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November 29, 2005
 Generous use of garlic, women with curves, Ennio Morricone scores—there are many good reasons to give thanks for the existence of Italy, and I just discovered another. Just last week I professed my undying loyalty to all things Goldorak (aka UFO Robot Grendizer), but it seems a few people in Italy have done me one better.The UFO is a fan-created prequel to Goldrake (the Italian Grendizer dub), almost entirely created in CGI and sporting some nice updates to the characters' and mecha's looks. This is a spare-time project, so it's not terribly surprising that the group are about a year past their original deadline. But from what they've shown on the site so far, this is one fan project that will definitely be worth the wait. Labels: anime November 28, 2005
 It's that time of year again: Ottawa came and went, the Cinemathèque was summoned to Annecy and answered the call, but did you (could you? I couldn't)? Had to attend your baby brother's bar mitzvah the weekend of Waterloo, or couldn't get to Kalamazoo? The year's almost over, and you still have lots to see.Here's your chance to catch up on some of the best animation offered up from around the world during the last year or so, selected by Marco de Blois, the Cinemathèque québécoise's animation curator, and you won't be disappointed (yes, in this case, I can see into the future). PROGRAM 1: Friday, December 2, 6:30 and Saturday, December 3, 9:00 p.m. PROGRAM 2: Friday, December 2, 8:30 and Saturday, December 3, 7:00 p.m.  Get the entire schedule, with film descriptions, in PDF. Don't forget to send one to an interested friend.Cost: 7$ 6$, students and seniors 4$, 6-15 years FREE, 5 and under, accompanied by an adult November 25, 2005
 fps got its start because I'm interested in the boundaries between different styles, techniques and animation cultures—or rather, I'm interested in exploring the connections that transgress them, because most of these boundaries are artificial in any case. Kino Kid calls them border crossings. I call them gray areas.Whatever you want to call them, I think this year has been fantastic for them—look no further than The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, which combines new-school three-dimensional computer graphics with old-school silhouette animation, à la Prince Achmed.  I just finished watching the pilot for Skyland, a coproduction between Method Films in France and 9Story in Canada that uses anime as its jumping-off point. They make no bones about it; the Skyland demo that's been on 9Story's website since last year uses music from Akira Symphonic Suite as its soundtrack. Like my two other favourite East-West hybrids, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Teen Titans, Skyland doesn't take the slapdash let's-mimic-anime approach favoured by Invasion: America and the unwatchable Loonatics. You can tell that the creators studied a wide range of anime from various perspectives, and took the best of what they needed. Teen Titans, Avatar and Skyland all feature rich backgrounds, strong poses and frame compositions, designs that immerse you in another world, scores that are true to the shows' genres, and a reluctance to soft-pedal certain aspects because, you know, they're cartoons. Skyland is also a hybrid in that it uses CG and motion capture along with cel shading. At present it's sort of an imperfect experiment. The backgrounds are the best part; they have all the complexity and solidity of CG, but with the painterly look that's straight outta Miyazaki's films. (Look at Skyland's blocks of Earth floating in the sky and just try not think of Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Go on, I double-dare you.) The characters are a different matter, though, closer to the MTV Spider-Man than to Kakurenbo. Their biggest problem is that they don't sit still—they bob and shift their weight, like real people being told to move for the sake of movement. There's also that literalness that rotoscoped work tends to have. Their second biggest problem is their dialogue, which is just a little forced in terms of script and execution. One or the other wouldn't be insurmountable (the original Star Wars trilogy shows that good things happen when you combine good performances with B-movie dialogue; the second trilogy shows what happens when you mess up both), but the two combined are just off enough to be problematic. The story, too, seems a bit formulaic (though I like the idea of good guys and bad guys both trying to fulfill a prophecy to their own advantage—very Neon Genesis Evangelion), but as it's only the first episode, there's plenty of potential for surprises later.However, none of these negatives detract from the pleasure of watching Skyland and seeing a show created with such obvious care. The show has such a good visual foundation that I'm willing to wait to see if everything else comes together. Skyland comes out January 14 in North America, Europe, Latin America and Australia. The channels I know of are Nicktoons, Teletoon, France 2, ITV, and ABC (Australia). Nick and Teletoon are airing sneak previews of the pilot tomorrow night.
The Montreal stop for RESfest begins today and continues through Sunday. Get the schedule here. If you love short films, you'll want to be there. It includes films of all types, including a healthy serving of animation. Tonight: a special presentation with director Michel Gondry, and screens the world premiere of his version of Kanye West's new video, Heard 'Em Say, which was pulled by MTV. See Bill Plympton's version of the video. Gondry is no slouch when it comes to animation. He directed the fantastic stop-mo Lego music video, Fell in Love With a Girl, for the White Stripes and Walkie Talkie Man for Steriogram.
