The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

[knives]

I agree with Zedz wholeheartedly though I should add that I feel that it is precisely the Tati-esque sentimentality and sort of perverse glee present in Chomet Chaplinizing the script which improves on Chomet's two previous animated films (his foray into live action is best ignored). Chomet's tendency to go for the grotesque is perfectly tempered so that instead of being jeering for the sake of jeering the film offers a loving hand.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, I certainly can't disagree about the depiction of Edinburgh, which is obviously the strongest aspect of the movie- but I much preferred the outlook in Triplets, which felt like it had an affection for all the bizarre characters it encountered, to The llusionist, which seemed frequently sour and nasty in its depictions, without the compensating warmth and humanity that Tati's embodiment of his character tended to bring. Then too, highlighting Hulot seems opposed to the direction that Tati himself went with the movies he seemed happiest with, as one certainly couldn't accuse Playtime of Chaplinesque sentimentality.

[knives]

Thankfully Chomet was not obliged to be Tati then. The film despite source doesn't really need to do anything like how Tati would.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, right, but from my view it doesn't do what Chomet does well either.

[Saturnome]

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

Ha, sorry! It's just that I think of The Man Who Planted Trees as one of the few well known "serious" short animated film. Anyway it's already in the spotlights of this list!

[zedz]

George Grosz meets M.C. Escher on De Chirico Street: a couple of masterpieces by Georges Schwizgebel:

Fugue
Jeu

[swo17]

Here's a dump of films on my shortlist at the moment, with plenty still to watch:

Alexeieff & Parker: Night on Bald Mountain
Avery: Blitz Wolf, Magical Maestro, King-Size Canary, Uncle Tom's Cabaña, Bad Luck Blackie, Northwest Hounded Police, Deputy Droopy, Little 'Tinker, Symphony in Slang, Slap Happy Lion, The Cat That Hated People
Belson: Allures
Bokanowski: The Woman Who Powders Herself
Bowers: There It Is
Brakhage: Black Ice
Clampett: Porky in Wackyland, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery
Cohl: Fantasmagorie
Cunningham: Rubber Johnny
Disney/Pixar: Bambi, The Rescuers, The Incredibles, Wall-E, Wreck-It Ralph
Fischinger: Motion Painting No. 1, Study No. 7, Komposition in Blau
Fleischer: Bimbo's Initiation, Swing You Sinners!
Freleng: Three Little Bops
Haynes: Superstar - The Karen Carpenter Story
Iimura: White Calligraphy
Jones: Duck Amuck
Keen: Cineblatz
Kessler: Plague Summer
Latham: Speak
Linklater: Waking Life
Lumière: Danse serpentine
Lye: Rainbow Dance, Free Radicals, Trade Tattoo
Melendez: A Charlie Brown Christmas
McLaren: Begone Dull Care, Neighbours, Blinkity Blank, A Little Phantasy on a 19th Century Painting
McCay: The Sinking of the Lusitania
Miyazaki: My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away
Pal: Tulips Shall Grow
Park: The Wrong Trousers
Quays: Street of Crocodiles
Reiniger: The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Rybczyński: Oh! I Can't Stop!
Schabenbeck: Stairs
Smith: No. 1 (Strange Dream)
Starewicz: The Cameraman's Revenge, The Mascot
Švankmajer: Conspirators of Pleasure, Alice, Dimensions of Dialogue, Darkness Light Darkness, Food, The Flat, Picnic with Wiesmann
Trnka: The Hand
Vanderbeek: Oh
Whitney: Yantra
Zeman: Inspirace

[Michael Kerpan]

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

I've actually never heard of this.

You can get a very nice box set of Frederic Back's complete works from the National Film Board of Canada: http://www.cbcshop.ca/frederic-back-dvd ... rench.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Back is one of the animation idols of both Miyazaki and Takahata (Studio Ghibli's founders). My favorite Back film is actually Crac -- the life history of a home-made (Quebecois) rocking chair, with a remarkable "post-resurrection" epilogue. Back's The Might River is his most visually impressive (the French version has a better choral group singing songs in the score than the English one).

