If there were awards for truth in advertising, then Kino International would have to win something for the use of one adjective. The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto contains the bulk of the animation master's work, seven short films made between 1968 and 1979.

Kawamoto is considered a stop-motion animator, and his recent feature-length masterpiece, The Book of the Dead, features gorgeous sets to accompany his beautiful puppets. However, this DVD serves as a reminder that his shorts were rarely quite so straightforward. All of the films on the DVD involve the manipulation of physical objects—if not puppets, then cutouts—but Kawamoto freely mixes them with drawn animation and flat paper cutouts with varying degrees of abstraction.

In earlier films like 1972's The Demon, Kawamoto plays with this stylization by having characters move in sync with the background music's rhythm, almost as if they were performing the story as a dance. By the time of the final film, 1979's House of Flames, he's also using stark lighting and elegant compositions to suggest, at times, a stage play. The three middle films in the collection, An Anthropo-Cynical Farce, The Trip and A Poet's Life (from 1970, 1973 and 1974) all break from the use of puppets and the use of ancient Japan as a setting, but are no less compelling. They are perhaps a bit more obtuse in that unique way that independent animation from the 1970s could be.

Kino has also released the feature-length The Book of the Dead, which features some of Kawamoto's most exquisite—there's that word again—stop-motion work to date. Like his best-known short-form films, the movie features Buddhism in ancient Japan. However, this time Buddhist teachings are central to the film, as it takes place in the eighth century, around the time that Buddhism was being introduced to Japan from China. Unlike his shorts, Kawamoto has chosen here to fill out his sets with physical objects and far more characters, all realized with considerable detail. It's hard to watch a sequence with a room full of elegantly dressed puppets with their clothes blowing in the wind and not be awestruck by both the scene's verisimilitude and its poetry.

As lovely as these releases are, there are a few things I'd have liked to have seen. The Book of the Dead uses the English narration with no option to hear the original Japanese (though all the dialogue is still in Japanese, with optional subtitles) and neither disc includes any kind of extras. While Kawamoto's work speaks for itself, the level of craftsmanship on display on both DVDs leaves you wanting to see and hear more. Finally, completists are likely to wag their fingers: The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto lacks four shorts that were included on the Region 2 Kihachiro Kawamoto Work Collection DVD.

Where to Get It
Buy The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto from Amazon.com
Buy The Book of the Dead from Amazon.com
Buy Kihachiro Kawamoto Work Collection from YesAsia.com

Labels: anime, features, Kihachiro Kawamoto, shorts, stop-motion

I'm generally not a fan of live-action adaptations of animated TV shows, because they almost always disappoint. The problems usually start with the choices the filmmakers make in order to get animated (or animated-looking) characters into a live action universe. The Flintstones had fake-looking rock sets; Alvin and the Chipmunks and Scooby Doo had CGI critters in an otherwise realistic universe; Fat Albert had the TV characters coming to life in the real world.

In Speed Racer, the Wachowskis do what none of the creators of these other films had the will to do: they created a cohesive universe in which all of the elements in any given frame look like they belong together. In the process, they also highlight something that's been missing from mainstream animation for quite some time.

As I was sitting in the cinema watching Speed Racer, it occurred to me that I already knew how most journalists were going to describe the movie's look. Some would say that it looks like a video game, or that it's anime come to life. They're dead wrong. Outside of some race scenes the movie looks nothing like any video game you've actually played, and outside of a few Akira-like shots and a nod to the original series opener, it looks nothing like any anime you've ever seen. Really, these are just phrases that reviewers use when they want to say that there are lots of things moving around very fast, or that have bright-coloured, futuristic-looking elements.

In a strange way, however, they're also right. Speed Racer, like many video games, demands that its viewers process a lot of visual information at once. Like anime, it stylizes motion in a way that isn't entirely realistic but is believable within its own reality.

If anything, Speed Racer's filmic cues come from green-screen/digital-set movies like the most recent Star Wars trilogy and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, along with shorts that feature heavily processed and manipulated live action, like Gaëlle Denis' City Paradise. But the Wachowskis' real inspiration here is manga. This doesn't just apply to the racing scenes, but to just about anything set outside of the Racer family home. Take a look at these images, and pay special attention to how they put the focus on certain foreground objects or characters and use the backgrounds to denote movement, atmosphere and mood, These compositions are pure manga:







Better still are the transitions, in which the camera moves around a foreground character's head and the backgrounds change to show scenes either as a transition or as a flashback to the past. Some of these scenes are multi-layered, including audio from both the current time and place and the location or time being referenced. There's even one scene where one character tells Speed about about something that will happen in the future; as the camera whirls around Speed, the background shifts to show scenes that highlight what the other character is saying—and eventually we discover this isn't speculation, but what actually happens in the future. The whole sequence interleaves between the present moment and flash-forwards, kind of like an episode of Lost on, well, speed. (Lazy journalists will look at all this and make references to audience members with short attention spans or ADD; the truth is, you really have to pay attention if you want to follow it all.)

I'm just scratching the surface here. All in all, Speed Racer is a visual effects spectacle that doesn't reserve its inventiveness for eye-candy money shots; rather, it's a carefully constructed, dynamic reality that is unlike anything seen on the big screen. All of which brings me to the question I kept asking myself when I left the cinema: why haven't I seen anything like this in feature animation for so long?

