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This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

Guilherme Marcondes’ experimental electronica-infused animated short mixes 2D computer animation with bunraku-style puppetry. From an amusement park on the edge of Sao Paulo, Brazil, a giant tiger emerges, controlled clearly by three shadowed puppeteers. As the striped beast stomps through the streets he creates a magical kind of chaos, transforming the humans into animals and spreading electrified vines and flowers across the modern landscape.

This ode to returning to nature has some fun with the transformations of its mindless humans. An office worker snaps into a slug. A family horking down dinner morphs into monkeys. A group of clubbers sprout feathers, becoming squawking toucans. Other inhabitants of the city are transformed as well. Cars snarled in traffic turn to slugs and a swipe with its paw at a helicopter bursts forth a flurry of birds. Marcondes mixes styles well, utilizing the tiger puppet — an older storytelling tool — as the transforming impetus in the modern world, which is animated through more high-tech means. Inspired by a poem from William Blake, the power of the beast is carried over into the short. While Blake wonders what kind of God would create the fearsome tiger, Marcondes’ film wonders what force would allow the creation of urban sprawl.

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This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

Tony Comley’s ABIGAIL won a special distinction award at the Annecy Animation Festival, a pretty nice feat for a student film. It begins with an airplane falling from the sky with its engines on fire. The passengers in coach sing cheerily “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” as they plummet to their deaths. A man longing for a woman in a photograph leaves the chaos in coach for the more refined first class, where things really get weird.

The nightmarish tale mixes tones in an off-putting way. Haunting moments are followed by jokes. Clues to the meaning are casually littered about, but as the film progresses they seem more and more random. Comley gives us little to decipher his code, leaving us to fill in the blanks for ourselves. This isn’t intrinsically bad, but without hints the viewer gets to the point where they get lost as the story twists and turns. As for the animation, the rotoscope-style, similar to WAKING LIFE and A SCANNER DARKLY, is a bit stilted.

With a lot of experimental animation, one takes what they bring in. The more obscure the references, especially when no overall theme is clear, the smaller the audience becomes. Comley says the film is about how we deal with the things we cannot control. Using that idea, which isn’t clear in the film, gives the film a discernable through line, but even that theme breaks down in cynical personal quirks.

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This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

GUIDE DOG is a sequel to prolific animator Bill Plympton’s 2004 Oscar-nominated short GUARD DOG. The animation legend brings more of his twisted flare to this installment, featuring his overly eager dog that loves to throw itself into its work. This time around the bouncing pooch wants to take a job as a seeing-eye dog, however, mishaps with birds, traffic and all around bad luck don’t bode well for a long future in the new profession.

Not as funny as GUARD DOG, which just barreled ahead with manic force, GUIDE DOG is tamer when it comes to energy, but features a darker and sadder tone. Outside of the bizarre first gag, the subsequent jokes aren’t very surprising. One sees where the rest of the film is going from the first gag and the following gags don’t have the punch that repetitive humor really needs. Plympton still does an excellent job of crafting the dog’s personality — sensitive and enthusiastic. The character seems a bit smarter this time around, however his single-mindedness in the original was part of what made the first film so funny. Some knowledge of the first film also makes the second funnier. Like most of Plympton’s work, the beautiful pencil drawings and exaggerated performances define his style, which is truly original and makes all his work worth seeing.

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This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

Many people will know Bill Plympton’s work from his early shorts that aired on MTV, like HOW TO KISS and YOUR FACE. His I MARRIED A STRANGE PERSON! is one of the great (and tragically underrated) animated features. Sadly, SHUTEYE HOTEL is not one of his best efforts. Guest after guest turns up dead at the sleazy Shuteye Hotel. A female detective decides to spend the night as bait to the mysterious killer. However, when the bait gets caught in its own trap, this stakeout could be the detectives last.

With his recent feature HAIR HIGH, Plympton seems to be going through his film noir and horror period. This short sets up the story well, but the pay off is massively anticlimactic. Lifting elements from NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, Plympton’s homage feels more like a retread. The one gag story never made me laugh and when it was over I was left with the “that’s it?” feeling. While a variance on his typical colored pencil style, his art mixes uncolored line drawings with dramatic flares of color very effectively. Like always, the acting is good with its smart and funny exaggeration. This all goes back to the good set-up leading to a pay-off that quickly lets the air out of the whole production.

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This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

Matthew Walker’s CG student short about two hapless astronauts made the festival rounds in 2006, bringing a good deal of attention to the young British animator. It made the theatrical rounds as part of both the Animation Show of Shows and Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt’s Animation Show. Filled with droll humor, British etiquette must rule the day when one astronaut’s boredom leads to a precarious predicament for him and his fellow space traveler.

While the design of the film isn’t trailblazing, Walker’s sense of timing is wonderful. He has the patience to allow his jokes to build. Sometimes he draws them out a tad too long, but for the most part he hits the mark. For sci-fi geeks, they’ll laugh at both the conventions he uses and for the real science that never gets used in other space-based stories. The first and last jokes are the best of the film, which makes for a good start and fine conclusion.

