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July 2, 2009
 The full Fantasia 2009 lineup will be announced soon, but here are some of the animation highlights of North American's largest cult film festival, right in fps's home base of Montreal. I'm excited about Genius Party Beyond, Studio 4C's companion to Genius Party, shown last year at the festival. Hells Angels is a Madhouse production with a star crew behind this manga adaptation. Cencoroll is an anime feature that seems quite intriguing. Seems equally intriguing, but with a more sedate, less over-the-top storytelling style. The feature Les Lascars is based on the French cult show of the same name and should go over well with the boisterous festival crowd (if you've not yet made it to a Fantasia festival screening, the involvement of the audience is worth the price of the ticket alone). Tokyo Onlypic 2008 looks like it will be a side-splitter. It's an anthology of animated and live-action shorts describing outrageous Olympic-style events. Check out Bill Plympton's Race For Love in the trailer. DJ XL5's Razzle Dazzle Zappin' Party promises another year or crazily juxtaposed shorts (many animated) simulating the channel-changing experience... to the power of ten. Celluloid Experiments always features edgy animation selections in its roster. I doubt this year will be any different. You'll be able to view the full schedule online and procure a printed festival program with a DVD full of trailers on Friday. Hope you can survive the wait! Labels: Fantasia festival, features, festivals, France, Japan, Madhouse, shorts, Studio 4C  The entire lineup looks promising at the Fantasia film festival this year, running from July 9 to 29. While fps focuses on animation, Fantasia (the largest event of its kind in North America) is a combination of the best cult film worldwide, and has an impressive lineup of film of all types, including live-action and animated horror, action, fantasy, science fiction, weird and edgy films.As I said, we like to stick with animation around here, but I have to mention this year's opening film, even though it's got (gasp) real people in it. This year's opening film is the live-action feature Yatterman that began life as a manga in the 70s, which shortly after became an anime series (that was recently updated in 2008).  This is the part where we usually begin a lament (but not always). Definitely not this time!The director is the irreverent Takashi Miike who made films such as Audition and Sukiyaki Western Django. To me this is more reason to see it. However, if viewers are worried about how he would do an all-ages film, I point to the fantastic film The Great Yokai War, which featured his signature style, but also was a wonderful film for younger viewers. I think this film will be the type of fare which is best watched with an enthusiastic audience, in the same way that the live-action version of Cutey Honey (directed by animator Hideako Anno) wowed audiences just a few years ago. The full Fantasia lineup will be available on Friday, July 3. Labels: anime, Fantasia festival, features, festivals, Japan, live action, manga June 22, 2009
 The Snowman, Street of Crocodiles, Girls Night Out, Creature Comforts, Screen Play, Bob’s Birthday, The Man With the Beautiful Eyes, City Paradise, Rabbit: A truncated litany of some of the brilliant shorts that since the mid-1980’s have defined British animation the world over, and are jaw-droppingly impressive. What they, and the unlisted others, share apart from their creative potency is, perversely enough, an institution. A government mandated, uniquely funded institution that luckily for all of us was peopled by passionate souls who cared about art and diversity (writ large), and who actively contrived to put money and resources into the hands of the most talented, fecund creators they could uncover. No, not the NFB (but thanks for thinking of us) Britain’s Channel 4 – or Channel Four, more correctly – television network.In British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor, Clare Kitson, Channel 4’s commissioning editor for animation throughout the 1990s, has written a humane and intimate history of the ups and downs of animation at the Channel, leavening it with just the right amount of dry wit, personal insight and anecdote. The book is a deft balance between an academic tome offering historical context and background and an eye-opening guide to anyone interested in the many behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings that go on to actually get these kinds of films made and-most importantly in Channel 4’s case-on to air. As an NFB producer, the themes that resonated for me (both for the echoes and the dissonances) are Kitson’s perspective as a commissioning editor rather than a producer, and the Channel’s intrinsic ability (and sometimes inability) to get things onto TV screens around the UK. While these