The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

[Saturnome]

The website is indeed a nightmare, but maybe I should have started by giving this link instead. I used to get my NFB dvds at their montreal store and never used the website.

If you ever get a short on DVD from them, be sure it isn't on a compilation already. For some reason there's a DVD of Spare Change (random example) for 15$ but you can get it with 38 other movies in Blu-Ray for 27$ with the Animation Express compilation! And the American release of Animation Express by Image Entertainement is even cheaper, at 15$.

I can recommend the Complete Pinscreen Works of Jacques Drouin, it's a beautiful package complete with a new documentary. Also, look for the Caroline Leaf compilation DVD, it's a must. "Caroline Leaf: Out on a Limb - Hand-Crafted Cinema".

There used to be some very old dvd compilations on sale there but I can't find them anymore, they included great shorts made by the NFB in the 70s.

[zedz]

I'm able to add items to my cart in the $20-25 range.

I have now figured out how to both navigate the site AND pay a normal price for things (by refreshing the page until the sidebar appears), but I still can't order from outside North America. -sigh-

[matrixschmatrix]

So, having actually watched The Incredibles- it's, uh, kind of weird. It's a bit of a retread of Watchmen, with the idea of superheroes gone underground in the face of public distaste and grown flabby in years of retirement, even to the point of representing the sexual excitement and reinvigoration they get from getting back into the game. It spends kind of a surprising amount of time on a depiction of a midlife crisis and marital discord- which isn't a problem in of itself, but the movie seems to expect us to identify totally with Mr. Incredible, a figure whom I found a bit creepy (as he is someone with anger issues who has a habit of taking them out physically, and the pseudo-affair sequence with subsequent heartbreak for his wife is passed off pretty easily.) He's also far less interesting than his wife in his action style- one of the best parts of the movie was the Plastic Man level creativity she got to display in her relatively short combat sequences, and I would have loved to see more of her. The kids seemed fairly standard for this kind of movie, though casting Sarah Vowell brought some extra notes of character to the daughter, who would otherwise be a bit flat.

In terms of the theme- I'm almost afraid to talk about this, because I feel like I see Pixar movies totally differently from you guys a lot of the time, but it really seemed as though it was about how the great should rise above the mediocre. Specifically, there are a couple of lines that seemed remarkably discomforting in this respect- Dash, early, whines that 'everyone's special is the same as saying nobody's special', and part of Syndrome's plan is to make everyone super- and thereby, apparently, making being super less than worthwhile. I have no idea of why we would be upset at the prospect of superpowers becoming universal, which would resolve the conflict the characters feel (that they have to repress what they can really do) and enable them to demonstrate that they were special due to their characters, rather than accidents of birth. Instead, it seems that the movie wants us to see the supers as god-like beings (explicitly, as Edna describes them as such) who should not be contained in workaday lives- and as with Ratatouille, I'm more than happy to see self expression made a priority, but I hate the idea that greatness has to be defined relative to the meaningless mundanity of the rest of the world.

At any rate, the movie ends on sort of a strange note, as the family is neither fully active nor fully inactive- it's as strange a compromise position as having Dash run in a track meet, but come in second (I genuinely do not understand why that would be a proud moment for anybody.) I'd be happy to hear that I'm missing the point on this one, though, as Bird is someone whom I'm inclined to like.

(I wish the whole movie was about Edna, she's fun)

[knives]

In his commentary Bird actually tackles many of your issues rather thoroughly.

[matrixschmatrix]

I should finish it- I got an hour in, and he hadn't spoken about much of anything beyond the animation process and shooting choices and so forth (which is interesting, but I'm too tired to listen to that kind of thing attentively right now.)

[knives]

I can't remember which part, but he tackles the accusations that the film is right wing pretty thoroughly being utterly offended at the idea and if I remember correctly he does think of it as a political film, but delving into greatness and uniqueness for more left purposes.

