The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

[matrixschmatrix]

I've done my best to keep the evidence for my arguments textually based, and I am discussing my reaction to watching the movie, which I had not read or seen anything about going in- it's not as though I went in with some specific expectations or reading in mind. I don't really see how disagreeing with you- or with Miyazaki, for that matter- about what I'm seeing means that I am imposing my viewpoint, at least not more so than any reading of anything is necessarily an imposition of one's own view.

[Michael Kerpan]

I can't see anything in the "text" of the film that suggests natural (and magical-natural) phenomena should be treated as objects for "colonialism". One needn't read Miyazaki's explanations to see that this film is about man versus nature (and man trying to establish a balance with nature). You MUST be bringing this perspective _into_ the film from somewhere.

[matrixschmatrix]

Really? The boars putting on warpaint and leading a doomed charge into the teeth of modern weaponry doesn't suggest a battle between native people and colonizers even a little bit?

[Mr Sausage]

I'm not aligning myself with any reading either way, but primitive peoples--native americans especially--have long been used as a trope for Natural Man in harmony with the natural order, with whom more mechanized and dehumanized forms of ordered society are in conflict. Those primitive peoples usually become a generalized trope for the natural world itself, often expressing the values of harmony, balance, peace, growth, solidarity, ect., values which aren't to be found in the opposing world of human society. If you'd like a slightly more fantastic recent example, Avatar. The themes of man vs. nature and of colonialism (especially of primitive peoples) are not mutually exclusive, and they have a long history of sharing the same thematic space.

[Michael Kerpan]

Mr S -- this may be true in a general sense -- but I think it has little relevance to Princess Mononoke. The context there is Japanese and folkloric -- and explicitly involves a conflict between humans and animals (and trees and nature gods). No need to import the notion of "primitive peoples" to stand in for nature -- as nature is being directly represented.

[Mr Sausage]

Mr S -- this may be true in a general sense -- but I think it has little relevance to Princess Mononoke. The context there is Japanese and folkloric -- and explicitly involves a conflict between humans and animals (and trees and nature gods). No need to import the notion of "primitive peoples" to stand in for nature -- as nature is being directly represented.

Nature is being personified, which is not direct representation. The magical creatures in the movie are not that much removed from, say, wood-sprites, fairies, elves, and other magical creatures that embody and give voice to the values and principles associated with the natural world. Primitive peoples in the narratives I mentioned are usually invested with mystical, spiritual properties that connect them to nature on a metaphysical plane and therefore make them of a kind with the wood-sprites in more fantastical versions of the same narrative.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, nor am I arguing against you--I'm kind of neutral on this issue for the moment--but I do think it's worth pointing out that Miyazaki's intentions may not actually resolve this. With certain stories and modes of representation there are thematic associations that may be impossible to avoid. It may well be the case that no matter what Miyazaki himself imagined he was doing, a story of a more modern/mechanized society attempting to subjugate a more primitive, nature-based one unavoidably carries the issue of colonialism with it, whether the makers wanted it there or not. This is a real possibility, and I don't think matrixschmatrix is being perverse in responding to it.

Again, not saying you're wrong--I could end up agreeing with you for all I know--just saying that this idea deserves real consideration.

[matrixschmatrix]

Just to sooth tensions a bit: here's a theory about a Ghibli film which I believe does totally fly in the face of the text: Totoro as the god of death.

[Michael Kerpan]

Just to sooth tensions a bit: here's a theory about a Ghibli film which I believe does totally fly in the face of the text: Totoro as the god of death.

I just ran across this recently. Creepy -- and stupid. ;~{

[Michael Kerpan]

Not ruling matrix's view out of hand automatically, but not convinced. Miyazaki DID touch on issues of colonialism in Nausicaa the movie (and probably even moreso, the manga). But in PM, he pretty much simplified things to a much more purely ecological parable/neo-myth.

[Gregory]

I can't understand how so many people came across this blog by some student who could hardly even communicate in English and posted a total of about six posts on the entire blog, about two years ago, and not even about a single topic.

[Shrew]

Well, I agree with matrix that his reading is valid based on evidence from the text. I just never considered it before. Of course, I don't think Miyazaki intended to make a film about colonial issues; his general preoccupation with ecological themes and mythology make that clear. But ultimately authorial intent doesn't matter in how one receives a film, and there's enough in the film to support matrix's approach even if it wasn't intended to be read as such.

The reason there's so much backlash in the discussion here is because matrix's view kind of ruins the film. Viewed through an ecological lens, it's coherent with Miyazaki's work and presents a nuanced view of the struggle between humanity and nature. It's certainly leaps and abounds above Fern Gully or Captain Planet in how it refuses to demonize humanity and technological progress even as it criticizes them.

