Check out this neat animation done entirely by lighting and extinguishing candles. I’m extremely impressed by the effort and ambition in the execution. See also the Making Of.

Via 6ix Passions.

NFB.ca has finally launched, allowing some of its great catalog of films to be available to the world. Above is Norman McLaren’s Pas de Deux, one of many great ones on the site. Another must-see is Lonely Boy, which I’ve posted here before, but in a sloppily-segmented YouTube version. The high-quality version here seems closer to DVD quality than I would have expected.

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Montréalers might also be interested in Montreal by Night, a portrait of the city in the 40’s; 23 Skidoo, a bizarre post-apocalyptic view of the city, and Our Street was Paved with Gold, about St. Laurent Blvd in the 70’s.

Thanks to Montreal City Weblog and Said the Gramophone for these selections.

This photograph was taken in 1910—long before colour film—by taking three photos from the same spot with Red, Green, and Blue filters in front of the camera. Lacking any sort of colour development process, the only method of showing the photos would have been from from three projectors projecting through colour filters. Thankfully, the negatives have here been combined digitally, giving us an amazing view of life in Russia before World War I.

You can see a sneak-peek into what happens when one of the subject moves, like this peasant-girl from the above-photo:

Hedgehog in the fog is one of the masterworks of Russian animator Yuri Norstein, who did most of his most well-known pieces under the Soviet-controlled Soyuzmultfilm. Some of the animators films are still available in the Masters Of Russian Animation series on DVD.

He has apparently been working on a feature-length film based on the Nikolai Gogol short-story the overcoat since 1981, and from the sound of the Wikipedia article, he isn’t even half done yet, which makes me feel better about my blogging pace of late.

Dave Soldier and Komar & Melamid are the producers of The People’s Choice Music, an EP of sorts created based on an internet survey in order to create a song which would statistically appeal to the most number of people. On the flip side, they also produced a song which would appeal to the least number of people possible.

The favourite song “comprises a moderately sized group (three to ten instruments) consisting of guitar, piano, saxophone, bass, drums, violin, cello, synthesizer, with low male and female vocals singing in rock/r&b style”. Not that surprising, considering what appears on top40 radio.

Much better is the least wanted song. At 26 minutes, it features “accordion and bagpipe (which tie at 13% as the most unwanted instrument), banjo, flute, tuba, harp, organ, synthesizer”.

“An operatic soprano raps and sings atonal music, advertising jingles, political slogans, and ‘elevator’ music, and a children’s choir sings jingles and holiday songs. The most unwanted subjects for lyrics are cowboys and holidays”

Visit the project page.

Stream the Most Wanted and Least Wanted.

Buy on iTunes

Via This American Life.

The Mittenstrings are a band, but that’s not their whole story. Though they play the occasional live show, they were originally conceived as a TV show of sorts—a show starring foam-core cut-outs and filmed in a style dubbed “Inanimation”. Over the summer I helped put the video episodes together along with the directors Lily and Sylvan Lanken.

The music (which is the real star), has been listenable on their MySpace page for a while now.

I’m very happy to announce that the videos are now up too. I did much of the editing, and some voicework, though I am not a professional at either of these things. I hope you enjoy it.

Here’s a little change of pace. I ran across this little gem of a book at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in New York City last week. Despite how it might look on video, this is a completely low-tech mechanical system, comprised of an acetate layer moving over a photo created from cut-up frames of motion.

The concept is so utterly simple, yet the resulting animation is surprisingly fluid.

Buy on Amazon

Music by Adam and the Amethysts (used completely without permission—please don’t sue me Adam).

Andrew has brought my attention to these great long exposure photographs of St. Petersburg Russia by Alexey Titarenko.

This is the time of year where we start seeing innumerable year-end best-of lists. Sean of Said the Gramophone, who kindly did some guest posts here this week, has one of the best: his 50 Best Songs of the Year. They’re in MP3 form and ready for downloading. It’s a great way to learn about new music you may not usually hear.

This is also following fellow Gramophone writer Dan Beirne’s Top 10 Albums of 2008.

Erin Dollar makes beards. She also paints beards, dreams of beards, and even sells beards. As someone with a beard, I approve of this. If you can’t grow ‘em, buy ‘em.

Furthermore, if you are beard-crazy, my pal Keith Shore is doing magnificent painted beard portraits for $200 (see the sidebar).