Each film in this year's animation spotlight is so unique in it's own method, statement and enjoyment factor that I'll briefly rate and discuss them individually. The overall grade for the collection, however, is a C+, despite some brilliant standouts.
One Rat Short: A
This richly detailed, cleverly constructed, brilliantly rendered, sensitive and tender tale was my favorite of the evening. Alex Weil's vision is one-of-a-kind. In just ten minutes and without a single spoken word he brings us into a fully developed world with complete and soulful characters and even manages to provoke some introspection about the price of our urbanity, scientific progress and technological failures without beating us over the head.
Duct Tape and Cover: B
Using a government "Duck and Cover" voice-over from 1951, Yong-Jin (Gene) Park cleverly manipulates it into a story for our time to demonstrate the inanity of the idea of ducking and covering to avoid getting hurt in an attack. Using the same verbal instructions, we are now visually instructed to wrap ourselves, our loved ones, our cars and our homes in government-issued duct tape. It's a clever one-liner with simple, vibrant images, but it doesn't go much further than the punchline.
Phantom Canyon: C-
Using Romanticism images from Edward Muybridge's anatomical studies and setting them in a surreal landscape is neat idea, but the story (which we're told is true) involves a woman who's attacked by bugs and loves a winged bat-man and fights off fish and has a bat-child and escapes a series of falling mattresses, more fish, and some canyon-like intestines to float down a river in a crate to an Alexander Pope poem... sorry, I just didn't get it.
Destiny Manifesto: D-
The only reason this annoying film didn't get an F is because I know I hard it was to create it and I think its anti-war message is a positive one. Still, it's completely overbearing, self-indulgent and SLOPPY. Sections of it were blurry, misaligned or showed hands or tape on the layers of painted glass over the collages. It has a shrieking soundtrack that doesn't let up and increases in volume and pitch. As the film progresses it gets angrier, but doesn't say anything new about how war is a bad thing and hurts people. We get it in the first 30 seconds. I went from irked to exasperated by the end of the first minute. The film goes on screaming for another nine.
Golden Age: B+
This initially hilarious film loses some of its humor as it progresses, mainly because the idea of taking iconic cartoon characters and redesigning them as mere actors with flawed lives beyond the screen is clever, but that's all that happens. Re imagining the toons and giving them all back stories in a "True Hollywood Story" style gave us some great laughs --but after the fifth story it started to feel long and I began to wonder if Aaron Augenblick was going to go through every cartoon I've ever seen in my life and maybe it was time for me to find a box of sugar cereal and my little yellow blankie and settle in for the night...
Pauline Hollers: F
I hated this film. Hated it. I hated the imagery, the story, the ranting monologue on the soundtrack, the insidious violin-and-reverse-reverb-dissonant music, the shoddy technique, the lazy photography. I'm stunned Sundance included this wretched, acerbic mess over hundreds of other submissions. The program would have been better off without it. No, better yet, the world would have been better off without it. Please don't ever make any more films like this.
Dreams and Desires - Family Ties: A
Sensational! Joanna Quinn's fantastic use of the line, her characters, the bizarre angles and high-brow wit make this the breeziest and most enjoyable ten minutes of animation I've seen in a long time. Reminiscent of Bill Plimpton's work but on a completely different plane, I can only rave, bravo, bravo, I can't wait to see everything you ever do!
Everything Will Be OK: C+
Don Hertzfeldt has a signature technique and unusually perceptive sense of humor that I adore. His work over the years, including Genre and Billy's Balloon, have always made me laugh--often at my own surprised reaction-- to the sick-side-of-life as presented in his films. In this one, however, Hertzfeldt deviates from his tried-and-true style and goes to a much darker side. He crosses over and leaves the humor behind, seeking downright destruction and carnage instead. The film stops being enjoyable. I wouldn't mind so much, perhaps, if the first five minutes of the film didn't have those smart, pensive musings that made me fall for the main character. It's like watching a puppy play happily in a field and then a wolf runs over and tears it to pieces. In his other films you get the same message that life can be randomly, sickly cruel, but it's the humor that brings it to us in a palatable form and gives the films levels and legs. This one just invited us in and then beat us over the head until we hurt -- and didn't laugh.
