The Only Song You Need For Your Halloween Party Soundtrack

Tracy Jordan - Werewolf Bar Mitzvah (RAC Mix). Brilliance.

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Run Wrake (1965-2012)

As reported on BoingBoing, underappreciated animation genius and illustrator Run Wrake has sadly passed away after losing a battle with cancer at the horrendously young age of 47.

By chance, we’d only recently stumbled over his YouTube channel, which seems to have gone largely unnoticed. Help remedy this by visiting it right now. If you need any special reason for doing so, because his work is so richly and wonderfully creative, the majority of it being from the 1990s, where opportunities for such weird and wonderful work to be seem by the public were – in comparison with nowadays – tremendously rare, cropping up in the likes of BBC/MTV’s Liquid Television or late night Channel 4. This also coming from the days before the ubiquity of programs such as Flash or After Effects made animation more accessible, Wrake became an inspiration for the new breed of offkilter animators, whose work now receives the audience such majestic oddness deserves. Think of Wrake’s work as being a midpoint between Terry Gilliam and Cyriak Harris, sadly without it ever really finding the audience it deserved.

A few examples:

PING BATTER PONG: In 1998, when MTV’s M2 channel launched on the new Sky Digital platform, it opened with an hour-long compilation of Run Wrake’s work. Those were (as we’ve said several times before) the days when M2 was quite simply the best music channel ever to grace television, happily playing host to acts you’d likely never see on the more mainstream MTV channels, as well as giving as much credit to directors of music videos as they would to the artists. Factor in that there were no adverts (hey, probably hardly any viewers) and it’d happily give up an hour of primetime to French hip-hop, and as we said, best music channel ever. And here are the first three minutes. Of it.

THE SHOWBIZ SET: In 2002, Channel 4 broadcast the wonderful documentary The Showbiz Set, looking from the formative years of television to its golden age. It was so wonderful in fact, that we named it 17th Best Television Programme Of The 00s. Chopping together a plethora of famous faces from the varying eras covered in the show, Wrake’s title sequence set the scene for it well.

NME GALLERY: We first came to recognise Wrake’s work from his artwork for the NME (when it was good, which was when we read it). Often taking a photo of the artist in question and transforming it into something otherworldly and fascinating, Wrake’s illustrations always seemed to leap out of the page and draw you in to a 700 diatribe from Johnny Cigarettes on the new Blaggers ITA album (or such).

JUST A MINUTE: More recently, Wrake produced this promotional piece for the BBC, highlighting (and we have to say, enhancing) sixty uninterrupted seconds on Sudoku from Paul Merton. Taking on the dual aims of being strange and inventive, but without being offputting to the Radio 4 audience it was aimed at, Wrake put together a piece that flows as expertly as Paul Merton’s yapping mouth does at its best.

FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON - WE HAVE EXPLOSIVE: Unsurprisingly, him having worked for the NME for so long, Wrake also lent his talents to a number of music videos. Many of which (such as his work for Howie B) are sadly unavailable to view in the UK (yeah, cheers BMG), but this example from Future Sound

of London shows just how well Wrake’s trademark style combined with similarly inventive sounds conjured by noise wizards FSOL.

MEAT STREET 2: Wrake’s most recent upload to YouTube, from just a couple of weeks ago, the second part of what was (at least intended to be) an ongoing narrative. While this may indeed have been part of an earlier work (the video doesn’t have a description), the abrupt ending to it comes across as a bit of a gutpunch, given the circumstances.

 

Run Wrake, 1965-2012
www.runwrake.com | vimeo.com/user10255055/videos | www.youtube.com/user/runwrake

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Bye Then, Analogue

Though luckily, BBC Northern Ireland were on hand to make sure it didn’t just fizzle out without a suitable salute. As you can see here:

They’ll have a job topping that when digital broadcasting is switched off in 2078 (to be replaced by all television being put out in edible pill form). Lovely stuff.

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So. What Did The American Media Make Of That Bit In The Olympic Closing Ceremony With Rodney and Del-Boy In It, Then?

Wondering how the US media covered the bit of the Olympics closing ceremony where “Del Boy” and “Rodney” appeared? Here’s what the New York Times live blog said about them:

Sadly, they don’t seem to have picked up on the BIG news that Eric Idle was (presumably) the first person to say (sing) the word ‘shit’ during an Olympic closing ceremony.

Oh well. Can’t have it all. More of this kind of thing soon, perhaps.

Oh, one more thing. No-one retweeted the best joke we made all night on Twitter, so we’re going to post it here. Now, where out of context it makes even less sense than it did at the time.

