monkey business

bbc sport picked an interesting way to promote it's olympic coverage. the whole thing really seems to be targeted at kids, starting with the (however well executed) monkey movie.

ah! i knew it! when i was watching this, it reminded me of the animation that 'the gorillaz' always do for their music videos. and i was right! damon albarn and jamie hewlett created a chinese opera called 'monkey: journey to the west.' it debuted at the spoleto festival in charleston, sc in may (wish i'd have known that before) and was at the royal opera house in london last month. it was supposed to appear in berlin as well, but has been cancelled (crap-so close!).

according to wikipedia, journey to the west "is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Originally published anonymously in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty, and even though no direct evidence of its authorship survives, it has been ascribed to the scholar Wú Chéng'ēn since the 20th century."

anyways, on the bbc website, you can download desktops and masks of the characters and take quizzes and see how the whole monkey saga was created.
and i thought this was just a random commercial for the olympics/bbc sport...

sidenote: i figured they picked a monkey because maybe it's the year of the monkey according to the chinese zodiac, but it's actually the year of the rat now. also interesting, i was born the day before the end of the year of the rat, feb 2, 1985.