The Secret of Kells

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMPhHTtKZ8Q

Honestly think Up robbed this. Animation is, what, very Tartakovsky, god, I loved this.

Animation is, what, very Tartakovsky

OTM - almost criminally so, even. This is pure Samurai Jack.

Lot more dynamic, though, especially with the colors and the details.

Looks really cool! Some of those action sequences definitely do seem inspired by SJ.

Saw this last night. Great stuff. This seems like it could be one of the most Irish/Celtic animated things ever.

mick lally, who had a vocal part in this, passed away last week. local man, very well thought of in irish theatre/art circles (but best known for his part in long running irish soaps)

Three people I wish could(could have) seen this would be Joseph Campbell, Hayao Miyazaki, and Shigeru Miyamoto, as it fits in so well with their work.

this is playing at the local 'arty' movie theatre, been thinking of going, unfortunately it's not there tonight

This was totally gorgeous A+ visually and not near as good in every other department. The novelty of seeing a movie so strongly devoted to big-upping one cultural artifact was interesting.

Gonna watch this this week! very excited..

This was totally gorgeous A+ visually and not near as good in every other department.

ireland

heard this is great actually, might be worth the cost of an illegal download.

Godddamn Irish propaganda, book was actually inked in IONA...

WAIT, IS THAT GINGER MONK DUDE ACTUALLY ATTACKED BY A BIT OF CELTIC KNOTWORK THAT TURNS INTO A KILLER PARAMECIUM PAISLEY AND TRIES TO EAT HIM?

OK, I gotta see this.

Really loved this movie, though I agree the visuals are the strongest point. I'm convinced the main character is the son of Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable, who got displaced in time somehow. Not sure if that added to the experience.

it is a bit vague and "visually poetic" but basically plays with scale and time in a very entertaining way. i thought the ending quite sad and touching, actually

I may not have successful delivered the message that I liked it a lot & it's totally worth watching.

weird, I just watched this last week without knowing anything about it

this is streaming on netflix btw

Abbott, thanks for clarification, I was about to go aspie on you for slighting it in any way. Out of curiosity, is its shortcomings due to the lack of variety of baddies? Otherwise, the ending wrecked me as completely as Wall-E did.

^^^

It was weird to me that the bad guys were just these grunting pure evil rectangle others, but I wasn't really wishing they had better variety or characterization or anything.

I just thought the movie looked so amazing that they set a near impossible standard for everything else. SO gorgeous! When I was watching it I was thinking about how Triplets of Belleville had almost no dialogue and a very simple plot, and it made it easier to take in all the extra nice animation. So I guess my difficulty with Kells is it was challenging (for an American). How lazy is that? Lame but true.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y211/ftwb/Blog/secret_kells.jpg

Brother Aidan was the best.

my 9 year old would disagree with the visuals being the best thing about it. or as he put it, "the graphics were terrible but that movie was awesome!"

which was followed by a paternal lecture on the evolution of perspective and foreshortening

Brother Aidan reminded me of George Carlin.

Abbott, I think I'm the other kind of American, because Triplets demanded a lot more from me because of its narrative minimalism. (I really didn't like Tati's Playtime, either, so this is definitely a pattern for me.)

Ha, he reminded me of George Carlin, too! I feel totally lame admitting this but I was having a hard time understanding their accents. It was a challenge. TBH I have the same problem with American-made movies where everyone speaks only in whispers for dramatic emphasis like in "The Forgotten."

so sick of wacky r kelly videos

I was gonna go all "but what accent WOULD a Ninth Century Scottish monk (who was actually probably either the descendant of or trained by Irish missionaries) who ended his days in Ireland actually have?"

But then I remembered that some Americans can't even tell a Scottish accent from an English one, let alone an Irish one so I guess I better just wait until the DVD gets here and anyway, hey, I often have trouble understanding Texans, Canadians, people from Georgia/the Carolinas (US versions) and Weejans so who am I to talk?

But you know, a cartoon based on an illuminated manuscript and set in a dark ages monastary is pretty much as K8-bait as you can get, really. Because that alchemist's laboratory (and really, even if that's supposed to be a scriptorum, that's a damn alchemist if I ever saw one) looks super amazing.

I have trouble understanding Southerners too, and they comprise half my family, y'all.

There was a security guard at my old job that my friend from Knoxville, TN (who also worked there) was afraid to talk to because she couldn't understand him. He was a grizzled old Texas dude and even I had to concentrate to figure out what all he was saying. What was awesome was that his favorite topic of conversation was the fantasy novels his granddaughter wrote!

Anyway, this movie is on Netflix now, and I am excited to watch it! Zero interest in Up. Pixar movies just... try too hard.

really beautiful little film...mick lally was fantastic as brother aidan. felt the use of animation to help with the rhythm of the story was really cool...and the music was actually good too, lots of it sounded like an irish trad version of steve reich's "electric counterpoint". also found the vikings/normans being such huge faceless BARBARIANS weird too...the way the tones and colours changed so effortlessly to reflect the moods in the film was so cool.

my only criticism is quite minor and it's prob the way the irish language was used. it's typical of the twee and really cloying way irish has always been used in cartoons and it just makes the language seem stupid. i question the need for it being in there at all, and i say that as a good irish speaker and someone who is pro keeping it alive. just all that "peangair bán" shit etc and that song...they've been dishing this crap out to kids for aeons and it doesn't make them like the language.

also the totally shoehorned and unnecessary use of the irish proverb in the scene where brendan meets aisling...it's like, kids aren't going to find an ancient gailge version of "look before you leap" or whatever interesting. maybe i'm totally off base but it had the feel of some irish language evangelist really wanting to force this.

but yeah i really enjoyed it. book of kells, yeah! i know what i'm going to see next time i'm back home in dublin!

Godddamn Irish propaganda, book was actually inked in IONA...

tracer island

Not super jazzed by the story or performances, but a lot of very cool art in this.

saw this last night, loved it to death. the animation and backgrounds are beautiful, of course, but i loved the story and characters, too. simple and two-dimensional in the manner of most children's films, but i have no problem with that. i related both to our hero and his woodland friend, got caught up in the quest story and even a little, uh, emotional from time to time. plus the cat! instant addition to the short list of my favorite animated films, something i'd like to buy and have around the house along with sleeping beauty, spirited away, fantastic planet, etc.

tartakovsky's influence is all over the secret of kells (along with that of other nickelodeon animators), i can't deny that, but not in a way that made it feel derivative to me. the animators here took some familiar styles and ran with them, an artistic approach i respect. and as much as i liked the look of samurai jack, i always appreciated it from a distance. i never fell for it the way i fell for TSoK.

Yeah, I agree. This had all the stylized-ness of that but pulled it off in a warm and attractive way.

really interesting to hear the writer/director (and lead animation designer) talk about his inspirations and strategies in the bonus features. lot of cool art history parallels and borrowings. plus i guess he'd been working on it for something like 10 years, since before he graduated college, very much a life's work. plenty of time to develop deep connections in the material.

^ this is the one thing I miss with netflix streaming - watching a cool movie and then digging into the extras