The Weekly Animation Challenge 2020
Week 4: Cutout Animation
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Wordless Ivan Ivanov-Vano short set to Rimsky-Korsakov features the combatants of a Medieval Russian fresco climbing down off the wall for a massive battle, Russians versus Mongols, with a special cameo by the Virgin Mary. Based on Rimsky-Korsakov's opera  The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya.

A classic score plus the playful manipulation of space, delicate earth tone colorings of these two 2-D cut-out figure…

As I sat there entranced and chortling, watching David Lynch and a Capuchin monkey in a suit trade cryptic quasi-noir clichés, the monkey with a voice one step removed from reality like he's a denizen of the Black Lodge which I slowly came to realize was also Lynch's voice thus making this like a really weird ventriloquist act, the minutes of the short film passing by way faster than I was realizing, I suddenly had the sensation that my head…

The very first shot of Jim and Andy is of a now gray-bearded 55-year-old Jim Carrey, and it feels like he's playing a character. Is this Old Jim we're seeing? Or Documentary Jim? Or are we just so used to Some Character Jim that we don't recognize the real him when we see it? Or even more disconcerting: did Real Jim get tossed aside somewhere along the road to the fame he now enjoys, possibly lost in the funhouse that…

If ever I'm in a coma and you can't reach me, play some of Bill Conti's score for the Rocky series (Conquest might work best). That about illustrates how deeply Rocky resonates with me, and a lot of other people.

Poverty. Illness. Discrimination. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Rocky speaks past those battles to the deepest part of each of us, the part which may sometimes be beaten but refuses to be defeated. And…