It's a cliché these days to say that effects-heavy summer movies are cartoon-like, and there's some truth to that. But it's also true that live-action movies have, through the heavy use of CGI, taken animation's "anything can happen here" mentality and run with it. Meanwhile, feature animation has largely concerned itself with looking more realistic, obsessing over things like realistic fur and hair. Even those productions that aren't so fixated are, relatively speaking, conservative. I've very much enjoyed Pixar's films, but when you get right down to it they mostly fit into a niche best described as "Talking ____s," with the blank filled in by toys, bugs, fish, rats or what have you. The Incredibles was an exciting departure, but so far the new direction that it signalled appears to be a dead end.

Where's the wow? Where's that moment when you jump up in your seat, excited because you've been shown something you've never seen before? Speed Racer provides that in spades, but in feature animation it's been sorely lacking. I remember seeing Tron in 1983, Akira in 1988 and Mind Game in 2005 and each time feeling like someone had redefined what was possible in animated cinema because I was being shown things I hadn't seen before. I've had that same feeling many times over since then, but when it comes to animation it's generally been in OAVs, shorts and—much to my surprise—television.

I'm all for the blurring of boundaries, but to me movies like Speed Racer indicate that feature animation is ceding ground to live action. Something is very wrong with this picture.

Labels: anime, CGI, features, live action, manga, Speed Racer, visual effects, Warner Bros.

Just 15 months after Kodansha and Production I.G. kissed and made up over optioning Ghost in the Shell, they've found a taker: DreamWorks, who released Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence in North American cinemas under their GoFish banner in 2005, has acquired the rights to make a live-action, 3D version of the property.

While I think Ghost in the Shell is a great selection for a 3D film, I can't say I'm particularly enthusiastic about the news. I'm generally not a fan of live-action remakes of animated shows or comics; overall, there have been more misses than hits. More to the point, the recent spate of rights acquisitions for anime (or anime-like)-to-Hollywood live-action adaptations (Robotech, Akira, Avatar: The Last Airbender—have I missed anything?) reminds me of the old maxim that in Hollywood no one wants to be first, but everyone wants to be second. Speed Racer is due to hit cinemas in just a few weeks, and I've long had the sense that these acquisitions are a means of lining things up to ride an anticipated wave of anime-inspired movies, in the same way Spider-Man and X-Men helped launch a wave of comic-inspired movies.

One thing I won't do, however, is claim that Spielberg (or any of the other directors/producers working on adapted anime works) will somehow "ruin" the original. Gimme a break—that's like saying a bad date will ruin your memory of your first kiss.

Labels: anime, DreamWorks, features, Ghost in the Shell

The "To the Source of Anime" retrospective ends its run today at the Cinémathèque québécoise with a tribute to Noburo Ofuji. The "Wartime Japanese Animation" programs included propaganda cartoons that feature strikingly American character designs. I mentioned this to Akira Tochigi, the curator of the retrospective, when I interviewed him during his stay in Montreal. Mr. Tochigi spoke with enthusiasm during our lengthy interview.

Armen Boudjikanian: This retrospective does a survey of Japanese animation from 1924 to 1952. Is there any reason why there are not any films from before the 1920s?

Akira Tochigi: Actually until last year, we haven't had any surviving elements of animation from the 1910s. But a private collector found two elements of early animation from 1917 [35mm prints]. We are now doing their digital restoration. We will showcase them soon in a program highlighting recent restoration projects.

What can you tell us about the state of Japanese animation in the 1910s?

Animation was first imported to Japan between 1908 and 1910 from France [the works of Émile Cohl] and the UK. The Japanese film industry created its first major studio in 1912: Nikkatsu studio. Nikkatsu was very powerful at making and distributing its own films but also distributing foreign films. Gradually, along with its competitors, it began being interested in making animation. Pioneers of early animation found opportunities in these studios.

Around the 20s, as more animation came from abroad, especially the States, the majors lost interest in producing their own animation. Rather, [they decided to focus on] importing. They believed that American animation was much more sophisticated and more appealing to [Japanese] audiences.

But also in the 1910s, there was a heated debate in Japan about the influence of cinema on children. The portion of young audiences was big: about 30 to 40 per cent of the moviegoers. The government, academics and intellectuals were all concerned on the [effect of films] on children.

So in the early 1920s, the Japanese central government set up the policy of supporting educational films [which at the time also encompassed] animation. By this kind of categorization the government supported animation filmmaking and sometimes commissioned independent filmmakers to make animations for kid audiences. Animation became a way to safeguard children [from] the influence of cinema. And so, its quality changed at that time.

Coming to the question of governmental funding for animated films. I have noticed that films from the WWII era which are heavily funded by the government resemble Hollywood cartoons much more than earlier Japanese animation. Is there a principal cause for this?

Yes, [this is the result of the combination] of two elements. In the late 20s, early 30s, more and more American animation came to Japan: Disney, [Fleischer's] Betty Boop and Popeye, etc... Japanese animation was very quick to react to this situation by creating its own [set] of characters which originated from comic books and also from Japanese folklore such as Momotaro, monkeys, badgers, etc...

It seems that the synthesis is very well done, though. These are early cartoons but they are very well executed technically. The western influence is obvious but the Japanese elements are blended in successfully.

[The reason for] this synthesis is that in the 1940s, the Japanese government set up the Film Law which forced culture films [documentaries], educational and animation films to be shown in theatres to [large] audiences.

