Consequence of Sound and New Musical Express Dig My Jello (Biafra)
It’s always a surreal blast when the past arrives in the present, especially if it’s my interview with the defiantly principled punk pioneer, Jello Biafra.
Interviews
At Last, Samurai Jack Returns
Last year, I once again interviewed Samurai Jack creator and animation auteur, Genndy Tartakovsky, who told me the samurai’s arrival was imminent. Now here he is, in all of his glory and wonder, when we need him most.
Sleater-Kinney Brings Power, Life to Paris
There aren’t enough ways for me to thank Sleater-Kinney for returning from hiatus, even if it was to a sleepy hyperreality still needing to be shaken awake with punk power and poetics.
Halloween Scene: Edgar Allen Poe Vs. Little Tibia And The Fibias
Let’s turn back to the greatest jam band on the bones, and a master of literary horror, reanimated.
All Hail the Return of Autolux!
I’ve been writing about Autolux for years, and yet they always sound fresh to me
Forest 500 Animates Reality of Rainforest Destruction
Can an earnest but alarming cartoon help stop the 500 companies, investors and governments deforesting the Earth to crisis?
We Nailed It: An Interview With Shaun the Sheep‘s Richard Starzak and Paul Kewley
I spoke with Starzak and Kewley about how and why Aardman’s low-budget, big-picture animation continues to compete in our blockbuster marketplace, and why stop-motion can be even more real than hyperreal CGI.
MorphToons: October 2015
Halloween found me wishing happy birthday to the one and old only Ralph Bakshi, whose anti-sermon shook the toonscape.
I Just Want Them to Wake Up: A Birthday Interview With Ralph Bakshi
“At my age, I wouldn’t release it if I thought it didn’t work.”
Poe, Reanimated
Extraordinary Tales brings Poe’s harrowing stories to the screen for newer generations raised on boundless technologies and influences.
Rethink What We Think is Normal: Interview With Dissonance Director Till Nowak
German-born artist and filmaker Till Nowak is a rare talent who can work across art forms and scientific disciplines, until his viewers are left disoriented and dazzled.
Interview: Ken Duncan On Creating New Scenes for The Iron Giant
I spoke with Duncan by phone about how his studio’s work on The Iron Giant: Signature Edition came to pass, and why hand-drawn animation, after years of laboring beneath CG’s towering shadow, is on the comeback trail.
Genndy Tartakovsky On Sony, Popeye, Can You Imagine and Samurai Jack
It doesn’t take long (at all) for the stubborn and refreshingly frank Tartakovsky to hold forth on his frustrations with the way Hotel Transylvania 2 and Popeye were handled.
Brad Bird Confirms The Iron Giant’s Signature
http://The studio’s reticence on the matter is understandable, given Bird’s well-documented love of cinema’s theatrical experience. “See it in the movie theater the way it’s meant to be seen,” Bird counsels
The Iron Giant’s Amazing Upgrade
With nearly two decades of growing cultural power beneath its indestructible belt, The Iron Giant is shaping up to be as potent and memorable as Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.
The Iron Giant Will (Finally) Return to Theaters
At long last, Brad Bird’s animated masterpiece of war and peace is back.
MorphToons: June 2015
I kicked off my first month as Cartoon Brew’s associate editor with an exclusive on the late, great John Lennon.
Geek The Beatles: John Lennon Sketchbook Makes Official Online Debut
“It was created from original drawings by John Lennon and a soundtrack that I also edited together, consisting of snatches of conversation between John and Yoko and song excerpts.”
Dear Utilities, Adapt Or Die
If the utilities don’t get on board, then consumers will find someone who will.
Cli-Fi: Director Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea
Like his Oscar-nominated feature debut The Secret of Kells, his new stunner Song of the Sea is steeped in regional folklore but still a universal wonder. But it is a more personal epic, about the extinction of mythological seal people called Selkies, as explored through a lighthouse family riven by loss and misunderstanding but healed by history and magic.
Grant Morrison’s Multicultural, Intertextual Multiversity
“gnaw at the very roots of Batman’s being, fuck up the private lives of his friends and relatives, make him doubt his raison d’etre, set his postal district on fire and blow up his cave.”
Added Benefit Of Solar Boom? Jobs
Now adding jobs to the American economy at 10 times the national average, has given labor some much-needed love.
No One Wins the US China Solar War
We’re in the slow-motion throes of an environmental apocalypse whose existential ravages are terrifyingly “irreversible.” Now is not the time to be arguing over solar cash.
The Future of Microgrids
But much of the changes we need will come from customers who can’t get what they want from the grid, concluded Asmus. “Ten years out, microgrids will be an everyday, non-controversial decision.”
People and Places Making Microgrids Work
Current efforts by utilities to stifle cleantech takeovers of the macrogrid, from solar taxes to worse, are being successfully fought off, as global warming throws ever more challenges in the way.