Well, we say joke…

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Yeah, Er, Thanks, But…

Our Twitter feed feels slightly tainted now. This is possibly payback for us trying to display a modicum of understanding for the subjects of BBC Two’s Young, Bright and On The Right when we previewed it in last Saturday’s Guardian Guide :(

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The Thursday Film: Oo Vuf Welcome, In Jaaaaaaaam

In protest at Team GB spending a whole day not bothering to win any gold medals, we’re skipping today’s Olympic update. Oh, okay, we couldn’t be bothered. Instead, what might become a nice idea for a weekly update where we ‘curate’ (post a YouTube link to) a ‘fascinating movie curio’ (a film rare enough for its handlers not to have ordered its removal from YouTube).

Today: JAM FILMS (Japan 2002)

Despite our linkbait blog title, this has absolutely nothing to do with Christopher Morris’ extravaganza of ambient stupid, but rather a collection of delightfully skewed short films from Japan. Co-funded by Sega (yes, that Sega),the Jam Films anthology series took works from a number of different directors and basically gave them free rein to do whatever they liked. Which, given these are Japanese film directors we’re talking about, is pretty much a licence to print bizarre money with the yelping face of King Alan Tractors IV on it.

Here, you’ll find the following tales:

THE MESSENGER: the fate set to befall a mobster holed up in his concrete lair is laid out by a mysterious woman.

KENDAMA: a ball and string toy gets mixed up with a bag of onions. Oddness ensues.

COLD SLEEP: A man awakes from suspended animation to find himself on a planet containing the wackiest high school in the world! (Of that particular planet.)

PANDORA: A woman with athlete’s foot consults a mysterious and slightly sinister old doctor, and ends up finding the cure in an unusual place.

HIJIKI: Translated as “edible seaweed”, a criminal takes a family hostage as a siege situation develops. But, who is actually the criminal(s) and who is truly the hostage(s)? Aaaah.

JUSTICE: A bored schoolboy counts the snapping of tight shorts worn by girls jumping hurdles viewed from the classroom window.

ARITA: A young woman has doodled a character called Arita throughout her life, but has no memory of ever doing so. It seems she is not alone. What IS going on?

Jam Films was followed up by “Jam Films 2” in 2003 and “Jam Films S” in 2005, both of which were similarly interesting. Quite frankly, we’re surprised Jonathan Ross hasn’t insisted they get an outing on BBC Four, so instead we’ll be thankful that at least one of them is available to view in full on Good Old YouTube.

Fingers crossed that the others will appear at some point, but for now, sit back and enjoy the glorious oddity that is Jam Films.

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Olympic YouTube Gold Day 5: Oh, You Guys! ITV Live Coverage Of Seoul 1988? Like, As If!

We have to admit, the fakery skills of the YouTube faux-continuity community are becoming increasingly realistic. You can’t even tell this was made using MS Paint and Windows Video Maker AT ALL.

After all, were it not for the fanciful notion of ITV bothering with actual Olympic coverage, we might even have been fooled. Oh RIGHT – as if they were going to pick one Olympics to cover, and then make it one taking place all the way over in South Korea? Chinny reck-ON.

 

 

 

Wait, what?

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Olympic YouTube Gold Day 4: Olympic Grandstand 1984

The first Olympics we can actually remember with any real kind of clarity - Daley Thompson! Zola Budd! “Of course, many of these contestants come from nations without swimming pools.” All that.

It was also the first time* the BBC went all out on presentation for their Olympic coverage, right down to their special rings-based BBC-1 ident (above, grabbed from a YouTube video itself pretty shamelessly… let’s say ‘mirrored’ from the mighty TV Ark). There isn’t even a special BBC One ident this year.

(*We are completely guessing here. We’ve never seen the titles for Olympics 72’, ‘76 or ‘80 and they don’t seem to be on YouTube or TV Ark. We’ll operate on the basis that if they were so bloody good, someone would have capped and uploaded them by now. Yes.)

But what of the title sequence for the BBC coverage?

Los Angeles 1984: Olympic Grandstand

A fairly frugal start, with a pretty lo-fi ‘sun’ effect that instantly makes a you bit worried the scary baby face from Teletubbies is about to appear.

Things only improve in quite a modest way, as shots of Famous Olympic Faces fade into view to the opening bars from Vengelis’ most famous offering, in a very mid-80s kind of a way. Come on, BBC! What’s going on, didn’t you get past page six of the manual for your Quantel Paintbox or something?

That’s more like it! A pan over to what were probably termed at the time “3D Computer Graphics”, and a bevelled “BBC Television Presents”. This is more like it. The serif font tells you that this is going to be classy, too.

Pan down with camera facing up, and we see the five iconic rings, from which…

…five more columns emerge. This might look quite comically lame nowadays – yes, we know your microwave can produce flashier graphics than that, even when it’s not plugged in – but we dimly remember being wowed by all this. But then, we were wowed by MODE 7 on the BBC Micro and calculator watches, so y’know.