The law also controlled film projections, and [theatre] personnel. There was severe censorship. [Nevertheless], the field of animation became prosperous in these times because the government supported it with its law. So as the influence of American cartoons on Japanese animation continued in the 1940s, it came together with the film law and this resulted in the making of the first medium and feature-length animated films in Japan [the 1942 war film Momotaro and the Sea Eagle was Japan's first five-reel animation].

[Films from this period] used characterization that was typical of American animation. [This] is pretty ironic because these films were very much anti-American propaganda, but still [laughs] it is very apparent that their character designs and aesthetic were coming from American animation.

Coming to Momotaro and the Sea Eagle, can you talk about its cast of characters? Why is the leader of the Japanese army a young girl and why are its soldiers animals?

I think that it's a young boy, not a girl. It seems that he has a kind of femininity but it's a boy. [These characters] come from the original story of Momotaro, who was a boy character that fought the enemy [with the help] of animals.

What happened to Japanese animation between the end of WWII and the establishment of Toei Doga studio in the fifties?

This is one of the hardest ever periods for Japanese animation. There was a shortage of film stock and taxes were high. The defeat of the war finished the [governmental] support to filmmaking. There were no festivals, no theatrical exhibitions, but there were a lot of talented young artists who tried to make films on an independent basis. So when Toei started in the '50s, and TV animation in the early '60s, they [offered the young] animators a way to sort of continue making films under a well-financed situation.

Noburo Ofuji, an animation pioneer to whom you attribute a program to in this retrospective, made Burglars of Baghdad Castle in 1926. This film is very innovative. The techniques used in it foresee some of those that Japanese animators will employ later such as limiting the movement of characters. Do you see a link between Ofuji's work and some of the techniques that were used later on?

Noburo Ofuji started using chiyogami [Japanese coloured paper] as a medium of motion in the 1920s. Celluloid was very expensive in Japan and most animators were not able to use it until the middle of the 1930s. Even then Ofuji remained interested in using chiyogami.

He would cut them [drawings done on chiyogami] out, right?

Right. Ofuji continued making films in the late '50s, and in his later films, used colored cellophane—not to use celluloid [laughs]. And because of the materiality of the [cellophane] paper, [he had] to find ways to economize the motion of the characters. And this seems very associative with TV animation. As you may know, when Osamu Tezuka started the program Astro Boy, thirty minutes of animation were aired on TV weekly. It was pretty hard to make original pictures for thirty minutes amount of work per week.

The team of Tezuka Productions only animated eight pictures in a second [as opposed to 24] to sort of economize the motion of characters... So when trying to connect history to what came before it, [early] paper animation and TV animation [seem] closely related.

Also, Burglars of Baghdad Castle, like current anime, has also plenty of action.

Yes. The Baghdad film features mass action.

Yes! A lot of crowds.

[Laughs] Something like a Kurosawa movie.

How about other links between the early animations and contemporary anime? Do you see any similarities in terms of inspiration?

I think that [there] is a very clear association with contemporary anime [especially] with the work of Studio Ghibli: in Pom Poko for example, a community of creatures [raccoon dogs, or tanuki] fight against human beings. This Ghibli film is not similar in content to 1930s cartoons that have [similar] characters, but [in terms of] the idea to use creature characters to make a satire of human society, it is very closely related. Ghibli, in this sense, is a very traditional animation creator.

So what got you interested in animation?

To be honest, I didn't have a special interest in animation for a long time. Of course, as a child I was intrigued by theatrical animation—and in fact had a passion for TV animation. I [also] read comics in my elementary school [years]. When I entered college, I continued reading comics, [especially the work of] Otomo [creator of Akira]. He was popular with the college crowd not only because of his aesthetics but also because of his handling of contemporary issues.

At this time, my interest in animation was not so much special. [However], when I started working for the Film Archives several years ago, I found many animations in their collection [from the past]. When I watched these films, I was struck by their power and complexity. Of course most were for kid audiences; but from a contemporary perspective, I found out about the [ability] of animation to deal with fantasy, illusion and delusion in many different ways. It seems to me that because these early animators worked mostly independently [their only support came from the government], their individualities and sense of art as filmmakers is apparent in their films; [whether] they worked on mainstream films or in alternative cinema.

[And since] I was struck by experimental cinema in college, including [laughs] Norman McLaren...

Of Course! [laughter]

[Continues laughing] So... Because of this intrigue, my connection with these animated films [felt] natural. And of course as an archivist, I was interested in the history of animation cinema.

There is going to be a retrospective of Canadian and Québécois animation in Tokyo in 2009. Is there an interest in Canadian animation in Japan right now?

Yes, definitely. Next year's exhibition of Canadian and Québécois animation will be programmed by [Marco de Blois of the Cinémathèque québécoise]. We like to leave him to make the final decisions for that [exhibition], as I did for this one.

The staff members of our institution [the National Film Center in Tokyo] are very eager for [this] program because when Norman McLaren was first introduced in Japan in the late '50s, many young artists were so surprised by his films: they were experimental and personal expressions of ideas and feeling through the medium of animation. Most of the Japanese audiences at the time thought animation would [only] be kid entertainment.

That's something that's common in many countries.

Right... And in the late '50s, early '60s, the word "animation" was first introduced in Japan.
Before then, we used the word "manga" film, not animation. But the exhibition that introduced McLaren's work was called "animation film screening". [This] means that the term animation was related not to Disney type of animation but to experimental film and personal film... So this context of Canadian animation has a special [significance] in Japan: it is a kind of individual expression.

