Featured on AWNtv

Thanks to AWNtv for featuring Bored Stiff. It always means a lot to get on there.

Words in the 5th Dimension – Hello Officer

Closed in. Grey. Kitchen table. Door handle. Rain. Colours? Textures? Rhubarb? Ouch! Sharp in oh so many ways. Oh the pain! Stop mocking me! Bush russle. Faster. Hup. What a day to climb a fence in mother’s underwear. I hope I don’t – I’m snagged! How do you explain something like this? Maybe the police station will have a leaflet?

Hello officer. No, this isn’t my house, no. Oh.

Popcorn Comedy

Screened at FilmRats

On Wednesday, was FilmRats, based in the Bristol Pear in Selly Oak. We’ve had our stuff screened there for the last couple of months but weren’t able to make it, so it was a nice surprise to see the evening’s films finished off with Bored Stiff and Message in A Bottle.

Organisers Andrew and Tom Hewson seem to have got the event down to a T, warming up the night with some music/live performance, then some films, then polishing of with a final musical act. An audio visual sandwich if you will. I think the guys have got a great feeling for keeping the mood up in the room too. It’s easy for these sort of screenings to end up as a endless depressing sludge of grainy experimental films – which is great in moderation – but here the films were mixed up so that there was a nice change of pace and our in-your-face-dirty-little-treats were used as little pick-me-ups at the end. Most importantly though Andrew compared. The most important thing for events like this is to TELL people to clap and get some repore going. For some reason people just don’t do it otherwise. I still don’t understand why.

The venue’s the perfect setting, it’s relaxed, nice size and layout, built in projector and a decent sound system. It’s a shame no where in the city centre really matches up. Highlights were personal favourites KateGoes plus FaceOmeter, as well as meeting Black Country Cinema collective, Birmingham Salute.

The Great Animation Challenge

The last week involved a few lovely screening/social events. Here’s the first.

On Tuesday was The Great Animation Challenge at the Lighthouse, Wolverhampton, which started off with brilliant round up of animations from last year’s Flip Festival. My personal favourite was about a man who’s slipped coordinates in 3D space and is trying to fix it by being hit by asteroids. I can’t tell you the name of it yet as I don’t know… (Skhizein, directed by Jeremy Clapin) I also missed the first half of it. Maybe that added to the feeling of just watching a snippet of someone’s life, rather than going through the whole process of setting up the character. I quite enjoy watching films half way through or without the sound on. You have to piece together a story which is probably no where near as interesting as it seems because it’s turned into a puzzle, everything they do suddenly becomes potentially important.

After that bit of reflection, came the screening and announcement of the winner of the Animation Challenge itself. The prize rightly went to Joe Lea’s interpretation of Underwater Fax of Death, which thanks to other people’s attraction to the song means I’m still singing that song in my head 4 days later. Afterwards, I got to catch up with some familiar faces and chat to some new ones… which was nice.

The Claw Hands are Coming!

You wanna know what it feels like to be an animator?! Huh?! Well 4mations’ Madevi Dailly (pictured) will tell ya what it feels like! HERE! I guess you could say it felt somewhat familiar.

I’m not racist I just don’t like raw cheese

If you know me well you probably know that I’m not a fan of ‘raw’ cheese, whilst my dicey counterparts could be described as cheese-embracers. I admit that I have a problem. I want to change and already even have my exceptions.

Bored Stiff Featured on Dailymotion

The New Adventures of Housebound Mickey

Astound your kids with dissapointment as Mickey copes with life in his eighty’s. His digestive system may be shot to pieces and his shorts maybe a few shades dirtier, but he’s still the good old abusive and slightly racist Mickey we came to love as children ourselves.