Animation Nation - Take 2

Small steps brought The Secret of Kells to New York.  Image from this New York Times slideshow.

Back in October, I wrote about attending Singapore's animation festival and seeing The Secret of Kells (sound alert), a movie directed by 33-year-old Irishman Tomm Moore.  Well, Moore's secret is now out in a big way.  The Secret earned a write-up in the New York Times on Tuesday, a major place in the New York International Children's Film Festival this month, and  a wider opening in Manhattan from today.  It also has a chance to shine at the Oscars as a nominee in the best animated feature category.  The NYT story focused only a bit on the historical underpinnings of the film and its aesthetic that I enjoyed so much.  Check out the paper's separate review to read about the distinct stylings of the animation.  Instead the big debut piece devoted most of its column inches to the word-of-mouth marketing effort employed by the film's distributors, both worldwide and in America, that earned it an Academy Award nomination.

The Secret's nomination puts it in competition with the very good films Up and Coraline.  It has only a very modest chance of success against these films, but the nomination should be a great encouragement to smaller animation outfits throughout the world.  Its inclusion loosens up the nominations monopoly usually held by Disney/Pixar.  Plus another heavyweight studio 20th Century Fox debuted Fantastic Mr. Fox to great acclaim and their own Oscar nomination this year.  The overall quality among this year's nominations suggests animation's widening talent pool should give filmgoers even more quality features to relish, even as the past decade has proven so good.  

New Yorker readers,  give The Secret of Kells a try, and if you want to be charmed by the early work of another great animation director, seek out Brad Bird's Iron Giant from 1999.

Broadsheet typos - The Fourth Plinth

Sam Martin appointed himself referee of Trafalgar Square one night, starting at 3am.

Even the venerable journalistic newspapers of Britain are showing signs of decline in the internet age. Fewer copy editors means more typographical errors in print and online. This one came from a Guardian review of, or maybe a comment on, Anthony Gormley's art installation that put ordinary Britons atop the usually empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

So it [Gormley's One & Other project] was popular before it began, and that popularity has not diminished. It has been widely celebrated as a democratic portrait of Britain in the 12st century.

I love this error because the ambiguity provokes such enjoyable speculation. What did the author Jonathan Jones really intend to write? Was One & Other "a democratic portrait of Britain in the 12th century," an insightful, modern take on the formative decades following the Norman Conquest? Perhaps the text is correct and this refers to some system of describing an era by weight. A 12-stone (168 lbs./76.2 kg) century would be a sturdy lady but a well-proportioned chap (to the Americans: people are weighed in stone in Britain and Ireland at 14 pounds/stone). The other intention might be "in the 21st century," but this hardly seems humorous.

Gormley's installation was a provocative piece of theater and certainly a populist stroke of creativity. The article includes a worthwhile slideshow of what people choose to do when given an hour of public prominence. The newspaper also featured a review that contradicted Jones' critique.

The Staffordshire Hoard

An especially deep plowing is suspected to have brought the buried treasure close to the surface this year.

An unemployed man with a metal detector in July unearthed the largest cache of Anglo-Saxon artifacts ever found in Britain. The lucky strike includes over 1500 objects, mostly of precious metals and gemstones, probably buried around AD 700 for safekeeping. Word of the discovery only went out today with an unveiling at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Since Terry Herbert first notified the portable antiquities scheme professional archaeologists have been working covertly in the field where the objects were found to try uncover more information about what took place there 1300 years ago. The exact location still remains secret and the Home Office is overseeing the excavations to keep out would-be looters.

Many of the precious objects were used to decorate swords, probably the spoils of warfare around the Midlands kingdom of Mercia. (from the BMAG flickr stream)

The overwhelming collection has been designated as "treasure" and thus belongs to the State. However, British museums will bid to take possession of the hoard. The final price will be divided between Mr. Herbert and the farmer who owns the field in which the find was made. These objects will keep curators, archaeologists, and art historians busy for years conserving and inspecting each piece for new historical insights into the so-called Dark Ages. The museum has great images of some of the treasure on flickr. The Guardian also has a slideshow, as does The Times.

The twisted state of this cross decorated with interlace lead researchers to surmise it was plundered as gold booty. I assume the item was removed from the cover of a gospelbook.

Small, precious items allowed the ruling classes of Europe to carry and secrete their wealth (from the BMAG flickr stream).