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Showing posts from 2012

College educated whites are not Republican

Did you know that McCain lost college educated whites by 19% in 2008? I always make a big deal about how working class Lake County Cheap Properties Cheap Properties whites should be Republican, but I did not consider that we do so poorly among the college educated. I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that public employees and teachers are all college graduates? There are so many teachers that they alone could skew the statistic heavily. The article does note that business oriented college graduates are Republican, so that's kind of a hint.

All is available in portable accommodation

Looking for building materials in the store building is not as easy as imagined. Because not all stores have a full inventory in bulk. And to build a very tall buildings, which is an indispensable ingredient. Is not possible if you have to move around the shop. a modular buildings provide the best solution for it. There is a number of buildings providing you want.

Realtor features my article in her blog

Ontario realtor ri Joanne Cross has featured one of my articles in her latest blog post. The article is entitled "Can I sell an estate property before getting probate?" and I know it will be of interest to executors who aren't sure in which order things are done in an estate. Click here to check out Joanne's blog, articles and new listings.

Week 2: Verse 2 - First Impressions

2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. Boy does this verse sting. After the revelations of last week, realising that a lot of gonging and clanging was due to me trying to be the smartest guy in the room, Paul God decided he was going to reinforce just how useless that pathetic effort was. MPV (My Paraphrased Version) - Even if you are as smart as God himself, seeing & knowing all things, and don't have love, YOU ARE NOTHING! Good lord I have been arrogant. I fear it has become a part of my character. I hate that. I also fear that my hypocritical distaste for all things stupid & ignorant has made me stupid and ignorant myself. It makes me wonder what the opposite of this verse would be. MPVO (My Paraphrased Version Opposite) - Even if you are as dumb as a pile of rocks, not knowing anything, but you love fiercely, YOU ARE EVERYTHING! That

All is available in portable accommodation

Looking for building materials in the store building is not as easy as imagined. Because not all stores have a full inventory in bulk. And to build a very tall buildings, which is an indispensable ingredient. Is not possible if you have to move around the shop. a portable accommodation provide the best solution for it. There is a number of buildings providing you want.

Change, Atmosphere Your Kitchen

In many developing countries, has been widely used by most homeowners. But not infrequently also in certain states, the kitchen table is still very little used, even more so because of the habit of using a kitchen set. Though very useful kitchen table, among others, as a place to put a dish that was just released from oven. As place to put a dish that is cooked and had just finished a comfortable place if you're making bread or cakes. If you want to reset to change the atmosphere in your kitchen, you can add a kitchen table with a beautiful countertop in your home. There are many choices in Kitchen Countertops Santa Cruz, to complement your kitchen. There is a countertop made from granite, marble, quartz, Cambria, silestone, caesarstone, zodiac, recycled glass, semi-precious, limestone and soapstone. Everything can be found in kitchen countertops santa cruz .

Sell Your House Fast - And Get Your Cash Today!

sell your house fast Are you one of those home owners who wish to sell their homes as soon as possible? There is a meager chance that you might be able to do so. Yet, you might very well be able to do that if you find the right people. The big issue you will be dealing with while selling your house is how you can get cash faster than the usual selling procedure can bring you. Well, you don't need to worry about a thing. You still have a great option when it comes to selling your house fast: you can sell your home and receive the complete agreed cash shortly after striking a deal with a company that invests in real estate. There may be different reasons which can drive you to sell your home. Maybe the lack of maintenance has finally got to your home, and made it so ugly that you can't bear to live in it any more. And now that the repair costs are surely out of your control, the last thing you would want is to invest your savings on fixing your house. This really justifies your
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Funny Feet: The Art of Eccentric Dance