Which filmmaker from the "To the Source of Anime" retrospective is of special interest to you as a researcher?

When I was watching the films of this retrospective again and again, the films of Masaoka Kenzo struck me so much [in terms] of aesthetic, ideas and technique.

The Spider and the Tulip is very well directed and animated, could you talk about the artist and how he got into animation?

[Kenzo] had a unique background; he came from a very rich family from Kyoto. He studied western painting in college. Then he joined a major film studio as an actor. He then made his first film, a documentary. [It is only afterwards] that he moved to animation.

Because he came from a prosperous family, and because of his movie studio contacts; he did not rely on [external] funding to make his films. He was exceptionally able to have his films exhibited in theatres, even his first film. Also, because of this, he did not care about targeting his films to children. He wanted to show his films to regular audiences. He often created in his own small studio. He [also coined] the Japanese term doga which means "animated images" in English.

He [did this to be able] to cover all aspects of animation: from puppet to silhouette animation, [whether designed] for children or not. He wanted to value animation as an art for everybody.

Labels: anime, features, Japan, Masaoka Kenzo, Montreal, Noburo Ofuji, Osamu Tezuka, shorts, Studio Ghibli

DC: The New Frontier was an ambitious, twelve-issue series created by Darwyn Cooke that reimagined the circumstances of the first encounter of the DC superheroes who would become the Justice League in the late 1950s. Justice League: The New Frontier, its animated adaptation, is on the ambitious Warner Premier label, which aims to release OAVs based on DC properties, along with striking acquisitions like Appleseed: Ex Machina. And with all this ambition going around, you'd expect a pretty amazing end product, right?

Let me back up a bit. In 1998, I was blown away by the striking, dynamic opening sequence to Batman Beyond, so I interviewed the man who was responsible for it. Fellow Canuck Darwyn Cooke's background was originally in graphic design, and he brought a fresh approach to his animation work, and later to his comics.

Last year I picked up the trade paperback compilation of DC: The New Frontier and read the whole thing in two and a half hours. I'm a fast reader, so that's a bit long for me; but I kept stopping to admire Cooke's bold lines, his compositions and his colours. He's one of those artists who makes good work look much easier than it is.

All of this is in service to one hell of an idea. After World War II, the "mystery men" who aided the war effort—the Golden Age heroes like Hourman, Dr. Fate, Black Canary and the original Flash—are forced to register or retire as Cold War paranoia whips up. Superman and Wonder Woman sign loyalty oaths and work for the government. Batman goes underground. But now a new, younger breed of heroes are starting to pop up, working in secret to do good, like the new Flash and the Martian Manhunter—all at around the same time Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman are realizing their old ways aren't working anymore. (Cooke expertly lifts some of these ideas—in a good way—from previous must-read comics mini-series JSA: The Golden Age, The Dark Knight Returns, and Kingdom Come, all of which expertly mix adult themes with the mythological wonder of the superhero story.)

It can't be unintentional that these events mirror what happened to DC superhero comics themselves between the 1940s and 1960s; they too were neutered post-war, and the Silver Age of comics was officially kicked off in 1959 with the introduction of the new Flash, launching an era of the "scientific" superhero. Many Golden Age heroes were born from the war or mysticism, but in the Silver Age just as many came from space or had their origins in astronomy, chemistry or physics. Cooke mined this and wrapped the story of The New Frontier—a phrase from John F. Kennedy's Democratic Party nomination acceptance speech—in the sense of discovery, adventure and optimism of new scientific discoveries that mixed with the uncertainty of growing social upheavals.

Embodying this spirit and this conflict is Hal Jordan, a jet jockey who will become the new Green Lantern. Driven to see the stars, the pacifist Hal joins the Air Force during peacetime and becomes embroiled in the Korean War. But he's also a man utterly without fear; presented (for the second time) with a death-defying, world-on-his-shoulders mission, his only response (again) is a smile and the simple response, "Outstanding."

That's a lot to fit even into a year's worth of comics, which points to the animated version's biggest flaw. With a mere 75-minute running time, a lot had to be pared down. Many characters and events were eliminated, sidelined or combined, and the net effect is a feeling of being rushed. Comics are incredible because a single panel can represent a split second, or several years; narrative animation tends to be more literal, so Justice League: The New Frontier is actually about 75 selected minutes out of a few years' events.

That would be fine for a conventional three-act story, but the New Frontier comic flits between the threads of multiple storylines and people that are gradually pulled together, each at different speeds. The animated version sticks with the same structure but doesn't have the luxury of time, which eats into things like characterization, back story, pacing and explaining who the hell these less familiar characters are.

The same comic/animation tension affects the visuals, too. A quick glance at the credits reveals the combined talents of the last sixteen years' worth of animated DC series, and it's all right up there on the screen. There's no resting on laurels here; although they've defined and refined a particular vocabulary, they're always pushing things forward. Everything in Justice League: The New Frontier screams 1950s, from the UPA-ish opening scene to the Saul Bass-ish title sequence to the many iconic Cold War-era locations, from Vegas to roadside diners. Colour design, compositions and staging are as sophisticated as the story's ideas. But for my money it all falls apart whenever I look at Wonder Woman.

Darwyn Cooke's Wonder Woman is pure 1950's smoking-hot sexy with generous zaftig curves that convey life, passion and power. Meanwhile, the current incarnation of the Bruce Timm-derived style has become increasingly angular, and the two just don't fit. This tension affects all the characters to one degree or another.

