JOHN LEAVITT LIVES!

1. Look how they lead the movement as they step back. Baryshnikov moves his leg following a hip/torso movement. Hines comes very close to leading with his knee. You’ll see that knee-leading motion in a later step, too. You can probably do this yourself: stand with your feet and hips square to the front, then turn your hips towards the left and use the pull of it to lead your leg into the step. Then go back to square, and take a step back by letting your knee open to the side and go backwards. You should be able to feel the muscles working pretty differently – the first movement engages a lot more of your core, the second relies more on your various thigh muscles.

2. The leg extension in the air – that perfect straight leg is ballet to the core – and look at how differently their hips and feet are when they land! Baryshnikov’s hips are squared to the side and his feet are aligned; Hines’s hips are angled and his back foot faces the front and is flat. If a ballet dancer had his foot like that – and he might – his hips wouldn’t be doing that angle.

3. This is a tap sequence and it’s where that knee-lead comes in again. Hines’s hips are loose and his knees seem to be leading the movement – almost like they are pulling both his hips and his ankles along for the ride. You can see where his feet will strike by watching the knees. Baryshnikov is not a tap dancer and it really shows here! Once again you can see that he moves his hips in order to shift his knees and weight.

4. There are a few things here but the biggest to me is how they land out of that jump. Hines lands…well, like a tap dancer. He comes down hard and flat – you can see the little jolt as he hits – like he’s slammin’ that tap shoe down to make a big ol’ noise. Baryshnikov’s landing foot isn’t as easy to see, but he comes down toe-first, as is correct for ballet.

5. Again there are a few, but what I find most striking is the looseness/rigidness of posture. Both of them have immense body control, but Hines is letting his joints flex more in the air. It looks to me like again he brings his heel down harder, as well, on both back and front legs – in fact I kind of wonder if the heeled boots Baryshnikov has on are to make it easier for him to match Hines’s foot movements in certain sequences, since he won’t have to bring his foot down as far. (They’re both in shoes with some degree of heel, but Hines’s are much less so.)

and EVEN WHEN things were more muted/neutral, the neutrality was OFFSET by ACCENT COLORS and HIGH CONTRAST between the wood tones and everything ELSE

ALSO AMERICAN COLONIAL INTERIORS POPPED OFF, Y'ALL (IN TERMS OF COLOR/COZINESS)

PEOPLE USED WHITEWASH AND COLORFUL TRIM OR EVEN JUST COLORFUL FURNITURE IF THEY COULD AFFORD TO DO SO

AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON FRENCH AND BRITISH AND AMERICAN WALLPAPERS

"ELIZABETH" YOU CRY, "WHY ARE YOU BEING SO EXTRA THIS MORNING?! IT'S MONDAY"

Because, my friend, my war on GREIGE will NEVER end.

Historic interiors were filled with LIFE and LIGHT and COLOR. ALWAYS HAVE BEEN.

Part of the reason we don't see a lot of textile art is because, frankly, textiles tend to degrade over time - especially ones that had utility! And yes, pigments and weaving and dying all boosted the expense of things, when we were finally reliably block-printing fabrics and broad reams of paper, it was no longer just the wealthy who could afford pretty patterns!

In the Americas, a far wider variety of pigments also became available because of the abundance of... well, a shitton of flora and minerals, some of which weren't as common in Europe.

WHY THE HIGHLIGHTER COLORS? you ask.

CANDLES.

Those colors reflect candlelight and natural sunlight REALLY WELL.

Humans LOVE bright colors, it's NOT just a thing for kids. We live in a brilliant, vibrant, multifaceted world. We ALWAYS have.

(If ever you have the opportunity to visit the Stencil House at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont (pictured above at 3, 4, and 5), I highly recommend.)

And that's before you get into American painted murals:

Any rigid solid object is extremely challenging for 2D artists to animate because if one stray line isn’t kept perfectly in check, the object will seem to wobble and shift unnaturally.

Even as early as the mid 80’s Disney was using a technique where they would animate a 3D object and then apply a 2D filter to it. This practice could be applied to any solid object a character interacts with: from lanterns a character is holding, to a book (like in Atlantis), or in the most extreme cases Cybernetic parts (like in Treasure Planet).

But 101 Dalmatians was made WAY before the advent of this technology. So how did they do the Cruella car chase sequence at the end of the film?

The answer is so simple I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner:

They just BUILT the models and painted them white with black outlines 🤣

That was the trick. They’re not actually 2D animated, they’re stop motion. They were physical models painted white and filmed on a white background. The black outlines become the lineart lines and they just xeroxed the frame onto an animation cel and painted it like any other 2D animated frame.

That’s how they did it! Isn’t that amazing? It’s such a simple low tech solution but it looks so cool in the final product.

Michelle Trachtenberg and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Wendy Peterson and Niel McCormick in MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004) dir. Gregg Araki