Miaow
Do not view the three animated films starring Simon's Cat unless you are a cat person. They will mean nothing to you. I saw the most recent, TV Dinner, on The Culture Show. You have to see them all. (Unless you're not a cat person.) It's not just animator Simon Tofield's keen observations of the human-cat dynamic, it's the noise the cat makes. Genius of the week.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 6:13 PM
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They're great aren't they, but would mean little if you've never had a cat. Simon Tofield was in the year above me at art college and was just as good an animator then...
Genius. I've known about Simon's Cat for about 15 minutes, but I love it. The couch one is just beautiful to watch. Very funny. Ah the internet, not just there for the nasty things in life, like a blocked drain or Hitler.
The Simon's Cat videos are great. He has captured the manipulatory behaviour of our friendly felines perfectly. If you look around on youtube, people seem to video their cats responding to the noise of Simon's cat on the computer. My cats just ignore it sadly.
Ah, these are pure genius. I've following them for months and all three of my cats are represented by Simon's Cat.
Beautiful stuff :)
thanks Andrew, they were lovely!
Hee! That's brilliant. And yes, I do have a cat, and that is exactly how she behaves when we're trying to watch telly.
Have you seen Winston? He is a very amusing looking cat who seems to have become an internet sensation. And as the most recent post about him shows, he makes very funny noises.
yes, very well-observed, particularly that deep pigeon-coo and the big eyes. excellent.
I've seen Simon's cat before and think it's great. My fiance is a huge cat person (ie. she likes cats a lot, she isn't actually huge!) and loved it.
I must admit I'm also somewhat hooked on lolcats: http://icanhascheezburger.com/
one of the best cat related things on teh internets.
Utterly brilliant, and to say it struck a familiar note would be an enormous understatement - after seeing this on The Culture Show, I spent a few minutes looking around the room for the hidden webcams, because it so precisely depicted what happens when I'm watching TV and my cat Howerd decides he wants my attention.
I started writing a slightly mean-spirited comment about how observing some widespread piece of behaviour (be that cat or human) and then describing it isn't exactly genius (though it's widely mistaken for it - see Peter Kay) but it felt a bit harsh for a blogpost about brilliantly-executed cute cat animation...
I too saw this on The Culture Show and immediately linked everyone I know (who likes cats) to YouTube. Simon's Cat is a perfect combination of my girlfriend's old cat Billy and one of our current children Paddy.
Apologies for constantly using tenuous reasons to drag up the subject of The Wire but if you saw Thursday’s Culture Show Andrew you will also have seen the ‘interview’ with Simon David.
It was a real let down for me. It was badly misjudged. I bow to no one in my admiration of Lauren Laverne but I’m afraid she seemed to be in one of her ‘let’s turn the irony button up to 11’ modes which I hoped she’d outgrown. And for a piece about a show that is a celebration of TV without gimmicks how did they choose to honour it? They pretended to interrogate David in a mock up police interview room, complete with ‘wired’ evidence on a tape recorder. For goodness sake couldn’t they just have sat him down and talked to him like a grown up? I know Simon avid went along with it (he may have even suggested it although that seems unlikely) but nobody said he was infallible and I just assumed the Culture Show was better than this. It was like something off the Sunday Night Project with that pillock with the long hair.
Anyway the new series starts on the FX channel (I know, I know) at 10.00 p.m. tonight although I presume most will wait until the box set is available. You can get it cheaper and a month earlier from Amazon America if you have a DVD player that plays Region 1 discs.
I’m going to watch it tonight. From the rave reviews it got in the Sunday papers and Fridays Newsnight Review (there was even a reference on Corrie on Friday!), I’m sure that the backlash is just around the corner. As I was late to pick up on it in the first place I want to make sure I’m near the head of the queue with the inevitable ‘it’s not as good as it used to be’ reaction and looking down on people who were even later than me to catch on… just joking, I sincerely hope the BBC gets it head out of its arse and finds the resources to show the whole thing from the start so that everyone gets to see just how good TV can be. But why is it that when something becomes so popular you start to feel there must be something wrong with it? Or is that just me?
p.s. After all that I should say that I love the Simon’s cat films.
The baseball bat one rings particularly true.
The miaowing campaign starts about 5am in our house.
People who have children should stop complaning - they have no idea what tiredness REALLY is.
