At the Nickelodeon: Le Ballet Mécanique

George Antheil (the self-proclaimed "Bad Boy of Music") composed this modernist musical piece to accompany a film made by Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy. The soundtrack and film were not united until the 1990s...but are finally united in this video. George Antheil was quite an American character. In addition to his pioneering musical compositions, he was an advice columnist, an expert of female endocrinology, and an inventor (along with Hedy Lamarr!!!) of a frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system that later served as a basis for modern communication technology such as COFDM used in wi-fi connections, and CDMA transmission protocol for cellular telephones!

The Wounded Angel

One of my favorite paintings is "The Wounded Angel" by Finnish Symbolist artist Hugo Simberg:

Doing a wee bit of internet sleuthing led me to this short film (after the jump), a re-imagining of the painting by Jennifer Bardsley:

At the Nickelodeon: Silly Symphonies - Flowers & Trees

If only animation remained as imaginative as it was back in 1932... The first animated short in full technicolor: "Flowers & Trees" courtesy of Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies series...

Flower Portraits

The majority of these gorgeous postcards are the art work of Thor E. Gyger. The postcards were printed in Switzerland during the 1940s and I am completely infatuated with them...
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Cornflower

Perennial Daisy

China Aster

Cornflower (part deux)

Alpine Soldanella

Strongly-veined Knap-weed

(the most unfortunate name for such a pretty flower)

Cactus Flower

Garden Anemones

Edelweiss

Columbine

and lastly... The Rose

At the Nickelodeon: Prohibition & Legos

I can't decide what the best aspect of this short B&W film is...the fact that a few guys took the time to tell a truncated story of Prohibition with stop action animation featuring Legos... or that two of the bootleggers are Spiderman & a Viking....