Funny stuff from Toy Story 3, out in theaters this weekend.





Love that elevator! - Jeremiah

Flickr user St3f4n's photos of storm trooper action figures kicking around and stirring up trouble are hilarious and really well-done, and thanks to his Creative Commons licensing, we can share a few of our favorites here. The photos combine a purposeless behavior, getting in over your head, and seeking outlets to express powerless rage in a way that reminds me of being a teenager, and St3fan's careful figure positioning expresses so much more than you'd think these little guys could.

















There are 365 in all - check out the full series if these make you laugh. - Jeremiah

If you bought the boxed set of the 26-episode 1980s star-studded ball of quirks that was Fairy Tale Theatre when it came out last year (come on, everybody, raise your hands) you might be sorry to hear that the whole series is now on Hulu. This is a very wacky series and much of it hasn't aged well - how can a show that brings together Mick Jagger, James Earl Jones, Robin Williams, and dozens of other name celebrities to perform richly-costumed and stiffly-directed rewrites of classic children's stories not add up to a whole that is less than the sum of its parts? - but you will get a kick out of seeing some of the big names of the day taking the time to do some "serious television," and your kid will love at least some of this tale-telling, at least on the first go-around. In other words, this is perfect for Hulu in a way it was not perfect for a multi-disc DVD extravaganza.

Here's a sample: "Aladdin and His Magical Lamp" directed by Tim Burton and featuring Valerie Bertinelli, James Earl Jones, and Leonard Nimoy. Man, you just can't make this stuff up:



Via kottke.org - Jennifer

Indie animator and composer Cyriak has finally made something I can show my five-year-old without supplying her with a decade's worth of nightmare material. The video about teddy bears is engaging, richly patterned, and laugh-out-loud funny. Enjoy it with a child!


For an example of a Cyriak piece with dozens of ingenious jokes (and plenty of mildly amusing ones), try his entertaining "Animation Mix." If you start watching it and think it would be ok for your young child to enjoy with you, don't be fooled. Things get ugly and, for young viewers, very creepy.

Here's an interview with Cyriak that gives a few hints of his creative process. It contains a bit of the artist's gore but nothing likely to really scare a kid. But that's just my assessment.


- Jeremiah

Inspired by Disney anthropomorphism, Czech animator Zdenek Miler invented Krtek the mole in 1956 to star in a short animated film to educate children on the processing of flax seed. In 1963 he began producing new cartoons based on the character, but instead of narraion elected to use his young daughters act as voice actors, providing non-verbal exclamations but no spoken words.

There is something very slow and deliberate about the cartoons in this series that make it feel at once primitive and perhaps a little slow for today's kids but make the stories' jokes that much funnier. Here are a couple of good episodes, which you'll find with translated titles from every eastern European country as well as in English. Like the Smurfs, Barbapapa, and Moomin, Krtek has become an international icon of only transitional importance in the U.S.

I liked this first episode a lot because Z and I have been working pretty hard on learning to read notes on a staff as part of her violin practice. Be patient with the pacing and you and your child will be delighted by it.



Mole's most frequent companions are the mouse and rabbit shown in the episode below. Their near-constant presence makes what happens at about 3:40 in the video you are about to see truly shocking. I find the music that accompanies this tragic turn of events hilarious. It is about as desperate a tenor as this slow-moving action can achieve.



- Jeremiah

We're using Hooked on Phonics' newly revised curriculum to teach our five-year-old daughter Z to read. A lot of that learning centers around word families, groups of short words with similar endings (basically, they rhyme) that can be easily learned as a group. This is the second in a series. (Here's the first.) Enjoy!

-ape

-op

- Jennifer