Today, though, we're taking a look back to the 1970's, at some of the animated shorts Philip Glass scored for Sesame Street. more ›

We discovered the genius of Tiny Fuppets through the fine folks at Best Week Ever and, while this ripoff of Muppet Babies didn't keep us from arguing with our brother during Christmas Eve dinner, it made us laugh afterward. more ›

We found this video on the YouTubes called "A Very Calvin and Hobbes Christmas" that captures the spirit of the strip, and Watterson's humor, perfectly. Well done. more ›

O, Canada. You've given us Rush, Bryan Adams, Anne Murray, Trailer Park Boys and Canadian bacon, among other things. You've also made hockey your national sport. more ›

Willie Nelson (and filmmaker Johnny Kelly) show us a farmer who shifts to industrial farming, learns to regret it and returns to the land. more ›

We first saw this video for Nina Simone's "My Baby Just Cares for Me" featuring claymation cats at the Music Box ages ago during a Spike and Mike's Festival of Sick and Twisted Animation and it's still one of our favorites that we love to beat our friends over their heads with. So we're going to do the same with this to you. Enjoy. more ›

We're huge fans of Futurama here in the Chicagoist offices and happy to see the show have a new lease on life at Comedy Central. We also stopped playing video games around the time that 8-bit systems went out of style in favor of 16-bit systems. (That's a while. Don't bother doing the math.) Anyway, someone put together an 8-bit Futurama video game which we liked so much it's today's diversion. Now everybody to the Bender. more ›

This clip is years old and has add video added in so many variations, but it's still a classic from the moment we heard it on Nightline fifteen years ago (Steve Dahl had a field day with this tape when it was first released). This is a dicatphone recording of President Lyndon Baines Johnson talking to the Haggar clothing company about customizing a few pairs of slacks for him, in decidedly non-Presidential language. more ›

You would think after over two decades of cutting bankruptcy infomercials, Peter Francis Geraci would have developed a speaking style that wasn't a dry monotone. Geraci's voice, to us, is the sound of bankruptcy and we never want to hear it trained in our direction. more ›

Here's something that isn't listed on our staff bio: we've seen "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" over 270 times (anywhere from 270 to 276, depending on how many beers we've had). We can do the Time Warp and we've even played the Criminologist once during one midnight showing in Florida. (Sample audience participation - Brad: "Great Scott!" Audience: "No. 'Mediocre Scott!" He's a paraplegic!") But in a "it's new to us" moment, here's the entire movie performed by animated bunnies in under 75 seconds. more ›

We were feeling whimsical most of the afternoon and couldn't think of a way to convey that with today's "OftR" installment. Thankfully, Kevin came through in the clutch with some Sam Prekop and quirky animation. more ›

When it comes to movies, we believe in starting young. It's no trick getting kids to watch movies, but plopping them down in front of the telivision to watch the same Pixar title for the 79th time in a row does nothing to encourage the next generation of cinephiles, to say nothing of encouraging the curiosity of the kiddies. The Chicago International Children's Film Festival, which begins its 27th year tomorrow, is a great opportunity to expand the youngsters horizons, and for parents to watch something new as well. more ›

Have you ever seen the Dr. Seuss cartoons featuring Snafu? Maybe the one where he fights off a swarm of mosquitos? Or how about the one where he is seduced by a sexy foreign spy and spills the beans about troop movement? Wait ... what? more ›

The Blago Trial gets underway once more today after a four-day break and we thought we'd get back into the swing of things with this animated clip which uses actual wiretap excerpts from the trial (so language is NSFW). The theme? A dreaming Blagojevich playing kickball which we now know from personal experience is something the ex-gov does like to dabble in with his spare time. more ›

Those moon shoes might look cool, but they're not worth your soul. Now excuse us while we go play outside. more ›

A neat animated short that explores the imagination of Elio, a janitor. more ›

Check out this cool collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis. more ›

Our friends over at WBEZ got creative and had a little fun. For a recent review from Sound Opinions - the new Fiery Furnaces album - the crew got Arthur Jones of Post-it Note Stories to animate Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis. Check out the WBEZ Blog for more information. It's a pretty entertaining twist for a program we quite enjoy. But animating music critics? It's been done! more ›

A cool steampunk, stop-motion animated short worth checking out. more ›

Every man, woman and child in the Chicago-area will probably either go see Public Enemies (and watch for our review tomorrow) or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at the movies this weekend, but there are a ton of cinematic alternatives available. Because, you know, there's more to America than murderous gangsters and robots. Such as: more ›

Created for the recent This American Life - Live! event, this short cartoon of Chris Ware's Quimby the Mouse (animation by John Kuramoto) is not only awesome, but features music by Chicago's own Andrew Bird. [Drawn! via The Daily What] more ›

Friday, we love you. But why do you have to drag like a cat's ass in the afternoon? zzzzzzzzz... more ›

Acclaimed animator and Animation Show co-creator Don Hertzfeldt is hitting Chicago's Music Box this Friday on a current tour billed as An Evening With Don Hertzfeldt. The event will showcase some of Don's classic animations, such as Billy's Balloon and Lily and Jim, and culminate in a screening of his newest animation, I Am So Proud Of You, the follow-up to his highly-praised Everything Will Be Ok. Hertzfeldt will then be on-hand for a post-screening interview. As we await Don's arrival, we'd like to look back at his hilarious short film Rejected, which happened to garner an Academy Award nomination (2001, Best Animated Short Film). It's nothing short of brilliant and is a perfect reflection of Hertzfeldt's bizarre genius. more ›

We love us some Xmas movies; but frankly there are plenty of swell, non-Holiday movie events coming up as well: more ›

Waaaay back when we were still aspiring animators, just getting over our Disney / WB phase and into our Fleischer Studios / Ralph Bakshi / Nelvana phase, Bill Plympton's early MTV cartoon shorts made a really big impact on us. We specifically remember "How to Kiss" and "25 Ways to Quit Smoking," two cartoons filled with dark whimsy and a loose line style allowing a freedom of movement, and a realistic mimicry of the absurd... more ›

Though it makes the rest of the Chicago International Film Festival seem sort of anti-climactic, awards were handed out last week to some of the festival films. The big winner of the Gold Hugo for best film? My Nikifor/Moj Nikifor from Poland. Paczkis for everybody! The film won the award, in part, because of a “cinematographic form that creates a dialogue between art and compassion.” We bet that dialogue contains a lot of words like... more ›

Chicagoist and its fellow cinemaphiles have it rough this weekend. With the college crowd on Spring Break, most of our favorite off-the-beaten-path movie houses (Block Cinema, Doc Films) are dark. Don’t even get us started on the mainstream box office this weekend. We know The Ring was a big hit, but we saw the sequel the first time, you know? As for the new Woody Allen film, we’re skipping that one too. Unlike the family dog, we only have to be hit on the nose with a newspaper twice before we learn our lesson. And as much as we love Joan Cusack and Buffy’s little sister, we’re not sure we can bring ourselves to see The Ice Princess especially when our local video store has The Cutting Edge on DVD. Now THAT'S an ice skating movie. more ›

Man, five o'clock cannot come fast enough. We love when the weekend is brimming with autumnal goodness, and we can't help but celebrate by using overly cheesy and obvious icons. Here are three of our picks for the oh-so-enjoyable last weekend in September: more ›