Month: March 2016

Passing along a message from my friend PK

if anyone who is tech savvy have time to kill tonight please troll the hell out of these tech support scammers, the number is 1-888-891-4850

as orginally posted on buzzfeed.com

It’s sold on Etsy by Savagepunk Studio, which sells “unique and finely crafted cosplay, leathercraft, and accessories”.
It’s owned by Andy Fyfe, 38, and his wife, Barbara, 31, although Andy told us there’s also input from Andy’s son from a previous marriage, Owen, who’s nearly 7, and “our Armour Cat in Training, Jenga, a mixed-breed Savannah cat”.
He told BuzzFeed: “The studio is based out of our home in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. We make all manner of masks, hats, costume pieces, and assorted oddities, with a specialisation in custom artsy leather armour for humans and felines alike.”
Fyfe told BuzzFeed the inspiration was an “absolutely brilliant artist based in Calgary named Jeff de Boer, who’s made a series of magnificent historically based cat armours”.

He said: “His ability far exceeds my own, but his pieces were designed more as sculptural standalone works, rather than something one could actually try to stuff a cat into.
“Inspired by his example, and as a novice armourer, I thought it would be a laugh and an excellent technical challenge to try making something that a cat could wear comfortably and move about unimpeded.”
Fyfe said they’d never intended to sell the armour: “It was just a bit of fun working with an unusually cooperative cat, and I posted some pictures on social media to share with friends. The pictures went viral almost instantly, to our total shock, and people started to track me down to ask how they could get cat armour of their own – I had to scramble to assemble additional sets a few weeks after the initial unveiling.”
They explain how they got their cat used to wearing the armour on their Etsy page, where they write: “Now she seems to genuinely enjoy wearing it – purring and actively modelling. I think she also appreciates the extra insulation the leather offers.”
He said there hasn’t been a crazy number of sales but “we’ve since developed a customer base of really wonderful, eccentric, and creative people who have sought us out as the artists who will try to make the things you can’t get anywhere else”.

“Humanity can rest at ease knowing that we are not yet under threat of a full-scale armoured cat uprising,” Fyfe said.
Is it condoning bad kitty behaviour? “The nice thing, ethically speaking, about making armour is that its use is purely defensive,” he said. “It can’t harm anyone unless they’re making a really determined effort to eat the creature wearing it. My conscience is clear.”

as originally posted on adjective species.com by JM

Zootropolis (known as Zootopia in some countries) is an upcoming Disney film, led by the creative team behind modern fairytales such as Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph. It’s caused no small amount of excitement within furry, not least because of its embrace of the term “anthropomorphic”.

In furry circles, Zootropolis has few points of comparison. A similar buzz was created following the announcement of a 2004 Simpsonsesque comedy series called Father of the Pride, although in that case any excitement died quickly. While it’s reasonable to guess that Zootropolis will fare better than Father, both have something that makes them stand out—to furries—in a crowd of animated anthropomorphics.

They stand out because they display the ‘modern furry aesthetic’, as discussed by Flip writing for [adjective][species] earlier this year. He identified a shift in funny animal art in the late 1970s, where a group of cartoonists collectively found a different direction for anthropomorphics. That shift would be the seed that led to furry diverging from—and ultimately becoming distinct from—science fiction and other fandom groups.

The first comic identified by Flip as displaying the modern furry aesthetic is in 1977’s Vootie #3, in a short comic by Reed Waller titled Disguise Adroit de Plastique. (It is republished in The Erotic Art of Reed Waller, currently in print.) The comic starts in a typical counter-cultural manner, a bit like Fritz the Cat, but it takes a novel turn when the characters decide to forego the demands of the story and act like animals instead. “All that stuff about ideals might be okay if we were human, but we’re just Animals! All we understand is fucking, and mothering, and killing, and eating!“.

Flip sees this as a seachange in funny animal comics, because Waller’s anthropomorphic characters cease to be near human, and instead reject the idea—or at least aspects of the idea—of being human. The furry aesthetic considers acting like an animal to be instinctually honest. It’s the animal instinct that provides insight to the human condition.