Like the real and fictitious era it represents, Justice League: The New Frontier is about ambition, but also uncertainty. I applaud Warner Premier's very existence, and the resources they put behind such a project. But to shoehorn everything into another 75-minute DC superhero cartoon regardless of the original style or format seems short-sighted and short-changing. One of the factors behind the initial success of the Japanese OAV market was a freedom from format constrictions; expanding Justice League: The New Frontier to a longer running time or mini-series and letting more of the Cooke visual magic shine through would have been a bolder experiment, and captured the bold spirit of the comic at the same time.

Justice League: The New Frontier
Buy Justice League: The New Frontier DVDs and more from Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
Buy DC: The New Frontier books and more from Amazon.com and Amazon.ca

Labels: comics, Darwyn Cooke, DC Comics, features, OAVs, superheroes, Warner Bros.

Review by René Walling

Horton Hears a Who!, Dr. Seuss' classic tale of an elephant discovering a town on a speck is a childhood favourite for many people. The sheer inventiveness and magic of his book has been translated to an animated film before, with Ted Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) himself as producer. The question was, could the folks at Blue Sky expand a half-hour story into a feature without losing the magic in it? And could they do it without the author at the helm of the project?

Read the review

Labels: CGI, features, reviews

The new Wall-E teaser trailer went up yesterday, and it's a good one. Oh, it doesn't tell us any more about the story than the previous teasers, but it does give us a little more about the title character's personality. (I still think the sad-eyes design is a bit of a cheat, but we'll see how it works out.) In fact, about a third of the QuickTime video has Wall-E interacting with Luxo, Jr. in front of the Pixar logo before there are any movie clips.

I haven't loved all of the Pixar trailers in the past, but when they get it right, it's perfect. remember the Toy Story teaser with Buzz "falling with style?" It told you everything you needed to know about the characters and set up Woody's animosity toward Buzz, didn't give away any plot points, and had you wanting to see the movie for reasons beyond the novelty of a feature-length CG film. I've never confirmed if Pixar cuts their own trailers, but I strongly suspect it; if more studios did that, I probably wouldn't spend the first fifteen minutes at the movies figuring out where to put my popcorn.

Labels: CGI, features, Pixar, Wall-E

Les Trois Brigands, the French version of German feature Die Drei Rauber, opened today in cinemas across Quebec and in Ottawa, Ontario. While Montreal stopped being a market for limited theatrical releases about ten years ago, it still has the advantage of getting French-language or translated animated features that have not yet been released widely in English.

(Ironically, Quebec is often overlooked for anticipated anime features, despite the diehard interest ingrained in a two generations of Quebecois through French programming, which made it a stronghold for anime fandom long ago, showing you just how clueless major distributors are.)

The timing is perfect, as the Spring Break begins for elementary schools tomorrow, which means it's time for FIFEM. The film is the only animated feature at this year's edition of the children's film fest, and also its opening film.



FIFEM is also screening shorts before each film. Many are animated, and almost half are Hothouse 4 shorts. Hothouser Carla Coma will be present when her stop-motion short, The Squirrel Next Door, is screened on March 4 and March 9.

Labels: features, FIFEM, Germany, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, shorts

Labels: features, Oscars, Pixar, shorts, stop-motion

La Cinematheque Quebecoise is hosting the largest retrospective of early Japanese animation to ever take place outside of Japan. Just last week that distinction went to the Japan Society's selection of films.

From February 27 to April 5, the special Montreal screenings of Japanese animation from 1924 to 1952 will feature 53 films in 16mm and 35mm, including one feature - Japan's first - Momotaru, The God Soldier of the Seas. National Film Center/Museum of Modern Art of Tokyo curator Akira Tochigi will be in town to inaugurate the event and will lead a conference on February 29 on early Japanese animation.

A full schedule is available on the CQ website (French only), and Facebook, with a sampling of the shorts. As of this week, a bilingual (French and English) program for the retrospective is available at the Cinematheque.

Previously on fps
Japanese Anime Classic Collection review
Podcast 11: Our Baseball Match (1931)

Labels: anime, features, Japan, Montreal, shorts

The Japan Culture + Hyperculture festival at the Kennedy Center is the place to be in Washington D.C. this weekend for exciting anime. We've been falling all over ourselves because of Genius Party anthology for a while, and its North American premiere and the world premiere of Genius Party Beyond will be screening at the festival on Friday and Saturday. The other three anime screenings on Sunday are equally notable: it just depends on the type of animation you like to seek out. The east coast premieres of Appleseed: Ex Machina and The Piano Forest are firsts, but Five Centimeters Per Second, despite being listed as an east coast premiere, screened last November at WFAC.

Thanks to a head's up from Amid at Cartoon Brew.

Previously on fps
Genius Party
Masaaki Yuasa interview
Eiko Tanaka interview

Labels: anime, features, festivals, Genius Party, Japan, Studio 4C, Washington DC

Last week Friday, the Children's Film Festival Seattle kicked off its 2008 edition and there is lots of animation in its program. It's still not too late to catch some wonderful events:

The opening film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, will be showing again this Sunday with a new score commissioned by the Northwest Film Forum. This feature was created in 1926, 11 years before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by German animator Lotte Reiniger. Her silhouette animation is gorgeous and will easily captivate an audience in 2008.