are not mass audiences by most standards, they are certainly much larger audiences than short animation otherwise gets on broadcast television – if our films get onto television at all. Such a luxury, but as Kitson points out also such a curse, was each season’s scheduling matrix even for a broadcaster so committed to diversities of topic, technique and running length. The Channel 4 Factor is valuable history. But as memoir about what Kitson likes and why, it’s revealing and fun, and already well exceeds the price of admission. The middle section, in particular, reveals the makings of several of the Channel’s most famous films from her own unique vantage point along with the filmmakers’ own tellings of the tale. It’s as a sociological dissection of how such an organization came about, almost from whole cloth, where Clare hits her stride. As a case study, Kitson offers up much of the recipe for success that created and sustained both Channel 4 and the NFB. Indeed, parallels to the NFB regularly caused me pleasant surprise. Compressed in active years, Channel 4’s animation history is like the NFB’s but accordioned into itself three times over. I suspect many producers see commissioning editors as mercurial demagogues, unaware of real work of filmmaking and blithely changing objectives and mandates from season to season. Kitson quite effectively put that myth to rest. She reveals the very passionate people who created an ethos committed to being background players. Producers boosted artists by giving them money to make films, but more importantly by creating a culture that was willing to take big risks on small films. Here’s the original job posting for Channel 4 commissioning editors: Television production experience may be an advantage but is not essential. Whether your passion is angling or cooking, fringe theatre, rock, politics, philosophy or religion, if you believe you can spot a good idea and help others realise it on the screen, we are looking for commissioning editors and would like to hear from you. Clearly, the early, passionate years of Channel 4 were driven by both by its unique mission and by strength of personality and will of its editors and executives. What kind of society is predisposed to permitting such a creature to be born, and more importantly, to live and thrive? Is it peculiar to Anglo-Saxon socialism, which would also explain the NFB? Kitson writes about diversity and minority remits (but not just about skin colour or ethnicity or orientation) and cultural big thinkers who believed in social change and art as the change tool. She admires a 1980s UK society and a handful of faithful who were ready to lift and be lifted to a new plateau of humanity and criticality, of engagement and responsibility. While not of the same soaring oratory and historic portent of Barack Obama’s presidency, Channel 4 changed the game. I wonder if Mr. Obama might see PBS and the NEA anew were he to read The Channel 4 Factor. I suspect he already carries those convictions or ones quite similar, but I’m quite certain he’d enjoy the animation education he’d get from Kitson's caring and insightful writing. Of course, there’s no telling what the success-to-fail ratio was for Channel 4’s roster, much as it’s hard to know for the NFB unless one is dogged and inclined to statistics. There’s a chance many animators are like me and prone to apocrypha rather than evidence. Although I do think it’s absolutely true that reputations are built on equal parts evidence and belief, and it’s only when belief has no tangible, recent success to riff on that paper lions are revealed and fairly scrutinized. The ratios may have dipped a bit in recent years, but Kitson leaves us with hope for British animation by the book’s end, and it’s a hope I share in all my various capacities within the animation shorts world. We always need a secular, art-centric “city upon a hill” that challenges and binds us. There are precious few such institutions left, but Clare Kitson has given valuable clues and insights in how to go forth and multiply.  Michael Fukushima is a producer in the National Film Board of Canada’s Animation Studio, apparently with a bit of closeted anglophilia.Where To Get It British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor, by Clare Kitson published by University of Indiana Press (North America) and Parliament Hill Publishing (UK). Labels: books, Clare Kitson, reviews, shorts, Television, United Kingdom June 15, 2009
 Annecy just wrapped up two days ago and the winners are announced.Highlights include Hanna Heilborn and David Aronowitsch's Slavar winning the Annecy Cristal Award in the Shorts category, Cordell Barker's Runaway garnering a Special Award from the Jury in the Short Film category, while Mary and Max and Coraline shared the Cristal for Best Feature. Labels: annecy, Awards, Coraline, Cordell Barker, Mary and Max June 10, 2009
