Sunday, June 9, 2013

Nina Paley MUST Do Mormonism Next (Or Scientology)


Talk about clearing out a niche for yourself - I'm jealous of this one: 

 If you ever wanted to learn about Hinduism the fun way, then check out Sita Sings The Blues, this real charmer of an animated film that YouTube has online - in it's entirety! 

It was made by an American, Nina Paley, using (mostly) the same techniques South Park employs, but to greater effect. And the story! Sheer madness: 

Sita, the wife of Rama, an avatar of the Hindu Supreme-God Vishnu, is abducted by the king of Sri Lanka, Ravan. Hilarity ensues, blood is spilled, lessons are learned, etc. 

This is the Ramayana, one of the great epics of India, and Sita Sings The Blues has three contemporary Indian religious scholars, light-heartedly explaining it to us. What's special is, they're mostly telling it from the point of view of the gods, with a tiny bit of historical data thrown in, as they correct each other, laugh, step on each other's sentences, and make jokes ("She is the most beautiful woman in the world. Her skin is fair like the lotus blossom. Her eyes are like lotus pools. Her hands are like,..um,...LOTUS'!") 

But along with telling a cool story, can you think of anything more fun to animate (and to watch) than the multi-faced and multi-armed animal/human/monkey warrior hybrids of Hinduism? You can have a ball with different animation styles - and Nina Paley does (including Thai puppets) showing us different incarnations of the same scene sometimes. Blue men, demons, and super curvy women whose heads (and other body parts) go side-to-side, at will, when they talk and dance.

Oh yeah, the story's sometimes advanced by these interludes where some old 78 RPM era recordings play, for apparently no reason - Sita Sings The Blues - get it? I don't, but I like it. I like it a lot: 

Religion rarely ever gets this good,...
 

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