Another idol of Miyazaki and Takahata is Yuri Norstein. I guess Life of Lifes is most acclaimed, but I love Hedgehog in the Mist even more.

My top Ghibli picks, FWIW, Takahata's Only Yesterday and Miyazaki's Totoro. Kondo's Whisper of the Heart could be my no. 3 pick -- but there is more competition for this slot.

Top animated series -- Haibane Renmei, Serial Experiment Lain and Texhnolyze (drama) and Azumanga Daioh (comedy).

[matrixschmatrix]

I just saw Spirited Away last night, and at first blush it seemed more like a Pixar/Alice in Wonderland sort of there and back again story than the more transcendent feel I have gotten from the other Miyazaki- but it seems as though it's one that's particularly well regarded. It's lovely, obviously, and I don't have anything whatsoever against it (though for me the 2d and 3d animation did not blend perfectly, and the cuts to the latter took me out of the environment a bit) but it felt like a world that was designed around the journey of the lead, as it follows the arc that a lot of children's stories do where our outsider character is an instant star and celebrity in her new world, and everything seems to turn around her and her actions- and then she completes her quest, and the world fades back into the ether. That's not objectionable, but I think it doesn't compare well for me with Totoro, which felt like a newly blossomed friendship between a magical world and a mundane one, where both can and will exist at the same time, or Mononoke and Castle in the Sky, where the magic is infused into the makeup of the world itself.

Could someone say what Spirited Away feels particularly special to them?

[Michael Kerpan]

The train journey towards the end of Spirited Away was totally wonderful, most of the rest was merely very very good -- though some bits struck meas a bit awkward. The Japanese version is better than the English one, as the Chihiro had a better tone (and there was some re-writing of the script in the English version).

[matrixschmatrix]

The series I've been watching has been all subbed prints, which is really nice- even the best anime dubs I've seen have a weird emptiness to the vocal recordings, as though they were whispering and then turned up a lot of the time, and it avoids the common dubbing issue of forcing a less accurate translation to match the lip movements. Dubbing seems perfectly defensible in these cases, but it never works well for me.

I did enjoy the train journey, though it seemed a bit odd that Chihiro had suddenly acquired a whole menagerie of sidekicks- what was the Yubaba doppelganger turned mosquito, exactly? The business with it and the baby/rat was entertaining but seemed apropos of nothing, beyond a sort of version-in-miniature of the journey Chihiro herself was going on for the baby/rat.

[Michael Kerpan]

I did enjoy the train journey, though it seemed a bit odd that Chihiro had suddenly acquired a whole menagerie of sidekicks- what was the Yubaba doppelganger turned mosquito, exactly? The business with it and the baby/rat was entertaining but seemed apropos of nothing, beyond a sort of version-in-miniature of the journey Chihiro herself was going on for the baby/rat.

Spoiler

Zeniba (Yubaba's sister) turns Yubaba's tattle-tale spy bird into an insect (to keep it from talking) and the giant baby into a mouse (because it was too big and annoying -- and, even more, it needed to be freed from Yubaba's misguidedly restrictive protection).

Yes, these characters' sitiation is sort of a reduplication of Chihiro's own -- but this seemed fine to me -- not nearly so intrusive as tyoical Disney sidekicks.

[matrixschmatrix]

Ok, yeah, I was up on what literally happened, I just wasn't sure if there something else going on with the spy bird (a mythological context or story point I'd missed beyond it just hanging out with Yubaba.)

[colinr0380]

zedz, if we are allowed to recommend series I would highly recommend the entire series of Gantz, since your post about the live action feature films inspired me to track it and then the anime series down!