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I've always loved dance animation.  Whether it is Mickey in Thru the Mirror or Donald in Mr. Duck Steps Out or the dancing in Rooty Toot Toot , when expressive movement joins with music, you get an energy that leaves ordinary animation in the dust.  Dick Lundy, Les Clark, Ken Harris, Preston Blair, Ward Kimball, and Pat Matthews are just some of the animators with a genuine flair for dance. Animated dance built on what was happening in live action films, and that was built on what had been done in Vaudeville and the English music hall.  Chaplin, Keaton, Stan Laurel, Groucho Marx, and James Cagney all used dance in their stage performances.  Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Ray Bolger, Buddy Ebsen, and the Nicholas Brothers were all influenced by the same tradition. Betsy Baytos has worked as an animator and dancer and is making a documentary called Funny Feet: The Art of Eccentric Dance.  Her promo is below: She's using Kickstarter to fund a trip to England to research music hall

Animation on TCM Reminder

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If you receive Turner Classic Movies, remember that this Sunday, October 21, they will be screening an evening of animation co-hosted by Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew .  Films include the two Fleischer features Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town ; a selection of UPA Jolly Frolic cartoons; a selection of silent animation provided by historian Tom Stathes; and The Adventures of Prince Achmed , which is the oldest surviving animated feature as well as the first animated feature directed by a woman, Lotte Reineger .  You can find the complete schedule here and Beck has posted artwork associated with Gulliver and Mr. Bug on his site. If you are interested in hearing about how Beck connected up with TCM and learning more about the early days of film collecting, you can hear him on a podcast called The Commentary Track .

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More Loomis

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Andrew Loomis' 1947 instruction book Creative Illustration has been reprinted .  One in a series of instruction books by Loomis, a Chicago-based commercial illustrator of the 20th century, this book might be described as his magnum opus.  It's the first of his books to deal with colour and composition. Sections include line, tone, colour, and creating ideas.  It is by far the thickest of Loomis's books and before this reprinting, copies sold for over $100. Titan Books will reprint Fun With a Pencil next April, Loomis's most basic how to draw book.  All that will remain, should Titan continue, will be Three Dimensional Drawing , an expanded version of Successful Drawing which they have already reprinted, and The Eye of the Painter and the Elements of Beauty , a book published after Loomis's death.  Used copies of that start at $141.

Manolito's Dream

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 I wrote about Txesco Montalt's work before , and here is a short that he created with Mayte Sanchez Solis.  Both of them worked on Pocoyo , one of the few pre-school shows I can watch without falling asleep.  Like Txesco's earlier work, it synchs beautifully to the soundtrack and while done in Flash, has lots of subtle shape-changing that gives it wonderful flexibility. I'm also in love with the simplicity of the design. The two are partnered in a company called Alla Kinda , and even their logo exudes charm.  Their site is worth checking out.

Ottawa Festival Report

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My visit to the Ottawa International Animation Festival got off to a bad start. I usually walk from the bus station to the hotel, but it was pouring rain when I arrived. As the walk would have been a half hour, I would have been thoroughly soaked, so I was forced to take a cab. The wireless at my hotel was not working when I arrived, which was frustrating. The first program I attended was the International Student Showcase, which was a unrelieved depression and boredom. It may be the choice of films or maybe students are actually this depressed, pretentious and boring, but I was contemplating never coming back to the festival during this screening. Fortunately, this was the low point and things rapidly improved. The next thing I attended was Amid Amidi's presentation on Ward Kimball, a teaser for his forthcoming book Full Steam Ahead: The Life and Art of Ward Kimball .  Amidi covered things I didn't know about Kimball's childhood and his artistic evolution

Ottawa International Animation Fest Winners

JUNKYARD WINS BEST SHORT, ARRUGAS SELECTED BEST FEATURE,  AT OTTAWA INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL OTTAWA (September 23, 2012) – The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) came to an end Sunday, with closing ceremonies held at the National Arts Centre. Organizers announced the winners of the official competition during the ceremonies. This year’s event, held September 19th-23rd, was a tremendous success with packed screenings, sold out workshops, high profile networking events such at the Television Animation Conference (TAC) and a strong weekend of professional development. The OIAF is a major international film event that attracts 1500 industry pass holders from across Canada and around the world with a total attendance of close to 30,000. Although the final numbers are not officially in, there are strong indications that this year’s Festival reached its highest attendance to date. The 2012 international jury for Short Program, Student and Commissioned Films

