Fragonard : The Bolt

Review by Giovanni Varazzani

Fragonard's painting "the bolt" (le verrou in French) was made in the eighteenth century in around 1778. It is exposed in le Louvres Museum in Paris. This piece or art is considered as one of the most representative of the times' stream: libertinism. As it is a genre painting, first thing we see is a clear situation: a couple who is just about to consume their love in a messy red bed, or maybe they have just done it..? The painting is full of different expressions and symbols, which can be interpreted in several ways. Agitation and movement are conveyed by the bed, and the couple. We have here an unmade and red coloured bed full of crimps and disorder, a broken glass on the left hand side of the bed and a couple in the middle of an intimate moment and both of them have one of their feet off the ground. These elements show the intensity and the passion of the moment, no matter what we can interpret about the woman or the man's will to carry on or not. It is, from my point of view, the feeling of movement, which generate into the audience the kind of energy and emotions that I like.
Finally, they are both the exact same height, which can symbolise equality between the two. It might just be an erotic scene of a couple making a forbidden act (whence, the bolt).. To conclude, there is a possible explanation that can be raised, linked to the context this painting was made in. In the eighteenth century, there codes existed about how to act in such circumstances, especially for middle class people. Here, it can represent woman's ambivalence who wants herself to be naive, and thus to feign not to understand what men want and in the same time wanting as much as them to answer them...AAaaAA women...

Few useful websites

http://www.amazon.co.uk/
Popular website where to buy animation dvd, books and software.

http://www.awn.com/
Website dedicated to the animated world.

http://www.andreavarazzani.com/
My brother website. I drew the logo.

http://www.hammerfilms.com/
English production company focused on horror films.

http://www.nirvan.com/
Animator website.

http://www.stargreen.com/
Be updated about gigs.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/
Architect website. Nice photo of buildings.

www.danieletribi.com

Animator website.

http://www.htfr.com/
If you are interested in djing.

http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/
One of the best animators ever.

Tom and Jerry

Review by Giovanni Varazzani

From a book fully dedicated to Hanna and Barbera, a chapter is about Tom and Jerry, one of my favorite cartoons. The makers of the classic mouse against the cat mayhem that has become worldwide success met the first time in 1938. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, still working at MGM, brought a combination of individual skills to the table. Bill Hanna described Barbera as the best cartoonist he had ever seen. Barbera’s superior drawing skills combined with sense of comedy and magnificent timing of Hanna gave the wings to the simple but effective everlasting story.

Few questions always rise when I view the classic Tom and Jerry cartoons. Which one is the good and which is the bad? I don’t know if it just me but I would really like to see that little smiling cocky mouse to be trapped by the cat and destroyed to the bone. For me it is about the cat, not that I am a fan of Tom (yes I am) but it seems like the hunter usually sets the stakes and gives the energy to story. In the original demonstration film the mouse did not even have a name. Feels like the mouse is there to just ignite the serious of events. This rash causing age old struggle between strong and the weak still makes generations laugh out loud when every episode can offer a new innovative way for the mouse to defeat the hunting cat. Every so of then Tom gets his teeth on the mouse but something happens and with a hair thin marginal the cuddle mouse runs away as a winner. Tom the cat is the punished punisher who merely tries to keep the house up while ‘mammy’ is away.

Popular film and televison comedy

Review by Giovanni Varazzani

To have a different opinion about comedy, I will read and use for my essay the book titled “Popular film and television comedy”, which answer questions like “What is comedy?” and “Can it easily be defined and described?”

The authors are Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik and Routledge releases the book.

The authors try to individualize the diversity of comedy’s forms and modes and to explain the nature of those conventions. From their point of view they tell that all forms and modes of the comic involve deviations from aesthetic and cultural conventions and norms.

They discuss conventions of comedy with a wide range of programmes and films from Blackadder to Bringing up baby and the Roadrunner cartoons.

With this book I’m basically trying to understand the basic rules of comedy, rules that applied to animated film can be slightly different from a live action film, because with the power of animation to exaggerate situations, those rules can go to endless directions.

This book also considers the different kind of comic as sit-com, cartoons, short, television etc. thus to have a wide view and a clever idea about the argument of comedy.

At first impact this book seems to me easier to read than the article, part of book on communication language, I described previously. It is also focused on the argument of comedy more than communication in general.

The last task for me will be, after understood the set of comic rules, to discover how those are mutated and evolved during years and years of laughing.

