LONELYPOND PRESENTS

Well, none really. I have a stack of movies — we started the Netflix account + some borrowed — that I’d like to make a dent in. The list? Soapdish (Netflix) — ever watch a soap opera, ever laugh at Sally Field and/or Kevin Kline (yes, A Fish Called Wanda is a must see) — then Soapdish is a can’t miss. What else? Blythe — one of my theatre peeps — loaned me Tristam Shandy(movie/book skipping back + forth with the excellent Steve Coogan) + Bubba Ho Tep (Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis kick some mummy ass) at the end of #tamingshakespeare so I’d like to watch them so I can then arrange a meeting to get my first three Scott Pilgrim graphic novels BACK (yes, I am suffering from a lack of a nearly complete Scott Pilgrim graphic novel stack by my bedside.) Oh, and long ago my former editor + anime/animation connection Mel loaned me Steamboy and although I am reluctant to pop it in, I do want to give it a try. Most of the anime movies I’ve seen are too warcentric for me.

Speaking of movies, my buddies at The Web Files (@The WebFiles) continue to do excellent work and thanks to them I have met my new friends at Movies You May Have Missed (@MYMHM) — we’ve been having snappy conversations the past couple of weeks about remakes + Netflix + streaming movies. Both shows did fun, crossover episodes with each other this week and left me with a craving for MORE movies — The Web Files ep + MYMHM ep. It’s pretty amazing what’s out there on the intrawebs. Check it out…

And, self plug, follow @blinkkittylove’s feed on Twitter, check out the episodes on their blip.tv station, or have some musical fun with lyrics at the Blink Kitty Love site.

Have a great weekend. This is my new favorite song.

I am planning* on curling up with the how to manual for ToonBoom’s Studio 5 program so I can figure out how to have some more Blink Kitty Love fun. Crush you later ; )

*Unless I decide to get distracted by Jane Austen or Harry Potter or my three weeks behind stack of FT’s. Or one of the cats decides the 500 page manual is her (or his) new favorite nap spot. Come back Tuesday to see what won.

I was writing behind the scene posts, linking to fun FT articles, getting rejected by the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, writing a kick ass Merchant of Venice blurb (yes, I, Michelle Denise Norton, have decided to take on yet another infamous Shakespearean speech. Stayed tuned for round by round updates), buying a shirt, listening to Radio FlashCatFlash, Radio blinkkittylove, searching the web, remembering the 80’s, Twittering, and doing and thinking about a galaxy of other things. Here’s the highlights:

Merchant of Venice blurb for the season brochure (then I stop thinking about it for several months):

Merchant of Venice follows Portia, another of Shakespeare’s inimitable heroines, as she makes her way through an obstacle course of money and marriage. One of Shakespeare’s most misunderstood comedies? Or the cruelest? See for yourself.

An excerpt from my Blink Kitty Love Animator’s Journal:

So many people cite Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, the team at Disney as early animation influences; not me. With Blink Kitty Love, you put Rocky and Bullwinkle, Scooby Doo and Josie and the Pussycats in a blender, press mince and here we are, having a blast + burning a hole in our Wacom tablet.

Read the rest at the Blink Kitty Love blog.

El Tigre won 4 Daytime Emmys…congratulations + to celebrate, here’s a fan made mashup trailer of High School Musical 3 + El Tigre.

FT’s Vanessa Friedman on the fashion industry making itself accessible to the film industry.

Peter Aspden on The Beatles, their digitally remastered back catalogue + a lack of originality in contemporary musical endeavors.

The Herge (creator of Tintin) museum. Read up now; Steven Spielberg + Peter Jackson Tintin movie coming to a theatre near you Christmas 2011.

And I think that’s enough for tonight *yawn*..wait, you must watch Warehouse 13. It’s smart, funny, well acted, sharply written, surprising and suspenseful…yes, many science fiction stories have the same seeds, but W-13 lets them grow in interesting + intricate ways. Last week’s Alice in Wonderland take was amazing — you can probably catch it next Tuesday at 7.

And yes, it would be nice if Claudia turned out to be gay…

And on that note, a shout out to the Outer Alliance (@nicolaz is a member + my source for this) and the GLBT Bookshelf (@yuricon the source for this one); people are banding together to get lgbt speculative fiction + writing out there. Click through if you’re interested in finding out how/why.

