The animated film “Cryptozoo” begins with a nude hippie grabbing a rock and violently bashing in the head of a unicorn, who just impaled her boyfriend. This should have raised a red flag. 

But I kept watching — and wincing — for another 90 obnoxious minutes.

Director Dash Shaw’s movie, which premiered Friday in the Sundance Film Festival, imagines a world in which mythological creatures coexist with modern humans. It’s like Narnia, only instead of Christian allegory, we get a lot of “f–k”s, warped sex scenes, brutal deaths and the clarity of a blindfold.

One such drug-fueled fantasy comes from the aforementioned impaled boyfriend at the film’s start: “Oh babe, I had the coolest dream last night,” he says. “We were in Washington, DC, like, thousands of people. We were storming the Capitol. The pigs were there guarding it, but we broke through. And we started a whole new perfect society where everyone was equal. It was a sweet trip.”

https://nypost.com/2021/01/30/sundance-2021-review-cryptozoo-is-animated-instrument-of-torture/

>>12771066

the film was written during the Obama years, yet we have a storming the Capitol scene

How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it?

Animation takes a long time. Cryptozoo was written and storyboarded when Obama was president. The first voice recordings were done in the early months of the Trump presidency. The final pick-up voice recordings were recorded remotely due to the pandemic. Now it premieres under Biden. During all of those years, we worked on this every day. The plan never changed, but of course everything (from painting a background, or recording a voice) happens in its own present moment. Ultimately, movies are a dream transmitted from the consciousness of the culture and time in which it was made. It’s reflecting the times but arriving warped. Coronavirus dreams are especially vivid and bizarre. The beholder’s share completes the picture in their own time.

https://filmmakermagazine.com/110907-its-reflecting-the-times-but-arriving-warped-director-dash-shaw-cryptozoo/

Congresswoman Calls on Capitol Police to Allow Sledding at U.S. Capitol

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) released a statement calling on the U.S. Capitol Police to allow sledding at the Capitol tomorrow and next week in anticipation of a snowstorm.

https://breaking911.com/congresswoman-calls-on-capitol-police-to-allow-sledding-at-u-s-capitol/

>>12771295

>>12771271

The west side of the Capitol is well known as perhaps the best place for sledding in D.C.’s high-density urban environment. Annually, I get a provision included in the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill directing the Capitol Police to allow sledding on Capitol grounds. While the Capitol complex has been closed since the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, sledding can be done safely by allowing only children and adults accompanied by children with sleds or other sled-like devices to use the Capitol grounds for sledding.

“This could be the only snowstorm D.C. gets this winter, and may be one of the best for sledding in years. Children and their parents should be able to enjoy sledding on one of the best hills in the city.

testing the waters probably, to see who can and can't get behind the Capitol fence

>>12771434