The Future of Animation is Coming!
Also Beetlejuice is here. What a rascal.
What a week it has been! Yes, I say that every week, but every week falls under that umbrella, so we carry on. This week was big, though! Around a year ago, my brother Peter Keahey had an idea for a co-op animation studio. One that allowed animation industry professionals to work on projects when they weren’t employed by the big studios that undervalued them. One that was donation-based and divided all earnings equally. One that allowed them to build out their portfolios while also creating a robust community of artists who help and respect each other.
This week, we launched the website.
Life Lines Animation is a new kind of studio. Purely donation based, every single person that helps us create animated art will be paid the same amount as everyone else. No bloated CEO sucking the fucking life out of everyone underneath them so they can buy up Hawaii or whatever the fuck those parasites are destroying this week.
Animators are currently negotiating for better contracts, but Peter wanted to make sure that in the event of a strike, animators could still be working toward something and making up for a bit of the lost income through donations. He’s been developing 13 different pilot ideas representing different kinds of animation and appealing to every demographic. Something that everyone can feel excited to work on.
This is positively huge for us. If you know my brother, you know that there is nothing he’s more passionate about than animation. He’s been in the industry for over a decade and has worked on shows like Bojack Horseman and Bob’s Burgers. He knows the industry well. We’ve been having meetings with interested artists, and the talent pool is already *insane* for this endeavor.
We already have so many talented artists who are on board with more on the way. Whatever we make is going to be amazing, so I highly encourage you to check out our website, follow our animation journey on our socials, and if you feel so inclined, donate to our Patreon!
(All of this is still under construction, but we’re making lots of headway!)
Let’s get to it…
OCTOBER MICROFICTION… AGAIN
Day 12: Unbothered
We circled up and let the orange light wash over us. We felt how the pioneers must have back in the day; far from civilization, nothing but necessities, and ready for the night to end and tomorrow to begin.
The fire would burn itself out eventually. We remembered when we were younger and so paranoid about the fire spreading, but we knew it wouldn’t. It had nowhere to go.
Some things are just too big, some fires too vast. One by one we floated from the window and gathered for dinner. The burning earth, the farthest thing from our minds.
Day 13: Anther
It’s okay to double up on your allergy meds, you know. Yeah, the box recommends that you take a certain amount, but I almost always take twice the recommended amount and nothing bad has ever happened.
Plus, I need it. Trees and seasonal weeds are tearing my face up from the moment I wake up to the moment I wheeze myself to sleep. My housemates don’t even want to be around me. I’m a snot factory! Hacking cough, runny nose, itchy eyes, the whole package.
The news says that people are dying, but it’s just allergies. It’s only allergies, right?
Day 14: Fishing Lure
There were fewer kids in class today. Six by my count. Bad night.
After school, we moved in a group. We lived too close to the school to take the bus, but far enough that it paid to have company. Then kids started splitting off.
One kid saw a GameBoy and ran off. One kid saw a large cheese pizza. It was different for everyone. One by one they grabbed the thing they wanted most and were yanked into the sky. Now it’s just me, and I can see my sister calling to me, pretty as the day she died.
Day 15: Splinter
It was a beloved staple of the county fair. There was a camera halfway down that would capture the petrified faces of the brave souls who dared ascend the many flights of stairs to the top. It was a rite of passage. The Tallest Wooden Slide in America.
Each year it brought joy to thousands, but nature changes everything. Just because it was manmade doesn’t mean it was immune to that irrefutable fact.
The weather coating had worn. The wood has swollen. Several hundred people had gone down without incident that day, but it only took one moment. One protrusion.
Day 16: Secrete
I wash my hands a lot. It’s not entirely effective, but it prevents the people I touch from getting a “full dose”. I’ve found if I don’t do this regularly, even the slightest contact is enough to drive a person to a dangerous place.
I don’t know why the oils on my hands make people tell the truth. They just can’t help it. They start vomiting all their secrets while their eyes scream in their sockets, unable to stop the deluge.
When people uncontrollably tell the truth, their first instinct is to silence whoever heard them by any means necessary.
Day 17: Echoing
I knew immediately that I had pushed too far. That I was stuck. Caving is a dangerous endeavor on a good day, but you add in arrogance like mine, and you get this situation. One where my rib cage had slid past a rock that it wouldn’t be able to slide back over.
It didn’t stop me from trying. I tried to wiggle backwards and felt the breath leave my lungs as my ribs fractured under the strain. I began screaming for help, but all I heard was my echo in reply…A hungry echo speaking a language I couldn’t understand.