 Animafrik, an African animation film festival that seeks to promote African art and animation will take place October 5th to the 9th, 2009. Animafrik draws the relationship between art and animation and plans to offer a platform to showcase Africa's finest works with screenings, workshops (including workshops for children), exhibits, and professional meetings under the theme "Telling Our Own Stories". There will also be regional screenings in various cities following the festival. DVD submissions may be sent by courier to: Animafrik Festival, No.5. Anowa Link, Tesano, Accra, Ghana; or by mail to: P.O.Box KN 150, Kaneshie, Accra, Ghana. The submission deadline is July 31 2009. More information can be found on the Animafrik 09 website Labels: Africa, call for submissions, festivals June 2, 2009
I'm speechless. This animated intro sequence for the upcoming Beatles Rock Band video game is simply stunning. I'd love to know more about the people responsible for it. They manage to tell the career-spanning, mind-bending story of the Beatles in a couple of minutes, seamlessly blending well designed 2-D and 3-D styles of animation. What I wouldn't give for a feature length film this cool... UPDATE: Offworld.com is reporting that the intro was handled by Gorillaz animator Pete Candeland of Passion Pictures, "based on Candeland's similarly jaw-dropping work on Guitar Hero II's TV ad and the full-3D Rock Band 2 intro" Labels: Rock Band, The Beatles, video games May 26, 2009
 The Sky Crawlers (122 mins, 2008 - Blu-ray released May 26, 2009) I would never count myself among the legion of Mamoru Oshii fans. In fact, I find Ghost in the Shell a hard slog, tough to sit through. Like watching water boil. All right, I’m exaggerating here. Oshii never fails to deliver beautiful moments and thrilling action in his films but in order to uncover the candy he forces you to suffer the interminable plastic wrapping of verbose philosophical monologues, pretentious classical quotations and ham-fisted expository detail. I’m happy to say that his latest animated film, The Sky Crawlers manages to side step these complications. For the most part. Read more after the jump:  The Sky Crawlers paints itself as a story about war. It leads you to believe you’re in for one hell of an airplane ride but while director Oshii delivers the occasional immaculately rendered, viscerally engaging dogfight - single and dual propeller CGI vehicles tearing through the computer-rendered sky and each other with dizzying speed and intensity - he’s less interested in action and more keen on theme and concepts. Adapted from Hiroshi Mori’s novels of the same name, The Sky Crawlers follows a group of eternally adolescent pilots into the skies as they struggle to understand the meaning of the corporate war they wage. The mysteries of the other-dimensional Europe of the film are revealed through the eyes of Yuichi, a ‘Kildren’ pilot with a missing past and a deepening relationship with the girl who holds the key to it - his self-destructive young airbase commander, Suito. As is par for the course with Oshii, we come to know the characters less through action or dialogue and more through their expression of the thematic concepts at hand - in this case, broadly, youth and war. But for once, this doesn’t get in the way of the film. Though moving at the pace of fanciful poetry, The Sky Crawlers remains inventive and engaging throughout, punctuating long stretches of haunting silence or ponderous exchanges with breathtaking images, lightning flashes of action and stirring music by Kenji Kawai.  The Blu-ray disc looks and sounds tremendous. I can’t heap enough praise on Sony for their work with animated features. These guys really seem to know what they’re doing. The transfer is immaculate, three-dimensional and electric on the screen, with the 2-D, cell animated scenes on the ground as clean and vibrant as the CGI aerial dogfights. The intense audio work by Skywalker Sound is some of the most realistic and present I’ve ever experienced in an animated film and immaculately represented here in Dolby TrueHD 5.1.  The Sky Crawlers Blu-ray disc includes three documentary shorts, each a candid look at the creation of the film and each worth your time. “Animation Research for The Sky Crawlers” (30:52) follows Oshii and his team all over the world as they photoggraph, sketch and record all the visual details required to build the alternate-universe European setting of the film. “The Sound Design and Animation of the Sky Crawlers” (32:16) takes Oshii to San Francisco and Skywalker Sound, giving insight into the critical nature of the film’s sound effects and music to the overall experience. Exclusive to the Blu-ray disc is the 15 minute featurette, “Sky’s the Limit: An Interview with Director Mamoru Oshii”, a sit-down conversation with the director that reveals his intentions for the film and the thought process that ushered the book to