i met the walrus
Looks like it’s Video Day on 17 Dots. I subscribe to the daily culture newsletter Very Short List (it’s pretty great, I highly recommend!) and today’s was particularly rewarding. Here’s the backstory:
Thirty-nine years ago, a 14-year-old named Jerry Levitan managed to talk his way into John Lennon’s Toronto hotel room. Impressed by the kid’s chutzpah, Lennon obliged him with a five-minute chat that covered war, peace, and the newly arrived Bee Gees.
Last year, Levitan teamed up with filmmaker Josh Raskin to make “I Met the Walrus” — a charming animated film that turns Lennon’s thoughts into concrete images.
The bulk of the recording is Lennon riffing on his All-Peace-All-Day stump speech that won’t sound too revolutionary to 2008 ears, even if the wacky context (and general rare-ness of the audio) is intriguing. It’s the animation that’s the surprising winner here — inventive, beautiful, liquid and loose. Pretty impressive stuff.
This was nominated for an Oscar, although it didn’t win. I saw it at a screening of all the Oscar-nominated animated short films earlier this year. The Peter and the Wolf short that won was actually pretty great, too, if you get a chance to check that out.
Wow, I had no idea! I will try to track down that other short…thanks!
absolutely brilliant animation!
I was also 14 in 1969. I like the part where Lennon postulates that violent revolution leads to taking over a country, building it up, and in defending it blindly, those violent revolutionaries morph into the New Establishment. I’m afraid that’s what happened to 99% of us Baby Boomers. We could have done more in the past 40 years. At least the decline of affluence that we’re undergoing in America right now may cause some of us to find value in and invest in non-material things again. We have a lot to pass on… it got buried in soccer moms, SUVs, plasma TCs, financing our kids’ college tuition and 401(k)s. This short provides a nice perspective at this pivotal foundation-shaking time in Boomer History.
So now i’ve gotten kind of hooked on VSL . . . which is how I learned that 17dots is written by a male, with 76% certainty.
http://www.genderanalyzer.com/
Haha yeah I shoulda done that for 17 Dots, not sure why I didn’t. VSL is so simple, yet so well executed. Glad you’re likin’ it Adamm!