100 Years of Chuck Jones

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September 21, 2012 is the 100th birthday of Charles Martin Jones, arguably the greatest director of animated shorts in history.  While there will be justifiable celebrations of his life and work this day, his career strikes me as a very curious thing.  There was a period of brilliance, but there was also a period of decline which lasted much longer. I've wrote about Jones' career back in the '90s and while my knowledge of Jones has been augmented by many interviews with his co-workers (see Michael Barrier's site for many of these), my opinion has remained constant. Whatever your opinion of Jones, there are worse ways to spend the day than to watch some of his films.

Shifting Distribution Patterns

The world of film distribution is changing.  What we take for granted, and have for years, may soon no longer be the case.  Movies open in theatres.  Three months later, they're on DVD.  Then they move to pay TV and finally free TV. Theatre audiences in the U.S. and Canada are shrinking.  Hollywood has compensated for this by raising prices, so that the overall theatrical grosses go up while the number of people buying tickets goes down.  Last summer was a disappointment in that everything went down.  Deadline Hollywood reports that the summer movie season ended with grosses in the U.S. and Canada down 2.8% over last summer and the number of tickets sold dropped 4.3%.  And that was with a rise in ticket prices of 1.5%. Just like studios have gone to digital projection as a way to cut their distribution costs, they're now shifting to downloads to cut their costs on DVD manufacture and distribution.  DVD sales have gone down in recent years, so the move to downloads is a way to

Toronto Urban Film Festival

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If you're riding the Toronto subway between Sept. 7 and 17, check out the electronic message boards for the Toronto Urban Film Festival .  Films are screened in the subways, so while waiting for your train, you have the chance to see one or more short films. Three of this year's films are by Sheridan students.  Yeti by Eva Zhou, Amare by Katarina Antonic and Bygone Bounce by Shen Ramu.

Facundo the Great

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Here's another Storycorps short animated by the Rauch Brothers. Storycorps is raising money through Kickstarter to do a half hour special.  The goal is only $25,000, so I don't know if the money is to simply top up a budget or if they're going to do a slight amount of new animation to wrap around the work they've already done. In any case, I'm a fan of their work and look forward to them doing more.

Persistence of Vision Preview

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I've written previously about Kevin Schreck's documentary on the making of The Cobbler and the Thief , Dick Williams' ill-fated feature.  Above is more preview footage of the finished documentary that is making the rounds at festivals.  If you're interested in finding out where it will show, you can check the film's Facebook page. (I really wish that Schreck would identify the people on screen in these clips.  I'm sure that they'll be identified in the final product, but I'm frustrated not knowing who I'm looking at.  That's Greg Duffell at the 25 second mark, but I have no idea who else is on screen.)

R. Crumb on Ward Kimball

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Amid Amidi recently posted this picture of (L to R) Robert Armstrong, Ward Kimball and R. Crumb on the blog 365 Days of Ward Kimball .  If you're interested in Crumb's thoughts on Kimball, you can go here and scroll down.  Crumb also comments on Matt Groening and Ralph Bakshi on the same page.  You'll have to scroll down to find them, but he also talks about Winsor McCay and Walt Disney , among many other people of note outside animation.