But seen as a colonial text, I now understand matrix's point about Eboshi committing an "unforgiveable act." In one version she's just attempting to conquer the natural world and in the end realizes that she must live in harmony with it. The colonial reading turns her actions into genocide. (It could be argued that the kami don't die but are reborn in new forms, but it's still the destruction of some sort of culture.) In short, I don't want to read the film this way because it pushes a delicately shaded balance into a starker black and white that the film problematically still treats as ambiguous, hence the bad aftertaste that it seems matrix felt. I feel the film has a lot more to offer, so I think it's a bit sad if that view overwhelms one's perception of the film. It's like if someone sticks in say, Keaton's Seven Chances and can't get past the casual racism to enjoy the rest of the comedy.

That said, I still think it's a valid argument. I'd just rather reserve it for cases in which its being compared to other (latent) colonial texts, or with other Japanese texts as a reflection of some complicated aspects of Japanese society and history.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, as I said originally, that was my gut reaction to the movie, and I found it unsettling- I really would like to see the film again, in hopes that at the very least I'll be able to see what is apparently the more common reading of it. It's certainly a beautiful film, and would genuinely be happy to be able to read it in terms I felt to be less disquieting- though I should say that that sense of disquiet didn't entirely ruin the work for me.

While I don't believe Miyazaki's views about his own work to be definitive, I think part of my discomfort with the work as I saw it turns around my reactions to how the movie intends me to feel about the events I'm seeing, more perhaps than the events themselves. Really, working with a colonialist reading, the ending we get is fairly realistic, in that the conquerors face setbacks and difficulties and must change to become somewhat more like the land they've conquered, but are ultimately a society built on a crime, and the world comes to accept that. That's not an ending that makes me happy- indeed, it's a story of unbearable historical tragedy that has played out over and over- but it's certainly not something I can attack as being unreal. And I think, to some degree, that if my reading of the movie isn't what Miyazaki had envisioned in creating it, the tonal discrepancy between an ending that seemed to be presented as ambiguous but hopeful and felt like the aftermath of a genocide is something that can be attributed to differing intentions more than a problematic outlook on the creator's part.

Sausage mentioned Avatar earlier, and I should say that the ending there- where the colonizers are magically overthrown by the natives- disgusted me as much or more than Mononoke's did, because it felt like a lie, a tacked on happy ending that acknowledges neither the humanity of the antagonists nor the reality of the situation. Miyazaki's film, in my reading, did a marvelous job at presenting the ways that colonizers come to live with themselves, and how such horrors grow out of fully human and fully sympathetic people- though I am certainly unwilling to accept or countenance what they've actually done. There is a real complexity and depth of truth to the movie, and I think that I can and do admire it despite the gut punch that the the logic of it leads to- much as I can and do admire Fort Apache, which as I mentioned before brought out a similarly mixed feeling of admiration for its honesty and revulsion for the way it appears to expect me to feel ok with the lionization of the explicitly racist and warmongering Custer figure, and the needless slaughter he brought about on both sides.

[Gregory]

I've been meaning to write more about Robert McKimson but have been too damned busy. I thought it might be fun to do a little write-up of Easter Yeggs today but now have to rush out the door. Everyone should watch it, though, especially if you have the Golden Collection Vol. 3 around (disc 1), and I'll follow up with some more comments about it later. It's an outstanding example of the kind of work McKimson did as a director in the late '40s and early '50s after developing his own unique style. This was the second major sustained period of achievement of his career, having already done unbelievably funny, original, and high-quality animation in Bob Clampett's unit from about 1941 to 1944, which is another topic.
But Easter Yeggs is a great example of McKimson's trademark bitter, wickedly funny view of people and all their worst traits, and how those flaws lead to situations and interactions that are funny in ways that are unlike anything else that's been done in animation since and indeed can't even be successfully imitated.
(edited to fix typo)

[knives]

If nothing else I feel confident saying he was the best animator to ever come out of America. He managed Disney quality animation out of Termite level budgets which is absolutely shocking. His backgrounds are some of the most breathtaking things ever.

[Gregory]

One point I wanted to make was about Bob McKimson as arguably (along with Clampett) the main person who developed the Bugs Bunny that is familiar to us today. Avery, the "official" creator, had contributed some of the key early qualities of the character, but looking at Bob’s model sheets of Bugs and the cartoons he did that developed the character, from amazing high points like 1943's Falling Hare (for Clampett, also with great animation by Rod Scribner) and developing the rabbit throughout the 1940s to a calmer character with more subtle traits, but still funny. Many of the great poses and mannerisms of Bugs (and other characters McKimson animated and/or created) came straight from Bob's incredible ability to observe, recreate, and exaggerate people’s qualities and expressions. (Nowadays we have a different version of that kind of subtlety: the blue-chip animation studios will record voice actors' performances on video and have the team of animators essentially copy nuances of what the actors did. I don't think it's the same as what animators like McKimson were able to do at all.)

