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May 2, 2008
 Toon Boom Animation, the University of Trinidad and Tobago and the Animae Caribe Festival have teamed up to launch the first Caribbean and Latin America Edition of the Toon Boom Animation Festival. As in previous editions of the festival, they're looking for short films produced in the Caribbean and Latin America using Toon Boom Studio, Digital Pro, Adobe Flash, Shockwave or similar packages. The submitted shorts must fit the theme "Bridging the Caribbean and Latin America through the Arts and Local Festivals." The top ten finalists' work will be shown at this year's Animae Caribe festival, which is being held September 25–27 in Trinidad.Labels: Caribbean, festivals, Flash animation, Latin America, Trinidad April 12, 2008
 Signe Baumane dropped me a line to let me know that two of her fellow New York-based independent animators are screening the American premieres of their recent features at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival. Nina Paley's longtime endeavour Sita Sings the Blues—which we featured in our November 2005 issue—will be showing from April 25 to May 2, while Bill Plympton's Idiots and Angels runs from April 26 to May 3. Screening times and ticket info below. Tickets: Visit the Tribeca Film Festival site, or call 646-502-5296. Sita Sings the Blues Friday, April 25, 8:15 pm AMC Village VII (AV7) 66 Third Avenue (at 11th Street) New York, NY 10003 Sunday, April 27, 3:45 pm AMC 19th Street East (A19) 890 Broadway (at 19th Street) New York, NY 10003 Monday, April 28, 10:45 pm AMC Village VII (AV7) 66 Third Avenue (at 11th Street) New York, NY 10003 Thursday, May 1, 1:45 pm Village East Cinemas (VEC) 181 Second Avenue (at 12th Street) New York, NY 10003 Friday, May 2, 3:00 pm AMC 19th Street East (A19) 890 Broadway (at 19th Street) New York, NY 10003 Idiots and Angels Saturday, April 26, 5:30 pm AMC 19th Street East (A19) 890 Broadway (at 19th Street) New York, NY 10003 Sunday, April 27, 9:30 pm Village East Cinemas (VEC) 181 Second Avenue (at 12th Street) New York, NY 10003 Wednesday, April 30, 11:00 pm AMC Village VII (AV7) 66 Third Avenue (at 11th Street) New York, NY 10003 Saturday, May 3, 8:00 pm Village East Cinemas (VEC) 181 Second Avenue (at 12th Street) New York, NY 10003 Labels: Bill Plympton, festivals, Flash animation, New York, Nina Paley, Tribeca Film Festival February 14, 2008
 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 December 11, 2007
Submissions must have been produced on or after January 1, 2005. Italian or English-subtitled films have preference. There are five competition categories:
Submissions must be received by January 1, 2008. There is no fee for entry. For more information, contact: Coritalia Via Paola Falconieri 3 Roma, Italy +39 06 45436533 redazione [at] cortoons.it Labels: call for entries, festivals, Italy November 7, 2007
 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 October 25, 2007
 New Yorkers have four opportunities to catch a screening of 11 Croatian animated shorts between Saturday, October 27 and Wednesday, November 14. Light Drawings: The Zagreb School of Animation is part of the Beyond Boundaries: The Emergence of Croatian Cinema series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which begins tomorrow.The Loner, Vatroslav Mimica, 1958; 12m Concerto for a Sub-machine Gun, Dusan Vukotic, 1958; 14m The Inspector Is Back! Vatroslav Mimica, 1959; 11m The Piece of Shagreen Leather, Vlado Kristl, 1960; 10m Don Quixote, Vlado Kristl, 1961; 11m The Substitute, Dusan Vukotic, 1961; 10m The Wall,Ante Zaninovic, 1965; 3m Curiosity , Borivoj Dovnikovic-Bordo, 1966, 8m Revelry, Zlatko Bourek, 1966; 9m Passing Days, Nedeljko Dragic, 1969, 10m Satiemania, Zdenko Gasparovic, 1978, 14m October 24, 2007
 The Cinematheque Quebecoise focuses on German animation this week. Filmfest Dresden Presents New German Animation screens on Thursday, October 25 at 6:30 p.m., and repeats on Friday at 4:00 p.m.Our Man in Nirvana Jan Koester Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker Stefan Müller Delivery Till Nowak (attending) Close Your Eyes and Do Not Breathe Vuk Jevremovic Lovesick Speka Cadez Bildfenster/Fensterbilder Bert Gottschalk The Tell-Tale Heart (Der Verrückte, das Herz und das Auge) Annette Jung Diary of a Perfect Love (Tagebuch einer perfekten Liebe) Sebastien Peterson As part of its World Animation Day events on Sunday, October 28th, Hints of Excellence: Classics of the DEFA screens for free. Labels: events, festivals, Filmfest Dresden, Germany, Montreal, shorts October 13, 2007
 Animation fans in LA who didn't make it to the Platform International Animation Festival (or those who simply want to relive it) will get a chance to see selections from the festival during a screening on Monday, October 15, at 8:00 p.m. at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater.There were many notable shorts during the festival although I haven't been able to find out the full lineup for this screening (Luis Cook's The Pearce Sisters and work by Don Hertzfeldt and Miwa Matreyek will be featured), I don't doubt for a moment that the variety and selection of shorts will be entirely worth your time. Previously on fps Platform International Animation Festival coverage Labels: events, festivals, Los Angeles, Platform, shorts October 12, 2007
