each second of film, each of which takes two days. It would take one person about 9,600 days (26 years) to do this all on their own. The paintings are then photographed using PAWS technology (Painted Animated Work Stations) and are being produced by BreakThru Films that won an Oscar in 2006 for their short feature Peter and the Wolf.

‘Loving Vincent’ isn’t finished and painters are still busy learning until August. The idea is to release the film at the end of this year. Check out the trailer, you won’t regret it:

(Link: thecreatorsproject.vice.com, Image: extreme close-up of The Harvest via Van Gogh Museum)

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January 14, 2016

Famous Czech children’s series hire Dutch writer

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 12:34 pm

PMtrezor

The stop motion series ‘Pat a Mat’ from the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) created by Lubomír Beneš and Vladimír Jiránek from 1976 to 2015 has a wildly popular Dutch version called ‘Buurman en Buurman’ (‘Neighbour and Neighbour’), two handymen getting themselves into all kinds of trouble. The fun part is they never get mad at each other, delighting children and parents alike, so much so that some people probably think it’s Dutch of origin.

Yesterday on the Dutch telelvision show ‘Jinek’ named after host Eva Jinek who happens to have a Czech background, theatre show creator Jelle Kuiper announced he had been given the green light to write 10 more episodes of the show in collaboration with the Czech makers for international distribution sometime in 2017. Kuiper was thrilled to be asked to do this, again highlighting the popularity of the Dutch version since it first appeared on television in 1986.

During Jinek, Kuiper explained that the Germans tried to launch the show three times and failed, something that surprised the guests and the host considering how much Czech culture the German have embraced. Kuiper said that “the Germans didn’t like things going wrong”, and apparently the Dutch love that part a lot.

Grab a beverage and have a look:

(Link: www.rtvzoo.nl, Photo of Pat a Mat by Wikipedia)

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November 7, 2014

What happens when aliens abduct you

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 10:00 am

dirkjan-heerst-studio-mooves

Dirkjan is a popular Dutch gag strip by Mark Retera. Now and again his co-conspirators Remco Polman and Wilfred Ottenheijm, who are part of animation studio Mooves, break out the onion skins and transfer their hero to celluloid.

In ‘Dirkjan Heerst’ (‘Dirkjan Rules’) the eponymous hero finds out exactly what his life is worth in the eyes of aliens from outer space. The short was released in 2010 when it was shown before Jackass 3 in Dutch film theatres. Last week Mooves released it to Vimeo.

It doesn’t have any actual talking, so enjoy.

(Disclosure: Remco, Wilfred and I go way back. Together with a few others we ran a comics fanzine in the 1990s called ‘Iris’ which later spun off an illustration studio of the same name, which even later became Mooves.)

(Photo: cropped screen capture of the short film)

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March 22, 2014

Metropole Orchestra re-records Esquivel

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Branko Collin @ 12:51 pm

Juan Garcia Esquivel was a Mexican composer of pop music who was one of the pioneers of a genre called Space Age Bachelor Pad Music.

mini-skirt-keller-filmLast year Zone 5300 called the genre “an orchestral cross of lounge pop and exotica”. In 2013 the Hilversum-based Metropole Orchestra, the largest professional pop and jazz orchestra in the world, released an album of re-recorded Esquivel tunes, Perfect Vision. Berlin-based composer Stefan Behrisch was asked to reconstruct the sheet music as the originals had been lost.

One Internet store, ReR MegaCorp, sells and describes the record as follows: “Remember stereo? Not the naturalistic, tasteful stereo but the extreme, weird, psychedelic stereo that has been all but forgotten now? Here it is. Apart from being stunning in its own right, this record makes some wake-up statements about recording and what it can do – and about how far we have moved away from that sensibility.”

Marco Kalnenek’s appraisal is not as excited, but then he isn’t trying to sell the album: “[A] loving tribute to an almost forgotten music director. The arrangements are meticulous and the recording and production are perfect—modern without diminishing the original sound.”

The video by Keller Film shown here is a perfect accompaniment for the Esquivel tune Mini Skirt. The sensibility of the animation is American and 1950s-like, but the theme is modern and Dutch. Boy meets girl, except that the girl is a high earning, Macbook wielding professional and the boy one of the army of under-earning delivery men that sprung up after the market for mail was liberalized in 2009.

See also: Wikipedia on Juan Garcia Esquivel.

