We Made a Blog

We’re bringing a little holiday cheer with this one.

It’s said that there are only a handful of stories and that any others are just a variation on them. Undoubtedly one of these rare originals is the Sanskrit tale, the Ramayana. From the chronicles of Rama – revolving around the abduction of his wife Sita and his quest for her return in which he is aided by his friend, the monkey king Hanuman – have evolved countless direct and indirect adaptations.

In Sita Sings the Blues, cartoonist Nina Paley has taken on the task of animating and recounting the epic and intertwining it with her own journey in and out of love and India. The film’s style fluctuates from figures reminiscent of Kara Walker cutouts to a Hindu Betty Boop.

Sita Sings the Blues opens today and plays until Dec. 31 at the IFC Center. Paley promises she’ll do Q & A’s at most, if not all, of the 8:25 p.m. shows. If you can’t make it, be grateful that she’s a believer in free distribution and you can watch Sita Sings the Blues online.

Didn’t make it to the movies much this past year? All you need to do is set aside seven minutes for the summary of what you missed – and a moving testament to the human need to tell a story.
Edited by Kees van Dijkhuizen

“X-Mess Detritus”
Written, Directed and Animated by Aurelio Voltaire
Narrated by Gerard Way

American ingenuity is sometimes faux ingenuousness over ideas taken from the Japanese. (Guess who really invented the Swiffer?) One item that unfortunately hasn’t been appropriated is coffee Jell-O. Often called “coffee jelly,” it’s just what it sounds like: a coffee-flavored gelatin dessert. You would think with coffee and Jell-O being two American staples, its adoption would be a no-brainer. But the Japanese have been enjoying this delight off-the-shelf for decades whereas here you can consider yourself lucky if you get to taste it as a special at Japanese restaurants (the luscious example above is from Sakagura). For whatever reason, it hasn’t generated the cult status that coffee jelly enjoys in Japan, where this past summer Starbucks re-released it as the starring ingredient in a limited-edition Frappuccino. For now we’ll have to settle for making coffee Jell-O from scratch. But maybe one day it will be widely available in supermarkets where grocery-shopping robots can pick it up for us.

Not all stories told on paper are written.

Creator: Sipho Mabona
Agency: Nordpol Hamburg+