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The Triplets of Bellville for IndieWeb Movie Club

This month’s IndieWeb Movie Club selection is The Triplets of Bellville that kicked off with Mark Sutherland’s introduction - IndieWeb Movie Club July 2025 - Triplets of Bellville - Mark Sutherland. For background:

• Letterboxd: (https://letterboxd.com/film/the-triplets-of-belleville/)
• IMDB: (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286244/)
• TMDB: The Triplets of Belleville (2003) — The Movie Database (TMDB)
• TVDB: (https://www.thetvdb.com/movies/the-triplets-of-belleville)
• Wikipedia: (https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triplets_of_Belleville)

A First Take of Triplets

I knew very little about The Triplets of Belleville going into the movie. I had watched the trailer and rented it. I knew it was a French animation movie with a connection to cycling and the Tour de France, but that is all I had going in.

A very short review would be: This is a modern French animation silent-ish movie that has a storyline akin to a fever dream. It was like watching Brazil with a different storyline, genre, and milieu, but French animation.

A Second Take of Triplets

As I was watching the first 10 to 15 minutes I would think I has a foundation for, “Oh, this is what the film is going to be”, but there seemed to be five or six potential paths. Throughout, what really stood out was the animation in a semi-sketch and water color with sepia tones and grays. Some animated films lean toward clean comfortable aesthetics with a illustrated tilt at reality, but not Triplets as its leans more to the surreal and exaggerated caricatures that would be quite believably done by the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Honoré Daumier. The somewhat rough environmental sketches set the atmospherics for a story of a boy and his grandmother in just above squalid conditions. This is clearly not a Disney movie, but the dog (a main character) would fit nicely in a draft quality of Aristocats (but, oh Triplets is not going anywhere near Disney type conventions as a movie and that is incredibly clear in the opening moments).

The film starts with us watching the screen that the character is watching, but that isn’t fully clear at first. But, this theme of looking in through eyes watching something created to be watched reoccurs and has layers. There are solid threads of commentary on “watching cultures” that are heavily invested in entertainment, no mater the human cost. The animated time transitions are sometimes rough and like many other twists and jags of plots and themes. But, the absurdity and unexpected twists are a part of charm and fun. Everything has quirks that could be annoying in reality, but are endearing in this framing.

To say this is a cycling film, which is what Triplets seems to start out as, is like saying Die Hard is a work place drama. The young man on a bike and his grandmother training him from trike with a pulsating whistle, along with very rudimentary and Rube Goldberg contraption devices for training and recovery, with cycling posters, and hints at Le Tour de France around their home would set the stage for a quaint rags to riches American cycling heroics movie. But, this isn’t American, it is French (you know the country with Sartre, surrealism, and existentialism) and this film leans into the surreal and the absurd in interesting (you know, the good kind of interesting) ways.

The rags to riches cycling animated film at Le Tour, takes a strong zig with a sinister plot, that comes to fruition, around a kidnapping of cyclists. The young man is taken by the mob / mafia along with two others. This is now a absurdist crime thriller. But, the creators of Triplets are playing with a deck of cards with six or seven suits and each suit as different cards from the other suits. This is all done wonderfully.

The grandmother and her dog go chasing the amazingly surreal ship to a different and unknown land with a city. It takes a while for this to settle and sort out what has happened to her grandson. They are so near, and yet so far. It is about halfway through before the Triplets themselves become apparent. But, how all of this fits together or comes together isn’t clear. There are more zigs, zags, and jags that are all perfectly enjoyable in unusual ways.

One of the Triplets goes frog fishing with grenades, because, of course. But, beyond this it starts getting into odd spoilers. With no words we watch as the grandmother is taken in by the Triplets with her dog and run through a myriad of odd house rules.

There is an ending to this film that is rather reminiscent of Brazil, which may be a nod, or strongly pointing. But, there is a layering of screens and being watched and observed that echoes in Triplets. What is real and perceived or watched is a lingering theme. A map to Hollywood and tour guide that is uncovered a long the way are more than a hint that this is one of the social commentary threads to hold onto.