[knives]

Also I think he's defining greatness and the mundane more subjectively than you are. The horror of Syndrome's greatness (and this also applies to Ratatouille) is that it doesn't let the individual to identify what is greatness. The result reminds me of that one Vonnegut story where everyone must conform in intelligence and looks so as to not offend others. If you love Pasolini's films and find them great and that drives you to make films like Pasolini that's Bird's idea of good greatness, but at the same time if you have no interest in that and instead strive to be a great accountant that's also Bird's greatness. Where the negativity of Syndrome's plan, on the thematic level anyway, comes from is that it takes away that interest in great things and striving passionately for something.

Going back to Ratatouille for a second the people who the film identifies as great in food (Remy, Ego, Colette) first and foremost have a passion that they focus in on the food with. So really the bad doesn't come from 'nothing being great' so much as there being nothing to have passion and strive for which is a scary thought. The problems of Mr. Incredible's life in hiding, by the movie's standards, is that it leaves him just accepting good enough as good enough. The ending is very complex, though I don't find it confused, as it is trying to make sense of the idea of alter egos in the superhero comics. It basically stands as an argument not to grandstand.

[Mr Sausage]

Instead, it seems that the movie wants us to see the supers as god-like beings (explicitly, as Edna describes them as such) who should not be contained in workaday lives

Well, no, considering how often it takes the bathetic route. Even in the midst of the heroic action there are these identifiable 'average people' moments, like when Stretch catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and frets over how large her bum looks. Emotionally, these characters are never presented as something more than identifiable human beings. That's the key, the thing that prevents the films from offering the conventionally bastardized version of Nietzsche's theories that you seem to be hinting: that however physically gifted they are, they are rarely above the average or the mundane emotionally. They still relate to each other and themselves in identifiable human terms with the same basic ethical and moral frameworks we all kind of use.

I hate the idea that greatness has to be defined relative to the meaningless mundanity of the rest of the world.

If I understand you here, you seem to dislike that greatness is being put in a binary not with awfulness but with the average or the mundane. I disagree. I think The Incedibles or Ratatouie are working with an emotional beat you, as a strong leftist, would actually agree with implicitly were I to phrase it in these (really Virginia Woolf's) terms: is there not a real tragedy in a woman who is a genius poet or novelist who is not given the education, the time, the encouragement, or the means to develop her talent and instead spends the rest of her life as a housemarm or a seamstress, slowly letting her gifts die until she herself dies leaving the world no evidence of herself? Is there not an injustice there? I think so. Same deal: doesn't it suck when irrational social and political circumstances prevent someone from being who they truly are and accomplishing what they so passionately want to accomplish?

I think on some level you're being uncharitable to these films, matrixschmatrix. I mean, are these interpretations you've come up with really the only ones you could come up with? Can you really think of no competing ones, ones which maybe better fit the tone and texture of the films?

[swo17]

matrix, are you going to be counting Hertzfeldt's It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012) as eligible? It's the three "Bill" films (the third of which shares the same title) seamlessly edited into a single, hour-long film. I suppose one might rule it out on a technicality as a trilogy, but if not, it would seem like the lightning rod Hertzfeldt choice. I would be inclined to call each of the individual films and the combined film separately eligible (with all votes competing against each other) but you're the one running the show here.

[matrixschmatrix]

matrix, are you going to be counting Hertzfeldt's It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012) as eligible? It's the three "Bill" films (the third of which shares the same title) seamlessly edited into a single, hour-long film. I suppose one might rule it out on a technicality as a trilogy, but if not, it would seem like the lightning rod Hertzfeldt choice. I would be inclined to call each of the individual films and the combined film separately eligible (with all votes competing against each other) but you're the one running the show here.

I think I would consider it in the same light as the Disney package films, where I'd be willing to count them either as individual segments or as a whole piece- as long as the combined version isn't just some fan edit, I don't see a problem with that.

[matrixschmatrix]

If I understand you here, you seem to dislike that greatness is being put in a binary not with awfulness but with the average or the mundane. I disagree. I think The Incedibles or Ratatouie are working with an emotional beat you, as a strong leftist, would actually agree with implicitly were I to phrase it in these (really Virginia Woolf's) terms: is there not a real tragedy in a woman who is a genius poet or novelist who is not given the education, the time, the encouragement, or the means to develop her talent and instead spends the rest of her life as a housemarm or a seamstress, slowly letting her gifts die until she herself dies leaving the world no evidence of herself? Is there not an injustice there? I think so. Same deal: doesn't it suck when irrational social and political circumstances prevent someone from being who they truly are and accomplishing what they so passionately want to accomplish?