Good night; sleep well.

New behind the scenes, peek at the process page up at the Blink Kitty Love site.

Not only is the Royal Shakespeare Company on Twitter, but they are running a tweet a love poem into “As You Like It” Contest(deadline 6/22/09). And the RSC search started with a Peter Aspden Culture column about tweeting, culture and the relevancy of the classics.

Good lunch with the FT with E-bay Billionaire and current philanthropist/movie mogul Jeff Skoll.

Vanessa Friedman, always informed and provoking of thought, this past weekend discusses Isabel Toledo.

Good Peter Aspden review of The World and Its Double: The Life and Work Of Otto Preminger.

And on a #tamingshakespeare note, have been working on Taming Of The Shrew both in rehearsals and out (currently trying to decide on image or word focus for t-shirt –actually, better to say, I am negotiating that point with Gayle. I have been informed that although it is not wide, the boardwalk problem has been solved) and I am enthralled by how much Taming is about clothes. Lines keep popping into my head: “I confess the cape” has always been one of my favorites. More recently, I have been mulling Petruchio’s succinct description of what his bride is getting into: “To me she’s married, not unto my clothes.” And then there is the lovely scene with the tailor where Shakespeare lets a character rant, and this one is right up there with the lovers’ ranting from Midsummer*. Out tailor is about 1/3 the size of our Petruchio so the contrast should be interesting:

“O monstrous arrogance! Thou liest, thou thread,
thou thimble,
Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail!
Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou!
Braved in mine own house with a skein of thread?
Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant;
Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard
As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou livest!
I tell thee, I, that thou hast marr’d her gown.”

I think if I were inclined to check myself back into an academic’s garb, I might be inclined to write a thesis on the clothes of Kate Hall. Could be scintillating.

And on a quick Disney note, the Wizards with Hannah On Deck event looks like a blast. I don’t think we have a show that night (7/17) — Flash is not liking the rehearsal schedule, seems to still be growing and now we have What I Like About You time after rehearsal. The N has, of course, incurred our wrath with DeGrassi again — bumping What I Like on the weekends….and yes, I still miss Radio Free Roscoe being on a time I’m actually awake.

That’s a wrap, I believe. Looking forward to seeing The Proposal on Friday, then Metamorphoses on Saturday (friend in the cast, plus, yes, fan of Ovid — are you really surprised?), Sunday, back to Shakespeare –we do Act IV and V until they sparkle which means I could not be home ’til Monday — Shrew has SO many characters on stage at most times. I had blanked out the horrible traffic jams.

*Hermia’s rant:
“Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him.
And are you grown so high in his esteem;
Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.”

Followed later by Lysander’s dismissal:
“Get you gone, you dwarf;
You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made;
You bead, you acorn.”

Oh, just read the whole scene here (thank you, MIT)

Interview with Chinese animation entrepreneur Hao Janing (My Own Swordsman).

Luke Johnson on the qualities that encourage entrepreneurs to strive and thrive.

And an article on how to become a British spy (for your eyes only).

Well:
1. great poem
2. cool flame monster
3. sword

but here’s the official version (and see mp4 version of movie):

Director’s Statement for the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival:

Poetry — I have been directing the comedies of William Shakespeare at DreamWrights Youth and Family Theatre for over a decade and I have seen again and again the difference words well used can make. Verse helps actors and audience gain familiarity and confidence with language. Parents of children I’ve worked with come up to me later amazed at how much a fan of Shakespeare their children have become (and how much better the children are doing in English classes). Poetry and verse make language and the ideas couched in it understandable.

My childhood had the poetry of A.A. Milne and Robert Louis Stevenson along with the fairies and comic verse of Shakespeare. Later, I added in ee cummings and Robert Frost and Odgen Nash and Lewis Carroll, with a touch of Doctor Seuss.

Jabberwocky is the poem I recited from memory to my younger brother at bedtime when I would come back from college for a visit or a summer. Its wordplay and adventure, plus the memories of a five year old Beau listening fascinated made it an easy choice as a movie subject.