The dark characters of the mob / mafia are comically draw and large boxy figures, that adhere to each other and things. There are many characters and animations that are purely comical and absurd in wonderful ways. Most of the prominent eyes are behind glasses, other than the cyclists (it may take a rewatch to sort this out, but it started to be noticeable).

The Third Take of Triplets is a Wrap

The Triplets of Belleville has the feeling of a film with a lot of layers, like one of my favorites to rewatch, Local Hero where the first watching or two you realize there are a lot of layers and things going on to watch for. I have a feeling I may watch this again, at least once, and discover more.

This was a gem of a movie and one heck of a fever dream. I’m thankful Mark Sutherland selected it for the IndieWeb Movie Club - IndieWeb watch for July.

Gutting Book Basics

I continually think I have written about gutting books in the past, but have only mentioned it and alluded to it. When I bring it up I often get asked about and want to point to my explanation, as there are few resources elsewhere (there is one that surfaced in 2009 from Naomi Standen guiding her students How to gut a book).

My Background with Gutting Books

I took my last semester / term of undergrad in England in the tutorial system. I ran into “gutting books” in a lecture in the naught week leading into the term at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Oxford where it was pointed out that the tutorials with papers to be written each week, there would be more reading than there would be time. For each tutorial there would be required reading and ancillary reading that could be 800 to 1200 pages a week, for one tutorial. Many of us had more than one tutorial, so learning to gut books would be a very helpful practices.

Most tutorials are aimed at the student answering a question about a subject to fill in their gap of knowledge through teaching yourself and showing your understanding and the paper you write is the means to express that knowledge had been acquired. You then read the paper to the tutor and work through anything you many have missed and the paper may be marked by the tutor in more detail.

Gutting a Book

There are essential readings that need to be read closely, but if you are familiar with the subject you shouldn’t read what you know, but approach it looking for something new and / or contradictory to what you know and focus on that.

Then approach the related readings by focussing on what is relevant and what you don’t know. Using the table of contents and the index to get to the parts of a book you should or need to read is the primary focus. This can cut down a 500 page book into 40 to 90 pages or reading. Also focus on the book’s preface or introduction and skim the beginning of each of the chapters to get better context.

Pulling notes out of the readings and using multiple bookmarks to reference as you take notes, so you can do back and verify the passages as your are structuring your paper or writing.

Key Concepts

The key concepts are:

• Don’t read what you already know, but skim it looking for nuance and counter arguments or information that you may disagree with
• Use the table of content and index to focus your reading
• Read the preface and introductions (if there are any) as well as skim the beginnings of other chapters to look for shifts in context
• Read the chapter conclusions and look for changes in context, focus, and shifts in polarity (going form a great thinker to the conclusion alluding to the person being a hack or plagiarist – sort of shift, but also more nuanced)
• Find areas where you need to read more closely for better understanding

Naomi Standen’s Book Gutting Guide

For the last 15 years or so when somebody asked about where they could find out about gutting a books I would point them to Naomi Standen’s class guide for gutting books - How to gut a book. This has basically been the only resource that I’ve found that is the same practice as what I learned many years prior. I am a bit surprised that this page is still around and available and I’m deeply thankful that it is.

Naomi has a conclusion that I really appreciate:

My Writing Process with Obsidian

A few times lately my writing process has come up as it relies heavily on markdown for portability, longevity access, flexibility, and using the Shift Happened – Part 2: Small Apps Loosely Joined – Personal InfoCloud. The Small Apps Loosely Joined concept is something I use heavily for many things, but for writing the use of markdown I use the concept quite heavily.

Recently in a IndieWeb gathering, James who runs and writes James’ Coffee Blog shared his process and workflow for writing through to posting on his site, which was similar to my own process, but uses different tools along the way. He had something in his process he was looking to improve upon so I walked through my process.

My Process has Morphed Over the Years

My current writing process is an extension and evolution from my initial processes that trace back to college. But, it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s that my current process formed iterated upon. My early writing for blog posts and articles all start in markdown, which years back was well structured text and sometimes HTML for the structure.

