Site Archives Podcasts

The Adventures of Edward Lear

Posted by Marco on March 3rd, 2008

You may remember that a few months ago I posted on a projected TV series on Edward Lear’s journey through Albania in 1848. A promo of the documentary is now available on YouTube.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies

Posted by Marco on September 24th, 2007

On YouTube, a nice animation based on Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies, by Matt Duplessie of Clandestiny:

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat: A New Arrangement

Posted by Marco on September 21st, 2007

Sumanguru Gyra Jones, from Somewhere West of the Everglades, proposes his own arrangement of Edward Lear’s poem:

Download
He also has an arrangement of Lewis Carroll’s “The Jabberwocky”:

Tomfoolery

Posted by Marco on September 5th, 2007

At long last I have managed to see an episode of Tomfoolery, the 1970-1971 Rankin-Bass show based upon the nonsensical verse and whimsical characters of authors such as Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, Frank Gelett Burgess, and Lewis Carroll.

Thanks to tooktracker for uploading this; also visit the YouTube page for comments.

Alice in Wonderland by Unsuk Chin

Posted by Marco on July 11th, 2007

Korean composer Unsuk Chin’s opera based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was premiered on 30 June at the Munich festival and has been favourably reviewed in the Guardian and the Los Angeles Times.

More information, including a photogallery and a video, is available at the Bayerische Staatsoper site.
Parts of the opera were previewed during the [...]

Another Owl and Pussy-Cat Reading

Posted by Marco on July 6th, 2007

Edward Lear’s most famous poem is performed by the “amazing” Kazzy, with limited animation:
The Owl and the PussycatCaricato da norrisnuvo

More UPA: Christopher Crumpet

Posted by Marco on June 12th, 2007

There are a lot of UPA cartoons on YouTube; I had never seen Christopher Crumpet (1953), another story drawn in a pseudo-simple style reminiscent of Edward Lear with a largely nonsensical tale by T. Hee and Robert Cannon. The cartoon also reminds me of the earliest animation sequences, which very often started with a hand [...]

The Unicorn in the Garden

Posted by Marco on June 7th, 2007

James Thurber’s drawings, once extremely popular, place him firmly in the tradition of Edward Lear’s apparently childish illustration, while his stories tend to be mildly satiric or parodistic.
One of the most famous of these, The Unicorn in the Garden, was adapted for one of UPA’s most acclaimed cartoons. After watching the short, don’t miss Michael [...]

Three Animated Limericks

Posted by Marco on May 12th, 2007

A new Edward Lear animation is available on YouTube, Edward Lear Poetic Stories, in Czech, I think, written and directed by Jana Šobáňová in 2005. That’s as much as I manage to gather. Listening to the sung text it would appear to consist of three limericks (though the third one seems to add some text); [...]

More Edward Lear from YouTube

Posted by Marco on April 1st, 2007

Violets Adventure, based on Edward Lear’s “The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Round the World“, here is what the author writes:
I started off by illustrating the characters then scanned them into a computer and put them against photo realistic backgrounds. I wanted the contrast between the hand drawn illustrations and the crisp [...]