Well that's undeniably a theme in there, particularly in Ratatouille, but there are two separate issues, perhaps best summarized by Ego's line at the end of that movie- "Not everyone can be great, but greatness can come from anywhere." What you're addressing, and one of the things I really like about Ratatouille, is the stress placed on the second part- it is entirely true that it's cruel to deny someone a fulfilling life in which their talents are put to best use because of who they are or the circumstances of their birth, and the theme of someone driven by artistic passion to overcome a hostile and prejudiced society is one I always enjoy. However, the other half of that statement is also present in both movies, and it's something I take intense issue with; knives alludes to Collette as being a great chef in the world of Ratatouille, but if that's the case we never get to see it- she's shut down every single time she makes a suggestion in Remy's purview, and as far as we can tell, Remy is always correct to do so. It's a place where The Incredibles fares a bit better, as it at least emphasizes the importance of collaboration and the contributions of several different authors, rather than having a single inspired leader as a hero, but it's nonetheless a movie in which the world is consciously divided into those who are special and those who are not.

It's tricky, because it's certainly not true to say that Bird is a Randroid, dismissing everyone who is not a superman as meaningless and beneath one's notice- he gives rounded, likable characters to nearly all of the incidental people one meets throughout the movie. But it also feels to me as though a huge part of the weight given to the first act of the movie is not so much the feeling of repression of a great gift or the need for self expression, but a feeling that the titular family were forcing themselves to act as though they belonged in the mundane world, when really they belonged to a greater one. It's a tricky thing to nail down, but I feel a paternalism there- it doesn't feel like a call to find the greatness in oneself, but to unshackle the titans among us.

I think on some level you're being uncharitable to these films, matrixschmatrix. I mean, are these interpretations you've come up with really the only ones you could come up with? Can you really think of no competing ones, ones which maybe better fit the tone and texture of the films?

Well, there are a couple of things there- I like several of the Pixars I've seen, Stanton's in particular, totally without reservation, for one, and I also quite like Ratatouille and would happily recommend it, though I have somewhat mixed feelings about some of the ideas I see in it. I'm certainly not trying to see the worst in everything, particularly as I feel as though I've got something of a reputation for that at this point and would like to overturn it. But honestly, The Incredibles pretty explicitly posits it as an evil plan to give everyone superpowers- how can that not be a jarring moment?

[swo17]

How on earth is every single person in the world of this film actually getting superpowers not a completely evil idea that would result in the annihilation of the planet within minutes? Unless you think that everyone getting superpowers is code for everyone getting a lollipop.

[domino harvey]

I think on some level you're being uncharitable to these films, matrixschmatrix. I mean, are these interpretations you've come up with really the only ones you could come up with? Can you really think of no competing ones, ones which maybe better fit the tone and texture of the films?

Matrix, it really does feel like you've half-decided you hate these films out of hand and then find starch-shirt justifications for your dislike. I've stated several times on this forum that I don't like any Pixar films I've seen outside of the first Toy Story, so I can hardly be called a booster for the studio, but you don't seem to be playing fair. To use a personal example, I watched all of those slasher films for the Horror list, many of which were bad, because I held out hope they might be secretly good. And indeed, enough were to justify all those that weren't. But I'm not convinced you give these animated films a similar due benefit of the doubt beforehand. I believe you are willfully missing the point of many of these films to further an agenda, as time and again you come to these films with the least-charitable interpretation for every perceived sin. It's gotten to the point that I can guess what knee-jerk response you'll make to a Disney film as soon as I see the title bolded in your post, because these writeups are bordering on parody of academic nearsightedness. I only even bother to address this because clearly you are intelligent and are attempting to engage with these films on a contextual level, but there's only so much contrariety these films can continue to bear.

