The Adventures of Mark Twain
When I was a kid I used to watch Will Vinton Claymation films and specials every week, forwarding with the remote one frame at a time, making a half-hour piece last hours as I studied the animating decisions the sculptors had made. A few days ago, Will Vinton Claymation's overlooked masterpiece, "The Adventures of Mark Twain," was been released on DVD. This is going right onto my wish list.
As is typical of the Vinton studios (as opposed to Aardman's Wallace and Gromit/Chicken Run), the faces are incredibly well-sculpted and express themselves by constantly resculpting their shape instead of swapping out rigid polymer mouths and eyes in the Aardman style. The Vinton animators were fantastically expressive actors.
Twain has a flying riverboat and flies with Huck, Tom, Becky and their jumping frog to meet Halley's Comet. I will never forget how they animated the character of the frog by distorting its shape into a squirt of green clay when it jumped; how they made characters walk through intangible walls; the funny depictions of Adam and Eve and the heaven for alien beings; and the chilling disembodied mask of "The Mysterious Stranger" who sculpted happy little clay people and then smashed them with godlike power.
Comments
phecda on Feb. 3, 2006 9:00 PM
You need to read a Phillip Jose' Farmer series: "To your Scattered Bodies Go", "The Fabulous River Boat", and whatever the third book in the series was -- "The Dark Design"? The second book featured Mark Twain as a central character.
matt-arnold on Feb. 3, 2006 9:34 PM
I recall a short story or novella in which characters from history, including Mark Twain, were living in the future and spoke Esperanto. I don't know if it's related, but I thought I recalled Philip Jose Farmer in connection with it.
trav13369 on Feb. 3, 2006 11:06 PM — Riverworld
That's the one, the Riverworld series by Farmer was fantastic, although "The Dark Design" was too long and bored me almost to sleep. The TV movie was passable, but I have my personal beefs about it.
Farmer has a fantastic grasp of history, and he mixed it well to produce a series that is his masterpiece.
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