Zootropolis embraces this idea by having human-like animals that have retained their animal instincts. In the first trailer, which introduces the Zootropolis universe, we see an exchange between a fox and a bunny.

The fox trips the bunny and the bunny turns out to be a policewoman. It’s a simple joke, setting up an expectation of who holds the power in the exchange, and then subverting it. So far, so Disney. Then a new variable is introduced: the lights go out, putting the fox at advantage because of an animal trait – good night vision. And then this is again upended due to the bunny’s superior hearing.

The animalistic traits of the Zootropolis characters are what makes this exchange recognisably furry. The furry characters are fundamentally human, in that they live in a version of our modern human world and do mundane things like wear clothing, have jobs, and so forth. The animal traits are a complication, just like the animal instincts (fucking, and mothering, and killing, and eating) of Disguise Adroit de Plastique.

This is in contrast with Zootropolis’s most obvious antecedent, Disney’s Robin Hood. The characters in Robin Hood are drawn in a similar style to those of Zootropolis, but they have very little in the way of animal characteristics other than their animal-person forms. The animators make the most of the most obvious animal features—eyes, ears, tails—to make the characters expressive, but that’s about it. Species and animal instinct are all but irrelevant.

A less obvious comparison is Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox. Towards the end of the film, Mr Fox and his squad of animal buddies find themselves trapped, and decide that they should make the most of their instincts and traits to survive: “we’re wild animals“. However the execution of these animal skills could hardly be less animalistic: each creature is identified by their Latin genus/species, and their escape is executed by a complex and structured plan, all to a military beat. This is a typical Wes Anderson joke: there is nothing wild or animalistic whatsoever about his wild animals. And when they’re done, Mr Fox renounces the risky animalistic ways of his youth and settles into very suburban, human domesticity.

Zootropilis’s gimmick, and the main source of the comedy in the trailers (and presumably the film), is the conflict between human and animal desires. It’s a fairly obvious route for comedy because it allows the creators to set up a simple expectation for behaviour based on one driver, then flipping it using the other. You can see this at work in its simplest form in Family Guy, as Brian the dog acts rational in one moment before sniffing butts in the next.

The challenge for works like Zootropolis is to explore this conflict without destroying the universe in which it takes place. The comedy and drama must be based on a world and characters that the viewer cares about. If the world is untenable, or if the characters change personality depending on the demands of the plot, the movie will become arbitrary and lack narrative tension. This is a real risk where the driving force behind the comedy (and narrative conflict) is inherently contradictory: on one hand, Zootropolis exists in a version of today’s human world; on the other hand it is ruled by animal instinct.

This is a risk for any story that mixes anthropomorphics with today’s world. Speculative furry universes, like sci-fi or fantasy worlds, tend to be more natural because the creator can pre-emptively address any narrative conflicts. When anthropomorphics are placed in the real world, problems can occur.

To give an example, Art Spiegelman’s widely acclaimed graphic novel, Maus, follows the story of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, using mice to represent the Jews and cats the Nazis. It’s a simple but effective metaphor, simultaneously showing the vulnerability of the mice while clearly delineating the two groups. However it fails the moment that a character from another race is required. Spiegelman tries to address this by inserting himself (the cartoonist) into the novel wondering what do to, but in the end his justification is irrelevant to the story, and just makes it clear that his metaphor has failed.

The combination of anthropomorphics and today’s world tends to work best when the artist can avoid being backed into a corner, as happened with Spiegelman and Maus. A successful example is PIES by Ian King, a graphic novel (see the [adjective][species] review here). In PIES, the world barely needs to be explained at all, instead acting a backdrop allowing the artist to show an allegorical journey.

Of course, nobody expects Zootropolis to have any special insight to the human condition, or to tell a complex story. The trailers and teasers released to date give us a good idea of what to expect: an airy, easily consumable comedy.