[matrixschmatrix]

How on earth is every single person in the world of this film actually getting superpowers not a completely evil idea that would result in the annihilation of the planet within minutes? Unless you think that everyone getting superpowers is code for everyone getting a lollipop.

Universal zero point energy that allows everyone effective flight and telekinesis? I genuinely don't understand why that's a bad thing, unless we're assuming that it's fueled by something destructive or whatever.

Matrix, it really does feel like you've half-decided you hate these films out of hand and then find starch-shirt justifications for your dislike. I've stated several times on this forum that I don't like any Pixar films I've seen outside of the first Toy Story, so I can hardly be called a booster for the studio, but you don't seem to be playing fair. To use a personal example, I watched all of those slasher films for the Horror list, many of which were bad, because I held out hope they might be secretly good. And indeed, enough were to justify all those that weren't. But I'm not convinced you give these animated films a similar due benefit of the doubt beforehand. I believe you are willfully missing the point of many of these films to further an agenda, as time and again you come to these films with the least-charitable interpretation for every perceived sin. It's gotten to the point that I can guess what knee-jerk response you'll make to a Disney film as soon as I see the title bolded in your post, because these writeups are bordering on parody of academic nearsightedness. I only even bother to address this because clearly you are intelligent and are attempting to engage with these films on a contextual level, but there's only so much contrariety these films can continue to bear.

This is frustrating, because I absolutely and seriously promise that I go into these movies thinking I will like them every time. I think I'm just going to avoid writing up any thematic concerns I have with further Disney and Pixar stuff- I've only got a couple to go, and for whatever reason I don't seem to be able to do so without seeing unpleasantness that doesn't show up for other people. I don't enjoy being contrarian, and I hate feeling like I can't reach a point where my way of seeing and other people's ways of seeing make sense to one another, and I post this stuff in hopes of being able to get there.

God knows I don't want to get into the nothing zone where I'm constantly attacking everything and everyone, so if that's where this is headed I'll spare everyone whatever feelings I have about Toy Story 3. Hopefully, though, I'll be able to address my next viewing (The Thief and the Cobbler) in a way that will get across why it's so wonderful without being, however unintentionally, a pissy jerk about it.

[knives]

How on earth is every single person in the world of this film actually getting superpowers not a completely evil idea that would result in the annihilation of the planet within minutes? Unless you think that everyone getting superpowers is code for everyone getting a lollipop.

Universal zero point energy that allows everyone effective flight and telekinesis? I genuinely don't understand why that's a bad thing, unless we're assuming that it's fueled by something destructive or whatever.

Which is why I brought up the Vonnegut story. The is making it so that if everyone is equally special than as Sausage said everyone would only be prepared to be a housewife type. It thematically is a point for killing off passion. A metaphor you seem to be taking too literally.

[matrixschmatrix]

See that's something I genuinely disagree with- I think being special, being especially worthy of respect or admiration, should be based not on what abilities one has intrinsically but on the choices one makes and what one makes of one's abilities. Giving everyone powers (or talents, or education, or whatever other metaphorical potency you want there) isn't Harrison Bergeron, where the high growing stalks are cut down to make everyone equal at a low level, it's a world in which everyone is raised to an equal and wonderful base state from which they can prove themselves via dedication or whatever. I seriously believe that each individual person has the potential to be great, given the right tools, and I think it's only right to give everyone those tools.

[Mr Sausage]

It's tricky, because it's certainly not true to say that Bird is a Randroid, dismissing everyone who is not a superman as meaningless and beneath one's notice- he gives rounded, likable characters to nearly all of the incidental people one meets throughout the movie. But it also feels to me as though a huge part of the weight given to the first act of the movie is not so much the feeling of repression of a great gift or the need for self expression, but a feeling that the titular family were forcing themselves to act as though they belonged in the mundane world, when really they belonged to a greater one. It's a tricky thing to nail down, but I feel a paternalism there- it doesn't feel like a call to find the greatness in oneself, but to unshackle the titans among us.

