The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

[knives]

Driessen was the fellow who made that Egg short, correct? That's a real lovely Gary Larson sort of piece.

[Saturnome]

I think the egg short (The Killing of an egg) was bought by Nickelodeon and shown often on their channel so that's why it's so well known. I'll second everything Karmajuice said, we have the same favorites for both animators.

[matrixschmatrix]

The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under

So, this is sort of a fascinating side by side in a few different ways. As a kid, we had an audio cassette with the dialog and plot from The Rescuers on it (though it was only about 40 minutes long, since a lot of it doesn't play without visuals) which I must have listened to 50 times, while trying to picture what the movie must be like- and though this isn't the first time I ever saw the actual movie, I remember my imagination of it better than I remember the thing itself. That said, I was totally charmed by it- the limitations imposed by Disney's low animation budget at the time are clear throughout, as the foreground and background elements aren't well integrated, much less any dream of the complicated multiplane shots that characterized the early eras of innovation. Some of the movement looks like something out of South Park, comprising a cel being dragged sideways along a static background, with no other motion- not at all the lush Disney house style I've gotten used to. And yet, the low rent feel of the thing seems to work in the movie's favor- the actual artwork for both background and foregrounds is gorgeous, and the acting on quite a few of the characters (Medusa and Rufus the cat in particular) is wonderfully expressive, capturing Medusa's poorly dyed hair, bad teeth, and pendulous bosom, and Rufus's old tomcat's slide and lumpy weight. Then too, the vocal performances are among the best I've heard in any Disney movie; Newhart is fantastic, giving his Bernard a lot of the stammering charm I associate with Newhart generally, but adding a self-effacing shyness that feels appropriate, as Gabor's Miss Bianca take the lead through most of the film. Penny, the little girl, is actually fairly active for a Disney damsel in distress, as she clearly isn't sitting there and accepting her fate until Our Heroes show up, but she's nevertheless and somewhat tragically a real little girl, in a fairly believable abusive situation (particularly if you mentally substitute less acceptable-for-Disney occupations than 'diamond grabber' for what she's being pushed to do.) Even the music, which is often a stumbling block for me, is actually quite lovely, in a weepy Joan Baez sort of way. There may be nostalgia involved, but this is something I liked enough that it could certainly make my list, though probably not the highest reaches.

I also have some nostalgic childhood memories of The Rescuers Down Under, which came out when I was five and is probably among the first few movies I ever saw in the theater. I don't have a good relationship with the post-Little Mermaid Renaissance period of Disney's output- I think I've mentioned that I hate The Lion King and Pocahontas, and of those I've seen (Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast), and Fantasia 2000) only Fantasia 2000 stuck with me as at all worthwhile. There's a plasticky Diet Coke feeling to the period, to me, as the manically mugging sidekicks ran rampant and the animation seemed to focus more on swooping crane shot effects than on characterization. I liked them when I was a kid, but they all gradually seemed less and less worthwhile to me as I rewatched them getting older, leading to my belief that I actually didn't like any Disney stuff whatsoever. That said, I went into this with fairly high hopes- I had just watched and fallen in love with the first movie, and I hadn't seen this one at all since I was a tiny child, so there was no feeling of disillusionment involved. I had heard that this was one where they were really showing off what the animation department could do, too.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, I absolutely hated it. The characters I care about are only lightly featured, and the plot they're given feels like a stale rehash of a million farces- poor Bernard has to prove his manhood by surpassing the irritating newcomer in dickish displays of masculine dominance, and the Newhart-y charm of his character is smothered in its sleep. The kid is no longer at all recognizable as a human child- the face they drew is appallingly ugly to me, and every third line out of his mouth is stupidly revealing information he shouldn't or ineffectually threatening his captor with the police. George C. Scott's MacLeish is one of the better characters- easily the best part of the movie is an interaction in which his pet monitor lizard steals all of his eggs- but honestly, a grown man attempting to murder a child by feeding him to crocodiles is some like Hannibal Lecter shit, and feels over the top even in comparison to the indifferent-about-a-child-drowning Medusa. The manic mugging is certainly on display in droves- not only John Candy's albatross, which feels like an even-less-funny dry run for Robin Williams' Genie in Aladdin (who is subjected to medical procedures which are played for laughs, but which felt actually pretty unsettling to me as an adult and seem as though they would be terrifying to a child) and a Jesus lizard who's given about 15 minutes in which he does not ever freaking shut up. The whole thing feels intensely 90s, too- the surface level environmentalism would feel right at home in an episode of Captain Planet, alongside the bizarre fascination with Australia that The Simpsons would later lampoon, along with a RADICAL!!! attitude that has Candy's character actually saying 'cowabunga!' more than once- which dates it much harder than the somewhat sweet signifiers of the 70s in The Rescuers. And the biggest selling point, the animation, certainly looks expensive, but it doesn't really seem rooted in much of anything- it shows off what the animation studio could do without actually putting those abilities to any productive use.

