"faust" By Jan Svankmajer

[Maximius]

I just watched Faust by Jan Svankmajer again last night, I cannot recommend it highly enough. For the uninitiated, Svankmajer is one of the worlds foremost animators. He uses human actors, marionettes, claymation, and stop action techniques and it all comes together into something very, very disturbing but usually with a lot of humor woven in. I also recommend his version of "Alice", about Alice in Wonderland, and "Little Otik" an adaptation of an old Czech myth about a monster that devours all it sees. There are lots of short films of his around as well in collections.

[demagogue]

I think I recall seeing this, although it's been a while.

Funny enough, I had once dreamt of making an animated version of Faust myself; I think after watching the Batman animated series and another series I can't remember the name right now, but really dark, I wanted to make something dark and classic (not really seriously). But when I saw that Faust had been done before, I was interested.

It was quirky, that's for sure.

Not quite the same (more somber) aesthetic I had in mind, but I liked it.

Edited February 1, 2007 by demagogue

[Maximius]

I think I recall seeing this, although it's been a while.

Funny enough, I had once dreamt of making an animated version of Faust myself; I think after watching the Batman animated series and another series I can't remember the name right now, but really dark, I wanted to make something dark and classic (not really seriously). But when I saw that Faust had been done before, I was interested.

It was quirky, that's for sure.

Not quite the same (more somber) aesthetic I had in mind, but I liked it.

 

 

Yes, Svankmajer always pulls a little trick on the viewer, in the darkest scenes there is usually a bit of humor, albeit dark humor thank Bog. The scenes of the summoning of Mephisto are wonderful though, I'' have to work that into a FM at some point in the future.

[Domarius]

Aaaaahhhh man, I saw, way late at night on our "multicultural channel" SBS (where they have a lot of wierd shit on late at night), a rendition of Alice In Wonderland. The white rabbit was a stuffed bunny that came alive, and tore an opening in its stomach by accident. The stuffing would leak out as he ran around, and sometimes he'd try to stuff it back in, and sometimes he'd eat it. He had these really ugly, vicious looking teeth.

 

Alice was a human girl (not animated) and looked alot like the disney one, but much younger. Everytime she narrated, it showed nothing but close up of her mouth as she spoke.

 

And the part I saw, just took place in some old abandoned house. And the hole was a hole in the broken wooden floor.

 

It was so surreal, I liked it for the same reason I liked Ren And Stimpy - crazy stuff that makes you go "woahhh..." but not in a bad way.

 

I've always wanted to know what that movie was, so I could see the full thing. Sounds like that must be it??

[Maximius]

Aaaaahhhh man, I saw, way late at night on our "multicultural channel" SBS (where they have a lot of wierd shit on late at night), a rendition of Alice In Wonderland. The white rabbit was a stuffed bunny that came alive, and tore an opening in its stomach by accident. The stuffing would leak out as he ran around, and sometimes he'd try to stuff it back in, and sometimes he'd eat it. He had these really ugly, vicious looking teeth.

 

Alice was a human girl (not animated) and looked alot like the disney one, but much younger. Everytime she narrated, it showed nothing but close up of her mouth as she spoke.

 

And the part I saw, just took place in some old abandoned house. And the hole was a hole in the broken wooden floor.

 

It was so surreal, I liked it for the same reason I liked Ren And Stimpy - crazy stuff that makes you go "woahhh..." but not in a bad way.

 

I've always wanted to know what that movie was, so I could see the full thing. Sounds like that must be it??

 

 

Yessir, thats its! I just watched "Alice" a few nights before "Faust." My fiancee ran out of the room when the Rabbit came alive and dived into the desk drawer. Definitely check out Faust too, anything by Svankmajer pretty much rocks, I cannot get the scene of Faust summoning Mephistopheles out of my head.

[Domarius]

Cool, well now I have a name to go on

[demagogue]

I just checked.

Some of Faust is up at Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1HJcijYmFk

 

And some of Alice is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5wHMgTPF-s

 

There's bits and pieces of a lot of his stuff actually,

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_quer...p;search=Search

 

I would probably never have checked...

[Domarius]

Thanks!

 

BTW guys, you can keep any streaming video from popular video sites, just by using www.keepvid.com - enter in the URL and it gives you a download link! But you also need to download the .FLV player (free)

'swhat I'm doin'...

[Crispy]

I recommend the VLC player for playing FLV files. And just about anything else for that matter; it plays almost every format you could think of.

 

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[Domarius]

Ahhh thanks... I think that's much better than what i'm using now...

[sparhawk]

I always use mplayer.

[Domarius]

Me too but it can't play FLV files, which is what you get when you download a streaming video with keepvid. I used to use FLV Player but its it's own player and doesn't have all the features that other players do.