Posts Tagged ‘Donald Duck’
“The Surrealist tradition in all these arts is united by the idea of destroying conventional meanings, and creating new meanings or counter-meanings through radical juxtaposition (the ‘collage principle’)”*…
California-based artist Bill Domonkos takes old photos and footage and turns them into surreal, witty GIF mash-ups. Flashbak reports…
As he says of his multimedia collages:
I experiment by combining, altering, editing and reassembling using digital technology, special effects and animation to create a new kind of experience. I am interested in the poetics of time and space—to renew and transform materials, experiences and ideas. The extraordinary thing about cinema is its ability to suggest the ineffable—it is this elusive, dreamlike quality that informs my work…
I think a lot of my work comes into being by chance. It’s all about making visual associations between things I’ve seen in the public domain. The back and forth experimentation of combining different elements usually leads somewhere unexpected…
More– and more wonderful examples: “Artist Creates Brilliant Surreal Animations from Archival Photos and Film,” from @billdomonkos in @aflashbak.
* Susan Sontag, “Happenings: an art of radical juxtaposition“
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As we muse on montage, we might send squawky birthday greetings to Donald Duck; “born” (in that he made his first screen appearance) on this date in 1934 in “The Wise Little Hen.”
“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.”*…
Ducklings everywhere: the names of Donald Duck’s three nephews across Europe, from Mapologies (where one will also find the other names of Donald himself and of the Flintstones).
* Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
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As we dunk on Uncle Donald, we might recall that it was on thus date in 1921 that Newman Laugh-O-Gram studio released it’s first (more or less) four animated films as a kind of demo reel. The first three were live shots of young director Walt Disney drawing a single fame; the fourth, “Kansas City’s Spring Clean-up,” was actually animated.
Laugh-O-Gram only lasted two years, but it was long enough for Disney to recruit several pioneers of animation: Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Friz Freleng, and Carman Maxwell— and, with Iwerks, to create Mickey Mouse.
“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined”*…
Over the last 40 years or so, the Topps Chewing Gum Company has published “Wacky Packages”– stickers featuring parodies of well-known consumer product packaging. Predictably. many marketers objected to this kind of treatment and sent “cease and desist” letters, shortening the lives of some of the parodies, which are now harder to find.
But the rarest of all are the “Lost Wackys,” titles that were never released at all (often because, on receiving a C&D letter, Topps would often pull all of the manufacturers packages, some of those, like the one below, before they were finished).
Wander the wonderful world of Lost Wackys.
* Toni Morrison, Beloved
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As we go faux logo, we might send squawky birthday greetings to Donald Duck; “born” (in that he made his first screen appearance) on this date in 1934 in “The Wise Little Hen.”
Donald in “The Wise Little Hen”
R.I.P…
Alongside its Waterbury, Vermont factory, surrounded by a white picket fence, stands Ben & Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard, arrayed with the headstones of especially beloved– or particularly despised– flavors…
See more monuments to melted dreams at Messy Nessy Chic.
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As we lower our spoons to half mast, we might spare a thought for Clarence Nash; he died on this date in 1985. While never as well known as Mel Blanc, Nash was the voice actor who created one of the most recognizable characters in American film history: he voiced Donald Duck.
Duck!…
Lars von Trier and The Duck
A mock trailer for a “Dogme 95” – Donald Duck movie, from Icelandic television’s Mid-Island show. The pretentious checklist of the Danish avant-garde cinematic movement seems to be followed to the letter here.
From the YouTube description:
Donald leads a tormented life on the unforgiving streets of Duckburg, where sometimes he must betray his own conscience to make ends meet.
Donald has to raise his 3 nephews, deal with a cheating girlfriend and put up with working for his stingy uncle; the richest duck in down. This is a tale everyone can relate to.
Wait for Goofy’s appearance, you’ll be glad you did.
Via the ever-illuminating Dangerous Minds…
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As we consider cultural commotion, we might recall that it was on this date that a mid-Manhattan opera house that had become a TV studio (Captain Kangaroo, Password), then fallen into disuse, reopened as Studio 54. The club was the project of Syracuse roommates Steve Rubell and Ian Shrager; with help of Carmen D’Alessio, a public-relations maven in the fashion industry, whose Rolodex included names like Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol and Truman Capote, it briskly became the epicenter of disco and the most famous nightclub in the world. In the end, Studio 54’s trajectory was tied to that of disco and of the transitional moment (part fin de siecle; part dawn of a new– Reagan’s– America) it epitomized. It closed on February 4, 1980– with a party called, appropriately enough, “The End of Modern-day Gomorrah.”
Andy Warhol, Jerry Hall, and friends
The crowd awaits
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