 Le Festival du Nouveau Cinéma is known for its wolf that adorns its publicity materials. The fest has a track called Les P'tits Loups or, in English, Little Wolves, with programming geared towards children, and only two shorts in that entire track are live-action. The selections will definitely be of interest to parents and guardians, and honestly, I think if you left the kids at home you might not notice. The track begins on the morning of Saturday, October 13 with U, a feature from France that appears to be a fairy tale on the outside and is a coming of age story underneath it all, despite the unicorn and the castle. It deals with concepts of love and adolescence in a very disarming fashion.Sunday, October 14 features an hour's worth of Komaneko: The Curious Cat shorts. I can't recommend this highly enough. Our heroine is the ultimate do-it-yourselfer and amateur auteur. This little stop-mo cat creates her own stop-motion shorts, makes her own props, sets and puppets, and can be found outside filming her surroundings. One of her partners in crime is a little cat who builds robots and fixes mechanical objects.  Kids take away a great lesson, and the shorts, although suitable for children as young as 3, can entertain someone in their 50s just as easily. The shorts are well-crafted, include engaging characters and they have a simple, but coherent story. In Japan, it is distributed by Geneon Entertainment. It's too bad that they'll no longer be distributing DVDs in North America. I hope that someone else distributes them here. For now, you can get them at Yesasia.For a more diverse selection, Sunday, October 21 features the various shorts, mostly animated, including the hilarious Isabelle au Bois Dormant/Sleeping Betty from Claude Cloutier at the NFB. If the festival's selection doesn't get local kids interested in film and animation, I'm not sure what will. Labels: features, Festival du Nouveau Cinema, festivals, FNC, France, Japan, Montreal, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, shorts, stop-motion October 11, 2007
 When I sat down to watch Persepolis, the opening film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, I was already a fan of the comics it was based on—even though I'd never read them. A year ago Kino Kid introduced me to Marjane Satrapi's work via Poulet aux prunes (Chicken with Plums), another comic set in her native Iran, and it quietly blew me away with its lyrical storytelling. Like Charles M. Schulz's work, Satrapi's style is deceptive: It would be easy to look at its simplicity and starkness (like most of Schulz's work, her comics are in black and white, with no greys) and declare it childish or naïve. It would also be an injustice. With heavy-lidded eyes, wide-open mouths or rubber-hosey limbs, Satrapi's characters convey everything from gleeful, kinetic action to stark terror to heart-rending anguish—which is perfectly fitting for the autobiographical Persepolis. The movie opens in Tehran, just a few years before the Iranian Revolution. Marjane's educated, progressive and politically aware parents are anticipating the fall of the Shah, and when the demonstrations start they're out on the streets protesting. In the middle of all this upheaval Marjane is starting to piece together her world view in that broad, semi-understanding, somewhat egocentric way that only a child can. As the situation becomes more dangerous (the protests turn violent), then hopeful (the Shah goes into exile, political prisoners are freed), then horribly awry (the rise of Islamic fundamentalism) she's forced to learn complicated, terrible lessons in a very short time. One of the hardest lessons for Marjane to learn is to temper her smart mouth. A bright child raised by socially conscious parents, she had long been encouraged to question and to speak her mind—not an especially bad thing during the Shah's last days in power, but a dangerous trait in an increasingly restrictive society, and especially in one that devalues its women. When she's fourteen, her parents realize that Marjane can't thrive in Iran, so they send her to a French school in Vienna. It's there that Marjane suffers the trials and confusion of culture shock, racism and adolescence, sometimes separately, often all at once. I ended up reading the first two collected Persepolis volumes after seeing the movie, and was struck by how well they complement each other. Because of the way comics telescope time, there are some things that the movie compresses, and others it extends. In some cases, it's a mix of both: A scene in which the Guardians of the Revolution, Iran's militia and moral police, break up an illicit party is given more play in the movie, but Marjane's emotional aftermath is reduced to mere moments—and the result is that much more powerful.  