I’m keeping a what goes on behind the scenes journal through Pages at the Blink Kitty Love site. Five so far. See what inspires me, frustrates me and how the band and blog are developing.

And if I didn’t have a problem with it, I would have said something sensible, noble and touchy-feely like being true to myself or the journey or…

So here I am in a ferment…I hate them when I’m in them, but often something positive comes out once I’ve churned my way through so I have learned to be a little patient with them — or at least not let them totally unnerve me.

I also feel like I should be walking but this is one of those topple over in a strong wind days so I’m channelling energy through the finger and forearm muscles. And should is a verb I’ve outlawed…

Patience, patience was supposed to be a launching point for a segue involving my friend@LisaMurray , Friday’s Awesome Optimist on the Awesome Optimist youTube channel. This week’s episode: Patience. Lisa wanted to know what stopped and frustrated you. So I started thinking about that.

And then there was Gomez, in Lancaster when we were videotaping Red Sea Radio in Harrisburg for Jeremy. So I started a Twitter conversation with them and, bless them, they started a twitter conversation with @blinkkittylove which was exciting and fun and distracted me from not feeling well but also started me thinking more about Blink Kitty Love.

And then there was @nicolaz who tweeted a new blog post and I decided to read and it was about the pleasures of reading which led me to thinking about the pleasures, many and sundry of writing.

And also, the lack of gay characters in what I do…although, that’s not strictly true. It’s just something I throw at myself when I’m trying to continue creative purgatory instead of finding something to laugh at or do. “The Mystery” has a gay character at its center, should (there we go) I ever rewrite it (and as I have a really cool sequel I WANT (the word we actually need) to write), “The M” needs to happen. But I also have been stewing about Blink Kitty Love, because TK was stuck in the androgynous zone(male? female? I didn’t know) and I was so hoping either or both TK or Tinker would turn out gay but TK’s skewing guy, Tinker’s still got her crush and Tammy’s putting old school kd lang songs into my head. And yes, if you’ve ever written anything, you’ll know that characters do occasionally make up their own minds. When I was writing In The Bleak December, Sally wouldn’t listen to me at all. And that was a good thing.

So, where am I? Not writing, not walking, feeling a bit better now and I should probably stop ranting and grab the last bit of sun. Tallyho.

I’m going to add a new feature to this and the Blink Kitty Love site, giving you a behind the scenes look at what happens when we do an episode of Gulible and Twitchy or I FlipBoom another bit of Blink Kitty Love fun. Which means I’m going to have to stop cheating and start learning how to use links in this blogging platform.

Today, we experimented with clay and stop motion as a start to our upcoming combining Shakespeare and animation project (two of the things I love most)…but for starters, we were going to do a sort of Gullible and Twitchy version of Frankenstein. We scheduled a Sunday session and shopping for clay made the to do list. I’ve always been a little afraid of clay; allergy to weird textures seems to be an issue sometime. Didn’t have much trouble with the textures, but the smell under the lights became almost obnoxious. And end of winter is a really good time to prop open a window.

During chi gung in the morning, I came up with the idea of the cats rolling together a head, which as we worked turned into a race to complete a monster head which turned into Twitchy cheating (a very typical Twitchy thing to do).

Ended up with black and two blue clays, manufactured by Van Aken, costing $3.79 a block. We have not cracked open the darker blue one yet. I didn’t buy the smaller more bright color Van Aken ClayToons options because unlike the other clays, they were not marked non toxic. I figure maybe there’s an issue with the dyes. But two colors worked out fine and they echo the colors of Gullible and Twitchy’s traditional nemesis, the Scarecrow. And Hermunn turned out to be pretty cool.

The images are in the computer to be edited together next session, with a special effect or two added. We used Composite Lab Pro to great effect in the last Gullible and Twitchy video, Skate Street, so I’m getting more comfortable with the thought of editing in tricks and tempos. It’s been too long since I’ve had the video camera out — the battery had totally drained and most of the files in storage had been corrupted, which bites. I’m pretty sure I was just keeping them there as backup data storage so nothing lost.

All Gullible and Twitchy videos so far can be found at MyToons. Just look for the orange cats. Now time for a shower and getting the smell of heated softening plastic out of my personal airspace. Good night all.