Went back for more animated goodness on Thursday night. Looking over my first ramble, I'm surprised at the things I wrote about a couple of the films. I totally missed with "Collision," and "Overtime" is DEFinitely a tribute to Jim Henson's work on his passing.I'm gonna hit the films again in the order they were screened. Yeah, nerdboy ("Geeks get things done, nerds don't."—Richard Clarke) that I am, this time I jotted down in the dark the film titles as they appeared.
"Welcome to the Animation Show (Beavis & Butthead)"
A Masterpiece Theatre-ish welcome to the show by Butthead and his assistant Beavis. The first new B&B material I've seen in many years. Reminded me of my old roommate J.P. who usedta do perfect recreations and channelling of any voice and character he heard. B&B were classic staples. Who'd have thought I could get sentimental about the guys who brought us "Frog Baseball?"
"Rabbit"
A wonderful Golden Book illustration style, married to some excellent trippy tunes, tells a grotesque cautionary tale for children. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you see a cute rabbit hopping along a lush green lawn? Well, for this one sweet little goldilocked girl, it's skinning it to make a lovely muff! Soon knife-wielding girl is chasing after cute little rabbit. When she and her brother finally capture it, they discover that a magickal riches-granting idol is disguised within! Wacky fun ensues! Awesome."City Paradise"
A Japanese newcomer to London, fresh off the plane, settles into her new flat. She unpacks her bag, pulling out a fishtank and a cassette player. She spends her day learning English from lessons on tape and going to a pool to take diving lessons. When she falls into the pool, she finds herself abducted by a giant jellyfish, who takes her to a surreal inner earth, below the London Underground. There she finds a magic wand which can take her home. Reminded me a bit of "Harpya" stylewise, a classic, trippy, piece of animated cutout photography. I'm not sure what the original media were in this one, but the look is very striking. There is a really gorgeous view of the girl looking out her window down at the rainy city streets—candy red double-decker buses dominate the traffic, and I like the way the Underground trains are used throughout, but yeah, unfortunately, the story didn't really do anything for me.
"Everything Will Be OK"
Don Hertzfeldt's latest Bitter Film! Need I say more? His layered animation and audio might be hard for some viewers to follow, but when it gets truly chaotic, well, that's what it's supposed to be—truly chaotic. This one actually jerks you around emotionally quite a bit, but laughs are allowed at all times. I'm amazed at the things that he can do sometimes, probably with very simple but creative methods, shooting onto film, and always happy to see someone getting a such great expression out of characters who are basically stick figures with smiley faces. =)
That Hertzfelt guy puts together some great absurd true slices of life... Some phrases and moments of greatness...
—Bill always preferred to take his produce from the back...
—Second place is the first loser.
—The pipe is leaking...
—Bill replied—Fine, thanks, how are you? The cashier ignored him. Bill felt used.
"Collision"
A stylin' animated kaleidoscope set to a soundtrack of exploding, smashing, twisting, and grinding metal. Short, sharp, and compelling in its geometry. What I didn't suss the first time around (I may have spent too many seconds cleaning my glasses and watching this as a lovely blur with great sound effects) is the significance of the symbols and colors used in the kaleidoscope. I definitely got that it started out in all-American colors, red, white, and blue, with stars appearing over and over again, and many stripes as well. Those could be explained away as pattern, built into the animation. The sickle moons, with their own stars, and the introduction of greens and yellows, I just totally missed the first time. It's really damn powerful in its simplicity. I hope everyone gets a chance to see it sometime.
"9"
Beautifully textured and kitbashed 3D computer generated animation tells the story of the last of a ragdoll tribe seeking to avenge his lost brothers on the beast that struck them down. In its dialogueless storytelling and action, it reminds me of... frack, can't remember the name of it,... it was "[something] and Blue." "Coyote and Blue?" "Blue" was some gorgeous stop motion (probably tweaked digitally, but I'll allow it) animation about a fellow and his dog facing off against a mean machiney beasty. The characters in "9" are made of beautiful junk and inhabit a landscape of abandoned objects and trash. Great atmosphere. Awesome.There was one detail that I loved both times I saw it—the inclusion of a zoetrope among the garbage in the environment—and one thing that I only noticed the second time—that the beast, once it takes the life of a rag doll, it uses its remains to add to its own skin. Pretty damn slick.
"Davey and Son of Goliath"
The true story behind Davey and his talking dog companion. Not pretty, but answers all those nagging questions you've had. Like Moral Orel, but just a tiny bit more twisted.