REVIEW: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Warning: This one is gonna have spoilers)
After years and years of fake photoshopped movie posters that all the Gen X people on Facebook kept falling for, it finally happened. They made another Beetlejuice movie. Everything in the world was black and white and green again as Michael Keaton reclaimed his title as Ghost with the Most while Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara have returned as Lydia and Delia Deetz. We’re back in the house and Jenna Ortega is here now because of course she is. This is absolutely her shit and we love her.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opens with the death of Charles Deetz, whose head was bitten off by a shark. This is a great direction for this character as the actor who portrayed Charles in the original is a pretty heinous sex offender and we all wish that the shark thing would really happen. As a result of his untimely, well-deserved death, everyone heads back to the big house on the hill.
Lydia–who is now a celebrated TV psychic medium–brings her greasy boyfriend and daughter Astrid back with her for the highly theatrical funeral being put on by Delia, and slowly but surely, the specter of Beetlejuice begins to re-enter her life… For better or worse.
Meanwhile, Beetlejuice is in the afterlife running his bio-exorcism business and making sure that Lydia knows that he’s still lurking just beyond the veil. General dirtbag behavior that we’ve come to expect from him. However, his afterlife is upended by the resurrection of his late wife (scandal!) by Danny Devito. She’s back, she hates him, and she wants to kill him. Why? Not important, honestly. She’s not important.
That’s the crux of this review, honestly. There’s a lot in this movie that ultimately doesn’t matter. It’s a very fun watch, but there’s so much going on that it actually takes away from the movie as a whole. Beetlejuice’s wife (played by the gorgeous Monica Bellucci) has zero bearing on the story. As everyone on the internet will point out, she’s Tim Burton’s partner, meaning her inclusion is essentially just Tim going, “Look how hot my partner is”.
At least when Rob Zombie does it, Sherri Moon has a legitimate part. Is it a good one? That’s for history to decide. Monica Bellucci didn’t even get to do any acting in this. She just looks cool. You could remove her from the movie and it would change nothing about the story in the slightest. Monica Bellucci can act! Give her some acting to do!
The same goes for Lydia’s late husband. There’s a whole thing about how he was in the amazon and he disappeared on a boat and blah blah blah. They can’t confirm he’s dead because he was never found and Lydia can’t see him, which is, like, her whole thing. Why can’t she see him? No idea. Never explained. They find him dead in the afterlife covered in piranhas, and that’s that. He even says, “I check in on you both”. Okay? Then why couldn’t Lydia see you? Why’d you leave them questioning your fate? The answer is, it doesn’t matter. They just wanted to put piranha prosthetics on a guy which is their god-given right.
I have a lot of little problems with this movie, but at the end of the day, it’s Beetlejuice, and it’s not that deep. I loved seeing Keaton in the costume again, Jenna Ortega brought amazing new energy to the cast, I would fucking die for Catherine O’Hara and/or Delia Deetz, and I adore their use of practical effects. They could have done so much of this with CGI but they KNEW it would look so much better if it were practical. They were right. There’s even a sequence with Beetlejuice and Lydia working together in a way that harkens back to Beetlejuice the Animated Series, and I really loved that. That show was a formative one for me, and I was excited to see that dynamic translated to the big screen.
So, even though Geena Davis isn’t in this and they used a pretty flimsy throwaway line to explain her and Alec Baldwin away, this is still a really fun time. I would highly recommend it for your Halloween viewing pleasure, especially if you enjoyed the original. We don’t often get to enjoy sets and costumes and makeup like this that’s so far outside the cinematic mainstream, and I appreciate it for what it is: A love letter to the little freaks like me who love Halloween and love when Michael Keaton gets to fucking cut loose.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is now available on digital… whatever you use for that.
YOUR WEEKLY MISSION
Next time you’re laying in bed struggling to sleep and you remember something stupid or mean you did in the past, I want you to forgive yourself.
You’re not that person. You haven’t been for a long time. You’re not still there and you’re not still them. You’ve come a long way. How much can you bully yourself for past mistakes before it’s finally enough?
You’ve done your time. It’s a new day.
SNAPSHOT OF THE WEEK
This shot was a behind-the-scenes photo I took of my dear friend and deathmatch wrestler Dimitri Alexandrov while we shot a promo for one of his upcoming matches in an abandoned gas station. Despite smashing all kinds of things on all manner of people, he’s one of the most genuinely kind and supportive people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. If you hear that Deathmatch Jesus is coming to town, you better grab tickets to that match. Otherwise, he’s gonna come find you, and you don’t want that. Go follow him everywhere and buy some of his merch. It’s his fuckin’ birthday.
Happy Birthday, man. I know it’s not actually your birthday anymore, but if I had gotten this newsletter out when I meant to, it would have been, so let’s just pretend that it’s Saturday again and that I don’t suck.
Taken on my Canon R8 with the 35mm f/1.8 macro lens. Edited in Abode Lightroom (ugh).