Results tagged “ryanlarkin”

The Worldwide Short Film Festival has two things perpetually working against it. One, any feature-length program of short films, in any context, is almost necessarily going to be a mixed bag; there will be one or two works of sustained brilliance, two or three self-satisfied efforts that try your patience despite their limited lengths, and then a handful of other interesting but mostly unremarkable entries. Two, the WSFF—this year running June 16–21—always comes at the end of Toronto's busy spring festival season, following Images (early April), Sprockets (mid-April), Toronto Jewish (late April), Hot Docs (early May), and Inside Out (mid-May); it's sometimes received as an afterthought in the scheme of things.

MUSIC: Torontonian electro-soul group Pants and Tie are celebrating the release of their new single, "Washing Machine," with a party tonight at Sneaky Dee's. The single, mixed by Dale Morningstar, will be available on both CD and vinyl at the show. Pants and Tie will be performing (obviously), accompanied by musical sets from the Pink Noise and Slow Hand Motem, and a DJ set from DVAS. Sneaky Dee's (431 College Street), 9 p.m., $5.

Torontoist was very saddened to learn of yesterday's passing of Canadian animation legend Ryan Larkin.

Between the groundbreaking (and Oscar-nominated) Walking in 1969 and his equally revolutionary follow-up, Street Musique, three years later, Ryan Larkin cemented his status as among the most daring and brilliant animators of his time, taking hand-drawn animation to a previously-unseen level of surreal impressionism. He was the rising star of the NFB, the protégé of, and successor to, Norman McLaren, but the pressure to top his earlier triumphs exacerbated his already-present problems with drug- and alcohol-dependency. He left the NFB in 1978, and after a "hazy" decade during which he managed to get himself off of cocaine, Larkin took up panhandling outside (the greatest restaurant in the world) Schwartz's deli in Montréal. This tragic fall from grace was chronicled in Chris Landreth's excellent 2004 Academy Award-winner for Best Animated Short, Ryan, which renewed attention on Larkin, who nevertheless chose to continue his long stint on The Main.