(Illustration: screen capture of the video, cropped)

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September 3, 2013

Moving in Amsterdam, an animated trip

Filed under: Film by Orangemaster @ 4:28 am

“Harry and his huge, oblivious son run a moving company together. When they help a girl move apartments, their dull, tiny lives are disrupted.”

‘Gracht’ (‘Canal’) was made for the Utrecht School of Arts in Hilversum as a graduation project by four students. The process took six months, and the four guys not only graduated but were also honoured with a ‘staff pick’ on Vimeo.

I like the mover’s watch and the somewhat trendy yet anachronistic use of the compact cassette with Dutch gabber music.

Gracht from Gracht2013 on Vimeo.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com)

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February 10, 2013

Title sequence for Dutch TV show Het Klokhuis uses stop motion video by PES

Filed under: Art,Shows by Branko Collin @ 1:43 pm

Dutch educational TV programme Het Klokhuis (the apple core) has just replaced its old intro. The new leader was made by American animator and Oscar nominee PES (the stage name of Adam Pesapane).

The animation is similar to the previous title sequence which was made by Irish animator Johnny Kelly according to Animated Review. You can see all the previous intros at the Klokhuis website.

Het Klokhuis is a daily educational programme for 8- to 12-year-olds which deals with a single theme each episode using both reporting, skits and songs. It was originally created in 1988 by the actors behind the Stratemakersopzeeshow, Aart Staartjes, Wieteke van Dort and Joost Prinsen.

(Photo: crop of the video. Video: YouTube / PESfilm)

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August 6, 2011

Mac ‘n’ Cheese (animated cartoon)

Filed under: Film,General by Branko Collin @ 3:11 pm

Four students at the Utrecht School of Arts made the following cartoon:

From the artists’ Vimeo page:

This two minute animation took about five months to make, and about a bajillion peanut butter sandwiches.

Synopsis: When you find yourself running scared and running out of energy, there’s only a few options left to outrun your opponent through the southern desert.

(Source video: Youtube / Tom Hankins, Gijs van Kooten, Guido Puijk, Roy Nieterau)

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September 7, 2010

KLIK! animation film festival bigger and crazier

Filed under: Film,General by Orangemaster @ 5:42 pm

This year’s edition of Amsterdam’s KLIK! animation film festival will feature more than 235 films from 63 countries from 15 to 20 September. Now in its fourth year, KLIK! has gone international, with satellite editions and festival tours around the globe. This year’s theme focusses on the wonderful and weirdly disturbing realms of science.

Movie freak and organiser Luuk van Huët talked to me again this year about KLIK! like a very proud father whose toddler now walks and says ‘papa’. He told me that they received an insane amount of films (1100!) to choose from this year.

The programme features great stuff for kids, student competitions and of course, smashing after parties.

KLIK! also still has a satellite edition in the city of Mopti in Mali, West Africa, where Dutchman Willem Snapper lives. He started the Mopti Foundation to help the locals build gardens and irrigation systems and also screens films in his own backyward every week, as there is no cinema to be found for hundreds of kilometers.

Beisdes watching the festival grow year after year, Luuk’s dream would be to have this as a job some day. Check out the funny animated e-cards and send them to friends!

(Link and image: klikamsterdam.nl)

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August 20, 2009

KLIK! animation film festival ready to roll

Filed under: Film,General by Orangemaster @ 10:25 am
wervingsflyer

The KLIK! animation film festival will feature more than 250 films from 32 countries from 17 to 20 September in Amsterdam. This internationally known festival is in its third year and keeps gets bigger. One of the enthusiastic organisers Luuk van Huët talks about KLIK! like a proud father so I had to write something.

“Even though Internet has made it easier to access and view animation from around the globe, not enough offbeat animated fare graces the big screens in our creative capital Amsterdam and the rest of the country. We started the KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival to change that.”

KLIK! also has a satellite edition in the city of Mopti in Mali, West Africa, where Dutchman Willem Snapper lives. He started the Mopti Foundation to help the locals build gardens and irrigation systems and also screens films in his own backyward every week, attracting 300 visitors at a time, as there is no cinema to be found for hundreds of kilometers.

This year KLIK! has compiled a special program for the Mopti Foundation, to be judged by a jury of local dignitaries, and the winner will receive the KLIK! Mopti Award. KLIK! will also give out awards for the best design in animation and the best political animated film and the awards for the best films in the Open and Student Competition.

And if Luuk were watching over my shoulder, he’d remind me again to finally go and see the ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut Sing-and-Swear-A-Long!’ on Friday 18 September.

(Link: klikamsterdam.nl)

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