I was going to try and do an 'alternate anime' list of films beyond the Studio Ghibli ones but unfortunately have not had much time to devote to it recently, so this post will have to do:

I really like your post Saturnome. The Wings of Honneamise is going to place quite highly on my list as well (along with featuring on my - spoiler - religious films list if we do that next!) as it is an incredibly beautiful film that manages to spectacularly meld the individual with the fate of humanity in its space race climax. More powerful than the religious element for me was the way that the individual struggles of the characters, the things they wish for out of their lives, and inevitably their disappointments are all folded into that larger idea. It is not as upsetting as Grave of the Fireflies but similarly it is a film which has me in tears with its devastating opening scene of the young hero yearningly wishing to be a pilot and having those dreams immediately quashed! Plus it has an excellent score by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

I'm fascinated by all these 'alternate history melding with fairy tales and/or religious texts' anime films, which I presume are in some ways influenced from the Ghibli films. Along with The Wings of Honneamise there is also Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, which wears a kind of postwar Eastern European influence over its alternate-history Japan setting (perhaps unsurprising since Mamoru Oshii's one live action film to date, Avalon, is set in Poland) and deals with terrorist bombings and the relationship between an unruly (or is he?) rookie soldier and the relationship he strikes up with the sister of a terrorist who blew herself up rather than be captured during one operation. The film is a doomed romance told through its (admittedly a little belaboured at times) Red Riding Hood metaphor.

___

Speaking of Mamoru Oshii, I absolutely love the first Patlabor film, less for the action sequences (though the final race against time is excellent) than for some wonderful character scenes such as the one where the characters work out the wind resonance that is going to cause the disaster - at home and suspended from work during a beautiful, hot day where nothing could seem to be about to go wrong. Although the absolutely perfect sequence of that film is the wordless one following two minor supporting characters investigating the past, and past haunts, of the man who mysteriously committed suicide at the beginning of the film. The sequence of that wordless journey (including a break for lunch!) is one that I would seriously point to as one of the perfect moments of all cinema - it is probably only a few minutes but is a scene that I often wish would go on for longer than it does!

Plus the film has one of the most key uses of one of Oshii's key signature themes - the dog that turns up in all his works - as yet another clue to unravelling the mystery.

(Also, because we mentioned the Wings of Honneamise earlier, I often think of The Sky Crawlers as being in the same vein as that)

___

I also mentioned this film in the 'Anime Recommendations' thread, but I would also highly recommend Katsuhiro Otomo's Roujin Z as a wonderfully amusing film melding the expected giant robot rampage antics with a surprisingly adult theme about the responsibilities and duties involved in caring for the elderly and the pressures that come from the private sector muscling in on healthcare contracts!

___

Some general films that I think are worth tracking down:

Anything by Makoto Shinkai: beautiful bittersweet romances such as The Place Promised In Our Early Days (which is kind of reminiscent of the plot of Macross Plus) or 5 Centimetres Per Second.

Grey Digital Target: It might not have the best looking animation compared to modern films but it is an amazingly nihilistic dystopia sci-fi film tackling the themes of endless wars and society stratified into different numbered levels, with people fighting to gain favour in order to gain favour and be allowed entrance into a fabled city as a 'Citizen', but most likely being fated to die in the wasteland warzone. Grey Digital Target performs the quite daring feat of introducing two or three sets of entirely new characters during its running time, only to totally, brutally and inevitably decimate them, showing the cycle as an endless one. It becomes a surprisingly harrowing and devastating piece of work.

Also in that vein there is Battle Angel Alita, an anime that decades ago I remember hearing rumours that James Cameron was one day going to adapt. I doubt that will happen with the Avatar sequels taking up much of his time, but this is great little sci-fi anime about a similar underclass of people existing in the wasteland of Earth who are desperate to reach a utopian floating future city that is only connected to the ground with guide wires. This film tackles the familiar 'Pinocchio', or Blade Runner, theme of robots who cannot stop wishing that they were real, or who never realise that they are not human beings until it is too late, but throws in ideas of organ harvesting, pollution, a doomed romance, and the need for coming to terms with your life versus being driven relentlessly on towards an illusory goal that will only end in your destruction.

EDIT: And for a great children's film, I love the wonderful characterisations throughout Fly Peek! Peek The Baby Whale, also set in a strange alternate universe but which I have my suspicions greatly influenced Free Willy (though it's much better than Free Willy!)