The movie, which is co-written and co-directed by Satrapi (along with Vincent Paronnaud), is extremely faithful to her style; though it includes more grey tones to provide some texture, there are only slight concessions to the animated medium. (Again, a comparison to Schulz's Peanuts is apt here). Faithful, however, doesn't mean slavish: rather than using the comics as a literal storyboard, the movie uses them as springboard. As loose as the comics' style is, the movie takes advantage of animation's possibilities, especially with regards to the chadors and habits of the strictly religious Iranian women and nuns who have the misfortune to cross Marjane's path. Bodies bend, curve and coil; rarely to extreme, but often with a liveliness that's just a step above Satrapi's more contemplative comics. Several one- or two-panel elements (or even just speech balloons) from the comic get extended, sometimes hilarious play in the movie, including a whimsical take on the Shah's father's installation by the British, and the best rendition of "Eye of the Tiger" ever.Persepolis is the cinematic sibling of other autobiographical films that encompass cultures and experiences that most in the West have heard or read of, but only really know superficially, like Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies; but it's also quite different. There's no singular, epic tragic moment as in Barefoot Gen, nor is there the shadow of death that hangs over Grave of the Fireflies. What we do have is several decades of a life, rather than a tiny sliver; and by observing the growth of that life, we're given a nuanced look at the culture and the people that shaped it. Satrapi's gaze is unflinching as she exposes everyone's good and bad sides; she not only reveals her own failings and hypocrisies, she exposes the good in people it would be easy to write off. When two militia members stop her family late one evening, she and her grandmother try to get to the apartment quickly so they can ditch her father's supply of alcohol. When the grandmother plays at being hypoglycemic for their excuse, one of the guardsmen softens for a moment and says, "Just like my mother. Go on." This is Persepolis's magic. It presents a complex, layered, compassionate and often humorous look at the people of a country that has been presented only superficially to Westerners, most recently as a member of the "axis of evil" with a lunatic as a leader. It's a shame that the people who most need to see Persepolis likely won't, but in the meantime we can experience the joys and sadness of a life that is at once alien and familiar, in glorious black and white. Labels: features, festivals, Iran, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Persepolis, Sony Pictures Entertainment October 10, 2007
 Since Persepolis and Madame Tutli-Putli each screened at Cannes and won awards this year in May, they have appeared at animation and mainstream film festivals to acclaim. Montrealers can now finally see both films by attending the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, which begins today. Animation seems to have taken on a more important role in the festival with more shorts than ever. However, a few might slip through the cracks if you aren't careful. The visceral Face lies in wait in Competition 1, on Thursday, October 11 and Wednesday, October 17th. Madame Tutli-Putli is showing during Competition 2 this Friday, October 12 and Tuesday, October 16. Selina Cobley's Crow Moon screens in Competition 3 next week on the 17th and 18th.The National Film Board of Canada Stereo Lab is screening four stereoscopic shorts, which 2004 OIAF attendees might have seen, but this screening includes the premiere of a stereoscopic version of Theodor Ushev's phenomenal Tower Bawher. Previously on fps Festival du Nouveau Cinéma coverage Persepolis coverage Two Podcasts for Madame Tutli-Putli Labels: computer animation, events, features, festivals, France, Madame Tutli-Putli, Montreal, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Persepolis, shorts, stop-motion, United Kingdom September 24, 2007
 BEST ANIMATED FEATUREPersepolis [2007] Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi, France BEST INDEPENDENT SHORT ANIMATION Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor [2007] Koji Yamamura, Japan BEST STUDENT ANIMATION Milk Teeth [2007] Tibor Banoczki, National Film and Television School, UK BEST COMMISSIONED ANIMATION Golden Age [2007] Aaron Augenblick, Augenblick Studios, USA BEST CANADIAN ANIMATION Sleeping Betty (Isabelle au bois dormant) [2007] Claude Cloutier, National Film Board of Canada, Canada Honourable Mention: I Met The Walrus (2007) Josh Raskin, I Met the Walrus Inc., Canada ANIMATION SCHOOL SHOWREEL Bezalel Academy for Art and Design (Israel) INDEPENDENT SHORT ANIMATION COMPETITION Narrative Short Animation under 35 minutes: Madame Tutli-Putli [2007] Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski, National Film Board of Canada, Canada Experimental / Abstract Animation under 35 minutes: Framing (Bildfenster / Fensterbilder) [2007] Bert Gottschalk, Germany Honourable Mention: Teat Beat of Sex [2007] Signe Baumane, USA