I had thought that this might be a gateway to reconsidering some of the other 90's features- my girlfriend is a big fan of Mulan, which I've never seen- but if anything, it reinforced my belief that I'm straightforwardly never going to like anything after The Little Mermaid.

[domino harvey]

I had one of those tape recordings for Sleeping Beauty and the Fox and the Hound and I remember the latter being by a long distance the most depressing thing I'd ever been exposed to as a kid-- it makes the film version seem cheerful in comparison!

Re: Your comments on the medical experiments/Genie dry run, have you seen Ferngully? Robin Williams voices a fruit bat who escapes from an animal testing lab and struggles with the after-effects for the length of the film, and like a lot of stuff in the film, it's fairly dark material. On the whole it's a more palatable venue for Williams' brand of wacky schtick than Aladdin (YMMV) at least! Though our tastes don't seem especially similar...

[knives]

Dom, no body should be forced to sit through Robin Williams 'rapping'.

[domino harvey]

I like Batty's rap :-$

[zedz]

DON'T WORRY, WE WON'T TELL ANYBODY THAT YOU LIKE BATTY'S RAP, DOMINO HARVEY!

[domino harvey]

Something something blind as a bat

[matrixschmatrix]

I had one of those tape recordings for Sleeping Beauty and the Fox and the Hound and I remember the latter being by a long distance the most depressing thing I'd ever been exposed to as a kid-- it makes the film version seem cheerful in comparison!

Re: Your comments on the medical experiments/Genie dry run, have you seen Ferngully? Robin Williams voices a fruit bat who escapes from an animal testing lab and struggles with the after-effects for the length of the film, and like a lot of stuff in the film, it's fairly dark material. On the whole it's a more palatable venue for Williams' brand of wacky schtick than Aladdin (YMMV) at least! Though our tastes don't seem especially similar...

It's another one I saw as a kid, and it sticks in my memory as being more effective enivironmentalism than Rescuers Down Under was- as I recall, it creates a sort of metaphorical demon unleashed by industrial deforestation, rather than just saying that destruction caused by one crazy mean dude. I'm more willing to give it another shot than I am Aladdin, certainly.

As far as our tastes go, as I recall I watched Cukor's Holiday on your recommendation, and I absolutely loved it, so there's at least some intersection in the Venn diagrams. Dunno about comedic Robin Williams rapping, though.

[knives]

It's sort of goofy and crappy with Tim Curry's villain not being given enough time. To be fully honest you'd be better off exploring the Quays, Svankmajer, Hertzfeldt, Petrov, Starewicz, Ushev, Norshteyn, Plympton,Servais, and Khitruk.

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, probably, or at the very least I should watch the rest of that Soviet Animation set and the Ghibli blus I just got. But I am entirely exhausted by work lately and revisiting the films of my youth enables me to be intellectually lazier.