The humour and story of Zootropolis will be driven by its central gimmick: the anthropomorphism, and the dissonance between human and animal traits. So our rabbit policewoman will rely on both technology and instinct to do her job. Species stereotypes will be subverted, so a cheetah will be fat, or a rhino will be delicate and sensitive, and somesuch. There will be snappy editing and a simple plot, driven by the conflict between the main characters’ human and animal sides. In the end someone will learn a lesson and the various plot threads will be tied into a neat bow.

And then the furries will make it weird.

This article released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license

By Nina Metz as originally posted on chicagotribune.com

Each January, while the Sundance Film Festival sucks up nearly all the oxygen in Park City, Utah, there’s another fest running at the same time, in the same city, and giving Sundance a run for its indie-cred money. Long known as an alternative to the celebrity-studded Sundance, the Slamdance Film Festival puts its emphasis squarely on discovering new filmmakers (Christopher Nolan’s debut feature, “Following,” was a 1999 entry, long before anyone considered him for “The Dark Knight”; Lena Dunham is another who showed her early work at the fest) and it aims to spotlight quality films that have yet to acquire the kind of advance buzz that turns the heads of theatrical distributors.

Through June, ArcLight Chicago will be screening a number of selections from this year’s Slamdance fest. Here are quick reviews of the two selected for this month, a comedy and a documentary:

“Honey Buddies” (8 p.m. Monday and March 31)

An out-of-work actor is dumped by his fiancee just before their wedding. She clears out their place, leaving him to contemplate the void alone while sitting on a bare living room floor, surrounded by cases and cases of rose wine intended for their nuptials.

David is drinking straight from one of those bottles, miserably, when his pal Flula, a German transplant to L.A., bursts through the door and suggests they go on the planned honeymoon: a seven-day hike on the Oregon Trail.

“David, what did Hoody do when he could not make the sack?” Flula asks seemingly out of the blue, his accent mangling the words slightly. “Rudy,” David corrects him, “the football movie.”

But Flula — an irrepressible collection of long limbs, boundless enthusiasm and memorable phrasings — is trying to build to a moment, to get his friend off his duff, and in doing so offers up one of the most bonkers motivational speeches put to film:

“Exactly, you are Rhrudy! … You are on the field and like, ‘I would like to make a sack, perhaps!’ but nobody can see you, you’re tiny. But do not worry David — I mean Rhrudy — you have friends, you have the other players on the team … this is me. And the crowd who cheer for you? ‘Rhrudy, Rhrudy, Rhrudy!’ — this is me, also. And I’m grasses and the sky, I’m all of these things, David! I’m helping you out! You will win the championship! And I will help you, Rhrudy! Let’s do it!”

The film is fiction, but you can see the ties of a real friendship at work here, and that is part of the charm. Played by actors and real-life former roommates David Giuntoli (NBC’s “Grimm”) and Flula Borg (and directed by a third friend, Alex Simmons, who has a small cameo), the comedy is a knowing and slightly tangy twist on the bromance genre as the two men head off into the wilderness for seven days of bonding and low-level idiocy. They are no honeymooners (despite being mistaken for such) but rather “honey buddies,” in Flula’s exuberant parlance.

Borg’s performance is all outsized gusto (for everything: “It’s photosynthesizing! Right now!” he says as they look at the nearby fauna), and it plays nicely against the square-jawed Giuntoli, who has leading-man looks and a wry way with lovelorn navel-gazing.

Flula may be exhausting (the movie version and quite possibly the real-life version) but he is precisely the sort of person you want around when you’re at your lowest. David’s straight man is the ballast to Flula’s uninhibited everythingness — he is the human embodiment of an exclamation point — but neither performance would really work without the other to balance it out. (The comedy was the Audience Award winner for narrative feature at this year’s Slamdance.)

The cinematography, by Peter Alton and Michael Lockridge, takes advantage of the gorgeous wooded setting, whether swinging the camera up, up, up and capturing the view or following the guys as they navigate a narrow path with a steep drop-off on one side.

They traverse the incline and then through the forest they go. Flula inhales deeply. “Feel it in your lungs, David!” And then he offers up this gem of an observation: “Oh nature, you’re so refreshing! You’re like an Arnold Palmer! You’re like a cigarette, if your nicotine was filled with nature! Nature, I suck you in!”

