¡Feliz Dia de Los Muertos!

Tonight, A bunch of us met up at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for the Day of the Dead festival. On this day, departed souls join the world of the living to  eat, drink and be merry.

Throughout each period in Mexican culture, death seems to hold no terror. In Mexican art, legends, and religion, death has not been a mysterious and fearful presence but a realistic recognizable character as much a part of life as life itself. Dia De Los Muertos expresses this perspective:it is not a mournful commemoration but a happy and colorful celebration where Death takes a lively, friendly expression and is not frightening or strange.There is no place for sorrow or weeping for this could be interpreted as a discourteous to the dead relatives who are visiting gladly. - ladayofthedead.com

It was Eddie’s and my first experience of Dia de Los Muertos, and it was an amazing evening in a spectacular setting. There were many elaborately decorated altars, vendors selling cool ‘muertos’ artefacts, people with facepaint, music, dancing, and those Oaxacan taquitos & margaritas really hit the spot.

The pic above is of two little kids who deserve the best costume prize! Check out more photos HERE. (flickr photoset)

Book Signing at La Luz

Autographed by Lourdes Grobet & Solar!

Watched this week…

Louis Clichy’s A Quoi Ça Sert L’Amour  was mentioned on Drawn and AWN a while ago. I saw it for the first time this week. Sigh. The animation is absolutely gorgeous, and what a great song by Edith Piaf.

The Mascot by Ladyslaw Starewicz. This was somethin’ else. A somewhat sweet and macabre stopmotion ”Toy Story” from the 30′s…

The story revolves around a hand-made stuffed dog puppet who comes to life when the poor woman who is making him sews a teardrop inside his chest. She has a sick little girl who wants “an orange” more than anything… how times have changed. Anyway, the dog goes through Hell to get this orange, fighting all sorts of weird demons, other puppets, and Satan himself! (via awn)

Tonight  Eddie, Jim and I went to see The Constant Gardener at the Beverley Center. It was a powerfully gripping and tragic experience. The cinematography is as stunning as in City Of God by the same director, Fernando Meirelles. Go see!

And…

Thanks to Kristin for the GIMP trade! And for linking us on her blog

 Patently silly stuff.

An Egg Car for drivers who can’t park

Awesome Rockabilly photo series by Erik Refner.

Via Aaron’s Cold Hard Flash – A series of Flash shorts that illustrate what’s new in Flash 8. (which we have yet to try out)

Dia de los Muertos this weekend! At the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I missed the last two years’ celebrations… am definitely going this year!

They’re back!

Let’s hope this is the first in a revival of the Mexi-Lucha film.  Mil Mascara Versus The Aztec Mummy, puts the man of a thousand masks back where he belongs…er, that is…fighting an Aztec mummy!  Yeah!  If this pic is anything to go by, the film should be a blast!  One question: what the hell is Private Reinhardt doing in there?!?

Is that really our very own Private Reinhardt, second from the end?

Private Reinhardt from ¡Mucha Lucha!

A few months ago I was invited to customize one of Paul Cruikshank’s Circus Punks.  Hmmm… Hand painting (??!!) It had been a while since I had tackled anything without a “Ctrl Z” option…. 

© Thorsten Hasenkamm

Gimp Plush by Kristin Tercek
(as posted on Cute Things)

Sign O’ The Times…

Spotted at The Coffee Bean, Hollywood Boulevard, on Monday.  Who said Californians don’t give a rat’s ass?

Copasetic!

CD cover by Lili for a compilation we made for a friend in Australia (hi Madonna!)  When Lili sent me her artwork I flipped!  Too, too cool.  Trojan Records should get on the case and actually put this out!

Old-school 3D

I saw Wallace & Gromit this week at the Cineramadome (cool theater… first time here) OK… there is something to be said about British humor which simply craps all over the type of textbook “slapsticky parody” humor seen in US animated features (not naming any names). Just my personal two-cents.

In short, Curse of the Were-Rabbit was funny as hell. The characters had so much personality for very simple designs; the dialogue was smart; the pacing brilliant. In this age of smoothly-rendered CG (and ’don’t-you-love-the-shiny-fur-textures-on-these-talking-animals’), it is a treat to see old school plasticine models with fingerprints on them! And GROMIT! No celebrity-voiced wisecrackin’ dialogue necessary. All the character and emotion is in his very expressively animated eyes.

Highly recommended

I know we haven’t posted here in ages. Eddie and I are still jetlagged from our trip… trying to get our energy back and bodyclocks working normally again … what with all this smoke and smog in L.A. Meanwhile, still doing stuff… slowly getting back into the swing of things…

Listen: The In-Crowd by Dobie Gray … And many more soulful goodies at Popmeter.com (We like the Soul Stomps & Black RnB jukebox!)

Download: Electric Vindaloo by Steinski