The subtlety and even adult nature of these cartoons often came out most strongly in Clampett's work. Look at the opening of Easter Yeggs, where Bugs is reading a book about how rabbits "multiply" and finding it very interesting. That’s it, no punchline, exactly, but the ways in which this was executed created a lot of subtle humor out of a brief, slightly risqué moment. As one of those who grew up watching a selected body of these cartoons on TV, I always thought of them as essentially for children. At the time of Easter Yeggs, however, they had been for young audiences but were increasingly created with an adult audience in mind. I’ve come to place the late 1940s as the time when the audience for these shorts began to transition to a mostly adult audience who could appreciate many of these subtleties, and the many references and impressions as well.

That brings me to the last theme of Easter Yeggs I wanted to write about: Bugs is a frustrated adult character, surrounded by an ill-mannered, belligerent, spoiled child on one generational side; and on the other a manipulative elder using a martyr tactic to exploit whatever good impulses Bugs has and guilt-trip him to doing his own dangerous job. But really, everyone in the cartoon is horrible in so many ways. Some of it is the Bugs we all know well—smashing Fudd’s watch in the guise of a magic trick—but there are so many less familiar kinds of scenarios here that I can’t begin to explore or praise their execution without doing a whole essay. It’s not just one sympathetic character battling and humiliating the unlikeable one (Fudd or Yosemite Sam, typically); it’s a whole ensemble of generally unlikeable characters combating each other in a spectacle that may even cynical but instead, I think, is wonderful “anti-social” satire in the tradition of Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers. The format of cartoons like this, combined with McKimson's eye for behavior and acting and his amazing skill as an animator, not only makes many of the worst human characteristics identifiable in ridiculous cartoon scenarios but sends them up and makes great comedy out of them.

(When I'm talking about "McKimson" as the sort of auteur here, I mainly mean Bob, but some of the credit also goes to his younger brother Chuck, who worked on Easter Yeggs among many others and was also a great talent in animation.)

[matrixschmatrix]

This is somewhat unorthodox in a films list, but I'm still seriously worried about getting enough consensus together to get a list of 50- so for those of you who have a working list, can you just vomit a bunch of titles out at us? Preferably in no particular order, but for lack of an externally defined canon, I'd like to hear at least the titles of what's on people's minds. Obviously, spotlight titles and the movies we've just been discussing don't need to be on there.

[Saturnome]

I'm having no trouble making a list of 50 titles. Due to my tastes there is no Disney/Pixar/etc. feature film and three Looney Tunes (two Clampett!). I wish I could make compelling arguments for a bunch of films I like a lot, but I'm terrible at this. I think the lists I shared early in the topic somewhat suggest an externally defined canon.

So, here's a bunch of stuff I like, I'm not mentioning obvious things like The Man Who Planted Trees and things like that:
Japanese animated features:
Wanpaku Oji no Orochi Taiji/The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (Yugo Serikawa, 1963)
DON'T even try to watch the american edit/dub! Great UPA designs, Akira Ifukube's best score possibly too.

Angel's Egg (Mamoru Oshii, 1985)

Night on the Galactic Railroad (Gisaburo Sugii, 1985)

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (Hiroyuki Yamaga,1987)
The title suggest a dumb mecha sci-fi movie, but it's nothing like that. Very intriguing film (and certainly list worthy, but not on mine!)
Here's a super expensive blu-ray for Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise

Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo 1988)
I assume everyone saw it, right?

Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondo, 1995)
My Ghibli underdog.

Tokyo Godfathers (Satoshi Kon, 2003)


Also, Alternative japanese animation:
Au Fou! (Yoji Kuri, 1968)
Speed (Taku Furukawa, 1980)
Spacy (Takeshi Ito, 1981)
The Magic Ballad (Tadanari Okamoto, 1982) (master Stop-motion animator, for some reason well known in his country but a total stranger outside, unlike Kihachiro Kawamoto)
Glassy Ocean (Shigeru Tamura, 1998) A film set in a beautiful, unreal world.


Some other feature films:
Le Roman de Renard (Ladislas Starevich, 1936)

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Jiří Trnka, 1959)
I've been trying to see Trnka's feature films, but they're so hard to find in acceptable quality with subtitles. So it's the only one I've seen. I wrote something about it in french over here if you can read the language (or you can just look at the pictures I've took), but to make it short and in english, it's pure eye candy with beautiful staging and lighting, but the film is distant from it's characters.
It was released on DVD in Japan, and nowhere else.