[Michael Kerpan]

Ok, yeah, I was up on what literally happened, I just wasn't sure if there something else going on with the spy bird (a mythological context or story point I'd missed beyond it just hanging out with Yubaba.)

Probably a good number of things going on -- but one would need the annotated version of Spirited Away (sort of like the Annotated Alice in Wonderland or Annotated Mother Goose volumes of yore) to ferret these things out. I ran across some explanations when the film was new, but have forgotten them by now.

[movielocke]

I recently went through the first Woody Woodpecker DVD set, and I think there's really only one Woody short that rises above most of the rest: Pantry Panic (I think this was the fourth Woody short). And even Pantry Panic is not as good as the best of WB or Disney of this era (forties). Almost the entire set is mostly meh, with some flashes of brilliance, but Pantry Panic is consistently superb.

There were two other shorts, not Woody Woodpecker, that were worthwhile. Naturally both are directed by Avery, "I'm Cold" and "The Legend of Rockabye Point" I'm cold is particularly great, but I may be slightly biased by viewing the weak use of the same characters by other directors before seeing the Avery take. It's interesting in the set to see how Avery's influence lingered on after he was no longer working on the characters, it definitely improved things, but his were significantly way above the class of the rest of the Lantz studio output.

I also watched The Tom and Jerry bluray set last year, that set is substantially better, the quality of animation and storytelling was far higher than at Lantz, it has at least 10 films of the caliber of the above mentioned three, and one especially great standout, imo, "Puttin on the Dog" which might be my pick for the best Tom and Jerry there is.

(the other great films on that set are: The Midnight Snack, The Bodyguard, House Trouble, Mouse Comes to Dinner, Quiet Please!, Cat Fishin, Part Time Pal, Salt Water Tabby, Truce Hurts, & Professor Tom. Almost all of those are on the second disc, the series really picked up as the studio found it's stride and learned to maximize the potential of their franchise.

[zedz]

Swo, your lisst prompted a few thoughts:

I'd forgotten about Bokanowski, mainly because L'Ange exists in the weirdest live action / animation limbo, so I wasn't going to include it, but the shorts are fair game.

Which also reminds me that I left off Borowczyk, because I hadn't figured out what film(s) to include.

Superstar is currently in my animation-or-not dither zone, but if it classifies right it will rank highly with me.

As for Spirited Away, I love the sweep of it, and the way it folds in so many disparate influences that every corner the story turns delivers opportunities for new design surprises. The cast of characters that ends up together at the end is a rag tag bunch that looks like they came from a half a dozen different films (with the train coming in from even further away), and for me that gives the film a real dream-like quality (assisted by the great number of weird transformations and two-contradictory-things-at-once locations / inventions). I'm jealous that kids today have access to something of such imaginative richness that also works as a relatable story.

[matrixschmatrix]

Superstar is essentially rough puppetry, isn't it? Seems as though it occupies the same limbo as The Dark Crystal, which I will absolutely vote for if it qualifies.

[zedz]

I suppose so, but I don't think there's any stop-motion animation in it, and the 'puppetry' largely consists of Haynes waggling a Barbie slightly to indicate that she's walking or talking. But it is a complete masterpiece, so why not toss it on the fire?

[matrixschmatrix]

Nobody said it had to be good animation

[swo17]

It is attempting to make the inanimate animate, even if poorly.

[Dansu Dansu Dansu]

I've often wondered how much the inhabitants of the bathhouse represent something more in Japanese folklore than what translates elsewhere, such as Onibaba's three bouncing heads. They function as oppressed, diminutive servants, which have a concrete function in the story, but do they reference anything in particular? I honestly don't believe it matters. There's always the feeling that I'm not totally in-the-know with Spirited Away, which might actually be part of its appeal. What good is a wonderland if everything has an obvious association with realty? Spirited Away makes sense without making sense.

Zeniba removes the bird and baby's authority and stature to reveal that their environment created their negative behavior. Miyazaki is always looking for a way to showcase his social liberalism. Onibaba is the only character who remains somewhat villainous, but even she has softened. After the gold turns to dirt, its as though she's no longer under the spell of capitalism and regains her instincts as a mother.

