The Corsican Brothers Trailer

An animated production of The Corsican Brothers draws lots of inspiration from Victorian-era toy theatre.

I just watched the trailer for The Corsican Brothers. It looks great and has obviously been a labour of love for filmmaker Nigel Peever. I'm pretty sure that it's actually being done as computer animation, but it has a wonderful handcrafted look to it that makes look just like toy theatre. Go have a look and see it for yourself.

Via Penny Plain, Twopence Coloured.

Dante's Inferno Now on DVD

The feature-length toy Theatre film Dante's Inferno is now available on DVD.

Dante's Inferno (see previous post) - the feature-length Toy Theatre film from a team that includes Paul Zaloom is now available to order on DVD. While it's the type of indie film that's probably not for everyone, I had a chance to catch this at last year's Puppeteers of America festival and really enjoyed it. It's available to order online for just $13.99 at www.dantefilm.com.

Dante's Inferno Screening in Venice, CA

The Toy Theatre film Dante's Inferno will screened this weekend in Venice, CA.

If you live in or near Venice, CA and you've been wanting to see the toy theatre film adaptation of Dante's Inferno (see previous post) a special screening is being held at the Quiksilver Mission this Saturday, July 28th, at 8 p.m. Click here for more information and to RSVP.

Quick Friday Night Links

After a two weeks of uneven posting my inbox is stuffed with lots of puppet film and video stuff to wade through. Here's a quick look at some of it:

• Axtell Expressions is running a video contest called The Axtell Video Challenge. If you own an Axtell puppet you can enter by making a video with it. Over $5,000 in prizes are available and videos will be judged by a panel of well-known puppeteers and industry veterans.
  
  
• A Tale of a Woofy Dog is a music video on YouTube from Stephen Durrant that features Wrinkles puppets.
  
  
• Beauty Will Come is a prequel to Beauty And The Beast created with Toy Theatre (thanks to Mary for the link).
  
  
• Kermit the Frog is appearing on the web as a "spokesfrog" for the Ford Escape Hybrid (link via The Muppet Newsflash).
  

1920s Toy Theatre Newsreel

A toy theatre maker shown at work in a newsreel from the 1920s.

Here's a great newsreel from the 1920s about toy theatre explaining how they are made. Toy Theatre (also sometimes called "paper theatre" or "model theatre") is unknown to many people today, but was extremely popular during the Victorian era, during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Toy theatres were mass produced and sold as printed sheets with images of a proscenium, scenery, sets, props and characters that could be cut out, pasted on to cardboard and used to present a play in your parlor or living room.

The public's fascination with toy theatre mostly died out with the advent of radio, but now almost a hundred years later there's been a recent resurgence of interest in it. An excellent source for Toy Theatre news and information is the Penny Plain, Twopence Coloured blog, where I discovered this newsreel.