STUDENT ANIMATION COMPETITION Adobe Prize for Best High School Animation: Herbert [2007] Aven Fisher, King’s View Academy, Canada Undergraduate Animation: Doxology [2007] Michael Langan, Rhode Island School of Design, USA Graduate Animation: t.o.m. [2006] Tom Brown & Daniel Gray, International Film School of Wales, UK COMMISSIONED ANIMATION COMPETITION Promotional Animation: National Lottery ‘The Big Win’ [2006] Marc Craste, Studio AKA, UK Music Video: OOIOO ‘UMO’ [2007] Shoji Goto, Japan Television Animation for Adults: John and Karen [2007] Matthew Walker, Arthur Cox Ltd., UK NEW MEDIA COMPETITION AniBoom Prize for Animation Short Made for the Internet: L’eau Life [2007] Jeff Scher, Fez Films, USA ANIMATION MADE FOR CHILDREN Best Short Animation: Zhiharka [2006] Oleg Uzhinov, “Pilot” Moscow Animation Studio, Russian Federation Honourable Mention: Nightmare at School [2007] Catherine Arcand, National Film Board of Canada, Canada Honourable Mention: Aston's Stones (Astons stenar) [2007] Uzi Geffenblad & Lotta Geffenblad, Sweden Television Animation for Children: Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends 'Squeeze the Day' [2006] Craig McCracken, Cartoon Network Studios, USA Honourable Mention: Pocoyo 'Dance Off' [2007] Guillermo Garcia & Alfonso Rodriguez, Zinkia Entertainment & Granada International, Spain & UK NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA PUBLIC PRIZE (Voted by the Audience) Sleeping Betty (Isabelle au bois dormant) [2007] Claude Cloutier, National Film Board of Canada, Canada Labels: features, festivals, Madame Tutli-Putli, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, shorts September 22, 2007
 The Animator's Picnic in Strathcona Park was plenty of fun. Lots of people were glad to see familiar faces and make new connections. This was my chance to see Martine Chartrand and Pilar Newton again. Pilar was one of the winners in the annual pumpkin carving contest again this year. Her pumpkin toaster was a hit with the crowd, along with many others. Another prizewinner was a pumpkin inspired by Luis Cook's Aardman Animation short, The Pearce Sisters. It was also a chance for the animation community to come together to help the family of the late Helen Hill. During the picnic, donations were contributed to an education fund for her son, the Francis Pop Education Fund.Labels: Aardman Animations, events, festivals, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival  People often forget that not every event at the Ottawa International Animation Festival requires that you get a babysitter before you leave home. There are many opportunities to take the kids with you. Here's a list of family friendly events.Labels: events, festivals, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, shorts, workshops September 18, 2007
 Festival madness: Animatu 2007 kicks off its appreciation of digital animation in Beja, Portugal on October 17, featuring shorts like Ark, Codehunters and Guy's Guide to Zombies; in Spain, Animadrid starts off strong on September 28, opening with Nocturna; I'm still a little peeved at Aurora (formerly Norwich International Animation Festival) for dumping the word "animation" from their name because they think it's too restrictive, but damn do they have a lot of cool animation and animators in this year's fest, which starts November 7; Animae Caribe hits the University of the West Indies, Trinidad on October 25 and will feature a history of African animation; and the awesome Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema returns to the tiny town starting November 15, with an undoubtedly incredible lineup and steady supply of excellent hot chocolate. Two new additions to our Sites We Like blogroll (over on the lower right sidebar, in case you hadn't noticed): Fill This Space is Patrick Smith's space for ruminating on the art and animation that he makes, and that inspires him; Diego Stoliar's self-titled blog features his personal and creative work. I featured Patrick's Moving Along in our Flicker newsletter a while ago, and praised his Handshake ever so briefly in my review of the second Avoid Eye Contact DVD; Diego was a participant in the National Film Board of Canada's most recent iteration of the Hothouse project, and you can see his contribution, One, along with the rest of them here. They'e both great guys, and I hope one day we'll all share beers together.In the past we've mentioned the weekend animation workshops that the National Film Board hosts for kids here in Montreal; I should also mention that the NFB in Toronto has been running the same kind of program at the Mediatheque, for budding animators aged 3 to 13. The current program runs through to April 2008, but you can jump in at any time.  The Iranian feature Persepolis has been making the festival rounds for most of the year, but it looks like Sony Classics is giving it at least some sort of a theatrical release. I don't know about the rest of the continent, but Montrealers will be able to catch it in English and French starting January 11.Speaking of Sony, the company is picking up where Disney left off with direct-to-DVD sequels of its feature properties; the first title is Open Season 2. Fans may howl at the resurgence of cheapquels, but I imagine it's hard for executives to ignore the heaping piles of money they generate. Labels: Canada, features, festivals, Montreal, Persepolis, Portugal, shorts, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Spain, Toronto, Trinidad, United Kingdom, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC September 16, 2007