All the remaining feature-length films are live-action, but preceded by animated shorts. The short programs include some animated shorts, and two are devoted specifically to it: Saturday's two Awesome Animation programs feature recent shorts from Sweden, including the very sweet Aston's Stones and a Will Vinton retrospective.

Will Vinton will actually be present at the festival, and he will also be conducting a workshop discussing his personal experience in both clay and 3D animation.

(Thanks to Plexipixel, also a festival sponsor.)

Labels: features, Lotte Reiniger, shorts, stop-motion, Will Vinton

Today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the 2008 Oscar nominees. For all the concern of Beowulf getting a spot, the worry was for naught. The shorts are diverse, in technique, storytelling and geography.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, France)
Ratatouille (Brad Bird, US)
Surf's Up (Ash Brannon and Chris Buck, US)

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

Even Pigeons Go To Heaven (Samuel Tourneux and Simon Vanesse, France) entire short
I Met The Walrus (Josh Raskin, Canada) clip
Madame Tutli-Putli (Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski, Canada) clip
My Love (Alexander Petrov, Russia) clip
Peter and The Wolf (Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman, UK) clip

Labels: Canada, features, France, Madame Tutli-Putli, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, Oscars, Persepolis, Pixar, Russia, shorts, United Kingdom

Ward Jenkins and Neil Gaiman have both put up pointers to a sneak peek of Coraline, directed by Henry Selick based on Gaiman's novel of the same name.

The final film is be the first stop-motion film shot stereoscopically, however this clip is in glorious 2D (otherwise it would just look silly on the Web).

I'm satisfied with this treat. I can wait to see the Other Mother and the Mouse Circus when the film comes out. I don't want to see too much before it's in the cinema. I want to see it as a whole - a solid story, excellent animation, great concepts, striking design - all at once.

Hi-res Quicktime
Lo-res:

[Disclaimer: I am huge fan of both Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman. Huge.]

Previously on fps
Platform: Henry Selick Previews Work on Coraline

Previously on The Critical Eye
Neil Gaiman: The Sandman Scribe on Anime and Miyazaki

Labels: Coraline, features, Henry Selick, Laika, Portland, stop-motion

Tous À L’Ouest, the new Lucky Luke animated feature, is an extraordinarily refreshing film; a masterpiece in slapstick and screwball animation filmmaking. It is a feature Chuck Jones or Tex Avery could have made, had they been animating on the other side of the Atlantic. This film is somewhat of a rarity: it’s hand drawn 2D, it’s European (produced by French studio Xilam), and based on classic comic book characters that many would consider outdated by now. I did not see the live-action flick Les Daltons from 2005, so I cannot get into any comparisons with it, but Tous À L’Ouest firmly stands next to the Belvision and Dargaud Films animated Lucky Luke movies: an updated, more eccentric version of them.

In this outing, director Olivier Jean-Marie selects all the right elements of the Lucky Luke saga to spend time on, to update, and to take into a zany, Terry Gilliam and Buster Keaton direction: that means plenty of Dalton Brothers action, cinematic showdowns, bar fights, furniture destruction, bank robberies, chases, and cabaret dancers. All of this, delivered in muscular, over-the-top 2D animation (you won’t get enough of Joe Dalton going bonkers) and through a layered plotline.

The film is based on the Morris/Goscinny Lucky Luke comic book La Caravane, in which the lonesome cowboy shepherds a caravan from eastern United States to the West. In Jean-Marie’s version, the cowboy meets the caravan folk (immigrants traveling to California to claim their newly bought lands) in New York City, where he has just put the Daltons in jail. The two story points inevitably intertwine, as Lucky Luke accepts to help the caravan cross safely the country and drag along with him the Daltons, who, fresh from their Big Apple jailbreak, are quickly recaptured by the cowboy. Why he doesn’t simply find another slammer for them in New York did not cross my mind, as I was simply too engrossed in the film’s action.

The NYC setting is wholly entertaining and does not feel tacked on at all, despite the fact that none of Lucky Luke’s adventures have taken place in industrialized New York. After the Daltons escape prison, they are treated to a Wall Street full of banks on each side of a gold bricked road, and a Times Square with a five story “Gun and Rifle Store”. Much of the cityscape, including the wagons on the streets and those of the caravan that the cowboy escorts, are rendered in cel-shaded 3D that blends beautifully with the drawn characters. It’s not just the quality of the cel-shading that makes the blending seamless: all of the 3D elements are modeled in the Morris’s graphic style. During the chase sequences, as much stretch and squash is applied to the wagons as to the 2D characters.

The boldest and strongest aspect of Tous À L’Ouest is evidently the powerful cartoon animation seen on the Joe Dalton character and Crook, a new villain created for the film. This slimy estate broker is designed to be deliciously evil: tall and thin with a hunch, sporting a mustache and a hat (it might remind you of another recent villain: Bowler Hat Guy from Meet The Robinsons.) This design makes for serpentine poses and takes, which often occur in that order: Crook attempts to sabotage the caravan from reaching its destination; he goes into elastic takes when his plans fail.

The way Joe Dalton’s character is handled in this film is a call to other mediums of cinema (live-action, CG animation) to accept the challenge in portraying extreme comedic anger. Joe is like Kricfulasi’s Ren but more agitated. He’s a walking time-bomb, ready to explode at any moment. His animated anatomy is comprised of two basic shapes: his large head and his tiny body. They behave as though they are propelled by a trampoline whenever he jumps in the air and screams how much he detests Lucky Luke. This recurring Morris/Goscinny scenario is pushed to the next level on the big screen because the animation of two people that bother Joe the most- his slow-witted brother Averel, and the cool-tempered cowboy- is much more restrained.

