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Mio Mao Mio Mao
Mar. 24th, 2008 09:47 pmEvery time I mention anything I watched growing up, I seem to have to say it with the special disclaimer that I wasn't actually brought up on milk laced with LSD and what I'm remembering is verifiably real. Therefore, I should mention now that this isn't actually something I grew up with at all - instead, I saw five minutes of it at about 6:30 in the morning about fifteen years ago, and so unique was its dementia that it's remained burned into my brain ever since.
It's a claymation short from Italy called Mio (and) Mao. On the surface it's simply a programme about two stop-motion plasticine kittens, Mio (the white one) and Mao (the red one. Appropriately). I vaguely knew even at the time I saw it that Mao was the name of someone from China who was a bit dodgy, even though I didn't exactly know the details. But getting back to the video - these are no ordinary kittens, instead they're sort of mutant T-1000 kittens from the future. Nothing moves in a way that you would expect - things twist, morph and grow extra limbs when needed, and the titular characters themselves transform into Slinky-type tubes that turn end over end, unroll, turn into balls and bounce, flatten and reconstitute themselves, combine, separate, and do anything other than walk to get from one end of the garden to the other. It's absolutely incredible to watch no matter what age you are.
This one's quite good as well - it has a spider that morphs into bits of random mathematics. It's the cutest thing you'll see all week, apart from possibly a duck with tragically miscounted legs.
It's not often clear exactly what's going on - there's absolutely no dialogue, and apart from their signature cat/communist dictator noises all communication is in a strange sort of gibberish language that sounds like the sound man swallowed a few helium balloons and an entire bag of sugar and then recorded the best bits of the result. It seems some of the later episodes were broadcast on Channel 5 with an attempt at a translation over the top, but I think that takes away from the nonsensical flow of it.
It's rather nice to have it confirmed that I wasn't imagining this whole thing after all, and I rather miss when television could be as charmingly bizarre as this - that era still produced people who nearly grew up all right. I should also warn you that if you watch any of the videos that bloody tune will be stuck in your head for the next week. Oh, too late.
It's a claymation short from Italy called Mio (and) Mao. On the surface it's simply a programme about two stop-motion plasticine kittens, Mio (the white one) and Mao (the red one. Appropriately). I vaguely knew even at the time I saw it that Mao was the name of someone from China who was a bit dodgy, even though I didn't exactly know the details. But getting back to the video - these are no ordinary kittens, instead they're sort of mutant T-1000 kittens from the future. Nothing moves in a way that you would expect - things twist, morph and grow extra limbs when needed, and the titular characters themselves transform into Slinky-type tubes that turn end over end, unroll, turn into balls and bounce, flatten and reconstitute themselves, combine, separate, and do anything other than walk to get from one end of the garden to the other. It's absolutely incredible to watch no matter what age you are.
This one's quite good as well - it has a spider that morphs into bits of random mathematics. It's the cutest thing you'll see all week, apart from possibly a duck with tragically miscounted legs.
It's not often clear exactly what's going on - there's absolutely no dialogue, and apart from their signature cat/communist dictator noises all communication is in a strange sort of gibberish language that sounds like the sound man swallowed a few helium balloons and an entire bag of sugar and then recorded the best bits of the result. It seems some of the later episodes were broadcast on Channel 5 with an attempt at a translation over the top, but I think that takes away from the nonsensical flow of it.
It's rather nice to have it confirmed that I wasn't imagining this whole thing after all, and I rather miss when television could be as charmingly bizarre as this - that era still produced people who nearly grew up all right. I should also warn you that if you watch any of the videos that bloody tune will be stuck in your head for the next week. Oh, too late.
