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The Animation Show - Volume 3
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Curated and produced by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt
Released by MTV Home Entertainment (2008)
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Home
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The Animation Show website
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Beavis & Butthead intro
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| Beavis and Butthead do Aristotle Cookie. This shit is so played out I can't even stand it any more. |
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Mike Judge
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Rabbit
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| Another twisted tale from the creator of British Animation Classic 1's Jukebox. Dick and Janey types find magic idol inside a rabbit that they catch and butcher. The idol turns junk into treasure, they devise a greedy plan by stuffing him with plum jam and selling the diamonds and feathers and ink that he transmogrifies things into. Alas, their plan typically backfires and they are left with crap, covered in bugs, and idol-less. Odd educational style with labels naming everything. Somewhat gross, but fascinating. |
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Run Wracke
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City Paradise
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Wondrously beautiful and impenetrably strange appear to be the themes of this disc, and this piece falls right into place. Distorted photographic odyssey of a young Japanese woman newly transplanted to London and her adventures learning to speak English in her flat and in an underwater fantasy world she reaches by hitting her head on the way to scuba diving class. A beautifully wrought world—engaging and puzzling. Great selectively oversaturated palette. Same woman who brought you Fish Never Sleep (British Animation Awards 5), surprisingly different. |
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Gaelle Denis
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Everything WIll Be OK
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| Small details of Bill's life and his facing of mortality. Series co-producer and regular contributor Hertzfeldt's stick figures (see volumes 1 and 2) done in irregular vignettes, allowing for occassional multi-screen overload. Hilarious details - especially the opening exchange with faint acquaintance. Gets heavy as his medical condition - whatever it is - worsens, then he gets better, to his family's faint chagrin. Style gets a bit old and whole piece goes on a bit too long, but it all adds up to a poignant and somewhat sad portrait of an unknown schlump. |
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Don Hertzfeldt
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Collision
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| Wonderful kaleidoscopic fantasia using flag iconography from around the world. Very clean grafficky style. Original take on We Are the World message over fireworks and shortwave radio static. Beautiful, thought-provoking, unique. Well done. |
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Max Hattler
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Astronauts
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| Sparse nearly monochromatic tale of two long-term astronauts and the eternal dilemma of the “do not touch” button, which ejects one of the two oxygen tanks when inevitably pressed, forcing one astronaut into an eternal spacewalk (with a little nudge). The now lone astroboy inadvertently hits the button again. Oh, the irony. Oh, the humanity. Deadpan to the point of boredom. |
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Matthew Walker
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Carlitopolis
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| French live-action lecture with animated display. Scruffy grad student performs bizarre experiments on mouse - including cutting it in two, inflating it, and vaporizing it with a bomb. Odd. |
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Nieto
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No Room for Gerald
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| Domestic, kitchen table melodrama, played out between anthro-animals - the veggies: a rhino, a hippo, and a gazelle (the only girl) and poor Gerald, the alligator and only carnivore. Recriminations, hurt feelings, bad vibes all around. Short faux-verite style complete with character hitting camera and awkward, too-late pans. Oh, and it's all in German. |
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Daniel Nocke
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Guide Dog
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| Another in Plymptoons occasional dog series. Cousin of Guard Dog (see Animation Show 2) applies for job as a guide dog with predictably surreal consequences. Fine - a fairly average Plymptoon. |
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Bill Plympton
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One D
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| Flatland minus one. Hero takes babe (nice rack!) to 2-D movie in 1-D world. Clever striped sticks for people. She doesn't want to see aliens or hillbillies or ghosts or gators, but the film turns out to be a Pixar/Disney hyper mash-up that lasts maybe ten seconds. After critiquing movie, they head up to Look-Out Point and are chased by aliens and gators and hillbillies et al. Humorous, with a David Sedarisy voices. |
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Mike Grimshaw
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Tyger
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Interesting mixed-media piece featuring a tiger (tyger, I suppose) puppet moved by three shrouded performers walking through an orangey sky urban environment, turning the city into a jungle. People are cut-out hipsters who turn into animals when glowing tendrils grow. Ugly palette, but interesting choice of elements. Based on Blake's poem. Brazilian, and looks (and sounds) it. |
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Guilherme Marcondes
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Versus
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| Comic computer animation of two warring neighboring Samurai islands trying to claim the tiny spindly rock between them. Has sort of a Gilliamesque feel to the design and palette, with nice surreal escalating physical gags, a la Wile E. Coyote. They, of course, lose their islands in an atempt to claim the useless rock between them. Then they turn out to be Godzilla's golf ball. You know, that old thing. |
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Caffiaux, Noel, Salas
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Learn Self Defense
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| Thinly veiled Bush parable about everyman George who learns "self defense" by pre-emptivley shooting everybody first. Done in typical 50's superflat advertising style. Nice clean retro style and controlled palette. Very dark. The kind of political humor that would be banned if it could. |
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Chris Harding
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Abigail
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| Surreal adventures of a doomed man on a burning plane, in that Owl Creek, Siesta, Jacob's Ladder way. He has violent, stylized interactions with inscrutable characters of seeming signifgicance. Done in a very appealing abstract posterized style. Beautiful, but too obtuse by half. |
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Tony Conley
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Shuteye Hotel
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Moody, expressionistic noir monster flick, in which a pillow eats heads of guests in the top floor room of the eponymous establishment. Cops investigate in all sorts of rain-soaked, jazz fueled, odd-angled shots, eventually shooting the wrong pillow and walking away in a shower of feathers, leaving the beast to claim more victims. Plymptoon, but with a computer assisted 3-D multiplane effect and no winks to the audience. Nicely restrained. Good to see Bill stretching out stylistically. |
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Bill Plympton
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Dreams and Desires
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| Beryl (from British Animation Classics 1's Girl's Night Out) videotapes her friend's wedding, with disastrous results. This is the tape. Nice exercise in using one set of visual conventions to emulate another and no doubt meant to show the exuberant earthiness of humanity, warts and all, but ends up being somewhat repellant, the ugly bits off people magnified uncomfortably. |
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Joanna Quinn
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Game Over
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| Brilliant PESification of classic video games, complete with original sounds. Great emulation - the games move exactly correctly. Short and sweet and very funny. Gotta love that PES (see Animation Show 1 and Animation Show 2) |
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PES
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| AniFan is a member of the Hypercube collective |
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Home
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copyright 2008 Christopher Earl
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