 Film: VEXILLECountry: Japan Director: Sori (Fumihiko Sori) Length: 110 minutes Rating: 14A Distributor: FUNimation Watching Vexille is a lot like going on a date with that hot airhead from high school: five minutes in, you wonder what excited you so much to begin with. Vexille is the story of Vexille Serra (or Serra Vexille, if you live in the West), a member of a UN Special Forces unit called S.W.O.R.D. that monitors the advance of robotics and cybernetics technologies. The year is 2077, and for ten years Japan has lived behind a veil of electro-magnetic cloaking, building up the Daiwa Corporation robotics empire and refusing to allow real communications or travel in or out. Now the world fears that Japan has developed an android capable of passing as a human being, in violation of the same international treaties that caused Japan to withdraw from the UN years ago. And you guessed it: they have, and only through a chain of explosions, pseudo-scientific explanations, and thunderous Paul Oakenfold club anthems can the world be saved from a Bodysnatchers-like plot of android replacement. Vexille has serious problems that render it more suitable for a late-night pizza-and-beer DVD rental than a twenty-dollar film festival movie ticket. But it's not all bad: Fumihiko Sori was the visual effects director for Appleseed, and fans of that silken, motion-capture-against-digital-vistas style will not be disappointed. The environments, particularly the slums of Tokyo and the toothy, glittering expanse of Los Angeles, are lovely. Tiny details, like snowflakes hitting a windscreen or grit kicked up by a tire, are well done. And the mechanical designs are fabulous. The aforementioned Oakenfold soundtrack keeps pace with the action. And the actions scenes themselves are good -- Sori knows how to execute a chase scene, if not how to inject one with any tension or suspense. From frame one, the film plays like a bid to the Bubble-era "Techno-Orientalist" anxieties that Toshiya Ueno attributed to the West. It's all there: the threat of individual humans being replaced by human automatons as a result of Japan's technological superiority, Japan's hubris eventually becoming its downfall, Japanese people nobly sacrificing themselves en masse so that their virus cannot spread... The trouble is that the Bubble popped years ago. America has other fears now in China and Iran. Vexille might be an acknowledgement of those fears, or a parody of them. And if the film were smarter, it could have worked as the latter. But the film is not smart. Every interesting plot point (the replacement of world leaders with "bio-metal" androids, or the giant, metal-eating desert sandworms borrowed from Dune) gets dropped in favour of yet another chase scene. And the titular character, Vexille, is just plain boring. Although the audience is supposed to believe her as a member of an elite fighting force, she does not behave like a well-trained or functional soldier. Yes, she pilots a mechanized suit very well, but so does everyone else on her squad. She seems to have no special skills to bring to the table, and frequently screams at the camera, bemoaning the fate of androids and humans alike instead of doing something useful to help herself or others. After watching a younger, more capable, smarter heroine in Terra, seeing Vexille Serra scream, cry, and follow secondary characters around causes no small amount of yawns and eye-rolls. It's telling when a titular character's most interesting plot development is learning via flashback that her boyfriend was in love with someone else ten years ago. I saw only four films this Festival, but the other three audiences were loads more enthusiastic than this one. They laughed. They cheered. They held their breath. At the end of Vexille, the audience stood up and filed out quietly, more inspired by the need to find the night's last subway than the film they'd just seen. If you're an anime fan and you want good news from this year's Toronto International Festival, listen to this: Takeshi Miike and Quentin Tarantino are anime fans, and they've worked together on a live-action film called Sukiyaki Western Django. It's violent, funny, and plays like a lusciously-coloured manga flip-book. And there are anime in-jokes. Do yourself a favour, and wait for it instead. Labels: anime, CGI, features, festivals, Japan, TIFF, Toronto, Toronto International Film Festival, Vexille September 14, 2007
