Saturday, July 11, 2009

MY SECRET OBSESSION

... about to be not-so-secret ...

It's a French animation site called
MINUSCULE -- short (five minutes max) animated films entirely devoted to the Private Life Of Insects (that's the series title). You can very easily Google the name and see most of them online, but I couldn't bear the poor quality of some of the uploads and besides when I REALLYREALLYREALLY like something, I believe in supporting it with purchases. So ... I asked a friend (a REALLYREALLYREALLY good friend, as you'll see) to buy the boxed DVD set for me -- 4 DVDs -- and post them to me, from Belgium, by airmail please as I had already become a junkie and was now seeing pink spiders everywhere. And he did. And I got my boxed set by airmail and I have them in my hot sticky little hands and I can play them anytime I want even though they are PAL Region 2 and out of the five available devices I have for playing stuff only ONE has successfully overcome the Ogre of Conflicting Software. And I even successfully resisted watching them until I was through working on my picture book for TULIKA BOOKS -- it's called WHERE'S THAT CAT? and is now finished, finished, FINISHED!! Whoohoo! -- as of yesterday, and I'm beyond thrilled and contented watching my little films.

So yes, I STRONGLY recommend the Minuscule series ... and I have added a permanent link to the site, in the right-hand column.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

agreed. minuscule is gr8 stuff! would be a great pl@4m 4 medical educ8ing. kind of like th@ movie with raquel welch entering the blood stream - i 4 get the movie's name but not raquel in her skin tight neoprene (?) costume! there r so many physiological processes that could be taught with anime techniques. get a cuppla parasites to enter the blood stream and w@ch them zoom around. gt

Unknown said...

It's a bit sad that the DVD can only be ordered from France but -- hey: that's how it is.

The movie was called THE FANTASTIC VOYAGE -- and I remember seeing it and yes, images from that movie truly augmented my perception of the body's interior plumbing and cellular-level politics ... it was amazing. There's a certain sense in which the early SF films were "better" because their special FX were OBVIOUSLY clunky -- and you could concentrate on the story elements or the straightforward drop-jaw situations. But now it may be possible to use one of those travelling capsules that can do a sort internal video tour to take an actual film of an actual gut, then superimpose characters to run around dodging the processes of digestion ...

Elimination would be the grand and thrilling finale!! Yow.

Scherezade said...

I likes.

WSW said...

Totally unrelated but your "Escape" is a nominee for Crossword Book of 2008!

I love Escape!!Waiting for its sequel. There is a sequel right?

Unknown said...

WSW -- delighted and thrilled ... and yes: a sequel is in the works. Being worked on. Will happen. Of course, in the end, tis all in the hands of the Almighty ... a.k.a The Great God Of Publishing!

Anonymous said...

speaking of publishing, heres something yet not connected. i read with very gr8 enthusiasm a description of the financial horror we have been heading for in an article The Great American Bubble Machine by Matt Taibbi Rolling Stones July 9 -23 52- that can be read through a blog site as http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3159732&pagenumber=1 gt

Mr. D said...

Outstanding stuff, that. Thanks for the tip-off