Simon's Cat is excellent. It's like a moving version of some of the Sinfest strips.
It's the door one that rings particularly true in my house.
Although I would say it's not just for cat lovers. A cat-hating friend of mine saw it and said "AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA This is why cats are evil. Why do you still have one in the house?"
So, you know, universal appeal.
I agree about the David Simon interview Nathan. Very much a wasted opportunity, though I get the feeling he's not the sort to over-analyse his work anyway.
Pathetically, I would forgive Lauren Laverne anything though, with those big doe eyes.
Unlike Justin Lee Collins, who is just an irritating twat.
I think those of us who saw the David Simon interview on The Culture Show are in total agreement then: wasted opportunity. And it rather assumed everybody watching has seen it. It's on FX. Not everybody has all the channels. Not everybody buys DVD box sets.
The irony is, Lauren had just interviewed Chris Addison, without any clever gimmicks. Why oh why must television image we all have attention spans of children?
Old Nathan - I've only just started watching The Wire (I bought it but never got around to it because of the original hype, not this latest wave)...
I'm on show 10 of Season one (watched 6 episodes this weekend... Christ!)... all I can ask is that you forgive us newcomers and congratulate you on listening to Andrew, Charlie Brooker and other TV critics who recommended it the first time round. Not sure if you deserve a prize, praise or just the smug knowledge that you were there first. But remember I still have what... 55 hours of it left to go! Woooo!
Seriously though - thanks for not including any spoilers in your comment. I hate 'em.
And Omar is my hero. For now (remember I'm only on S.1 Ep10!)
A little ironic then that Chris Addison did such a good job selling his show. His protestations addressed to early critics of Lab Rats, that it was meant to be completely different to ‘The thick of it’ and that they were deliberately going for ‘silly’ rather than ‘clever’ really won me over. I love a bit of silly and stupid. So I watched it.
I lasted 10 minutes. It wasn’t silly it was just shit.
No problem Swineshead. Although you make me feel a bit fraudulent. I may have been loudest recently but I certainly wasn’t first by a long way. I’m actually rather envious of you. I’ve taken to David Abramovich’s suggestion and started to watch them all again with the subtitles on (and any commentaries available) just to see if it alters anything.
And, just to prove how annoyingly holier than thou this Johnny Come Lately can get, I managed to get hold of two of HBO’s ‘The Wire’ t-shirts despite the fact that they wouldn’t deliver outside the US. I shall be parading then round Brighton (wearing the obviously) in a couple of weeks time. What a tit eh?
Swinehead, I only dicovered it myself about a month ago, so youre not alone. I have, however, caught up heroicially and now completed the entire series 1-5 (dont ask)
I can assure you, without any spoilers, that Omar's heroic status only continues to increase and you have many happy hours with him and the rest of the great characters to look forward to.
On a note of personal triumph, I should confess that I watched the whole 10 episodes of Season 5 in one sitting.
Anyone else anal and socially-deprived enough to beat that, I'd be keen to hear from you - either in person, or, failing that, through your social worker.
I have not laughed as much at You Tube as I have just done. The films perfectly sum up what it is like to have a cat.
As you said Andrew, he is a genius.
Those are fantastic. The mewing is spot on, everything is spot on.
I agree Oldnathan. It's customary to give something new a few episodes to get going. But with something so utterly dreadful as Lab Rats that's almost impossible as it's hard to make it past the first 10 minutes.
In the interests of fairness, I watched the first two episodes in full. It gets worse, if anything.
Truly dreadful.
I'm starting to wonder, in fact, if the Lab Rats in question aren't the viewing audience.
Maybe they'll reveal in episode six that we've all been unwittingly taking part in some complex social experiment - presumably involving how much really really shite comedy you can watch before you force your own head through the tv set to make it stop.
I'm too scared to read AC's Wire post above in case it contains spoilers... does it? Can someone let me know?
Thanking you.
Not exactly earth-shattering spoilers, Swineshead - it's the first show, after all - but even the passing mentions might spoil it for you. Don't read it yet. (It's mostly general, but there are a couple of casual mentions of stuff in the last paragraph. Not much more than you'd read in a newspaper preview really.)
I'm avoiding all newspaper previews and any conversation on it fpr fear of spoilers which is, perhaps, slightly sad.
I'll not read it then - thanks for the tip, Mr Collins
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