 Film: TERRACountry: Canada Director: Aristomenis Tsirbas Running Time: 85 minutes Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Luke Wilson, Brian Cox, David Cross, Amanda Peet, Dennis Quaid, Rosanna Arquette, and James Garner Today I saw Terra at the Toronto International Film Festival. My screening was packed, and I was lucky enough to attend a Q&A with the director. Tsirbas is a Montreal native, and remarked that premiering his first feature film at TIFF was a "moving and rewarding experience." There has been serious buzz about Terra, and after attending the film I learnt why. Terra is the story of Mala, a young Terrian (a peaceful, art-loving, techno-wary race who resemble cute tadpoles) whose passion for designing and constructing gadgets makes her something of a misfit at school and home. One day, Mala (Evan Rachel Wood) and her friend Sen notice a mysterious alien ship. When it deploys several smaller ships, one of them crashes and Mala finds Lieutenant Jim Stanton (Luke Wilson) of the Earth Forces after he emerges from the wreckage. With the help of his robot Giddy (David Cross), she builds him an oxygen-friendly environment and learns his language. After the Earth Forces take Terra's father as a "test subject," Mala agrees to help Jim repair his ship if he takes her to the human mothership, known as the Ark, so that she can rescue him. Naturally, it all goes terribly wrong, and soon Mala and Jim are embroiled in a struggle for the planet Terra: Earth Forces military want to terraform Terra and render it uninhabitable for the native Terrians, and the Terrians must confront their warlike past in order to defend themselves. Terra is not for everyone. It is not for neo-conservatives, although they would probably benefit most from seeing it. It is not for viewers who cannot stand violence in their animation. (Terra is very violent, but not graphic -- you'll see very little blood, but experience quite a lot of tension.) It is not for viewers who do not enjoy CGI, although the animation here is anything but the cheery plasticity of Cars. However, it is meant for people who enjoy great music, fast-paced action (including some fantastic aerial dogfights), and the sort of plot that Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks will never, ever create on their own. Although Tsirbas shied away from applying any sort of definitive moral to his story, Terra is already being discussed as an allegory for the Iraq War. Terra presents the sort of difficult moral world that Miyazaki fans will remember from Princess Mononoke. (But Mononoke does it better, thanks in part to a more eloquent script.) Terra has a few other flaws. The character designs are somewhat at odds with the environmental and mechanical ones. The humans in particular look as though they have all been stamped from the same mould, which is partially a product of military costume: flight suits and shaved heads. One notable exception is the villainous General Hemmer, whose face one audience member called "copied from George W. Bush." In addition, there are the usual scientific errors that populate most film-based science-fiction: Terra is supposed to be a helium atmosphere, and at certain moments Jim's respirator helps him metabolize it into oxygen. And the script is not particularly witty -- instead it evokes feeling mostly through high-pressure situations and the grace of good actors. That said, Terra is probably leaps and bounds more unique than most animated feature films due out this year, and it has a good shot at distribution. The kids at my screening had a great time, and the popcorn-munching died down quickly. During the final sequences, I could hear every tiny rustle in the seats -- the film held everyone's attention in a tight grip. I hope you all get a chance to see it, and decide for yourselves what the story's message is. Labels: CGI, features, festivals, Terra, TIFF, Toronto, Toronto International Film Festival  Ever since I first discovered CG-Arts and the Japan Media Arts Festival, I've been delighted to find that every year the festival features at least one short that looks and feels unlike any film I've ever seen—my criterion for an excellent film fest. This year one of the most striking was Tomonori Hayase's Mix a Miniascape. Set to music by Jumpei Yamada, Hayase's film uses Adobe Photoshop and After Effects to create a funky, unusual Tokyo travelogue. Hayase took hundreds, if not thousands, of photos of people, places and thing as he passed by them, or they passed him. He then assembled the images into a collage, animating his travels through the city by erasing the image of, say, a building piece by piece at the same time as the next image of the same building is being built piece by piece. The effect is of moving through a fractured urban landscape, propelled by Yamada's breakbeats while navigating periods of both chaos and calm. While Mix a Miniascape was an example of something new, there were also some nice reprises. Tochka Factory's Pikapika made its Japan Media Arts Festival debut—if you haven't already heard about this literally brilliant short, you should read my earlier praise—and Hikaru Yamakawa followed up last year's Oh Hisse (itself a followup to the previous year's Tope Con Giro) with La Magistral.  