Foreign Royalties Owed to Canadian Directors

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The Directors Rights Collective of Canada is an organization that collects residuals that accrue from foreign screenings of Canadian film and television.  I've received several hundred dollars for work I directed on Monster By Mistake .  The DRCC has money they have not been able to distribute as they cannot locate the directors. The list is below.  Click on the images to enlarge.  I see the names of several animation directors from the NFB on the list as well as animation directors of TV series. If you're on the list or know someone who is, contact the DRCC.  For the record, I have alerted Kaj Pindal, whose name is on the list. Here's the email that accompanied the list: The Directors Rights Collective of Canada (DRCC)  is currently holding royalties for the attached list of directors derived from foreign broadcasts of their work. We have been unable to make contact with them in order to send them these funds. The attached list is comprehensive and includes directors f

1,000th Post: Where's Our Eastwood?

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Since May, 2006, I have now posted 1000 times to this blog.  It's hard to believe.  I'd be the first to admit that the quality of the postings is variable.  There are some that are simply announcements or were tossed off quickly just to keep the blog from going stale.  However, there are entries I'm proud of, even if they're becoming fewer and farther between. I once asked on this blog, " Where's our Brando? "  That discussion was about how characters in animation are conceived and executed.  I'm now going to ask, "Where's our Clint Eastwood?" I mistakenly wrote Eastwood off years ago during his Dirty Harry period.  I had no interest in movies about right wing vigilantes.  This summer, I have watched a large number of films that Eastwood directed, and I have to say that I was very impressed and embarrassed by my earlier response to him. What does Eastwood have to do with animation?  Unfortunately, nothing.  However, Eastwood's streng

Burlington Animation Festival

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Animation festivals are proliferating in Ontario these days.  In addition to the Ottawa International Animation Festival and TAAFI , there is now an animation festival in Burlington, located down the Queen Elizabeth Way from Toronto. The Burlington Animation Festival will take place on Saturday, September 29.  The inaugural festival is starting out very modestly, with a single screening at the Encore Upper Canada Place Cinemas located at 460 Brant Street  in Burlington, ON.  A list of the films to be screened can be found here and tickets can be purchased here .  The festival also has a Facebook page and is on Twitter .

Tissa David R.I.P.

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Animator Tissa David has died at the age of 91.  Michael Sporn has more at his site.  Michael was associated with Tissa professional and personally for more than 35 years. Tissa drew exquisitely well.  Her animation was very sensitive but could also be vigorous and raucous.  After working in Europe and coming to the U.S. after the second world war, she worked with Grim Natwick for years.  She animated for John Hubley, R.O. Blechman, Richard Williams and Michael Sporn.  She animated the whole of Sporn's TV special The Marzipan Pig . Because she was located in New York, she didn't get to work on projects that had the visibility of features made in California.  It's unfortunate that her name isn't associated with the kinds of animation projects that an average person would be familiar with.  However, she was unquestionably one of the best animators the field has ever seen. Tissa's roughs from the 1977 feature Raggedy Ann and Andy.  She was a fixture of the New York in

DHX Buys Cookie Jar

Update : Canadian Animation Resources has links to stories with more information. This may only be of interest to those working in the Canadian animated TV field, but DHX has bought Cookie Jar .  While consolidation makes it easier for the two studios to compete internationally, it also makes it harder for independent producers to get their work on Canadian TV. Michael Hirsh, CEO of Cookie Jar, was one of the founders of Nelvana.  Cookie Jar rose out of the ashes of Cinar, a Montreal company that was plagued by scandals over fraud with regard to government tax credits and suffered from the untimely death of co-owner Micheline Charest.  Hirsh reorganized Cinar into Cookie Jar and bought DIC in 2008.  There was speculation from the beginning that he intended to take the company public.  While that hasn't happened, there's still a large payday for Cookie Jar's owners. DHX is the result of the 2006 merger of Decode and the Halifax Film Company.  The merged entity later went o