Tous À L’Ouest is a celebration of the cartoony, the burlesque and of repetitive shticks. The Daltons have two things on their mind: to get their loot and kill Lucky Luke. You will witness them act on these goals throughout the film; each time displaying more of their sheer stupidity and ineptitude of actions. This film is a must must-see for all cartoon fans, not just Lucky Luke ones. It’s as close as its going to get to a proper Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck feature. We will probably not see this style of traditional animation on the big screen for a while, so see it before it’s out of the theatres.

Labels: Belgium, comics, features, France

The latest WALL-E trailer has been posted on MySpace.


Don't forget to visit the Buy N Large website, based on the film's fictional company.

Did I mention I love robots? I love robots.

Labels: CGI, computer animation, features, Pixar, trailers

Beowulf is no monster, but animation fandom seems to be welcoming it as if it were Grendel itself.

Robert Zemeckis' latest feature foray into the world of motion-capture moviemaking comes correct, despite any aesthetic predispositions and prejudices. Professor Z and his uncanny CGI-Men have lost all of the "dead eyes", much of the plastic skin, and most of the lanky posturing that infested previous big-budget, Hollywood attempts at motion-captured semi realism (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Polar Express, Monster House).

Viewed in Disney 3-D with the oversized, specialized glasses (they fit over my small glasses), the effect is mixed, but mostly positive. Rapid foreground movement tends to appear blurry, but slower scenes crackle and pop with amazing detail. This isn't some chintzy Viewmaster effect. While humans sometimes appear flat, most objects (from pebbles and surging waves) have infinite depth. Even conventional, low-angle shots suck you in, before galloping horses trample over your head. The experience deserves at least one shot from any jaded moviegoer.

Beyond Beowulf's technical achievements is a far rarer achievement for North American animated features: It's a well-crafted, animated drama. With screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary brandishing their fine ears and pens to complement Zemeckis' cinematic sense, they bring brains and soul to this ancient story. The drama is less clumsy than Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, and more coherent than either Paprika or Tekkonkinkreet. It also has sharper wit, meatier dialogue, and stronger performances than all of them.

The storytellers are earnest enough to tell the tale with genuine emotion, but generous enough to play to the back of the room. Gaiman and Avary respect grand pronouncements and bawdy interplay. Zemeckis respects playful camera work, dramatic pauses and silent exchanges. Someone on staff respects blood and buck-nakedness, so the PG-13 rating is bent with glee. Crafty craftsman that he is, Zemeckis ensures that impalings and other impolitic protrusions are artfully obscured. Grendel's brutal assaults in Act 1 are bathed in an otherworldly blue firelight that strobes just enough to blot out the more gruesome deaths. The camera hurtles through spears and arrows instead of the bodies they pierce. Some naughty bits are obscured by foreground objects. Others are obscured by gold trim and dark shadows.

Which leads me to mention that a functionally nude Angelina Jolie facsimile appears in the movie. She may not be a thick-lipped, thick-hipped Ralph Bakshi goddess (like Elenor from Wizards) but she'll do. To wit, Ray Winstone has a gruff, Russell Crowe alpha-maleness mojo going, but I don't think he'll make anyone forget about Gerard Butler's Leonidas from 300. Sorry, these supposedly sensual elements of the story aren't fantastically nebulous enough to be smokin'.

What the performers lack in physical hotness, they make up in emotional presence. Unlike Tom Hanks in Polar Express, the actors don't have to pantomime excessively to get the performance across. With surprising nuance, the best scenes feature tiny smirks, darting eyes, and pained brows. These are not the wax puppets that you see in most video games. (God of War certainly didn't have the patience to tell a story with this much deliberation and visual detail.) Without the brilliantly rendered facial contours, we might miss the visual subtleties of Robin Wright Penn's notable performance, for instance. When her aged queen converses with a young mistress, the subtext in her face could only be captured by the finest character animators. Even the hammier performances of Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich grow on you, leading to incisive interplay late in the film. Don't judge these animated figures based on the motion-captured aesthetic offenses committed by past films. Watch this film and make the distinction.

Think of Zemeckis as a student of the Fleischer school of mimetic action animation, having completed his prerequisite study in Rotscoping 202 and The Animated Short Films of Superman. He's the art major with a computer science concentration, so forgive his literalism and obsessive sense of static detail. If Disney can develop a better multiplane camera to emulate live-action dollies and zooms, then surely the Z-man shouldn't be garroted for employing his own form of hybridization.

Silicon Valley has not yet crossed over into the Uncanny Valley, but it's getting pretty darn close to the down slope with Beowulf.

Labels: Beowulf, CGI, computer animation, features, reviews

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just released their list of films that have been submitted for consideration for the animated feature film category for next year's Oscars. The features are Alvin and the Chipmunks, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, Bee Movie, Beowulf, Meet the Robinsons, Persepolis, Ratatouille, Shrek the Third, The Simpsons Movie, Surf's Up, Tekkonkinkreet and TMNT. Alvin, Beowulf and Persepolis still haven't had their Los Angeles qualifying runs, but I'm sure Fox, Warner and Sony will get right on that.

