A few new caricatures: Sex & the City, Frank Sinatra and Stephen Colbert
Posted by mcusiman
at 7:00 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, 7 July 2008 11:14 PM EDT
Sunday, 15 June 2008
June Caricatures
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Leonardo Movie
An email arrived saying that the animated movie The Dreams of Leonardo da Vinci was picked for the Woods Hole Film Festival in late July. That's on Cape Cod. This is a six minute movie inspired by Leonardo's notebooks.
Checkout
http://woodshole.bside.com/2008/films/thedreamsofleonardodavinci_woodshole2008
Posted by mcusiman
at 7:33 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, 7 July 2008 11:20 PM EDT
Friday, 25 April 2008
Transiberian
Recently the movie Transiberian premiered at the Boston Independent Film Festival. The Russian detective in the movie Ben Kingsley was there for the event. He said it was a challenge playing such a dark figure in this Hitchcockian type thriller. Afterwards several of my friends came along to the film party. We met Sir Ben and other filmmakers.
One guy was doing a documentary about machine guns in Boston. This woman I met teaches film studies at a local College. There were other local filmmakers there who we know from the scene which is very active in Boston. Tomorrow there is a seminar on working on the local film industry and Sunday some of us are going to see Twelve: a collecton of shorts from Boston filmmakers.
The festival will be covered by Imagine Magazine which is a very important part of the resurgence in filmmaking in Massachusetts.
Posted by mcusiman
at 7:17 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 12 June 2008 6:48 PM EDT
Thursday, 20 December 2007
New Years approaching
Vladimir Putin the new Czar of Russia gets picked as Time magazine's man of the year. Cheney is all set to invade Iran when the intelligence report comes out saying that Iran quit their nuclear waepons program years ago. Iran doesn't have weapons of mass destruction after all. Haven't we heard this story before? Japanese officials admit that UFOs exist. What a way to wind up the end of 2007.
In January and Feb. the Museum of Fine Arts singles nights draw the largest crowds of the year. One doctor suggests that this is because of all the people are there making their New Years resolutiuons to get out and meet new people.
What will the New Year bring? We won't know for another week.
Posted by mcusiman
at 7:19 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, 20 December 2007 7:25 PM EST
Friday, 16 November 2007
Dragons
A while back I picked up a book about drawing Dragons. It was pretty detailed considering that they are imaginary creatures. There's a difference between ferocious Europeen dragons and benign spiritual enlightened Chinese dragons. I needed to come up with one for an upcoming movie about Leonardo da Vinci and the Rennaisance. I did the drawing in pencil, scanned it in and edited it in Flash....You can watch it by clicking on the movie camera below. No roaring or sound effects yet.
Posted by mcusiman
at 10:37 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, 20 December 2007 7:26 PM EST
Monday, 22 October 2007
October
The morning news is bleak. More endless war in Iraq, an Israeli Palestinian peace process that appears to be going nowhere. Bhutto a reformist returns to Pakistan and is greeted by bombs. The stock market is shaky. The world seems to be descending into apocalyptic doom yet people are dancing in the streets.
Yes the Red Sox, defying impossible odds, are back in the World Series. People in the streets and bars are exuberent. Humans are the only animals who are capable of dreaming and hoping for something better...the only species that can believe in magic.
Yes the players are overpaid milliionaires in their twenties playing a kid's game for other adults ridiculously willing to pay $100 or more for the experience.
But a home run at Fenway Park and all is right in the world...if even just for a while. Play ball!
Posted by mcusiman
at 9:18 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 1 May 2008 8:21 PM EDT
Thursday, 18 October 2007
Middle East
Today I went to a Harvard Middle East seminar about the upcoming Palestianian - Israeli peace confererence that Condoleezza Rice is pushing to make happen. The guest speaker Henry Siegman Director of the U.S./Mideast project said right off that bat that there is practically no chance that it would succeed. He said that it willl fail because it is only an US-Israeli pretext for destroying Hamas. Siegman said that the two sides are too far apart to agree on anything and won't even reach a joint statement.
There was much discussion about the history of the establishment of Israel and how the Arabs origonally thought the Palestinians would get half the land. Now they have only 22% of it and he said that Israel demanding more was like trying to squeeze blood form a stone. Both sides see themselves as persecuted and oppressed.
Someone asked Siegman if any of the current presidential candidates had anything to say about the subject. Guliani says that the Palestinians shouldn't get a state. When Howard Dean announced last time that we should have an even handed approach in this issue his campaign was over.