Bennys badekar (Jannik Hastrup & Flemming Quist Møller, 1971)
It's only a bit more than 40 minutes, but anyway. Crazy fun animation in here, even a couple of segments where painted straight on film.

Flåklypa Grand Prix (Ivo Caprino, 1975)
Flåklypa Grand Prix is sold here with english subs, you can chose between PAL and NTSC.

Le Roi et l'oiseau (Paul Grimault, 1980)
Better not watch the american edit (The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird)!
French NTSC DVD was sold in Quebec a few years ago, there's also a French DVD.

Feherlofia (Marcell Jankovics, 1981).
I mentioned hungarian animation in my previous post, but I keep discovering stuff. Here's a 1 minute film from the same director, you certainly have time to watch this. I say it's pretty amazing.

When the Wind Blows (Jimmy Murakami, 1986)
R2 DVD

Old Toons (other than Swing you sinners!) :
Hells Heels (Walter Lantz, 1930).
Oswald the Rabbit! Seems like everybody forgot he had a career after Universal took him from Disney. This short is pure surreal goodness and funny animation, I like to think it's his best film. But I tend to think anything made between 1930 and 1933 that isn't Disney and is a bit wacky to be the best thing ever.
Available on "Woody Woodpecker and Friends" R1 DVD...

National Film Board of Canada :
Hey you could make a whole top 50 with NFB shorts. Even without Norman McLaren! I'm not sure if it's worldwide of a Canada-only thing, but pretty much everything is on their website.
Or... almost. Premiers Jours/Beginnings (posthumous work by Clorinda Warny completed by Suzanne Gervais and Lina Gagnon, 1980) is an incredibly beautiful semi-abstract film that was acclaimed on it's release, but is pretty hard to see now. I had to go to the Cinérobothèque in Montreal (a few weeks before it closed) to finally see it.
Notes sur un triangle (René Jodoin, 1966. That one was only on Youtube it seem. Forget computer technology for a time and the dezoom is pretty impressive. But even without considering that, I love this short)
Op Hop - Hop Op (Pierre Hébert, 1966)
Walking (Ryan Larkin, 1968)
Street Musique (Ryan Larkin, 1972)
Hunger (Peter Foldès, 1973)
The Street (Caroline Leaf, 1976)
Bead Game (Ishu Patel, 1977)
Le château de sable (Co Hoedman, 1977)
Special Delivery (Eunice Macaulay & John Weldon, 1978)
L'Heure des anges (Bretislav Pojar & Jacques Drouin, 1986) (hosted on a different part of the NFB website)
Two Sisters (Caroline Leaf, 1991)


US/Europe shorts:
This post is taking me long enough, so I'll focus on stuff that isn't mentionned often or isn't on the lists I've linked before (sorry Yuri Norstein and al)
Don Kihot (Vlado Kristl, Yugoslavia, 1961)
Suspicous Circumstances (Jim Blashfield, US, 1980)
Kontraste (Sieglinde Hamacher, East Germany, 1982) (get it here!)
The tree and the cat ( Yevgeniy Sivokon, Soviet Union, 1983)
Dog (Suzie Templeton, UK, 2002)
Orgesticulanismus (Mathieur Labaye, France, 2008) (at the very very least watch the middle part!)
The Black Dog's Progress (Stephen Irwin, UK, 2008)
Singles (Rebecca Sugar, US, 2009)

Oh man. I've got stuff to do. so etc. etc.

[knives]

Could you were applicable put a best place to purchase thing. Some of those I'd love to see, but don't know were to (legally).

[zedz]

I'll try to get onto my Animation list in earnest soon.

At the moment, I'm having real trouble ranking abstract and experimental animation alongside more conventional narrative-based work. That's an issue I have to deal with almost all list projects, but it's accentuated this time because there's so much experimental work I want to include.

I'm tentatively considering creating two parallel 25-film lists and then interleaving them. Maybe once I do that, relative rankings between the two realms might emerge more organically. If not, at least I won't be short-changing left-brain or right-brain animation.