“Fursonas”
A furry community member from the documentary “Fursonas.” (ArcLight Cinemas)
“Fursonas” (8 p.m. Sunday and March 30)

This documentary from filmmaker Dominic Rodriguez goes inside the subculture of furry fandom, made up of men and women (although it’s mostly men) who enjoy wearing animal suits (the kind typically worn by sports mascots) and assume an alter ego.

Conventions abound for the community. Anthrocon in Pittsburgh is billed as the world’s largest gathering “for those fascinated with anthropomorphics, which are humanlike animal characters such as have fascinated mankind since the dawn of human imagination.”

If the furry scene is unknown to you, as it was to me, the movie might be an exercise in setting aside preconceptions and initial puzzlement, but Rodriguez asks the right questions about why this is such a vital part of the participants’ lives. Some expressed wariness about being on camera or revealing a lifestyle that has been mocked by others. There is great sensitivity to how being a furry is talked about, so I’ll let Anthrocon’s website do some of the heavy lifting: “We are a collection of artists, animators, writers, costumers, puppeteers and just everyday fans who enjoy cartoon animals and their kin. Membership is open to any and all who like to imagine what it would be like if animals could walk and talk as we do — and no, you don’t have to wear a costume to attend!”

Rodriguez goes into the homes of a handful of furries, and what you hear them talk about is the social acceptance they feel within their community. I suspect they are drawn to it for many of the same reasons a person might be drawn to cosplay: For the anonymity it affords, and the ability to be something other than what you are in everyday life. To create an alternate persona — sorry, fursona — and find a niche for yourself in a world that doesn’t make you feel particularly welcome otherwise.

Furries themselves have said they were the kids in school who felt like outcasts. As adults, that fursuit provides an outlet — to be brash and flirtatious and confident. To be beautiful or adorable. Or simply to be noticed. (I will not soon forget an image Rodriguez captures of a guy named Will, who goes by Diezel the Raccoon, sitting on a John Deere riding mower in his fursuit.)

Despite all the talk of social utopia, it is inevitable that hierarchies tend to assert themselves, and certain autocratic personalities emerge and become polarizing. Shangri-La always reverts back to reality.

It is this path that leads the film astray, however, as it attempts to parse (or gin up; I’m not sure which) a bit of in-fighting. Much of it has to do with what (or how much) furries should say when interviewed by the media.

There is real tension between the community’s fundamental ethos — Social acceptance! You are free to be yourself! No judgment! — and a tightly controlled (and entirely asexual) image preferred by some.

You can understand the concern. There is quite a bit of outside interest in some of the more private aspects of furry social life (people hook up, perhaps sometimes in their fursuits), and while most media stories don’t come right out and say the word “pervert,” they come close. And that has left members of the community feeling exposed, if not burned. What happens within the furry community stays within the furry community — or at least, that’s the way some in the film want it. Others are more open.

Thematically, the documentary is a little all over the place but is most grounded when it spends time with a man who goes by the nom de fur Boomer the Dog. He is sweet and guileless and wears a perfectly whimsical suit he made himself from shredded paper. (Most costumes are purchased and cost thousands of dollars.) The word “creativity” gets thrown around a lot by the furries in the film, but Boomer’s suit (to my outsider eyes, anyway) is the most legitimately creative.

He seems to really believe there is something doglike in his outlook and essence — it’s like the premise of a Disney movie turned inside out: a dog trapped in the body of a man — and over the years this has alienated him from the larger furry community. But I liked him. And he seemed genuine and kind. Most of the time, that’s the best you can ask of the world.

Ultimately the movie leaves you with the right sort of mindset, though. As someone in the film puts it, “What feels normal to me may not be normal for you.” Amen.

Slamdance Cinema Club showings begin Sunday at ArcLight Chicago, 1500 N. Clybourn Ave. For more, go to http://www.arclightcinemas.com/news/ArcLight-Presents-Slamdance-Cinema-Club.

Copyright © 2016, Chicago Tribune

This one will melt your heart