Friday, July 4, 2008

Movie review: The Animation Show 4

By John P. Meyer

The Animation Show 4

• Showtimes and more on The Animation Show 4

The Animation Show is a touring festival of short films curated by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head, King of the Hill), and presented as a feature-length theatrical compilation on an annual basis. The 2008 offering represents the fourth annual big screen event.

I don't know what I was expecting going into this movie-watching experience, but whatever it was, this turned out not to be it. And that's the beauty of it.

We're talking 80-some-odd minutes of rapid-fire whimsy, presented in a variety of styles from cut-out to stop motion to Pixar-quality computer generation, each feature demonstrating its own aberrant charm. A few of the foreign language entries employ subtitles; several have no need of them, because they're related entirely in picture (or gesture, or universally-understood exclamation).

Here's a rundown of the specific short films, which you are welcome to disregard if you'd rather plop down in your theater seat totally unprepared, as I did:

* The intro clip (by Joel Trussel) sets the tone for the compilation, with a cruise ship of oldsters standing in allegorically for - um, well - you and me, and our expectations about the animated art form. Enter a boatload of vikings/pirates who shake things up in transformative electrical fashion.

* Psychotown (part 1) finds two slap-happy chaps playing at a game called "oranges." But only one of them knows the rules.

* Burning Safari tells a wordless tale of the intrusion of WALL-E-like aliens into the jungle realm of a confrontational ape, who might or might not prove to have been our ancestor.

* Operator documents perhaps the first ever instance of an individual reaching God by phone. It may also be the first appearance of mumblecore to hit the animation game.

* Yompi the Crotch-biting Sloup (part 1 of 3) chronicles the "adventures" of the title character, who looks like a big ocher turd with razor-sharp teeth. Pretty much a one-trick pony, and a nasty one, at that. If there's a joke here, I'm missing it. (Thankfully.)

* Mr. Schwarz, Mr. Hazen and Mr. Horlocker - I thought this would be my favorite of the show, until I got to Angry Unpaid Hooker and Key Lime Pie and Hot Dog (read on). The story involves a straight-laced upstanding reader of the Financial Times who's bothered by loud music coming from the apartment of an upstairs neighbor. He calls the police, setting into motion a revisionist history string of events leading to bouts of tachypsychia laced with flammable liquids.

* Love Sport (Paintballing) is a diverting little pixelated video game segment featuring stalking horses, endless escalation and vast quantities of paint.

* Angry Unpaid Hooker - Ye gods, this is funny. Kind of like a peanut-buttery episode of Seinfeld smashed together, Reese's-like, with the chocolaty-profane badness of The Wire. "One frappuccino and half of the b.j. money is gone."

* Psychotown (part 2) takes place in the psychologist's office, where a free-association session goes tragically awry.

* Blind Spot tells the unlikely story of a convenience store robbery gone Rube Goldberg, with a cautionary backstory about taking security camera evidence at face value.

* Speaking of cautionary, USAVITCH (Beware of Distraction) features a family of whimsical bunny-like toy creatures taking a road trip in the country on a cliff-edge highway, their family sedan piloted by a an extremely inattentive driver. My advice: travel ye not with hungry frogs.

* JEU demonstrates the evolution of thought and forms, increasing complexity and randomness, through artful pencil strokes. Underlying all is a mandelbrot of creative elegance. Accompanied by Prokofiev.

* Prof Nieto Show mixes live action and animation to demonstrate - by scientific observation - how the observer affects the observed. And vice-versa. (Even the bugs in Brazil are mad for football, it seems.)

* Voodoo finds rain forest despoilers getting a taste of their own world-ravaging medicine by means of a sacred deity who's a bit of a blockhead. But he has sharp teeth.

* John & Karen should warm the cockles of all those who view their love partners as hopelessly incompatible. An odd coupling, indeed. (Gingersnap, anyone?)

* Cocotte Minute is a black kitchen comedy told in uproarious living color, en Francais, in which everyone gets their just desserts.

* Speaking of desserts, Key Lime Pie delivers a two-fisted dose of animation noir, told from the Marlowe-ish viewpoint of a homburg-wearing shamus in a nameless diner trying (though not very hard) to buck a nasty pie habit. "The taste is to die for," he says - and means it. Hard-boiled with whipped cream.

* USAVICH (Beware of Dance) gives us another glimpse of the toy bunny family on the cliff-edge mountain road, this time conducting a ribbit symphony. (Why did it have to be frogs, eh?)

* Raymond is an ordinary guy who dreams of snorkeling with the dolphins - but he's too lazy to get up off his butt and do anything about it. Through the miracles of modern medical science, society has found a way to program him into action. Buckethead physical comedy at its best, with a lesson involving the ills of socialism. (I think.)

* Forgetfulness provides a melancholy visual rendering of a beautiful, worldly-wise poem written by Billy Collins. "No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart." (Sigh.)

* Psychotown (part 3) brings three friends together on the threshold of a coup. Which one of them orchestrated. Badly. "We're going to relive that scene from The Wild Bunch." Uh oh.

* Hot Dog is an ambitious pup who dreams of being a firehouse hound, and he'll go to any lengths (literally) to achieve his lofty goal. Perilous action, dramatic scoring and dreams going up in smoke. Poor doggy!

* Western Spaghetti - it's amazing what you can do with candy corn. And Rubik's Cubes. And pickup sticks, and dice. Gets my nod for "Best Use of Post-it Notes in the Role of Butter."

* For the bravura finish, we're treated to This Way Up, the story of a father/son undertaking team who go to the ends of the earth (and beyond) to carry out the duties of their undertaking. (Ahem.) Crusty ghoulish humor with a heartwarming, chewy moral center; the Addams Family meets Abbott and Costello. With a twist (or, rather, swan dive) ending.

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