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Normally I do music on Saturday night’s, but normally Saturday is not Halloween. So this time around, a couple of classics in honor of the holiday. To make up for the schedule, music will be along very shortly, in honor of the new Abney Park album. The first Halloween video:

This is part of Disney’s Silly Symphonies series: The Skeleton Dance is a classic from 1929, not long after the Steamboat Willie era, and perfect for Halloween. In those days, this stuff was experimental state of the art, which tends to explain why Walt himself directed this one. The entire Silly Symphony collection was created from 1929 to 1939, and totaled out to 75 separate short animations, most of which were mini-masterpieces for their time. As evidence of this, the series won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film seven times, including the first 6 times that award was ever given out. It was also a Disney test bed for new technology, of which the single most important piece (to my mind, at least) was Technicolor, a technology nobody else in the industry would appreciate until decades later.

The second Halloween video is a more modern classic: The 8 Bit version of Army of Darkness. It may have been the third film in the Evil Dead franchise, but it became the definitive horror comedy film of its time very quickly. It didn’t have a serious contender for that title until Shaun Of The Dead hit the big screen quite a few years later. I do kind of wish I could have played the game instead of just watched it, though. These CineFix virtual remakes are quite the hoot.

The trailer for Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie is out, and the film will be in US theaters on November 10th, 11th, and 16th. This is the franchise that first brought Cyberpunk to the big screen in 1995, and along with Akira introduced American audiences to Japanese Anime. Meanwhile, the live action version of Ghost in the Shell, The Movie starring Scarlett Johansson has been pushed back to a March 2017 release, and is currently having its script rewritten.

The short animation Descendants is a wonderful and touching piece of work, but thanks to the CG Society publishing of the article it is even more than that; it is an excellent tutorial in animation production. When you read the Making Of, you get an understanding of what some of the challenges are in the animation process, and some of the options available for solving each one. So if you have ever considered making your own animation, watch this amazing example, read the Making Of, and consider how to apply its lessens to your own production.

Descendants from Goro Fujita on Vimeo.

This short but quality animation is called No-A and pronounced Noah, and it has a lot of heart for having a robotic protagonist. The team that put it together was lead by Director Liam Murphy, Producer Chloe Mortensen, and Executive Producer Xeon Xai. It has won some awards, and you can get some more details here.

While nothing stands out this week, there are a few amusing titles. The Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is a horror comedy geared to a younger audience, which makes it somewhat strange that they went for an R rating. Freaks of Nature is also a comedy horror where humans, vampires and zombies had to team up together to fight off the alien invasion. Again it seems written for 12 year olds but has an R rating. I won’t be seeing either of these but figured I should mention them.