The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers
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domino harvey
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#726 Post by domino harvey » Wed May 12, 2021 10:21 pm

The YouTube algorithm has done it again: Outside In, which both soothes and creates a headache as two unseen voices discuss how to turn a sphere inside out without folding or creasing it as early era CGI illustrates the problem at hand in yellow and purple. Probably once every minute I kind of understood what was going on, only for it to completely lose me and send me like eighteen steps back. Adult Swim before Adult Swim. An incredible whatsit

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swo17
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#727 Post by swo17 » Mon Nov 22, 2021 4:54 am

These are cute--stop-motion animation with wool!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#728 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat May 21, 2022 1:42 pm

It’s been disheartening to revisit many old Looney Tunes sketches in recent stages of adulthood with significantly diminished returns, many of them falling completely flat with slapstick ideas revealed as cheap and uninspired. Though every once in a while, there’s an adult-centered newbie that just hits all the marks right. For me, that episode is Birds Anonymous, a hysterical and thoroughly apt application of self-help addiction programs like Alcoholics Anonymous to Sylvester’s compulsions to eat birds. The skit covers a lot of ground in a short seven minutes: interventions, meetings, relapse, withdrawals, rumination on will power, and a denouement of sky cruelty where Tweety Bird pathologizes the addict with a line that’s both fair and demeaning, depending on how you read it or which perspective you attach to: the addict or the victims of addiction. Wall-to-wall genius.

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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#729 Post by RIP Film » Sat Jul 02, 2022 11:40 am

I finally caught Studio Ghibli’s When Marnie was There and enjoyed it more that I thought I would, being a sweet story with some Ghibli charm. Its themes of loneliness feel more grounded and painful than in say, Kiki’s Delivery Service, but it’s a much more uneven film. While the ending is kind of clever, I can’t understand why this coming of age film veered so much into
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LGBQT territory, only to fake you out at the end. To me there’s a certain bitter taste left over from not capitalizing on what it was obviously building up to, especially in regard to throwing light on the generational pain of those not able to come out.
The denouement is also way too long.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#730 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Jul 02, 2022 12:13 pm

When Marnie Was There, despite some flaws, struck me as a much more rewarding movie than any of Miyazaki's own films after Spirited Away. Not as good as Takahata's last film, of course, but all in all one of the best of the later Ghibli films. I've always meant to read the source book -- but have never gotten around to it.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#731 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Aug 19, 2022 4:03 pm

Wladyslaw Starewicz's 1927 short, Le Rat des villes et le rat des champs, is a lot of manic fun, moving at such an exhaustively zany rhythm that I was beyond impressed at how much spatial awareness had to be planned out in the filmmaker's mind during the creation, rather than just editing process, in order to actualize such a busy composition of stop-motion. I was reminded of the central tunnel scenes in Fantastic Mr. Fox or the intricate tracking of Rube Goldberg activity in Isle of Dogs, and while there are clear limitations to the medium prohibiting the same degree of consistent detailing in those two films, believing this is how Wes Anderson might approach a silent comedy a century ago is as high a compliment as I can give

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domino harvey
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#732 Post by domino harvey » Wed Dec 21, 2022 1:40 am

YouTube's algorithm recommended me another animated short about a cat, and while it's no Cat City (what is), My Cat Lucy is pretty cute and demonic and only a two minutes long. Extremely impressed to learn this was a thesis film by a college student, it looks as polished as a major studio work

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domino harvey
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#733 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jun 18, 2024 7:59 pm

Daffy in Wackyland (2023), available on Max and also upped in full to YouTube as of this writing, is a short so wild that it’s hard to believe it’s a licensed cartoon from Looney Tunes. Using stop motion animation (or CGI that convincingly fooled me), the film’s bizarre sense of texture and pattern (Daffy’s eyes at default gleam with the starlight of a distant galaxy, etc) coupled with an appropriately weird cast of denizens and character designs assists in giving a singular sensory experience. There’s such a wonderfully intuitive nature to how the rando weirdnesses blend into each other, and the camera goes on some impressively bonkers perspective-shift set-ups that feel more effectively “zany” than any other animation I can think of. I must admit I didn’t think it was all that funny, but I don’t think that really matters here anyways