Your basic critical method on every one of these movies is to treat randomly chosen bits as a generalized political allegory. There is no real rigour behind your choice to take this or that part as allegory, either, you just kinda do it when you feel like it. The above is a great example. Do you really think that the movie is saying "unshackle the titans among us"? Really? The other available interpretations are sitting right there in front of your nose, none of which involve broad political messages. It's not real hard to see what the movie is getting at by having its main character feel crushed by having to work in a stuffy office job he's not suited for; it's not hard to see why the son would chafe under a rule that does not let him excel at the things he's good at. It's taking common human experiences and applying them to the characters in a superhero movie. There is no broad political message here; they're specific representations of certain common emotions. The basic gambit is to treat superheroes as tho' they, too, are regular people inside.

The Incredibles is a movie about people who are slowly being crushed by the need to conform where otherwise they'd rather celebrate their difference (or have become less of a person by having their desire to disappear nourished). This is not a new theme. What's more, if such a theme were applied to this or that group you typically sympathize with (women, minorities, the underprivileged), I doubt you'd object to anything. But because those themes are being used in a fantastical scenario that involves superheros, you're going to balk? If there's a message, it's not that "it sucks to be mediocre", it's that "it sucks to be something you're not." Because, in the end, despite having superpowers, the family is shown to be very normal, average people with normal, average emotions. Even more to the point, the "mundane" aspects portrayed negatively are very specific ones, such as crushing drone work in a boring office job. It's not mundaneity as a whole that's being attacked, it's the mundane at its most robotic and soul-crushing. These are just conventional ways to show characters living unhappy, unsatisfied lives.

I think the worst part is what domino said: you're running yourself into critical cliches. You've turned this into a "with me/against me" binary, with Libertarian-esque individualism and socialist/Marxist/communist communal values vying with each other for the souls of children. This is not the ground on which the film's themes are being played out. You're doing these movies a disservice by adopting this limiting, paranoid lense. You're at risk of being unable to judge a film accurately because any movie that expresses the value of individuality, however benignly, becomes an attack on leftist values immediately.

It's a place where The Incredibles fares a bit better, as it at least emphasizes the importance of collaboration and the contributions of several different authors, rather than having a single inspired leader as a hero, but it's nonetheless a movie in which the world is consciously divided into those who are special and those who are not.

I like how you threw in the word "consciously" as tho' there were any other choice in a superhero movie.

Well that's undeniably a theme in there, particularly in Ratatouille, but there are two separate issues, perhaps best summarized by Ego's line at the end of that movie- "Not everyone can be great, but greatness can come from anywhere."

These aren't two separate issues. The second clause arises out of the first; it gains its meaning from the implicit prejudice of that first clause. Inherit in that first clause is the sense that "not everyone can be great, and we know what types can and can't be." The second clause then upturns that, not by repudiating the truism, but clarifying it so that the initial prejudice is removed without dismantling the framework. It's very specific to the character saying it, then, because he is admitting to being wrong without repudiating his whole conceptual framework. The initial assumption--not really a wrong one--is modified, so there is self-preservation in addition to improvement. As to whether Remy is always right and Colette not, who cares? She may be a sympathetic character, but she is still one of the blocking figures, so of course she also has to be overcome.

[Mr Sausage]

See that's something I genuinely disagree with- I think being special, being especially worthy of respect or admiration, should be based not on what abilities one has intrinsically but on the choices one makes and what one makes of one's abilities. Giving everyone powers (or talents, or education, or whatever other metaphorical potency you want there) isn't Harrison Bergeron, where the high growing stalks are cut down to make everyone equal at a low level, it's a world in which everyone is raised to an equal and wonderful base state from which they can prove themselves via dedication or whatever. I seriously believe that each individual person has the potential to be great, given the right tools, and I think it's only right to give everyone those tools.

I assume tho' that:

A. you don't think people should be forced into it, right?
B. you'll agree that giving everyone superpowers is more like giving everyone elite-level athletic abilities than giving them access to the tools to succeed, and that this does not actually represent what your values purport.
C. you'll be forced to agree there's no evidence that in the movie's world there aren't non-super people who are great, like artists, inventors, scientists, ect.
D. the fact of them becoming superheroes rather than villains makes almost all of your post moot.