Henry Siegman hopes that maybe a 3rd party ie: the UN can step in and try to get the 2 sides to negotiate.
But the bottom line for any eventual agreement is for both sides to put themselves in the other party's shoes...a quality that doesn't presently exist on either side of the proverbial fence. The seminar had very little optimism. The last seminar about the prospects in Iraq had no optimism whatsoever...not even a glimmer of light at the end of that tunnel.
Posted by mcusiman
at 8:30 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 23 October 2007 10:37 PM EDT
Rubens
Yesterday I went to a museum lecture about Rubens and Baroque art. This curator from Belgium talked about different drawings and paintings he did. Rubens is one of the best artists of all time I think. When I was in Paris in the Louvre I spent an hour in this rooom filled with his 50 foot paintings. the thing about his paintings aren't just that he drew nude women...it's that he is a master of drawing moving figures. other artists may be good at drawing someone standing still. Rubens figures are all writhing, grabbing, twisting, struggling, reaching.
No one draws people in motion with such gusto and liveliness. He is a caricaturist in a way. Not exaggerating the heads but caricaturing movement. This is the essence of baroque art: showing grand events, extreme emotions. You won't find any subtlety here.
Posted by mcusiman
at 8:29 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, 15 June 2008 7:10 PM EDT
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
Reno
Last week my movie Valley of the Kings played at an archaeological film festival in Italy...however I went to Reno Nevada instead. I only gambled a dollar on the slot machines. The reason for going to this place was to attend the National Caricaturist Network convention.
You've seen people at parties and theme parks draw caricatures of people. For many artists this is a full time or part time career. Over 200 caricaturists from the US, europe, England, and Japan came to this convention. For 4 days a large ballrooom was kept open 24 hours a day so that we could draw each other's exaggerated portraits. At the final banquet we gave people the drawings that we did of them. Over 20 people drew me...several portrayed me as a mad scientist. It was an enlightening experience to delve into a misunderstood artform.
Posted by mcusiman
at 1:27 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 10 October 2007 1:42 PM EDT
Wednesday, 19 September 2007
Woodstock Museum Film Festival
Woodstock Museum Film Festival
©2007 mick cusimano
The Woodstock Museum Film held their 8th annual Film Festival on Labor Day weekend at Woodstock (NY) Town Hall.
As usual they had an eclectic mixture of films that you aren’t likely to see elsewhere. Gobi Women was a documentary of struggling Nomadic women living in the Mongolian desert. The Dalai Lama in Woodstock was a video of his recent visit preaching compassion and understanding.
The Woodstock museum was founded by Nathan Koenig and Shelli Lipton.(picture 3) Unlike the other 500,000 people who were at the 1969 Woodstock rock festival they didn’t go home but stayed in town to keep the spirit of the Woodstock Nation alive. They do this by traveling around the country showing slide shows and film about the Sixties. But they also keep a network going between other people with the same vision.
One of the themes this year was the 40th Anniversary of the Monterey Pop Festival and the Summer of Love. Every year during the festival Nathan and Shellli have filmmakers and guests staying at the museum for Labor Day weekend. One of them Danny Eggink was the editor of The Oracle Magazine which was instrumental in bringing people to Haight Ashbury in the summer of 1967.
Eggink convinced Nathan and Shelli to take a trip with their video cameras to San Francisco weeks before the festival for the Summer of Love anniversary. During the festival videos were screened from these recent concerts which included Jefferson Airplane, Hendrix, and Janis Joplin tribute bands. There was also footage of Barry McGuire (Eve of Destruction) and the Doors (with their new lead singer)
Another museum guest was Benny Zable. He had a small part in the documentary Nearly Norman Nimbin. Nimbin: Woodstock’s sister city is a commune begun in the 70s in rural Australia where Benny Zabel is a renouned ani-war and anti-nuclear activist. Zabel walked through Woodstock wearing his black costume and gas-mask which was well received by the weekly drum circle gathered in the park. He was rehearsing for a larger upcoming protest in New York City. The festival was well attended and included a live dance performance by the Diamond Dance Company. 
They got me a grant to teach a Flash animation workshop over the weekend and they showed my new dinosaur movie Human Park Sunday night.
The Woodstock Museum has film, music, and performance events throughout the year. For more information see
www.woodstockmuseum.org
Posted by mcusiman
at 6:00 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, 16 November 2007 11:29 PM EST
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