Chez PLJ

The animation blog Cartoon Brew, for the better part of a year now has been singing the praises of Sita Sings the Blues, a full-length animated movie made single-handedly by indie comic artist Nina Paley. It depicts stories of love and betrayal between Prince Rama and his wife Sita from the Indian epic Ramayana, interwoven with the personal story of Paley’s long-distance breakup with her husband. Along the way there are three Indians doing a voice-over, Creature Comforts-style, debating the finer details of Sita’s story (was she or wasn’t she wearing jewellery when she was abducted?) These seemingly unrelated themes are woven together using 1920’s songs sung by jazz singer Annette Hanshaw. Apparently the movie works, and surprisingly well.

Here’s a trailer, featuring the voice-overs and lots of trippy artwork:

I say “apparently”, because this movie is in distribution limbo and is unable to be seen by anyone. The Annette Hanshaw performances are in the public domain; not so the actual songs. (It’s exactly the same silliness that keeps a song as old as “Happy Birthday”—written in 1893!—under copyright.) Paley (or the film’s distributors) would have to fork out almost a quarter of a million dollars to secure the rights to use these songs in her movie; an insurmountable amount for a tiny indie film during a recession.

Enter the 500-lb gorilla, Roger Ebert, who published a lengthy rave about the movie on his blog. Ebert enjoyed it so much he invited Paley and her movie to appear at his personal film festival in April. (BTW, whether or not you like Ebert’s actual movie critiques, his blog articles are superb, and features the most interesting, civilized and well-written commentaries by readers I’ve ever read … this blog’s readers excepted! )

Since the Ebert post, Nina Paley has revealed her distribution plan for Sita Sings the Blues. Basically she will place Sita in the public domain, by uploading the film on archive.org and various mirror sites, and calling them “promotional copies”. Promotional copies of a work are exempt from most song licence fees. Paley will not make any money directly from her movie. Instead, she hopes to earn money by “donations, commissions, grants, patrons, speaking fees”. Sounds an awful lot like the life of artists before the rise of the rights-owning mega-corporations.

February 15, 2009 Update

No, we haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth! Usually the client work drops off by early December; this year it picked up considerably. Such is the life of freelancers!

Here’s a fun website that I’ve been reading for a few months, to tide you over until we have something interesting in our lives to blog about: Cake Wrecks, which features disastrously-decorated cakes (done by so-called professional cake decorators, though admittedly a lot of them are of Safeway- or Walmart-caliber quality.)

The following cake wreck made me snort, though. (Both photos from Cake Wrecks.)

This is what the bride requested:

What she ended up with:

One of the most important figures in the history of brain research—and to me, as a former student of brain and behaviour, one of the most tragic and moving—died earlier this week at the age of 82. Henry Gustav Molaison, better known in the psychological literature as H.M., had a brain operation at the age of 27 to try to alleviate intractable seizures (the result of an accident at the age of 9). The surgery—cutting into the part of the brain called the hippocampus—successfully stopped the seizures, but came with a horrifying side-effect: Molaison could no longer form any long-term memories.

His short-term memory—e.g. remembering a phone number for the length of time needed to dial it—was unaffected, and everything he learned prior to his operation was retained, so he could cope reasonably well with day-to-day existence. However, H.M. never remembered experiencing anything or going anywhere a few seconds after doing it. Even when researchers met with him hundreds of times it was always as if he was meeting them for the first time. Every time he was told of his mother’s death his grief was as fresh as if he’d never been told.

From H.M. it was discovered by Brenda Milner of McGill University, that even though one kind of long-term memory is affected by hippocampal damage, another type of memory is not. H.M. could learn complex and difficult motor tasks (e.g. tracing a star while looking through a mirror); even though he never remembered doing the task, he got noticeably better at it over time. This “muscle memory” is why doing things learned long ago, like playing a once much-practised piece of music, or riding a bicycle, can be performed surprisingly well years later.

After working with hundreds of researchers over the years, H.M. had a vague idea that his story was somehow unusual, but he never could parse the details of why. He did thoroughly learn that he had a bad memory. His only life-lasting memories were ones that predated his 1953 operation, and they eventually lost any narrative thread or context in his existence. He remarked that his life was like constantly waking from a dream.

After his death H.M.’s brain was preserved for study, which will hopefully provide researchers with even more insights from a tragic life.

In case you hadn’t heard, the multi-talented Isabella Rossellini wrote, co-directed and starred in a series of short films for the Sundance Channel called Green Porno, about different animal mating habits.

Conceived for computers and mobile devices, the films ended up going on the film festival circuit. They weren’t available online to us Canadians for a while, but they are now and well worth watching for their blend of science and cartoony humour/melodrama.

(Personal favourite: Bees. Go you drones.)

Probably NSFW, depending on how stuck up your office is.