The Animation Show 3 (2006?)

R: As many of you know, I'm antsy for animation. I actually spent a year in Russia studying animation criticism (insofar as that field exists), and, since my graduate student lifestyle doesn't permit pilgrimages to Annecy, The Animation Show is one of the highlights of my year. Now that you know what a long-winded post you're in for, let's look at this year's selections.

Rabbit: I thought this was an intersesting way to open the show. My initial reaction was "cute, if only they'd bothered to animate it." In the end, I have to agree that the reference to the moving arms and legs that might appear in childrens books complimented the feel of the film. Not my favorite, but I can at least respect it.

City Paradise: A major problem in modern animation is that the computer makes it easy to (a) generate complicated images and (b) move them in very crude ways. The thing that the computer cannot do is, well, animate -- the intricate process by which actual movements are created, and coalesce into a performance, well, it takes a lot of hard work. And talent. While this film contains some mildly interesting images, the animation is terrible. Now, we could argue about whether this in some sense constitutes a new kind of video art which isn't animation, but has its own merit -- but then we'd have to admit that, taken on its own terms, this film just isn't effective. Oh well.

Everything Will be OK: This, I have to say, is a marked improvement over Don Hertzfeldt's contribution last year. One of the things that animation can do convincingly is present a character's view of the world. I think this is a fantastically difficult thing to do with live-action film, at least to do convincingly. The closest a live film comes to doing this, that I can think of, is Tarkovsky with Mirror, but the result there is notoriously obscure. In animation in general (and in this film in particular), the result is much more transparent. Hertzfeldt is able to deftly switch back and forth between the more objective presentation of the narrator and Bill's subjective experience, and the transitions are darn near seamless. Whether the film deserves all of the lavish praise its received is a separate question -- I'd say no, but it's definitely one of the best films they're showing this year.

Collision: My initial reaction to this was "wow, it'd be way better as a web page." Abstract animation is a huge world of possibilities, and this explores... pretty much none of them. Boo. A quick perusal of Hattler's webpage reveals liberal use of the word "visuals," which is a word more appropriate to anime fan-boys than artists. Double boo.

Nine: This, at least, was well-animated. I felt that it was missing something, though. I had long arguments with my professors in Russia about whether a film had to have an "idea." My feeling was that this was a crude, reductionist way to look at a work of art. Their feeling was that a work of art without a, well, without a point, was empty. Guess who convinced whom. While the animator here created effectively created both a world and individual characters within it, I think it had the emotional depth of Jurassic Park, from which I believe it stole several shots. It's too bad. On the other hand, Don Hertzfeldt got his start with (admittedly) brilliant gags, and look how he turned out.

No Room for Gerold: Now this, I loved. Not much to say besides that.

Davey and Son of Goliath: My first reaction to this was that it was actually produced by the guy who does "Moral Orel," but I was wrong -- it just looks like it. Let me back up for a second. I like Adult Swim. But one shouldn't confuse the shows produced for Adult Swim with animation. They're more like, well, like comic books. There was a time when animation felt very short, both because the typical film was 10 minutes long, and because things tended to happen more "suddenly" then they did in live action. I think that action movies and commercials have sort of reversed this -- the 10 minute films of way back when would feel very slow today, precisely because they consist of shots that are long enough that you can see something move. But I digress. I thought this was neither clever nor well-animated. I give it a double "boo."

Guide Dog: Conventional wisdom has it that Bill Plympton is totally the best thing ever. The truth is that Your Face is pretty good, and it's all downhill from there. You can take much of my rant about shots that are 0.7 seconds long where nothing moves and insert it here. Though I'll admit that the dog is kind of cute.

Eaux Forte: Absolutely gorgeous. This is one that I want to rewatch, since I don't think I got it all the first time. On the other hand, that suggests that there's something to get, doesn't it?

Versus: Freakin' hilarious. This is one of the most enjoyable pieces in the program -- shame that there aren't any details about it in the program. Consider this evidence that I do like funny animation!

Overtime: This was, I think, my favorite film in the show. Roughly, a puppeteer (~Jim Henson) dies and his puppets (which all look the same, and look like stripped-down versions of Kermit) take over his house. And, well, his body, ala Weekend at Bernie's. So this works on a fairly obvious level -- puppet and puppeteer are reversed, and a good time is had by all. The film is more than clever, though, it also has some depth. These puppets were both created and controlled by their puppet master, and they convey the mix of affection and anger toward him that one might expect. In short, they act, as the characters do in really good animation.

Dreams and Desires: I really enjoy watching Joanna Quinn draw -- the style here is rather different than that in When the Day Breaks, which was in the previous Animation Show, but it's still recognizably her. It's not really fair to compare this to When the Day Breaks, which stands on its own, whereas this is (I think) properly part of a series of shorts, but I'd be remiss if I didn't take this chance to at least plug it, since it's absolutely brilliant. Dreams and Desires is good too.

Game Over: I thought this was a nice way to end the show -- not profound, but certainly a lot of fun.