In Oh Hisse, Yamakawa presented a surreal world in which hundreds of faceless schoolboys marched in increasingly outlandish geometric processions, to the utter disregard of a man sitting on a bench and three schoolgirls talking among themselves. Oh Hisse's hypnotic appeal lay in its minimalist colour palette (black, white, a few shades of grey and spots of red), the mannequin-like quality of its characters, and its rhythmic and only vaguely natural movement. In La Magistral, Yamakawa explores the same concepts, but opens things up a little bit. The range of colours has expanded to include blues, greens and browns, as seven nearly identical men in grey tracksuits ride unicycles along a slender beam, observed on by swaying figures in coloured tracksuits, all of whom have spheres, cubes and cones for heads, and often casually defying gravity.Not only does La Magistral have more colour than its predecessor, it also has a more dynamic cameral and yet, it's just as mesmerizing. Another distinction, however, is that Yamakawa decided to give La Magistral an actual ending—one that induces a chuckle, maybe, but otherwise doesn't offer much.  A more compelling film, however, was also perhaps more modest, at least in its tone. Naked Youth is directed by Kojiro Shishido, who coincidentally composed the music for La Magistral. As the film starts, a young man emerges from a school's shower stall. His towel falls, and just as he pulls it back up someone steps out of another stall. The two wordlessly face each other, and the camera cuts away to another scene. We soon see the boys training together and learn that they're members of a boxing team. There's little in the way of linear narrative here; the camera lingers with equal summer laziness on the sunlit trees and blue skies in their Japanese suburb, the mundane scenes of road trips, and the boys' vigorous exercise and practice regimen.And then there's that shower scene, which appears and disappears like a metronome tick, four times throughout the film. Like the rest of Naked Youth, the scene is wordless and features just the right sounds to establish a sense of place and mood. But that mood is ambiguous, and increasingly charged with tentative eroticism whenever the boys face each other. Are there clues to their relationship in other scenes? The boys sometimes work out together, sometimes alone; and they look away from each other as often as not. When one of them changes out of his shorts next to the boxing ring—a seemingly common occurrence, as no one really pays him any mind—is the other boy looking at him, or you know, looking at him? The delight of Naked Youth is that it obeys the maxim of "show, don't tell," but it doesn't go out of its way to show everything, either. Subtlety is king here, and the audience still has to work to figure out what it can. From the standpoint of technique, Naked Youth presents its story in a way that seems very traditional, and yet unconventional. It's hand-drawn in what we consider the anime style, though its characters are perhaps a little less streamlined and a little more detailed—closer, one might say, to more of a manga style. The animation direction also favours a look and feel that's less flat than most commercial anime. Athletic scenes feature a moving, "handheld" camera, with figures looking more as if they're moving through three-dimensional space, with little of the exaggeration that's common in anime. Much of this look is a result of strikingly stylized integration of 3D computer animation, hand-drawn animation and beautiful lighting and texturing effects. Shishido gives Naked Youth space to breathe by providing many moments of figurative, if not literal, silence, in which nothing more happens than, say, the team waiting out a summer downpour or sunlight filtering through the trees as crickets chirp. Of course, these kinds of moments aren't new to anime; for decades, this appreciation of stillness has been part of the medium's appeal. But in Naked Youth these scenes are even more engaging, as Shishido uses light CGI touches and careful audio work to effectively place the viewer in the scene. That downpour, for example, is pretty convincing, and while one nightttime scene is a just a little CGI-flashy—since when do moths flitting around a street light cast such stark shadows?—it beautifully conveys that feeling of being out alone on a quiet summer night. It's films like Naked Youth that put the lie to the sentiment that animation must necessarily be simple, childish, or fantastic in subject matter; the complicated yet simple Naked Youth's exploration of a slice of adolescent life could well have been told in live action, but it would have been all the poorer for it. Labels: anime, CGI, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, music videos, reviews, shorts September 13, 2007
If you're an animator looking for work, you need to get yourself over to the Ottawa International Animation Festival if you can humanly manage it. For a number of reasons, but one is the Animators For Hire event featuring companies like Blue Sky, Nelvana and Walt Disney Animation Studios.