script and finally to screen. Read more about The Sky Crawlers in Madeline Ashby's excellent review of the film for fps: TIFF 08: The Sky Crawlers The Sky Crawlers is available for $22.99 on Amazon.com - 34% off the MSRP of $34.95 Via: The Blu-ray Blog Labels: Blu-ray, CGI, DVD, Mamoru Oshii, The Sky Crawlers Chris Landreth's latest film, The Spine will premiere at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival this coming June. What makes a Landreth film really stand out from most other photorealistic 3D computer animated films out there is how he explores and exposes his character's inner realities to the outside world for all to see. According to the official website, The Spine is the exploration of the relationship between a man and a woman trapped in a spiral of mutual destruction. From this description and the stills I've managed to see, I think we can look forward to seeing some more explorations of the human condition and to be again touched and amazed by this very talented filmmaker. But for those of us who can't wait until the Annecy festival, the NFB offers several shorts discussing the "making of" to whet our appetites: http://www.nfb.ca/film/spine_making_of_new_generation_animations http://www.nfb.ca/film/spine_making_of_story_genesis http://www.nfb.ca/film/spine_making_of_the_studio http://www.nfb.ca/film/spine_making_of_walkabout And if that's not enough to hold you until Annecy, you could always watch Ryan again. Labels: annecy, Chris Landreth, National Film Board of Canada, NFB May 22, 2009
Good news: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is returning with new episodes to Japanese television screens, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is on YouTube. The two titles mentioned above employ the same castmembers and staff, the same production studios, and both are further explorations of the source texts: the former a series of comedic science fiction novels, the latter Hiromu Arakawa's manga series. (FMA:B promises to adhere more closely to the manga, in a way that the original Fullmetal Alchemist didn't.) Hellsing, Evangelion and the Macross franchise have received similar treatments in recent years. And in an economy like this one, it's not hard to see why -- established titles have a built-in fanbase that can better ensure a return on investments of time and money.
The revival of these series has me wondering what other anime titles I'd like to see resurrected or re-explored. In many cases, anime series are filmed before the manga that precipitated them has ended, meaning that the anime ends at a point that doesn't quite feel like an ending. Here's a list of some series that I'd like to see dusted off and properly finished:  Fruits Basket: With the manga having ended in Japan, I think it's high time Akitaro Daichi brought us another complement of this sweet, zany, and heartrending anime. Every time I watch this series, I want more. And now that the story has a real ending with even deeper revelations, there's nothing to stop us from getting it. Except for time. And money. And availability. But this is Furuba, damn it -- you know you want some. Ouran High School Host Club: With ANN's recent full subbed stream of the series, I've been watching the episodes in too-large blocks, surprised at how much I enjoy it, how sorry I am not to have been part of the first wave of viewers to enjoy it, and most of all how clever it is at embracing then subverting shoujo stereotypes in order to critique fetishized gender roles. And the manga is now within sight of ending: more, please! FLCL: GAINAX had only enough time and money for six episodes of the original series, but those six episodes were enough to tell a thoughtful story about growing up, locating your inner strength, and realizing that what you want and what you need are often very different. (Plus, there was giant mecha action. With guitars.) Ideally I'd like to see a "ten years later" treatment, in which Naota and Atomsk team up to fight Medical Mechanica, this time without Haruko's "help." It sounds crazy, but just think: more music by The Pillows! Samurai Champloo: Watanabe isn't fond of re-visiting his own series, and I can't blame him. They're mostly perfect on their own. But Cowboy Bebop had its own in-series movie treatment with Knockin' on Heaven's Door, and there's no reason that SC coudn't enjoy the same. If not a follow-up to the series that further re-mixes Japan's history with a critique of nation-building while simultaneously exploring the continuing stories of Jin, Mugen, and Fuu, then maybe an extended episode that picks up another famous figure from Edo Period history and twists it beyond recognition. (Admit it: Samurai Champloo: Rebel Without A Pause would be awesome.) I've had my say: what would you like to see brought back? (And if you say Cowboy Bebop, we're done.) Labels: anime |
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