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A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
What's New at Arcadia
Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast By Glenn A. Knoblock
Arcadia Publishing has releases a new title in the Images of America series, the historic account of the cemeteries along the New Hampshire Seacoast. This collection is a must for anyone interested in local history, genealogy, or colonial-era art. Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast and browse other cemetery books!
Green-Wood Cemetery By Alexandra Mosca
Arcadia Publishing announces the release of the historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery.
Announcements
Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb By Scott L. Newstok
An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts. Visit Palgrave Macmillan and purchase your copy today!
Living by the Dead By Ellen Ashdown with illustrations by Mary Liz Moody.
A memoir about living beside a cemetery--and about the members of my family who came to rest at Roselawn Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. Please visit Kitsune Books for more information.
Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski.
Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman
Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture is now available. Please visit Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark
Features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Written by DeadGirl
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Friday, 10 September 2004 |
Frank Thomas, who died on Wednesday aged 92, was a leading animator with Walt Disney, and one of the "Nine Old Men" who shaped the style of the studio's feature films from Snow White on.
He was a directing animator on many of the pictures which created Disney's style: he devised, supervised and directed the look of the title character in Pinocchio, which in 1940 consolidated Disney's reputation for pre-eminence in the animated field. Thomas was also in charge of the I've Got No Strings number.
He had previously worked on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature, in which he was responsible for the animation of the dwarfs. Few expected the film to succeed, but it was a box-office triumph, and has since been hailed as having the significance of Birth of a Nation or The Jazz Singer, and won Disney an Academy Award for "significant screen innovation". Disney accepted one Oscar statuette, and seven miniature versions.
Pinocchio, however, which was supervised by Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske, succeeded in making Snow White look almost crude. It was immediately recognised as having re-invented the animated form. The sympathetic, endearing qualities of the characters - which sprang from a desire to make them seem naturally involved in the situations demanded by the plot - owed much to the sensibilities of Thomas and his principal collaborator, Ollie Johnston.
Although some critics were later to complain about the excessively saccharine nature of Disney's characters, the studio's style owed much to Thomas's genius for identifying anthropomorphic qualities which made the films almost compulsory viewing for generations of children.
Perhaps the best example of Thomas's work - in both its technical skill and tendency towards sentimentality - was demonstrated by his sequence for Lady and the Tramp (1955), in which two dogs begin eating opposite ends of a string of spaghetti, only to pause coyly as their eyes meet.
Franklin Rosborough Thomas was born at Santa Monica, California, on September 5 1912, and educated at Fresno State College, where he made a spoof film about Hollywood's view of college life which - to his surprise - made more than $1,000 profit at local cinemas. Thomas moved on to study Art at Stanford University, where he met Ollie Johnston, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship and working relationship. The combination was to contribute enormously to the look and feel of Disney's pictures.
After Stanford, both Thomas and Johnston moved south, enrolling in a postgraduate course at Chouinard Art School in 1933, where the pair were taught by the illustrator Pruett Carter.
The following year Thomas joined Disney, where - with the exception of a spell in the US Air Force during the war - he was to remain for more than four decades. His first animation work was on the short Mickey's Elephant in 1936; later that year he also worked on More Kittens. Before beginning work on Snow White the following year, he contributed to Little Hiawatha, and drew Mickey Mouse for both The Brave Little Tailor (1938) and The Pointer, which appeared the year after.
After Pinocchio, while Ollie Johnston worked on the Pastoral Symphony sequence of Fantasia, Thomas was devising the animation for Bambi, which hit the screens in 1942, including the sequences with the young Bambi, and in which Thumper the rabbit learns to skate. Some thought the death of Bambi's mother (shot by hunters) created much the same effect as the death of Dickens's Little Nell; but it was another huge hit.
Thomas was involved in Der Fuhrer's Face (1942) for Disney, before joining the air force, where he was involved in producing The Winged Scourge; Education for Death and Victory Vehicles. After demob in 1945, he returned to Burbank to work on sections of Package Pictures (released between 1945 and 1950). He was directing animator for the wicked stepmother in Cinderella (1950); the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland (1951) - a job with which he was not entirely happy - and Captain Hook in 1953's Peter Pan.
With Johnston, he animated the good fairies in Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Pongo and Perdita, the parents in 101 Dalmatians (1961). The dancing penguins in Mary Poppins (1964) and Mowgli, Kaa and Baloo in the spirited 1967 version of Kipling's Jungle Book also came from his pen.
This was the last film Thomas made with Disney himself: but he remained with the studio for The Aristocats (1970); Robin Hood (1973) and The Rescuers (1977), and supervised 1981's Fox and the Hound. He retired from full-time work at Disney in 1978, but frequently lectured on his work, and published a number of books, including Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life; Bambi: The Story and the Film and Disney Villains.
Thomas was an accomplished Dixieland pianist, and played with a band called The Firehouse Five Plus Two for many years.
He married, in 1946, Jeannette Armentrout. They had a daughter and three sons, one of whom, Theodore, made a documentary film about his father's work with Ollie Johnston.
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/11/db1101.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/09/11/ixopright.html |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“Fear not death, for the sooner we die the longer we shall be immortal.” Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
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