Communication Theory

Review by Giovanni Varazzani

Theory of humour? What? I don’t believe that. Well I still susceptible even after I found an article on the net, part of the book “Communication Theory” written by John C. Meyer, professor in the United States, where he explain how humour works.
The title of the chapter is “Humour as a Double-Edge Sword: four Functions of Humour in communications”. It has included three subchapters: Theories of Humour Origin, The Function of Humour in Messages, The paradox of Dual Humour Functions.
My believe was that humour is something that cannot have explanation, a powerful energy from the silly mind of a bunch of people (comedians, pro and not) but now reading through this article I have to change my idea.
This article will help me in my essay because it analyzes and then understand all the mechanisms able to make people laugh. And then how those mechanisms will be applied to a cartoon or animation. I will use it to clarify, probably in the introduction, the meaning of humour (what a task!) in general.
Basically it is possible to find humour in any kind of situation that life shows to the people. Even from sad moments. Well talking about humour it really depends from each person so the argument is quite variable.
And my questions are: will this article make me laugh more to jokes and funny cartoons? Will it make me understand jokes I didn’t understand before? It will explain why my jokes never work? I really don’t know.

Je t'aime John Wayne

Review by Giovanni Varazzani

Je t’aime John Wayne was released on Friday 13th July 2000. This short movie is written by writer Luke Ponte and directed by Toby MacDonald.
The story is about an English middle class guy living in London, where he models himself like a French man with gangster habits. The idea comes from the 1960’s film “Breathless” with French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, who thought to be an American. The film has also influence from “Julie and Jim” and the “400 Blows”.
The film follows the 1960’s French new wave cinema, which has influence from the Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. The wave movement basically make a radical experiment with editing, visual style and narrative, part of a general break with the conservative paradigm. So the audience recognize the style from the black and white colours, the revolutionary (in the 1960) jump cut and the different narrative that make a film serious at the first impact, but it has a kind of comedy that make the audience smile and dream trough the dreams of the main character. A funny scene is when Kris Marshall, alias Belmondo, smokes a cigarette while he is brushing his teeth.
Another point of wave cinema is the low budget to make the film. For “Je t’aime John Wayne” MacDonald and Ponte raised about £15.000, and all the production was about four months.
Thinking about the little detail, I identify it in the dream present in any person, that wish to have a perfect lifestyle, in case of this film it has been seen through an adult eyes, thus to explain that not only kids but adults too can dream.
It also important to mention that this film won several awards, like the TCM short film competition at the London film festival. It also has been the only British film selected for the Cannes 2001 Director’s fortnight.

Un Chien Andalou

Review by Giovanni Varazzani

If I have to listen to my instinct, I would like to write this review in the same way as the narrative in “Un Chien Andalou”, and probably I will, with an illogic narrative. It will make the logic vulcanian Spock really upset.
“Un Chien Andalou” is a short film, about sixteen minutes, written by Salvador Dalí, probably the icon of the surrealist movement, and Luis Buñuel, psychologist and Dalí’s friend, it follows the surrealism idea thus to make surprise into the audience with unexpected ideas and outcomes. In this short there isn’t a flowing narrative. At the first impact, each scene has nothing to do with the next one but those scenes edited all together make a really powerful result even seventy years later. This was the exact outcome that Dalí and Buñuel were looking for. Thanks to the masters of the surrealist style, the surprised and shocked audience is forced to get deep into the film by asking questions and try to understand the meaning of the film, which, in the end, can have a meaning for each person that watch the film.
The “small” details that makes the difference is definitely the rule to break all the other rules that the audience usually recognize as normal, thus to have all of those feeling that the surrealist movement own.
My favourite scene, as a gory fan, is definitely when the man purposefully passes his blade over the pupil of the open-eyed woman seated calmly in front of him.