And though I understand what you mean, I would also argue the bathhouse does not revolve around Chihiro, as it has an independent reason for existing outside of her existence. You could remove Chihiro from the equation and the bathhouse would be an entirely functional environment and a fantastic story in itself. Also, Miyazaki's threading of No-Face through the film, from a peripheral detail to a major component of the film, is astonishing and strangely exhilarating, considering he is essential to Chihiro's arc yet another foreign influence upon the world. Usually the protagonist is the outside influence on a normally functioning environment, but No-Face functions as something of a failed parallel protagonist, as he starts the film entirely with our sympathy, changes the environment more than Chihiro (or, at least, he reveals the flaws of the environment while Chihiro offers an alternative), is more thematically essential than she is, and has his own separate arc from Chihiro's. The struggle to assimilate herself into the culture and climb the social hierarchy as she ascends through the bathhouse, then expand the scope of the environment and possibilities for the characters through the train ride to the country, gives her autonomy from both the ideological limitations of the bathhouse and her parents' sense of entitlement. No-Face is not a spirit at all, but a byproduct of capitalism, as if an empty compulsion waiting to be fed. As always in the Ghibli universe, country life proves to be the perfect tonic to his affected self.

The joke of the film (at least, as I see it) is Onibaba takes over an abandoned resort and turns it into a resort for spirits, as if influenced by the original spirit in which the building was created (such as how the River Spirit was distorted by pollution to become a "Stink Spirit"), and Chihiro works through this western influence to restore an ideological balance. I say "joke" because I think Miyazaki has a lot of fun with the idea of spirits acting like banal, middle-class tourists, such as the Radish Spirit poking around the building.

[matrixschmatrix]

No Face is definitely an interesting figure, and represents a place where I was really curious whether he represented a specific archetype or demon or some such that I wasn't familiar with- that mask in particular seemed like it would tie to the Noh or Kabuki traditions, but obviously I haven't anything like the knowledge necessary for such an analysis. Reading him as essentially a god of nothing, a god of a world without spirituality, makes pretty good sense, as he's obviously more reflection that personality- even his consumption of the little frog guy can be read as an action in imitation of the frog guy's own consumerist greed. I like that he's not made a simple inverse of the protagonist, just a being that happens to wander in at roughly the same time, or at best has been kept vaguely at by until Chihiro invites him in. I like too that Chihiro's acts of kindness tend not to be heroic self sacrifice, but simple decency, a quality that is shared by several of the employees of the bath house- there's still a bit of exceptionalism for our outsider heroine, but it never feels like she's the smartest, cleverest, kindest kid around, just a sort of scared, lonely kid finding her way in a scary environment.

It's true that the bath house feels like enough of a real place that one doesn't imagine that it just falls apart as soon as Chihiro isn't there to observe it- it just feels to me as though the whole environment very quickly bends to place her at the center, in a way the other Miyazaki magical worlds didn't.

I think I may also feel less of a pull towards Spirited Away specifically because it whizzes past so much of itself at high speed, instead of settling in and growing in the world we've found, which is probably just an issue of taste- it feels like it's the pilot for a TV show, with lots of little threads that could go on and on indefinitely.

[zedz]

I think you've hit on another core appeal of the film, Dansu: the sense that there's a fully realized imaginary world that we (and Chihiro) have just stumbled into, and that if the film ran twice as long, or in a completely different direction, we would continue to discover astounding things. It also makes the film's world wonderfully inhabitable for kids - it's not just there to serve the purposes of a specific story, but is a place where they can imagine having their own, entirely independent, adventures.

[Michael Kerpan]

Several years back I bought a sort of field guide to yokai (traditional Japanese ghosts and monsters), but I don't find it available at Amazon anymore (or anything else quite like what I recall). In it, one found a number of entities who show up in Spirited Away (or near relatives, at least). Nausicaa.net used to also have valuable background information on this film (as well as other Ghibli films), but last time I looked, much of the older material was not accessible (or not easily findable).