I've actually also been watching a number of shorts, I just literally don't have anything to say about them- my response is usually too easily boiled down to 'liked it' or 'hey that's neat' or something.

[knives]

Speaking of shorts I just discovered PES today and his work is very fascinating. Firstly the animation is just slick and inventive. The whole point to everything is taking mundane tasks and letting them seem unique again. That's become more and more clear as he's gone on until his latest was basically somebody cutting up 'food' to make some guac. The animation is really necessary to these thematic ideas though as its taking the inanimate and giving it a new role. Even in his early more uncharacteristic shorts like Roof Sex he turns something relatively boring and maybe provocateur-ish into a deeper comment on these basic actions through what is doing them. To the best of my knowledge all of his shorts are available on his youtube page in high condition if you want to see them.
http://www.youtube.com/user/PESfilm?feature=watch" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[karmajuice]

I love the vignettes PES does -- pure craft and visual wit. My favorite film of his is actually not available on his youtube channel. It's called The Deep, and it was done for Showtime's SHORT stories series (which has produced several great little films). Mysteriously, the video is now private. No idea why. But I managed to find a good quality version posted to the Facebook video streaming.

The Deep

[bamwc2]

I thought that I'd compose my thoughts on a few recent viewings. First up is Isao Takahata's Chie the Brat, selected as part of a recommendation from this thread. For the most part, I found the film to be very enjoyable light fare (though definitely not for the kiddies). I don't think that I would have gone for a film centered solely around the character of Chie, but the generous use of ancillary characters--especially the nonhuman ones toward the end--certainly made this a worthwhile experience.

I must admit that I was completely blown away by the Starewicz's The Story of the Fox. This had been on my radar for some time now, but I had never gotten around to watching it until a few days ago. Based on a Goethe fairy tale, the film recounts the wily fox as he outwits the king and his underlinings in their quest to bring him to justice for eating the rooster's wife. Despite the gory premise and the copious use of violence, this comedy is both as bubbly and light as champagne. Drawing inspiration from the mischeaveous anti-hero tradition of French literature, the Starewiczs crafted a masterpiece of animation. Shot in beautiful black and white stop-motion, the world of the lion's kingdom never feels any less real than the imagination of a child. This is great stuff, folks. It'll rank very high on my animation list and may even be toward the top of any list that I put together for the next 30s poll.

I was similarly impressed by Martin Rosen's The Plague Dogs, another film that I watched as a recommendation from a poster in this thread. I had seen Watership Down, Rosen's only other feature effort, well over a decade ago. As much as I was impressed by that one at the time, I must admit that I think The Plague Dogs is even better. Telling the story of Rowf and Snitter, a pair of hollow and beaten dogs tortured at the hands of research scientists that escape from their cages and seek a place for themselves in the world. While they initially look for a human to attach themselves to, they quickly change their search to a quest for mere survival as the cruelty that they experienced by the "white coats" is matched by the farmers and hunters in the surrounding world. I suppose that it's inescapable that my interest in the film was shaped at least in part by my views on animal welfare, but Rosen does a fairly effective job moving the story along with a pair of sympathetic characters, that you'd have to be heartless not to be effected by it. It's likely another top tenner for me.

I had seen bits and pieces of Gerald Potterton's Heavy Metal on cable as a kid, but never thought much of it. Now having sat through the entire film thanks to Netflix, my reaction is still indifference. The plot makes no sense whatsoever, with a green orb of evil energy being the only thing that ties the stories together. Fine. Anthologies don't have to have to have the most coherent framing methods, but having the orb tell some terrified woman stories from its past before obliterating her strikes me as particularly bizarre. If the stories themselves ever rose beyond mediocrity, then the framing scenes could be forgiven. However, despite trying out a number of styles (horror, sci-fi, comedy, and fantasy) none of them is particularly good or bad. Instead, they lay in the vast middle ground of "ehh".

