Best known for his work with Neil Gaiman and his Harvey award-winning graphic novel Cages, comes this Blu-ray collection of Dave McKean's surreal short films collected in a behind the scenes 9 x 12 hardcover book!
Dave McKean's short cinema on Blu-ray included in a hardcover book featuring photos, posters, stills, drawings, and more. A must-have for McKean fans!
"Dave demands his characters agonize over the meaning of life but he forces us to take the roller-coaster ride as well . . . right to the heart of the creative process--his words and drawings cascading across the page in perfectly structured cacophony. Beautiful!"--Terry Gilliam
Blu-Ray includes the following short films and documentaries from Dave Week Before - 23mins - Insipired by the music of Django Reinhardt, story about two neighbors, God, and The Devil. Neon - 27mins - This film is narrated by Velvet Underground founder John Cale and was first prize winner at Clermont-Ferrand (one of most prestigous short film festivals in the world). Whack! - 14mins - Based on Mr. Punch graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. Displacements - 14mins - A combination of three short films featuring Michael Moorcock, Iain Sinclair, and Ed Dorn. Dawn - 9mins - Filmed after McKeans's work on the movie Mirrormask, this short film is based on the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel Pictures that Tick , and was accepted into Clermont-Ferrand Festival Iain Ballamy & Stian Carstensen - 3 1/2 minutes - A video short of jazz musicians Iain Ballamy & Stian Carstensen. Sonnet No. 138 - 1min - An animated version of one of Shakespeare's sonnets as part of a large project to turn all of them into short films, the project was canceled and all that remains is this short film. MTV-9/11 Reason - 1min - Reason was created to play on Sept. 11th 2002, a year after the terrorist attack in New York in 2001. McKean made this image as a illustration for a memorial book published by Dark Horse, and turned it into a film shortly after. MTV-World Aids Day - 1min - McKean's short film for MTV on World Aids Day. Visitors - 15mins - Created to be a video shown during live performances for the band Food, this film was shot at the Pacific coastline at Pebble Beach, Point Lobos, Big Sur, Pacific Grove, and at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. A short film for Adobe - 4mins - Short film to cover the making of an image, which was the cover of The Particle Tarot . Signal to Noise - 4mins - Based of his own Graphic Novel Signal to Noise . RAINDANCE 7 - 1min - Trailer/Advert for the Raindance Film Festival. TAKE PICTURES FURTHER - 40Mins - Commissioned by Kodak to launch a new film stock, and consisted of a lavish book, featuring several photographer/ artists, and accompanying 'making of' films for each contributor. BUCKETHEAD -THE BALLAD OF BUCKETHEAD - 4.5 mins - Daves ode to the musician Buckethead Izzy - 3.5 Mins - Film dedicated to opera singer Izzy, featured on MTV's Classical Channel. Lowcraft - 1 minute - A music video made for the band Lowcraft, inspired by the artist Lorenzo Mattotti. The Old Monkey - 4 minutes - A performance by McKean of a song he wrote for jazz composer Iain Ballamy and poet Matthew Sweeney. 9 Sheepdip, Johnson and Dupree; 9 The Cathedral of Trees - 4 minutes - Two short films from a show by McKean called Nine Lives .
Dave McKean is a world-renowned artist, designer, and film director who has illustrated several books for children, including The Savage by David Almond, and Coraline, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, and The Wolves in the Wall, all by Neil Gaiman. Dave McKean lives in England.
The 5 stars is strictly for the book itself, which is beautiful. Many people have reported that the enclosed blu-ray does not play, and mine has the same problem.
I've waited something like 20 years to get my hands on these short films of McKean's (some previously issued on the hard-to-get Keanoshow years ago), so it's great to see them so beautifully presented. The book is more than just a companion to the Blu-Ray (enclosed in a gold sleeve attached to the inside back cover); McKean has written brief essays for nearly every item on the disc, and they've included additional artwork relevant to some of the projects (film posters, festival illustrations, book covers), most of which haven't been collected elsewhere. Of course, there are also plenty of still images from the films themselves, but these have been clearly relegated in favour of uniquely print-based art. If I have a single contention with the book, it's merely that its organisation is different to the disc. That is such a minor gripe, though, for such a beautiful project, that it barely merits mention. Spanning as it does McKean's peripheral experimentation in moving images (all the way back to his very first when he was 8), the disc could scarcely have been better (mine is a later edition that has been re-authored to correct the original problems many encountered). As a companion-book, this volume is a sublime addition. This edition includes a foreword by McKean's Gospel of Us star Michael Sheen, lyrics to the McKean songs on the disc, an introduction by McKean, a filmography (encompassing all his film work of any degree) and a biography.
If you like Dave McKean's art, you'll probably enjoy this DVD.
I've been slowly going through the videos on the disc, and outside the design, they can be a bit of a mixed bag. Some are stronger than others. My biggest complaint is the lack of subtitles on the disc. It made shorts that the book had me interested in (N[eon]) much harder to follow when I couldn't parse half of what was said, and
The piece that stuck with me the most was definitely "Whack!" I can see why he wrote that he doesn't often show that one. Black comedy horror based on Punch & Judy, the short is genuinely distressing.