Undestanding Animation

Review by Giovanni Varazzani

Despite the animation industry is old like the film industry, it has no many books that talk about the form and its concepts. There are many that treat the argument of the different techniques and how to draw for animation, but not about everything there is behind the screen.
“Understanding Animation” is written by professor Paul Wells, which is Director of Animation in the Animation Academy. With his experience as writer, broadcaster and director, he wrote different books about the argument of animation.
“Understanding Animation” is a kind of bible for animators. This book explains several aspect of animation, from history to narrative techniques, the relationship between animation and audiences. It also has a chapter fully dedicated to comedy in animation. Well explains with several points many techniques that make people laugh, techniques that in animation find a wide field to develop and explore themselves with endless solution for a really funny outcome.
Trough “Understanding Animation” Paul Wells also analyze many animations, from Walt Disney to Hanna Barbera, and in its comic section cartoon like Tom and Jerry, Road Runner and The Flintstones.
Thanks to all those reasons, I’m going to use this book to write my essay despite the fact that this book comes out as academic book, so it doesn’t have an easy reading. With its 249 pages it doesn’t have many images, thus to make me feel surprised at my first impact with it. So after few times I’ve opened this book I still have difficult to read it but I’m sure it will help once more.

Layer Cake

Review by Giovanni Varazzani

Layer cake is a classic gangster movie with a bit of that British comedy that sometimes it is difficult to understand if the viewers are not English.
The director Matthew Vaughn made his first approach to direction with this movie but with more experience as producer for several films including “Snatch” and “Stardust” in witch he was the writer as well.
The story is about a bunch of friends involved in the drug business and when they have a big amount of ecstasy tablet to sell, they found themselves between two factions both interested to buy the drug with all the dirty tricks available.
The main character interpreted by Daniel Craig (the last Bond on the big screen) says that he is not a drug dealer but a businessman. And he is a successful in that by abiding to a strict set of rules.
The main story has along the film few little parallel stories that, from my point of view make the film more real because in real life there is more than one story that goes on in everybody but, it can distract the audience. It is probably this communion between real and unreal that makes the film a good film.
One of the scenes, that I think is amazing, is when Craig (the character is anonymous in the film) kills one of the big gangsters and he goes back to his home. He is definitely shocked by the killing and he starts taking ecstasy tablets and spirits with the result of him smashed, until he close a bathroom cabinet with a mirror where he his reflected but in perfect condition, dressed with a suit and tie ready for the next business.

28 Days Later

Review by Giovanni Varazzani

From the director of “The Beach” and “Trainspotting”, Danny Boyle tries with “28 Days Later” to resuscitate the British horror movie collapsed with the major film companies as Hammer (Dracula – 1958) or Amicus (Torture Garden – 1967) by the early ‘80s.
The movie opens with a scene where a band of animal right activist release from a science laboratory some chimps, unaware that the animals were carrying the most deadly virus man ever know. 28 days later Jim interpreted by Cillian Murphy (Scarecrow in “Batman Begins”) wakes up in an empty hospital. After he met a couple of survivors, he learns that the virus is terminating the country population where they will try to survive.
The main character will try to join an apparent army base in Manchester, but they will find that the key to survive is not with those soldiers, people that kill other people, but it is closed inside their humanity, so love and compassion will be again the ultimate weapon to win the virus.
In this film, zombies that are a not zombie but infected people, recall the zombies from the famous George Romero’s trilogy “Night Of The Living Dead”. The difference from the usual zombie is that those infected humans have unusual strength and speed.
In the film there is a big feeling of isolation that it’s made bigger in those scenes where London, the city where the virus start his devastation, is amazingly empty of the usual traffic and people. These scenes are opposed to those full of violence and gory thus to have a result a film quite scary.

Le Grand Cheval

Review by Giovanni Varazzani


Le Gran Cheval, name translate as Large Horse in English, is a sculpture made by the French artist Raymond Duchamp-Villon, brother of famous artists as Marcel Duchamp and Jacques Villon.
On the beginning of his career Raymond was studying medicine at the Sorbonne but rheumatism fever forced him to quit his studies and left him with temporary problems. This event altered the course of his life, so he matured his interest for sculpture, he start then to work closely with his brothers thus to have artistic influences coming from different ways.
After a first influence by Auguste Rodin with his figurative sculpture, Raymond was then the first artist to apply the rules of the Cubist movement to a sculpture that, basically, study still images from different point of view and the use of simple forms as cylinder, cube and sphere.
The choice of the horse probably comes from his past as an auxiliary doctor in a cavalry regiment, and the initial idea was the horse with his knight, developed after to a representation of a horse with all his energy and power.
The bronze sculpture is also notable for its dynamic depiction of mechanical motion, one of the themes of the Futurist style, influence that came from his friendship with the Italian Umberto Boccioni.
So the artist use in these sculpture simple forms built in a way, like spirals and layers in which he create motion and aggressive energy. It is probably the simplicity, the little detail of this sculpture that makes the big difference.