Finally, there's last night's viewing of Fehérlófia or Son of the White Mare, another great discovery made because of a recommendation on this thread. Based upon ancient Steppe legends, the film does probably the best job that I've ever seen of capturing the look and feel of mythology. Focusing on the superhuman exploits of Son of the White Mare and his two companions, the film charts the course of his life of an infant suckling his mother's milk for seven extra years at the advice of Forefather through the ultimate defeat of the dragon, griffin, and assorted monsters keeping princesses hostage. The animation is decidedly abstract and dreamlike, but rich in symbolism, much like the legends themselves. This was a really special find.

Thanks for the great recommendations folks. Up next for me: Book of the Dead, The Triplets of Belleville, and The Illusionist. I'd be happy to do a write up on them if there's any interest in my further ramblings.

[matrixschmatrix]

Please write up everything and Triplets and The Illusionist in particular- I want to talk about Chomet.

[bamwc2]

The AV Club makes the case for one of my spotlights, Beavis & Butt-Head Do America.

[matrixschmatrix]

I've been watching through Pixar's shorts, and while I don't have a lot to say about most of them- aside from that I'm really baffled by how Lasseter went from being the dude who did Luxo Jr. (which holds up astonishingly) to the dude who did several Larry the Cable Guy focused Cars spin-offs- I do want to put in a word for Presto. It's not the only good one, by a long shot, but it's easily the most Looney Tunes-esque I've seen Pixar. It's got the staging (it's played out mostly in front of and in the margins of a proscenium, as are maybe half a dozen Bugs cartoons that come to mind), it's got the go-for-broke sense of slapstick (including the traditional silly striped boxers when pants get pulled down!) and it's got the rapidly escalating rivalry that takes a straightforward idea and milks every conceivable gag out it. Moreover, it's funny as hell.

It doesn't feel like a simple Bugs pastiche, as the acting and the heart are still very Pixar, but it captures the overall feel of Looney Tunes as well as anything that comes to mind after, like, the fifties. It's on the Wall-E disc, as well as the Pixar Shorts vol 2 one, and it's well worth seeking out.

(Incidentally- Wall-E itself seems more and more inventive and brilliantly designed every time I watch it, and it's one of the few CGI animated features that feels to me as though it belongs in a discussion of the best and most inventive movies of any kind since the turn of the millennium.)

[zedz]

Yep, Presto will certainly be making my list. It's a brilliant piece of classic animation, regardless of the tools used. One of the great things about animation is the way it can imagine whole worlds based on the most unlikely or arbitrary rules, and this film sets up a simple play on physics then goes to town with the comic possibilities.

[colinr0380]

Presto is great fun and I especially like the Looney Tunes influence that matrix notes, particularly the way that the magician starts off in the pompous performer mode of the opera singer that Bugs had those run ins with and eventually in the section involving the ladders, high jumps and various other forms of violence turns into a kind of Yosemite Sam foil! (With the neat twist that the bunny here doesn't let the magician get (too) hurt when push comes to shove! Unlike Bugs who wouldn't have cared a jot in that final moment!)

The fun magic hat gimmick here is also extremely reminiscent of the way Portals were used in those computer games, particularly the way that gravity/direction/momentum changes as you pass through it!

If you want a darker view of period theatrical performance (and a barbed view of the cruelty of cinema production and its fickle audiences as an adjunct) there is also that Aardmann short, Stagefright

[karmajuice]

You might find more Pixar shorts on my list than features. In addition to Presto, I'm also a big fan of Day and Night. It wears its sentiment on its sleeve, but I don't think it suffers for it, and the film is so inventive, so distinctive, and so eloquent, that I will probably rank it higher than anything else from Pixar.

[swo17]

I can't believe I'm only thinking of this now, but what about Fuego en Castilla? It may not use much in the way of traditional animation techniques, but that's only because Val del Omar is too busy innovating his own (here, something he called TactilVisión). Once he starts getting down to business (around 8:00 in at this link), the film seems primarily concerned with creating the illusion of statues come to life, achieved through a combination of camera movement and pulsing lights. If nothing else, this is essential viewing for the '60s project.