It also appears that the Academy has gotten over its uncertainty with regards to tagging Beowulf and Alvin as animated features (the former because of its extensive use of motion capture—which even direct Robert Zemeckis doesn't feel is animation—and the latter because of its blend of animation and live action).

So which three films do you think will actually be nominated for the li'l gold guy? Here's what I think, and why:

Beowulf: Gosh-wow technology; eye candy in the form of both lush imagery and Angelina Jolie; Hollywood loves a good epic; the novelty of a PG-13 animated feature.

Persepolis: Great festival buzz; the hand-drawn look balances out the CG of most of the other entries; topical themes; more straightforward plotwise than Tekkonkinkreet; a nod to foreign animation.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters: Just kidding. Though I expect that The Simpsons Movie and Ratatouille will split the vote and we'll get something like Shrek the Third or Surf's Up in there.

Labels: features, Oscars

This Saturday and Sunday afternoon, November 10 and 11: leading up to the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC in partnership with Bandai Visual and the Waterloo Children's Museum will be holding a 20th anniversary screening of Wings of Honneamise, one the best anime features of the 80s, and the first feature ever produced by Gainax.

If you go on Saturday, On both days, you can catch Jin Roh, also in high-definition, based on the comic by Mamoru Oshii, and the English premiere of Detective Conan.

If you are anywhere near Waterloo, Ontario, this is not to be missed. All screenings are free.
Showtimes

Labels: anime, events, features, Gainax, Mamoru Oshii, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC

The Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema is a small festival in the quiet town of Waterloo, Ontario, dedicated to long-form animation. WFAC's lineup has grown at a reasonable pace, from three anime films each for its first and second editions to a dozen or more selections since from all over the world, including independent features from North America.

The website is live and all the films are listed here.

"The World Cinema programme includes Oscar-nominated Leslie Iwerks’ The Pixar Story, a chronicle of the history, the challenges, the triumphs, and the people of Pixar Animation Studios and the art they pioneered: computer animation; the charming re-imagined fairytale The Ugly Duckling and Me, the hilarious and completely outrageous Aachi and Ssipak, master Czech stop-motion animator Jan Balej's incredible horror film One Night In The City, the infamous hilarious Norwegian romp Free Jimmy, Shinkai Makoto's heart-wrenching anime drama 5 Centimeters Per Second, vampire action RH+, and the edgy hard-boiled Film Noir, and Otto Guerra's irreverent hippie satire Wood & Stock: Sex, Oregano and Rock 'n Roll."

Balej's Fimfarum 2 was one of my personal favourites from last year's festival, but One Night In The City seems to be in a whole other league. On Saturday at 6:30 p.m. EST, Ladd Ehrlinger's adaptation of Flatland will be screened and the director will be present for a Q&A afterward, both of which will be broadcast live online. As if that weren't enough, Katsuhiro Otomo's latest short project is screening in the timeslot just before it.

The festival is about 90 minutes from Toronto, ON, 3 hours from Rochester, NY or Detroit, MI. I'd say it's definitely worth at least a day trip for animation fans in search of more than the slim pickings at the cineplex.

Labels: features, festivals, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC

In the late 1980s, Yoshiaki Kawajiri directed four projects that would cement his distinctive style: the short film The Running Man, the 2-part OAV series Goku: Midnight Eye, and the features Yojutoshi (aka Wicked City, produced in 1987) and Demon City Shinjuku. All of them share Kawajiri's trademark slickness and his knack for moodiness, but only the last two feature supernatural horrors running around a nighttime urban landscape as if it were their natural habitat.

Of the two, Wicked City is the better movie overall. It posits the existence of the Black World, a world inhabited by demons that coexists with our own. Few know about the Black World, and fewer still know that every few hundred years, a peace treaty is signed between the Black World and ours, guaranteeing peaceful coexistence; a secret organization known as the Black Guard enforces the treaty. A splinter group of demons wants to sabotage the current peace treaty by killing the 200-year-old Giuseppe Mayart, a key figure in brokering the deal. Two Black World agents are assigned the task of protecting him: the human Taki Renzaburo, who carries a big gun and knows how to use it, and the beautiful, human-looking demon Makie, whose weapons of choice are her extendable, deadly-sharp fingernails.

The entire film takes place at night, of course, which allows not only for a reduced, somber colour palette and countless shadows, but an opportunity to explore the idea of an underworld in both common senses—the realm of the unnatural, and a criminal urban milieu that exists, much like the Black World, in parallel to our own. It's notable that many of the demons make their initial appearance not as ugly beasties, but as men and women in the dress we're accustomed to seeing in urban crime stories. The first female demon Taki encounters is in the form of a bar hostess; the first male demons are dressed in sharp black business suits. Confrontations take place in many of the same locations as in traditional noir films: foggy airport runways, hotel bars, back rooms, run-down buildings, brothels.

The setting is perfect for Kawajiri's style, which favours gorgeous establishing shots, backgrounds dense with details and scenes with one or two dominant colours. Particularly distinctive are the many ways that light spills into scenes: airplane lights on a foggy runway, street lights as a car speeds toward the city, moonlight filtering into a church. All of his movies play with these elements, but only Wicked City and Demon City Shinjuku make use of them all.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Wicked City is the large part that women's sexuality plays in it. Anyone with a double major in women's studies and film studies needs to watch this film, for the many ways in which it plays with the many images of women and men's fears. You've got vagina dentata, a spider-woman, a prostitute who literally absorbs her victims—the list goes on. The things that women do and the things that are done to women in this film could fill a few