Risk

Several recent events have reminded me of the risks involved in animation. Brenda Chapman's dismissal as director of Pixar's Brave is old news, but she recently spoke out   about being fired. Henry Selick's untitled film with Disney was cancelled , forcing the layoff of over a hundred artists at the Cinderbiter studio in the San Francisco area. Finally, and this won't be as well known, the CEO of the Go Go Gorillas operation, Christopher Turner, is under investigation for fraud .  Further details here .  I've written about John Celestri in the past.  John's a friend and former co-worker who was looking for an alternate financial model for animation and connected with Christopher Turner.  The company was attempting to use a restaurant/arcade to fund animation.  That's the reverse of the typical approach where popular cartoon characters are used to brand other enterprises like theme parks.  In any case, it is doubtful that the company will be able to move for

The Continuing Evolution of TV Economics

348,000 people in the U.S. cancelled their cable in three months time.  Why?  This article suggests that the use of OTT (which stands for over-the-top) boxes, used to access Netflix and Hulu, are responsible for the drop. To date, the majority of what's available on Netflix and Hulu is pre-existing material.  In other words, the production of this content was paid for under the existing TV model, where broadcasters pay a license fee and producers sell to multiple markets in order to finance their shows. But if the number of cable subscribers continues to drop, subscription fees and advertising revenues will also drop, making it even more difficult to finance original programming. TV's evolution from a business standpoint has been very interesting.  Initially, when there were limited choices over the air, every program got a substantial audience.  A show didn't have to be the best, it only had to be the best in it's time slot, and the competition was less than half a do

Happy 88th Birthday, Gene Deitch

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And many more!

Upcoming Animation on TCM

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  Update : Jerry Beck, who will be co-hosting with TCM's Robert Osborne, has more details at Cartoon Brew . Sunday, October 21 is still a distance away, but Turner Classic Movies will be devoting their evening block to animation.  It starts with the two Fleischer features, Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town .  That's followed by six UPA cartoons (all available on the Jolly Frolics DVD set).  Sundays at midnight, TCM regularly schedules silent films, and for this day they're showing 11 silent cartoons, including The Artist's Dream (an early J.R. Bray), Trip to Mars (with Koko the Clown), Bobby Bumps Goes to School , and Fireman Save My Child (with Mutt and Jeff).  The next slot is for foreign films, and their animated example is Lotte Reineger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed . The schedule can be accessed here , and I'll be reminding everyone as the date approaches.

OIAF 2012 Selections

The Ottawa International Animation Festival has posted its selections for 2012.  Congratulations to everyone whose film will screen.

Animation Before Movies

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In the period between the discovery of the principle of persistence of vision and the invention of flexible film stock, animation was born.  It was made with a variety of toys, all given impressive Greek names like Thaumatrope, Phenakistoscope and Zootrope (see the comments for the derivations of these words courtesy of Daniel).  These toys combined drawn or painted images in ways to give the illusion of movement.  The technology behind animation has become a lot more sophisticated, but it's all built on on the same principles exploited by these toys. Richard Balzer is a collector of these toys and the images they used and he has a site where the images are animated via Flash.  This means that if you're browsing on an iPhone or iPad, you will not be able to see the motion.  He also has a blog that deals with these toys as well as other 19th century amusements such as the Magic Lantern. While the animation is necessarily cycled and limited in duration, we have a modern equival

Super Complicated

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Readers of this blog will know how interested I am in creators' rights.  Some of the most famous characters of 20th century pop culture were created under dubious legal and financial conditions.  The copyright to Superman was transferred from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the writer and artist, to their publisher for the sum of $130.  That was $10 per page for their first 13 page Superman story.  In order to get paid for their work, they lost control of their creation. The latest U.S. copyright law allows for creators who sold their copyrights to regain them during specific time periods.  If the creators are deceased, their heirs have the right to pursue the copyright. Jerry Seigel's heirs have filed to regain their half of the Superman copyright.  Joe Shuster's heirs are eligible to file in the near future.  Both are represented by attorney Marc Toberoff. On the face of it, it's a nice, clear story.  Two little guys were taken advantage of, lost millions of dollars as

In Light of Finding Nemo 2...

