The Animation Show 2005

Fri­day I went to see The Ani­ma­tion Show at the Cleve­land Cin­e­math­eque. It was real­ly good. Here is what is play­ing in 2005.

Mini-reviews with­in.

Bun­nies — Jakob Schuh, Sasch­ka Unseld
This short short hops to it and wel­comes us to the Ani­ma­tion Show.

Guard Dog — Bill Plymp­ton
You can see a clip of the film and oth­ers here.
This brief ‘toon is about a man’s best friend who is a bit too con­cerned with pro­tect­ing his mas­ter. It has the typ­i­cal Plymp­ton twist at the end of the film and quite a few bark­ing laughs.

Fall­en Art — Tomek Bagin­s­ki
Trail­er and stills here.
I was real­ly look­ing for­ward to see­ing this Pol­ish ani­ma­tion, ever since I saw the pre­view for it a year ago. It did­n’t dis­ap­point and had the char­ac­ter­is­tic gal­lows humor that I’ve come to expect from Poles.

Rock­fish — Blur Stu­dio
Watch the whole thing here. [embed­ded hirez .mov]
This is a sci­ence fic­tion ver­sion of ice fish­ing. A tall tale come true of a man and his pet on a fish­ing trip. Old sto­ry rewrit­ten with a new hook.

The F.E.D.S. — Jen Drum­mond
Stills here.
This short is done just like Wak­ing Life and since Jen Drum­mond worked as an ani­ma­tor on that film I guess I’m not sur­prised. It was too much like Wak­ing Life for my taste, and is about those peo­ple who hand out sam­ples at the gro­cery.

Ward 13 — Peter Corn­well
Trail­er here.
This clay­mat­ed short was extreme­ly well done. There is a cane-fight as good as you would expect from a live-action movie, a Cthul­hu-like mon­ster and a cou­ple per­fect instances where the view­er’s expec­ta­tions were dead wrong. It had me in stitch­es.

L’homme sans ombre — Georges Schwiz­gebel
The Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da does not spon­sor crap. The Man With­out a Shad­ow is Faus­t­ian in much the same way as Beat the Dev­il. Except, instead of Amer­i­can riproar­ing it con­tains a melan­choly that even­tu­al­ly leads to wis­dom. I can’t think of a pun to put in this review.

Hel­lo — Jonathan Nix
Clip here.
This is a charm­ing love sto­ry involv­ing an ana­log guy and a dig­i­tal girl. It even has an old Vic­tro­la men­tor. Anoth­er new spin on the same old tune, but worth a watch for all you audio­philes.

When the Day Breaks — Aman­da For­bis, Wendy Til­by
Clip here. [.ram]
I knew this was ani­mat­ed by a woman [or in this case, women] from the first frame. It has a pow­er­ful mes­sage that is deliv­ered quite del­i­cate­ly and the tech­nique they used in ani­mat­ing this short was beau­ti­ful and worth the effort. The ani­mals look like peo­ple and when they get lemons they make lemon­ade.

Pan With Us — David Rus­so
While this film was­n’t the most inter­est­ing in con­tent, I think it was the best in form of the whole fes­ti­val. It is stop-motion ani­mat­ed using humans in-frame as the sup­port for the ani­mat­ed pieces. Robert Frost’s poem is read as accom­pa­ni­ment. It does almost inspire pan­ic and def­i­nite­ly evokes a sense of wilder­ness. No pun here.

The Mean­ing of Life — Don Hertzfeldt
In-depth stuff here.
Tech­ni­cal­ly amaz­ing, this fell through a lit­tle bit on the con­tent scale. Hertzfeldt seems to do a lot bet­ter with his dark humor, and while I expect­ed this to be a more seri­ous work [hav­ing fol­lowed its pro­duc­tion for a few years] I’m not sure most of the oth­er peo­ple there were as enlight­ened. The com­plex­i­ty of ani­mat­ing the crowd scene and the exper­i­men­tal cam­er­a­work was worth the effort, quite ground­break­ing.

Fire­works — PES
Watch it here. [embed­ded .mov]
This short short is just deli­cious.