Also, the bolded part is contentious enough that you should be open to considering a movie that assumes this is not true (if The Incredibles is indeed doing that).

[matrixschmatrix]

To address your last point first, I think that may well be a philosophical difference that I have with Bird, and one that is a serious matter to me- the movie's free to disagree, but surely I should feel free to try to go into how I feel about. Beyond that- how is having everybody on earth presented with the choice of using their abilities for good or for evil worse than having a randomly selected group of people presented with that choice? Moreover, how is it different from what we have now, beyond a more level playing field?

Obviously there are ways to be great that don't involve superpowers, but they're not the issue of the movie- superdom is the axis of greatness on which it turns, as cooking is in Ratatouille, and it's not as though there's any effort made to address other paths to great achievement. And I seriously, seriously don't understand why it wouldn't be a great thing if everyone suddenly had elite athletic skills, or at least the muscular potential for them (as we see that the superpowers in the movie require training and effort to be used at their peak value.)

As for your previous post, I'm not sure of how I can address it without repeating myself. I will say, though, that I loved Wall-E, which surely expresses the value of individuality- in part by showing how a remarkable individual can inspire others to become remarkable in themselves. I certainly much prefer it when a heroic movie allows the heroic figures at its center to be a catalyst for the ordinary people of its world than when it focuses on their exceptionalism, and perhaps the working out of that preference is something that I've been overly focused on in these movies (though as I recall, it was an issue I had with Django Unchained, too.)

[PillowRock]

Matrix, Syndrome's plan is:

Step 1) Commit dozens of serial murders, and during that process perfect a killer robot design.
Step 2) Use killer robots to launch a huge assault on a major population center, committing mass murder in the process.
Step 3) Play act a "rescue" of the city to cement myself of THE universally acclaimed superhero of the world, with all of the associated adulation and power.

By that point (actually, even just in Stop 1), it doesn't matter at all what the later steps of the plan are, you're already WAAAAAAAY over the line into the "evil" portion of the venn diagram of plans. There is no altruism involved in anything that Syndrome wants to do.

[PillowRock]

Moreover, how is it different from what we have now, beyond a more level playing field?

You mean besides amplifying the destructive consequences of people's worst momentary impulses by several orders of magnitude?

[matrixschmatrix]

Yeah, that's clearly true- I'm not saying he's secretly a good guy, he's an amoral terrorist/war profiteer. But the last part of his plan (which is never depicted, and could presumably be left out without issue) is represented as an act of evil, and that struck me as weird.

Moreover, how is it different from what we have now, beyond a more level playing field?

You mean besides amplifying the destructive consequences of people's worst momentary impulses by several orders of magnitude?

Haha, hmm- I suppose you could make some sort of analogy to gun control there, where obviously I'd be in favor of restricting it, but I don't think it quite works, as powers have unlimited positive applications with negative ones only as an unfortunate side effect, rather than the reverse with a weapon. I mean, cars magnify people's destructive impulses, but they're worthwhile because they give people so much more access to travel and different jobs and different places to live and what have you, and they'd be doubly so if they were available without wasteful fuel sources (as would be the case with zero point energy? I think?)

[swo17]

Syndrome thought of his superpowers as a sort of curse. Can you not see how wishing that curse on everyone else (against their will, no less) might fit right at home in an evil plan package?

[matrixschmatrix]

Did he? I don't remember that beat- as I recall, they were all technological, things he built and chose to use (and could therefore give to others or divest himself of as he chose.)

[swo17]

I haven't seen the film in a while, and might be misremembering the backstory. Either way though, there are good and bad sides to everything. (Water is the essence of life, and yet it can kill you if you engorge on it.) You seem to be positing that Bird was using the film, and the character of Syndrome in particular, to inculcate children as to what really constitutes evil, i.e. you know that murder is evil, but do you know what else is--giving everyone in the world superpowers! This seems like a pretty out-there conspiracy theory though, not least because the act in question is not even remotely achievable outside the world of the film.