The Animation Show 1

The Animation Show - Volume 1

Curated and produced by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt

Released by MTV Home Entertainment (2004)

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Welcome to the Show

Part of a trilogy that Animation Show co-producer Hertzfeldt created for the show. Minimal as possible cotton puffs with stick limbs welcoming everyone and explaining what animation is before freaking out and running, flaming and misshapen, through a concession ad. Very funny, best of the three. Crazy German kids choir folky music. I'm not wearing any pants.

Don Hertzfeldt

Mt. Head

Modern interpretation of a classic rakugo story. A stingy man eats some cherries he picks off the ground, including the pits (“what a waste”). A cherry tree grows out of his head. He clips it off a few times, then just lets it grow. Sakura revelers on his head in the spring drive him batty with their dancing and pissing, so he pulls the tree out, leaving a puddle. Looking at his reflection in the puddles, he falls into an infinite regress and dies. Scratchy pen and ink on occasional multi-plane set to traditional Japanese music.Very Japanesey.

Koji Yamamura

Brother

Part of a trilogy (along with Cousin and Uncle). Distinctive black and white claymation (the clay is grey, the film is in color). Opens on Forbidden Zoney house and tells story of early family life with an asthmatic older brother, who dies one night. Long on interesting details, short on action. Sad story of a disfunctional Australian lower class family. “Memories of you I will always keep. God saw you were tired, and put you to sleep.”

Adam Elliot

Parking

Trademark Plymptoon style quirky jerky tale of a parking lot attendant - king of all he surveys - battling a rogue piece of grass that has poked up through the concrete. Typical absurdist battle (although quite funny at points) ensues. Interesting use of telegraphing the attendent's feelings by drawing them on the lines of his forehead. Grass wins, turning parking into park. Fun.

Bill Plympton

Adventures of Ricardo

Rough claymation of “four-year-old” Ricardo, as imagined and voice by Quakenbush (not Quackenbush, thank you very much). Not a very accurate impersonation, generically let’s-make-fun-of-the-sped-with-the-lisp type of “humor”. Three vignettes—one featuring Madonna’s Sex book, one about the Incwedible Hunk and something else. Juvenal and annoying.

Corky Quakenbush

Moving Illustrations of Machines

After an opening prologue from a scientist about how cloning and manipulating DNA is the first real step to becoming more god-like, the piece drifts into an elegiac montage of inscrutable machinery. Supposed to be a reaction to the news about Dolly, but it’s pretty vague. The meticulous black and white machinery grinding inexorably on and the lack of any reference point (until the end, when this appears to be all happening on the atomic level) gives it an abstract steam-punk feel. Interesting textures. Not listed in the booklet or on the case.

Jeremy Sotterbeck

La Course a L'Abime

Translation: The Ride to the Abyss, set to a seemingly random chunk of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. Two horseback riders race through a changing landscape, changing form themselves, constantly mutating into other pairs and then back again to horses running to the chugging beat of the orchestra, who makes an appearance throughout. Beautiful dark green and mahogany palette. Very painterly, with large active brush strokes. Breaks into an odd and confusing multiscreen image (roughly 5x5) in which tiny pieces of the piece are played in loops. Doesn't really start and doesn’t really end (musically). Odd, but pretty.

Georges Schwizgebel

Billy's Balloon

Hilarious super-minimalist kid’s drawing of gangs of balloons terrorizing silent toddlers. Child abuse made funny. Great timing and sound effects.

Don Hertzfeldt

Cousin

Same low key black and white claymation minimally animated style as Brother. Another touching, finely detailed set of observations of his tragic hero relative, this time his cousin with cerebral palsy. Odd characters, lovingly rendered in a child-like style. Very effective and affecting.

Adam Elliot

Cathedral

Elaborate sci-fi computer animation about an interstellar traveler to a abandoned cathedral on a dark planet. He wanders around a bit—looking slightly monkish in his hood—marveling at the huge halls and elaborate organic detail—including the stone heads embedded in the lacelike tracery around the arches. He comes to the end of the hall where the cathedral ends, unfinished. The sun comes out and activates the cathedral, which quickly wraps him in viny tendrils and uses his life force to grow another set of arches, his head the only remnant of his presence. Gloriously detailed and beautiful, if a bit gruesome.

Tomek Baginski

Intermission

Trademark superflat hyperminimal cotton ball falsetto people extolling the wonders of 3-D cinema (glasses not available at all locations) in a series of ridiculous vignettes. Mildly amusing, I suppose. Nice decision to use soft (or non-existent) synch as a stylistic choice. More Deutche kinder muik (Der Jingle Bellser) and wacky effects.

Don Hertzfeldt

50 Percent Grey

Dark (well, grey) fable about eternity. A wounded soldier wakes up in a vast empty grey landscape with only a TV. Prerecorded message congratulates him on being dead and welcomes him to heaven. After wandering in one direction for a long time, he eventually circles back to the TV again and, despondent, kills himself. Wakes up in the same place, but now the TV welcomes him to purgatory. Once more with the gun to the head and he wakes up again. In hell. He shoots the TV, then runs out of bullets. Clever and witty and profound all in one little gruesome gumball. Music by Autechre.

Ruairi Robinson + Seamus Byrne

Uncle

Final piece of the trilogy—same style as Brother and Cousin. Nice vignettes of tragic characters coping with what life they have. Bittersweet and affecting.

Adam Elliot

Pencil Tests

A few humorous moments (and the origin of Office Space), but really, how indulgent. Who the hell wants to see Mike Judge’s pencil tests and movement cycles? Producer’s privilege, I suppose, but at least Hetrzfeld came up with some new shit.

Mike Judge

Bathtime in Clerkenwell

Music video for The Real Tuesday Weld. Distinctive silhouette with eyes stylee. Cuckoos bomb London to crazy hot jazz scat hop. Completely nonsensical, but interesting and you can dance to it.

Alex Budovsky

Aria

Madam Butterfly (with authentic opera music) told through Barbiesque dolls (with what looks like an actual Barbie as Captain Horny Honky’s baby-stealing bride). Hot doll sex leads to abandonment and despair. Madam is so consumed with grief at the end that she rips her skin off, revealing her Terminator armature.

Pjotr Sapegin

The Rocks

A great example of temporal relativism. Two rock creatures—Hew and Kew—sit on their hill and watch the world around them unfold in their timeframe. The entire history of mankind unfolds in about six minutes, ending with the fast encroaching city suddenly stopping, then blowing away to dust. Great details like the flickering billboard or the thrown pinecone that immediately sprouts into a tree, knocking another rock dude over. Wonderful.

Stenner, Uibel, and Wittinger

The End of the Show

The final piece, featuring Hertzfeldt's superflat hyperminimal falsetto cotton puffs. This time, they thank you for watching and proving that animation isn’t just mindless violence for children and the mentally challenged before devolving into a massive battle complete with marauding cotton-ball-stomping robots and optically printed laser canons. Cute.

Don Hertzfeldt

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