 It's simple, just go to the OIAF website, check out the list of interviewees, and follow the steps (but do it all by this Friday, September 14): 1. Review what each company is looking for to make sure you would be a good fit. Take note of what countries they can take applicants from, and the level of experience they are looking for.Forget speed-dating. Clean up your portfolio, and get ready for the speed-meeting that could really change your life. Labels: events, festivals, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival September 12, 2007
 There's just a week to go before the Ottawa International Animation Festival opens, and the lineup is impressive. If you'll be in Ottawa for the first day, Wednesday, September 19, then you will be among the first to see the film adaptation of Persepolis, adapted by the author Marjane Satrapi. It won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes earlier this year and screened recently at the Toronto International Film Festival. Unless you will be at the VFF in October, you won't want to miss it in Ottawa with a crowd that can't be beat for enthusiasm when the film is deserving. Following the opening feature, Short Competition 1 also features a notable selection including instant personal classic, UMO, the visceral J-Pop video directed by Shoji Goto. The video melds multiple techniques, including stop-motion, CG and 2D, and effectively makes you want more when it ends. It won't be the first or last animation short that you will see over the course of the festival the latches onto you.Labels: comics, features, festivals, Iran, Japan, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Persepolis, shorts, visual music September 8, 2007
 One of SIGGRAPH's (many) hidden gems is the collection of digitally animated shorts from the previous Japan Media Arts Festival. Hidden because in the middle of the constantly repeating Animation Theater, the 90 minutes or so of selected Japan Media Arts Festival shorts are each shown exactly once, across three half-hour programs. However, those screenings represent just a slice of all the films shown during the nine days of the festival. (For that matter, films are just one part of the fest, which includes manga, artwork and installations.)A case in point is that the two films lodged most firmly in my brain were in the festival's Entertainment Division, and both are rooted in live action. In Tadashi Tsukagoshi's Arrow, a man notices that the cigarette butts he's extinguished under his shoe form an arrow, which points straight to a procession of ants marching... in the shape of an arrow. Digital trickery (as well as creative prop placement and hair gel) creates the procession of pointers that the man follows first out of curiosity, then out of dark compulsion.  Koichiro Tsujikawa's dreamy music video to Cornelius's "Fit Song" spends its entire time in the confines of a house, where CGI brings everyday items to a strange sort of life. Strange because aside from a few objects (most amusingly, a discus-throwing action figure and a top-heavy, ambulatory magnifying glass), almost none are anthropomorphized—and many replicate themselves with more of an eye to what looks good and, above all, what works with the music, rather than any strict adherence to physics. I'm a lifelong puzzler, so I was delighted to see a ball of matches explode into a floating array of early 20th-century Japanese matchstick puzzles, some of which solved themselves as the camera floated by. And is it just me, or is the rolling (and, yes, self-reproducing) sugar cubes' initial dance a nod to Norman McLaren's 1964 film, Canon? The Entertainment Division did have some fully animated works, however. Satoshi Tomioka's Exit online ads for Taito are frantic and deliriously absurd, both involving noisy and chaotic chase scenes with characters looking for a way out of predicaments they've brought on themselves. (A naked man with a bored, negligée-clad girl in tow flees a woman—her mother? his wife?—down a hotel corridor; a cat tries to liberate a fish from the dinner table of an elderly couple. Oddly enough, in both cases the pursuers have glowing laser eyes and preternatural abilities.) Every time I watch these one-minute ads I think about the buckets of money companies like Dreamworks spend trying to make 3D CGI more cartoony, while smaller studios just sit down and do it—sometimes with better results.Labels: anime, CGI, commercials, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, music videos, reviews, shorts August 19, 2007
 If you couldn't make it to this year's SIGGRAPH conference in San Diego (or your local chapter's screening of selected Computer Animation Festival shorts), you're in luck: I've pulled together links to all of the shorts from this year's Electronic Theater and Animation Theaters that are available online in their entirety. (Rather, I think this is all of them: if I've missed any, please let me know.)Of course, you're not really getting the whole experience as most of these shorts are squished to easily-downloadable sizes. Most of the shorts are on three DVDs available directly from SIGGRAPH's Video Review website; while they're not listed on the site yet, you can send them e-mail to get all the info. The discs are a little pricey, though (they're $60 each, or $40 each for ACM members), especially if you're looking for specific shorts. If you're hunting for something in particular on DVD, you can sometimes find shorts for a little less on the creators' websites or on Stash's monthly DVD compilations. For now, however, here's what's available online. This list makes up just a little more than half of all the shorts that were shown, so you'll get a good idea of what the festival was like this year. And to save you clicking back and forth, all of these links open in a new browser window. 8848 27 Storms: Arlene to Zeta 90° Adidas: Adistar Aditya Birla Group India Beach Ball Beck: Girl Budwiser: King Crab Building Blocks Burning Safari Cafard Capturing and Animating Skin Deformation Cascades Chevrolet: Buildings Chocolate Pillows Codehunters Crow Dynamo En Tus Brazos equilibrio Esc Fed Ex: Moon Office Fetch Fight Night Round 3 Froggy Gears of War Gorillaz: El Mañana Half Life 2: Episode 2 Happiness Factory High Fashion in Equations HP Hands: Jay-Z HP Hands: Paulo Coelho It's JerryTime!: The Big Time Johnnie Walker: Human La Marche des sans nom Lenovo: Virus L'Uomo Uccello Marvel Ultimate Alliance: Intro Microsoft Zune: Two Little Birds Moutons Nissan Animal Oli's Chance Paraworld Pepsi: Dance Tron Portal Raymond Respire, Mon Ami - Breathe, My Friend Sears Tools: Aboretum Sky HD: Feel Everything swirl Ted The Adventures of Baxter & McGuire: The Soccer Game The Animator and the Seat The End The Grandfather of Soul The Itch Tournis Travelers: Snowball | |
