Meanwhile #217

Frogspawn, gravel, ribbons, the usual.

I spent the weekend being utterly dismantled and emotionally wrecked by The Wild Robot. I think it helped that I went in completely blind – somehow I’d made it all the way to the cinema without having seen a single clip of the film, so I had no idea what to expect. The whole thing is still settling in my head, but right now I’d happily put it alongside WALL-E and The Iron Giant; and it’s up there with the best of recent western animations for it’s focus on artistry over photorealism. Director Chris Sanders in this month’s Sight and Sound:

All of our surfaces, our skies, our trees are painted by human beings. There’s no geometry covered by rubber-stamping. With hand-painted backgrounds like these, we’ve come full circle to where this whole craft began. Miyazaki’s backgrounds, Bambi’s backgrounds, The Lion King’s backgrounds: they do the best job of creating a world that you can get. Our goal was to get the finished film looking as close to the initial exploratory development drawings as we could get: so abstract and colourful, loose and free and beautiful, and they reminded me a lot of some of the inspirational art by Tyrus Wong that guided Bambi.

The Spider-Verse films, Klaus, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, The Mitchells Vs The Machines, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle: Mutant Mayhem – do we have a name for this new era of painterly animation? New Artistry? Craftcore?

Animation Obsessive Staff

help me out here.

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Ooh a colour Kindle is finally here. That sound you hear is a thousand cover designers gently weeping with joy! Curious that one of the promo shots has Ms Marvel on the display, but there’s no mention of Marvel Unlimited integration. I realise these things are essentially shop windows for Amazon and only Amazon, but MU plus a dedicated e-ink reader would be incredible.

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Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Red Rocket, Anora) talks to MUBI’s Adrian Curry about his ongoing use of Aguafina Script Pro and how a simple design solution turned into a unique brand identity.

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My current favourite jam¹ is LCD Soundsystem and Miles Davis playing in side-by-side browsers. Somehow this works.

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Couch to 100k –

John Grindrod

’s tips for non-fiction writers:

I’m firmly of the opinion that no subject is a bad subject for a book per se, it’s what you do with it. Perhaps you have the desire to write a book about frogspawn. Or gravel. Or ribbon. Sure, that one word might taunt you. Who is going to be interested in that? But nothing is innately boring. Not when you can communicate what is actually exciting you about the subject. Frogspawn contains the miraculous secret of life; gravel a doorway into the ancient formation of geology and stardust; ribbon the tale of industrial revolutions, global culture and the history of fashion. Actually, why am I writing this blog post, all of those books sound amazing.

I used to get excited about boring subjects every month for my MacUser colum² – “you write interestingly about any old crap” was basically my editor’s pitch. Not sure I have the stamina or attention to go beyond a two-page spread, but maybe one day I’ll give it a go.

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In Hidden Portraits, Volker Hermes reimagines historical figures in overwhelming frippery. Great name for a band right there.

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Revisiting the Horst P. Horst monograph Style and Glamour after seeing Jack Davison’s incredible Saoirse Ronan shoot for Vogue. He’s captured and modernised Horst’s already-ahead-of-its-time 1940s style³ impeccably.

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Oh dear lord I’m trying Bluesky again. Basically just biding my time on this social network carousel until somebody revives mySpace.⁴

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That is all.

1. Jams? Do we still talk about our jams? Or did we kick out the jams?

2. They’re all pretty much lost to the sands of time now, unless anyone is hoarding old copies of MacUser in their basement … ? If anyone fancies a read, I’ll see if I can dig them out and upload them here in some manner.

3.

Running with Scissors

’s Lisa McKenna put it perfectly in her reply to a recent note: “I’ve always appreciated how [Horst] kept his cover design behind the lens”.

4. Seriously, it baffles me that something that still has so much brand recognition and clear purpose – social media based around music – is still up on the shelf, gathering dust.