...I'd like to point you to a post, now a year old, called "Growth, Maturity and Decline."   My impression is that Pixar is done.  That doesn't mean that they won't make the occasional film that is exceptional, but the initial energy that propelled the company creatively is gone.  It was inevitable;  they are now predictable.  In terms of the previous article, they are a mature company.  The question now is when does the studio enter its decline?  This is not a criticism of the company so much as it is a sad observation.

Taafi Report

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July6-8 was the first TAAFI festival.  TAAFI stands for Toronto Animation and Arts Festival International.  I suspect that the acronym was chosen before the full title was worked out, but that's okay.  TAAFI is catchy. Ben McAvoy and Barnabas Wornoff are the two guys who made it all happen.  They spent the better part of a year pulling everything together and I have to say it was a successful festival, especially for a first-time event.  The TIFF Bell Lightbox, located in downtown Toronto and easily accessible, was a good venue, keeping all the events under a single roof.  The fest was a good mix of screenings, workshops and presentations and there was more happening than any individual could take in. Some of the events included a screening of Rock and Rule with a reunion of some of the crew, the North American premiere of Ronal the Barbarian , a northern European 3D cgi feature that parodied sword and sorcery movies, workshops by Charlie Bonifacio on posing, Peter Emslie on cari

Advice from Bill Plympton

Here's an interview with Bill Plympton, where he gives advice to independent animators.  The piece includes video clips.  And there's a link at the bottom to "4 Lessons in Creativity from John Cleese" that's also worth reading.

In Praise of Tony Fucile

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Tony Fucile is an animator and visual development artist who has worked on The Little Mermaid , Aladdin , The Lion King , The Iron Giant , The Incredibles , Ratatouille , Up and other films.  He is also an illustrator of children's books, and that's what I'd like to focus on. I first became aware of his art in books in Jack-Jack Attack , a Golden Book that was part of merchandising for The Incredibles .  His drawings are spare, but spare shouldn't be confused with simple.  His characters are solidly constructed and his compositions are nailed down, but everything is delineated with very few lines.  While those lines are somewhat rough, they are very expressive.  Slickness is not high on Fucile's list, but his other qualities are so outstanding that it isn't missed. Fucile both wrote and drew Let's Do Nothing , a story of two boys desperate to come up with a way to fill time.  You can see from this example how strong Fucile's poses are, a result, no dou

Gilliam's Favourites

Ever wonder what Terry Gilliam's favourite animated films are?  If so, go here .  To see some of them, go here .

Brave Story

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Character A has a conflict with Character B based on pride and control. Character A's will to power accidentally does something to put Character B in jeopardy, so Character A has to rescue Character B. During the rescue, the two characters reconcile their differences and learn to accept each other. That's the underlying structure of Brave . It's also the underlying structure of Toy Story . We may never know the story that Brenda Chapman intended to tell before being removed from the director's chair, but the story we have is a retread. It comes in a visually attractive package with qualities that were unachievable just a few years ago, but it feels like Pixar, having rejected Chapman, reverted to something it felt comfortable with. So while Brave isn't one of the Pixar sequels already released or yet to come, it still feels overly familiar with only the environment to set it apart. A reliance on setting, rather than story, smacks of the later drawn Disney fea

R.I.P. Andrew Sarris

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This has nothing to do with animation, so skip it if you like. There was a time when Hollywood movies were treated as nothing more than commercial entertainment.  (Sound familar?)  They were a product, not an art form.  In the years after World War II in France, a group of cineastes started looking hard at Hollywood films.  Perhaps, due to their cultural background or perhaps due to their lack of English skills, they saw things in Hollywood films that no one had bothered to notice.  They formed a magazine called Cahiers du Cinema and many of them, besides being critics, grew to become film makers.  Some of you will be familiar with the names Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and others of their generation.  Collectively, they were known as the Nouvelle Vague , the French New Wave. Critically, they championed what they referred to as Les Politiques des Auteurs .  They saw directors as the ones who shaped what was on screen and noticed recu