My notes prior to formal blogging (started at the tail end of 2000) that I posted to my site were all hand coded HTML (or raw coding). If a note was going to turn into a blog post it quickly was marked up, and often as I was making the note or post.

Automate Early

One of the core elements I learned in the 1990s was to automate early for anything you can automate, use the tools you have at hand to help yourself be more productive. Most of my writing up through around 2010 was text and then quickly turned into HTML markup, as it is simple to do. But, the tough part is connecting related content, which is why I created my personal content management system (CMS) to run this vanderwal.net blog in 2000 and fully put it to use in 2001 (I used Blogger for a bit early on). Taking rote patterns and automating them was a great addition to help my process in 2000 to now.

In 2010 I shifted all of my note taking to markdown as moving across apps and devices made using other note making methods difficult to access and use. This shift to full markdown for notes, helped my writing move from notes to posts and articles much easier.

Markdown Workflow Process

Today and the last 5 years my notes start most often in Obsidian (and on mobile in Drafts, which is great for the good practice of get it out of your head and then sort out what to do with it). I have many notes flagged as “blogfodder” and track those through the writing process and moving them from a stub of an idea, to draft, not posted but ready, and posted (which includes a link to where it was posted). I’ll have another post about my new blogfodder process, which I’m really liking.

The writing starts as a note and gets fleshed out, if it is needed. If it is a short item I may stay in Obsidian and then grab and drag the markdown file in the Finder to the next step (I will get to this shortly).

Quite often I will leave Obsidian and from it click to open the Finder with the markdown file highlighted and then open that file in iA Writer - iA Writer, which is a nice focussed writing app for markdown, with additional capabilities. I often use the old journalism marker for needs attention (tk!) or “to correct” for things that need links, fact checks, or reference notes. Once I’m happy with the writing and structure in iA Writer (or Obsidian) I move to the next step.

Move to Prep for Posting

In years past I would take the markdown and quickly take the markdown structure and convert it to HTML markup by hand. Around 2013 or so I started scripting this transition, but the script was fussy. I’m not sure when, but it wasn’t long after this, I ran across Marked 2 - Marked 2. I think I started using Marked to convert markdown to PDFs and Word documents (for things that need to be sent out for formal article transformation in publications from Word). But, I realized Marked 2 had really good markdown to HTML conversion that was as good as my script, but not fussy. As I moved to Obsidian with properties in front matter and a footer with blogfodder tracking, it can remove all of that with ease, translate external links very nicely, and remove all backlink notation.

It is often in Marked 2 that I find markdown problems or the tk! marks. Marked 2 also includes some light grammar checking, which I appreciate and I’ll work through those suggestions. Then I flip to the HTML markup view and make edits, if needed, there.

Open My Blog Entry Form

Once I’m happy enough with the post I open my blog entry for for vanderwal.net or Personal InfoCloud and paste the HMTL into the form for the body of the post. On vanderwal.net I add in the title, location, type of post (these days everything is a weblog, but in the past it was more diverse), then select the related categories and submit it. Then I just to look at the post and review it again. If it needs an edit (up until July 5th) I would go into the database and make edits to the post there, but now have an edit process in my CMS (after 25 years, I figured it was about time). Once that is done, I go click to generate the RSS feed for the site, and send out alerts to services that share out links and summaries farther.

Wrap-up of the Workflow

This workflow is now done, except for seeing spelling errors or things not right and needing tweaks.

The process that starts in a markdown note, then progresses through to a more formal writing process and flow. I replaced a lot of manual steps that I didn’t think were difficult nor took a lot of time and automated the steps that do exactly what I had been doing with the same level of care, but saving time and reducing errors.

I don’t use AI in any of this writing process. I run across too much AI written content that is lifeless and doesn’t sound like the writer any longer. I’ve stopped reading many colleagues who used to have great ideas and a great personal voice, but are now just bland slop through the use of AI that tilts at, but doesn’t achieve mediocrity.

I have my own quirks and writing patterns, which I am fine with. I don’t write to impress, but to get honest ideas and understandings out. I blog and write to find connection with others of like or similar minds.