"No Room For Gerold"
Wonderful combination of mundane dialogue with surreal animated visuals. You'll get to play a reality-TV style fly on the wall in the kitchen of an apartment shared by four roommates. Three of them are waiting on the fourth. Together they plan on telling him he has to move out. Can you guess who will leave and who will stay? Will it be the rhino, the hippo, the crocodile, or the deer? You'll see them, dressed in casual attire at home, having sharp and measured words over kicking their longtime roommate out. Awesome.
I would have loved for this to have been based on unscripted non sequitur audio, like Aardman's "Creature Comforts," y'know? But there's one piece of dialogue that doesn't quite work. Also, over the credits, there's the audio from an answering machine message playing, but I'm not up on my German, so I suspect I missed out on a last zinger from the animators. Foo.
"Guide Dog"
A Plymptoon, and a follow-up to his previous Oscar-nominated "Guard Dog." I love his illustration/animation style, and the way it allows him to convincingly animate at less than 12 frames per second. His characters and stories are always a bit hit-or-miss with me, tho. This... about 50-50. A bunch of small laughs, and one really clever funny bit involving birds that most folks didn't catch til the very end. But in the end, they all get it. Perhaps Plympton anticipates audiences better than I would.
"Eaux Forte"
In my head I've conjured up an explanation of this film as a spoof of a cigarette ad. A man buys a pack of smokes at a convenience store, then exits, all set to unwrap it and experience some of that cool flavor. Out on the street, tho, he's almost knocked over by a crowd running away from a monstrous wall of water. He's unfazed as it bears down on him, and when it reaches him, it sweeps him up and away. Visually, it could do with some higher contrast—the illustrations seem just too washed out, but for the most part I dig the line drawn watercolor painted images. And there's some really wonderful animation in the man's effort to stay on top of the wave, the tumbling and physics of his body and everything that's swept up with him, as well as the calmer, quieter moments of floating.
"Versus"
Bright, candylike, 3-D animation. Samurai warriors from opposing clans on two island camps are at war over a tiny third island directly between them. With Wile E. Coyote perseverance and ingenuity, each clans sends warrior after warrior to claim the island, one-upping each other in attempt after attempt. The character designs are sweet, like Mr. Incredible in samurai armor. Oh, you *have* to sit thru the end credits to catch the superstar cameo! =)
"Overtime"
A tribute to Jim Henson by some very admiring CG animators. Beautiful CG, used to give life to a man's muppet creations after dark. You'll see them play some very cool tunes, prepare a feast for their creator, and then put on a last puppet show of their own in his honor.
"Game Over"
80s Arcade Games resurrected in the creative animation of collections of found objects, set to the soundtrack of the original games' music and sound effects. Centipede and Frogger are my faves, especially when the frog's appearance when he makes it safely it across the river.
"Dreams and Desires"
A British matron given to daydreams is the first among her friends to get a video camera, aka "vidjacam," and is drafted to become amateur videographer at all of their events. At the wedding of a girlfriend (whose dress is a tight and shiny red), she tries to emulate the cinematography of movie greats she admires... with limited success. She (tries to?) quote Eisenstein, and references the work of Leni Riefenstahl, and apparently reads Hitchcock and Bunuel before bed. The dialogue is heavily British accented, enough so that most people in the audience the first time around probably would've appreciated subtitles, but the handdrawn animation (with a little digital post help) is gorgeous and story-driving enough. The characters are lively and expressive, and the ways perspective and lens distortion are created in drawings are very impressive. Some kickass animating goin' on here.
I caught the very end of Bill Plympton's intro to the show this time and he expressed a lot of admiration for "Dreams." If you get to see it, I think you'll see why.
You should really see this stuff. It's good crack!
After the show they ran the student films again. I opted out of watching them again so that I could wait in in line and get an autographed postcard from Bill Plympton. If you look real close at the top photo of this entry, you'll see his spectacled animator self in the background, his face cropped on the right by the edge of the column with the poster. As I got closer to the head of the line, tho, I could see into the main auditorium and the big screen, and it worked out that I got to see part of "Fabulous somethin somethin somethin," the short that so charmed me one night earlier. Alas, I missed the title, but I *did* catch the animatrix's name this time. Lizzi Akana, a RISD student. From watching her film, I may have fallen a little bit in love with her. I hope that she sticks with animating a while and more of her work makes it out into the world.
Keep on keepin on~
* Later that day... Good old intertubes... Found Akana's film online—"Marvelous Keen Looney Bin"—Good crack. =)
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