[matrixschmatrix]

Just watched The Iron Giant, which is certainly affecting, but seemed somehow less impressive overall than I recall it being. I very much like the specificity of time and place, something one rarely gets in animated films, and I'm broadly on board with the morality of it (though I feel as though it undercuts itself a bit by having the bad guy be a cartoonish hypocrite, rather than someone genuinely acting on his convictions- there's a bit of confusion whether the problem is militarism as a whole or merely bad militarism that results.) I suppose it just seems so focused on heart that the whole of the movie gets swallowed in a message that feels as though it would work better if underplayed- which I suspect is something that comes across in part because Pixar movies, Bird's work there included, often manage to have the same emotional depth without focusing on it to the exclusion of virtually everything else.

I was amused at the caricaturing of the patronizing 50s father archetype in the Christopher McDonald character, with his pipe smoking and the montage of nicknames for Hogarth, though the idea that Dean is developed as a replacement father seemed a little off- in part because there's no real suggestion of a connection between him and Hogarth's mother. There is a bit of that in the deleted scenes, along with a really charming beat of Hogarth and his mother arguing about who gets to voice whom in reading a comic book together, both of which seem like they would have improved the whole; the mother is a likable character, but she's stuck playing frazzled and irritated so much that we don't get much of the good parts of her relationship with her son.

Overall, I have really strong, fond memories of this movie from my previous viewing, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's something that a further rewatch would flip me on again, but at the moment it seems more fairly solid than actually great. I was surprised to find out that the book on which it's based was written by Ted Hughes- that Ted Hughes, the Sylvia Plath one- and that one of the producers is that Pete Townshend, who apparently got the ball rolling somewhat with a song cycle about the book in the 80s, which I had never heard of.

[zedz]

I can't believe I'm only thinking of this now, but what about Fuego en Castilla? It may not use much in the way of traditional animation techniques, but that's only because Val del Omar is too busy innovating his own (here, something he called TactilVisión). Once he starts getting down to business (around 8:00 in at this link), the film seems primarily concerned with creating the illusion of statues come to life, achieved through a combination of camera movement and pulsing lights. If nothing else, this is essential viewing for the '60s project.

Stealth marketing for your 60s list project, huh?

Much as I love the film, there's no way I could consider it animation. It's always going to be a fuzzy distinction, and I acknowledge that my White Stripes video fell on the wrong side of somebody else's fuzziness, but wherever I draw the line, it will be well short of "amazing lighting effects and distorting mirrors."

But seriously, watch the film. You won't believe just how trippy and transcendent lights and mirrors can be, and those statues really do come alive for a few seconds, all because of Val del Omar's skill.

Edit: actually, what VdO is doing is actually a far more remarkable feat than mere animation. Anybody can make a statue move by animating it.

[knives]

I have not done nearly enough drugs to appreciate The Point I suspect, but in all of the insanity and hippie philosophizing it's a pretty good film with some nifty animation.

[matrixschmatrix]

Monsters Inc. is really charming, and while it doesn't quite reach the heights of a Wall-E- it suffers a bit from the sort of empty CG sparseness that Wall-E so brilliantly overcame in the design, and it doesn't feel quite so brilliantly inventive overall- it's the kind of thing that I feel built Pixar's reputation for consistency, coming off as the kind of kid's movie that should come out all the time. I'm glad that I watched it, but I don't think it will make my list.

I do recall some grumbling about slightly right-wing messages showing up in Pixar, particularly for Toy Story 3 (with the toys' terror of being in an orphanage) and The Incredibles (which I guess can be read as having a sort of Nietzschean demand that the great rise above the common herd) but it certainly doesn't seem to be reflected here- among other things, it's a story about finding an alternative fuel when the somewhat unethical fuel source is in crisis, and refusing to justify evil behavior in the name of obtaining fuel. It's not overstated, but it's in there, and it's nice.