So in reponse to matrixschmatrix's call for titles, here are some of the experimental / non-narrative works I'll be considering for inclusion:

Belson: Allures
Cohl: Fantasmagorie, The Magic Hoop
Fischinger: Raumlichtkunst, Studies Nos. 7 & 8, An Optical Poem, Motion Painting No 1
Gondry: Star Guitar (music video)
Knox: Turning Brown and Torn in Two (music video)
Lefdup / Flash / Eno: Ali Click (music video)
Lye: Tusalava, Trade Tattoo, Free Radicals, Particles in Space
McLaren: Begone Dull Care, Blinkity Blank (and more, but I'll need to rewatch that set for specifics)
Norstein: Tale of Tales
Parn: Hotel E
Pawlowski: Cineforms
Pitt: Asparagus
Quays: Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (plus Street of Crocodiles and others, but they fall more on the narrative side of the fence)
Rhodes: Light Music
Rybczyzynski: Oh! I Can't Stop!, Media
Schabenbeck: Stairs
Schwizgebel: Fugue, Jeu
Smith: Number 2: Message from the Sun
Whitneys: Film Exercises 2 & 3, Yantra

Plus, there are a number of films I love that I'm not sure whether to classify as animation, such as Brakhage's Mothlight, Greenaway's A Walk through H, Latham's Speak, and O'Neill's Let's Make a Sandwich (and several others).

The commercial features I'll likely be voting for:
Disney: Pinocchio
Dunning: Yellow Submarine
Ghibli: My Neighbour Totoro, Only Yesterday, Spirited Away
Linklater: A Scanner Darkly
Pixar: The Incredibles, Wall-E, Up
Svankmajer: Alice
Starewicz: Le Roman de Renard


Narrative shorts:
Aardman: Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers
Avery: Deputy Droopy
Chomet: The Illusionist
Disney: Thru the Mirror, The Old Mill
International Rocketship: Bambi Meets Godzilla, Sing Beast Sing!
Jones: Duck Amuck
McCay: Gertie the Dinosaur, The Sinking of the Lusitania
Pixar: Presto!
Plympton: 25 Ways to Quit Smoking
Purves: Screen Play
Quays: Street of Crocodiles, The Unnameable Little Broom
Starewicz: The Cameraman's Revenge
Svankmajer: A Quiet Week in the House, Darkness Light Darkness

I think that's already well over fifty films, and I haven't even started to seriously explored some major areas, or followed up on various recommendations.

[Saturnome]

Could you were applicable put a best place to purchase thing. Some of those I'd love to see, but don't know were to (legally).

Well, I added a few DVDs links and info, but it's all I know, outside of obvious stuff like the Ghibli film. For most of the shorts it's a big mess, as far as I can tell the most recent ones are there with permission from the author (Singles being hosted by Cartoon Brew, Black Dog's Progress by Future Shorts...). Of course the NFB website is all okay. Stuff like Don Kihot wasn't released on anything as far as I can tell, though I recommend the Zagreb film DVD collection for anything Yugoslavian animation related, a lot of classic shorts are included (Nedeljko Dragic's Dnevnik, Dusan Vukotic's Surogat and Zdenko Gasparovic's Satiemania are the must-see IMO)

[swo17]

I'm not mentioning obvious things like The Man Who Planted Trees

I've actually never heard of this.

[knives]

I'm not mentioning obvious things like The Man Who Planted Trees

I've actually never heard of this.

You need to get right on that then. I'm not a huge fan of Back or anything, but he's a huge name deserving of at least his big film getting a few mentions. Rhino or Image put out a great set of his films (that said I encourage everyone to check out Ryan Larkin first).

[swo17]

I'm just saying, don't assume that anything is too obvious to mention!

[matrixschmatrix]

Guys, thanks so much, that's exactly what I was hoping for- and now I've got a big list of stuff to look into over the next few weeks.

Zedz, just curious, are you planning to vote for Chomet's Illusionist and not his Triplets of Belleville? The former seemed like a noble failure to me- gorgeous animation overwhelmed by a comically maudlin plot and a misuse of the Tati figure- but the latter is one of my favorite animated features ever, and a likely top ten entry for me.

[zedz]

Guys, thanks so much, that's exactly what I was hoping for- and now I've got a big list of stuff to look into over the next few weeks.

Zedz, just curious, are you planning to vote for Chomet's Illusionist and not his Triplets of Belleville? The former seemed like a noble failure to me- gorgeous animation overwhelmed by a comically maudlin plot and a misuse of the Tati figure- but the latter is one of my favorite animated features ever, and a likely top ten entry for me.

Yeah, I prefer The Illusionist, primarily for its wonderful depiction of Edinburgh (one of the best evocations of a place in recent cinema), though I'm honestly not sure whether there will be room for it in my final list.

EDIT: And I also thought the sentimentality of the plot was right in line with Tati. I actually thought it was a pretty good use of his persona (certainly better than Parade!) and a really interesting way of tackling the 'problem' of the 'unfilmable' screenplay.