ASTRONAUTS is a solid debut for a filmmaker who only gets better with his second effort. I encourage folks to check out his sophomore effort JOHN AND KAREN as part of the 4th Animation Show theatrical run. I gave that film an honorable mention as part of last year’s RFP Overlooked Awards.

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This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

Luis Nieto’s CARLITOPOLIS is more of a filmic experiment than a film per se. Set up as a demonstration to an audience, real life Carlito demonstrates his shocking experiments on a very cute mouse. Trust me, PETA would not be amused.

In the film, French animator Nieto shows off his skills at animating lifelike characters and mixing them seamlessly with live-action actors and environments. The shock value elicits a few laughs, but the underlying cruelty of the action mutes the overall humor. What works in a Looney Tunes short doesn’t play the same way in some that is photo real. However, after seeing the film a few times, the shock has worn off and the mouse’s character moments begin to emerge, which are very funny. Subsequently, the scales now tip more in favor of humor and less in favor of unsettling. Additionally, one could debate on what exactly is being experimented on, but a grander debate on cloning is not really what this film is setting out to do.

As a calling card to student Nieto’s animation talents, the film gets an A+, but as a storyteller he gets a C+ at best. Nonetheless, I must admit the twisted short made me laugh and works better the more I see it. So I have to recommend it.

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This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

Don Hertzfeldt, who helped produce the first three Animation Show theatrical programs in which this film appears, has taken droll sarcasm to a new wonderful level in EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. In the short, Bill is going about his every day, experiencing many of the awkward occurrences that happen to us all. Then he gets ill. Paranoia sets in and he starts to go a little mad. Various people in his life try to help, but what do they know. Life goes on.

Mixing the absurd with the observational, Hertzfeldt crafts an interesting look at illness, exaggerating many of the common feelings and experiences that everyone has. The title alone displays the clichéd niceties that the non-sick try to comfort the ill with. It captures the irony that seeps into the entire production. Hertzfeldt’s stick figure style works so well with the way he makes his films. The delivery of his narration combined with the look and tone fit together like a maddening puzzle that you swear must be missing pieces. Each episode flows one upon each other in the randomness that is life, building to a chaotic conclusion.

Hertzfeldt has made some of the great modern animated shorts including BILLY’S BALLOON and the Oscar-nominated REJECTED. When so many animators never escape their influences, it’s refreshing to see a true auteur in the medium. Hertzfeldt has created a style and world all his own.

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This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

The easiest way to anger the non-adventurous movie watcher is not to show them something shocking, but to show them experimental animation. They become belligerent with what seems to be nonsense and you can watch as the anger consumes them when someone tries to explain the meaning. This could be for many reasons, which I will get to later.

So why do I bring this universal statement up in the discussion of Max Hattler’s experimental short COLLISION? Because the film is a great example of the barrier between those who like experimental film and those who hate it. Hattler’s explosion of bright colors and shapes is timed to a firework-like soundtrack. His use of color and symbols make it fairly easy to read his meaning. They represent the various flags of the world as they mix and meld and explode into a celebration of multiculturalism. The message comes off fairly obvious… at least for me. Someone else might just see a kaleidoscope of pointlessness.

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Recently I caught the new audacious horror comedy TEETH on DVD, so this week’s lineup is dedicated to the age-old combination of giggles and gore. This Weekend’s Film Festival features one of the original horror comedies from the 1930s. There’s a retro-silent horror ballet flick. An originator of the slasher genre, which could be taken as a soap opera satire. A tongue in cheek H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. And let’s not forget a girl power remix of the vagina dentata myth. This isn’t a lineup for the cinematic timid. This is a lineup for those how like blood and could find ironic gory deaths laugh out loud hilarious. It’s a lineup for the twisted or those who want to see another side of cinema that lurks in the shadows and is having a great time there.

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This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

Run Wrake’s devilish short is brilliantly twisted. Using a Dick-and-Jane-like illustration style, Wrake skewers contemporary morality. With words floating overhead, describing each object on screen, a young girl sees a rabbit in a field and thinks that it would make a wonderful muff. With the help of a mischievous little boy, she knocks out the rabbit, takes it home and cuts it open to discover a tiny devil idol inside. Turns out, the idol loves red plum jam and can turn insects into jewels, feathers and ink. The greedy little children then devise a murderous plan to bring swarms of bugs to the idol, so he will make jewels rain from the sky.

Using the well-known illustration style and contrasting it with the violence of the children is a stroke of genius. At the same moment, the action can be unsettling and hilarious. Warnings against excessive consumerism and greed are abundant. Wrake also makes a unique statement about the children’s desire for the jewels over the use of the feather and ink. What future do we have when the youngest generation would rather consume than create? Some have been baffled by exactly what the ending means. I find it the reasonable conclusion of excessive greed, but I also see it as a bit of “you get what you wish for.” Karma is a bitch sometimes when you live for getting something for nothing.

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