A slow zoom toward the columns, and a silhouette of an athlete running with the Olympic flame. Quite noticeably this only seems to be animated at about 10fps, but it took a supercomputer the size of Anglesey to generate it all, so shush.

Slow wipe into that mainstay of title sequences – sepia-tinged footage of classic Olympic moments old and new that gradually bleed into colour (“the Games coming to life before your very eyes”, a producer probably announced to his boss in an edit suite, we imagine). Carl Lewis, some steeplechasers, a swimming man, Sebastian “Jam Festival” Coe and such.

Then, it’s our silhouette torch carrier again, this time in front of the official ‘stripey-stars’ logo for the 1984 Los Angeles games, the first point of the titles to give any clue where the while shebang is taking place.

Another pan sideways along the Giraud-shaded Olympic venue, this time to reveal the title of the programme: Olympic Grandstand. As all BBC Olympic programmes should be called. Even now. In fact, especially now, so dads can explain to their offspring about what Grandstand was.

Aaaaand….

FLAME ON. See, now we’re in business.

Cue more footage of the colourful British characters who we’ll be vicariously living through during the two-week Olympiad. Steve Cram!

Zola Budd!

Daley “ZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZX” Thompson!

And on to the programme itself, in this instance footage of the Olympic Torch making its way to the host venue in a typically understated Californian manner.

To borrow a phrase from David Coleman, you have to say that’s remarkable.

RATING: GOLD

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Olympic YouTube Gold Day 3: BBC Good Morning Mexico,1968

Remember the concept of British Cynicism? What were all that about? Yeah, we’re getting increasingly suckered in by it all, especially now we’re not distracted by the Team GB football team (which is probably as close as we’ll ever get to seeing Wales in the finals of a major international tournament, yet we still found it hard to genuinely make any emotional investment in it).

One major factor in the London Olympics being so well received must be the excellent BBC coverage. As all talk Stateside has been about the many, many failings of NBC’s coverage (really, not even bothering to show the 100m final live? It happened at about 4.50pm EST on a Sunday afternoon, you clods), many Americans have been proxying up the live BBC coverage. Add in viewing figures of more than 20 million for the Beeb coverage here – as well as the 24 dedicated HD channels* on Sky and Freesat – and you’ve got a fresh clutch of evidence to suggest the BBC really is the finest broadcaster on the planet.

(*Coincidentally, our favourite Tweet Of The Weekend:

Excellent.)

 

So, how did the BBC cover the Olympics in the past? From behind a series of beige desks in London we imagine. Anyway, much more importantly, what were all the title sequences like? Were they all CGI? Were the titles for Moscow 1980 made from monochrome wireframe vector graphics? Where the Los Angeles 1984 titles a cheekily reworked version of the attract mode from Konami’s Track & Field arcade machine? And so on?

Let’s find out via the magic of Typing Quite Obvious Keywords Into YouTube’s Search Box...

Mexico 1968: You Can’t Spell Cheap And Functional Without ‘Fun’

A slide that doesn’t even count as ‘animated’ unless you’re being hugely charitable, containing as it does the rising rings and the words plonking themselves into place one by one. And, erm, that’s it. Well, unless you’re counting that timeless Sports Report theme, but to modern ears (well, ours) that only makes it come across like a pisstake of Olympic coverage from an episode of Fantasy Football League.

We do get a split screen dual clock and Frank Bough, though (see top of page). Plus, the fun of all the action taking place while any right-minded Briton is soundly asleep makes it all seem a bit more international, if you ask us.

Okay, we’re making excuses. A poor start.

RATING: KNOCKED OUT IN AN EARLY HEAT

 

(Another trot through Olympiads past tomorrow, chums!)

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Olympic YouTube Gold*: Day Two (*Still Soon To Be Retitled “Quadrennial Sporting Occasion YouTube Shiny Brown” Under Threat Of Legal Action)

Second-division Hanna-Barbara characters: this is, as Martine McCutcheon might say, Your Golden Moment. It’s an episode of 1977 cartoon ‘supergroup’ Laff-A-Lympics! With fondly remembered characters like, er, Dynomutt, Taffy Dare, Hokey Wolf, Blabber, Junior Creeply and Orful Octopus!

Basically, it’s Wacky Races, only without the ‘being any good’.Here’s episode one of it:

OLYMPIC-BASED TWEET OF THE DAY THAT WE THINK SHOULD HAVE GOT MORE CREDIT THAN IT DID SO WE’RE RE-POSTING IT HERE: “Just switched to the rowing on BBC Olympic 47. No arguments at all, just some blokes in a boat. Rubbish.”

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