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#734 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jun 18, 2024 8:18 pm

Great rec, wall-to-wall fun and impressive mechanics, but I didn't laugh much either - with the exception of once they arrive at Wackyland. So many strong gags jam-packed into like thirty seconds there

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domino harvey
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#735 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jun 19, 2024 12:01 pm

Apparently WB knew what they had here and this was supposed to be attached to the aborted theatrical release of Coyote vs Acme. Can only imagine how wild this would be to watch on the big screen, and of course now the short is not eligible for an Oscar (which it would rightly have deserved and surely would have won)

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brundlefly
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#736 Post by brundlefly » Sun Jul 07, 2024 4:40 am

Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik, 2022)(trailer)

May not qualify as animation more than any other work that leans heavy on digital compositing, but Beavers’ Looney Tunes foundations should find it fans here.

Co-creators Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews previously made Lake Michigan Monster, a Maddin-inspired stylistic exercise that flailed to find material and a consistent tone beyond self-amusement. They're on firmer ground here, assembling reenactments of time-worn gags along a video game structure toward supposedly pure and obvious goals: Survival, self-improvement, gettin’ the gal. Basically: A master distiller (Tews) in frontier-era Green Bay finds himself out of business when the titular varmints descend on a celebratory harvest drunk; he wakes alone in a barren snow-covered landscape and has to build a new life hunting critters.

Doesn’t help that Beavers takes longer than a Looney Tune to get going: The mostly wordless feature starts with a shouted expository ditty, and when Tews goes through the first cycle of each inherited bit it’s more cute/clever than funny. But this is a movie about utilizing acquired knowledge, and gags accumulate and compound and everything pays off eventually. Sometimes several times over, and sometimes self-consciously mocking its own m.o. Though Tews is given to mugging and the soundtrack gets heavy with his tiresome verbal interjections, Cheslik is dedicated to visual humor and rewards attention with tangents and throwaways. A motif about impressions in snow turns rabbit tracking into a family epic; Dogs Playing Poker initiates a desperate progression; a Titanic-shaped ice floe floats by. As if to highlight its proficiency at information management, the movie metes its opening credits until it’s time for the closing ones.

Silent films of all stripe serve inspiration, but the tone is always cartoon and Tews’ starting point is Elmer Fudd/Wile E. Coyote. He is pathetic, hungover, and lonely. Masochistic and prone to repeated failure, but persistently optimistic. Tews is playing opposite man-sized men-in-suit critters (you’re welcome, furries) which evens the odds more than humanizing the prey. (They bleed Styrofoam peanuts.) For a while, at least: This is a Fudd/Coyote who can learn from his mistakes and innovate, and while the movie shrewdly introduces new threats (wolves, a potential father-in-law, pursuant detectives) and regularly returns to his struggles with alcohol, as the hunter’s goals move beyond pure survival it hangs heavier question marks on its hero. Psychotic shades to his chirpy nature show through, a pointed confusion of should-I with can-do. He has made use of his own laughable screams of anguish and passes the pain along. The violence is hilarious and horrifying, competing notions of wanton destruction are weighed.

Cheslik (who also edited) has sharp comic timing but Beavers drags down the stretch, especially when action sequences too closely mimic video games. It’s bold to set so much of this against white, it burns the eyes and can emphasize flatness. Rare cuts to dynamic angles are bracing. Most of the beauty in Lake Michigan Monster took place against darkness, and there’s more than relief those times Beavers lets night come or moves indoors. But I fell for its escalations and laughed a lot, a good watch when your brain is broiling and you want to fantasize about frostbite.

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knives
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#737 Post by knives » Thu Jan 16, 2025 11:13 am

I was rewatching Little Nemo (always better than I remember) and I forgot just how packed the crew is here. Sherman brothers, work by some of Disney’s old men, designs by Moebius, story credits from Bradbury with Chris Columbus turning in one of his best scripts. Robert Towne is even given credit for giving the film a once over. It seems like everyone involved with the film is a major figure in one way or another b

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