Here's the complete program for RESfest's last stop.
I've finally updated our writer's guidelines. If you're interested in writing for the magazine, you'll want to have a look. (You'll also get a sneak peek at what we've got planned for the next few months.)
 He's back, and this time, he's dancing. Yes, Pillsbury's highly recognizable "Poppin Fresh" character (c.1973) is now showing off his dance moves on the web. Visitors to the site www.pillsbury.com/AALL/ can choreograph this little guy's moves, and then email the finished routine to friends. I must say, his vitality and enthusiasm does seem to put the dancing baby to shame, but then again, I always thought that cgi baby was just strange. And while Poppin Fresh knows how to party, his acting abilities are put to the test in a number of different ads also available here and here, complete with 'outtakes'.I did a quick online search into "Poppin Fresh's" family history, and I came across The Advertising Icon Museum online at www.advertisingiconmuseum.com. I hadn't planned on visiting Kansas City this evening, but so is the nature of the web. I was re-introduced to the entire Pillsbury family: Granmommer, Granpopper, the dog Flapjack, the cat Biscuit, Bun Bun, Popper, Poppie, and of course, Poppin Fresh. The museum actually has a 5 foot tall version of Poppin Fresh, and a seven foot tall Jolly Green Giant (one of only three in the world). And of course, there's lots more...about 1,000 more characters, including the oldest piece - a 1939 ceramic Heinz Aristocrat Tomato, complete with top hat and monocle. The Advertising Icon Museum opens to new digs in the fall of 2007 in Kansas City. November 23, 2005
 Illustration by Matthew Forsythe One of the highlights of the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema this past week-end was an inspirational talk given by the distinguished animator, Michael Nguyen. Nguyen, who has worked on such major-studio projects as The Little Mermaid, The Road to El Dorado, and The Iron Giant, told the audience about bringing 'a sense of life' to animation. "Animation is more than moving an arm," he said. "That doesn't give life. When you go to a museum to see a Rembrandt, what you see is just a picture. But what makes a Rembrandt a Rembrandt is what you feel. There's a soul, something that lives and resonates with the viewer. That's the way I see animation. We need to communicate that life," he said. Though he encouraged animators to approach their work with a child-like sense of fun, Nguyen said he takes the medium very seriously. "I don't treat them as a funny cartoons. Animation is a way to communicate." Since 1994, Nguyen has also been an instructor at the California Institute of the Arts. Though he says, "I don't teach, I just share what I love." Nguyen just returned from South Korea, where he was judging student animation. Sadly, he said, a lot of contemporary animation lacks the life force and empathy required to effectively communicate. "When I animate a seal, I become a seal. When I animate an elephant," - he hung his arm in front of his face and lumbering moving slowly - "I become an elephant." Despite the major studio emphasis on computer generated animation, Nguyen is still a traditional animator and his favourite films are still the classics. He cites Pinnochio and Snow White as his favourite films. But Fantasia is his all time favourite. "The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the most perfect piece of animation there is, in my opinion. There's only one shot which I would change if I could." Which one? "When the books are swirling around Mickey, there's a strobe effect. It should be a little smoother." Among other projects, Nguyen is currently directing My Little World, which will be his first feature under the production company, July Films. Set in Vietnam, My Little World is a story of a boy who grapples with the loss of a family member through a summer in the country. Watching previews of the film, it was obvious that Nguyen took his own advice and threw himself into the work. "For me to live is to feel, to touch, to love and to share that feeling and for me the way I do that is through traditional animation." November 22, 2005
 The Cinémathèque québécoise always has a great lineup, and its animation curator, Marco de Blois, always makes sure the programming includes a healthy dose of some of the best animation the world has seen. This time, I think he has administered an overdose and I can die happily: a retrospective of the incredible work of Zbigniew Rybczynski, in his divine presence (that is an understatement) beginning on Wednesday, November 23rd, and continuing with a distinct program over four nights, with a master class on Saturday, November 26th before Program 4.Rybczynski, known as Zbig, is a border-crosser - I like those. He is a painter, animator, and live film director. If he had merely been responsible for The Art of Noise's Close to the Edit music video and the Oscar winning animation short Tango (a conceptual drawing is pictured above), I would have loved him anyway - but, no. He is not happy to begin or end there. I have quite a few questions for him, but the one that keeps me awake is how - HOW - does he store all of his awards?  Tango will be presented during Program 1, tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. Admission is $7.00 for each program. Saturday's master class at 2:00 p.m. is $10 and you must sign up in advance by calling (514) 842-9763. The class will be held in English and Marco will be running the whole show. Make sure when it's over to thank him for doing such a great job.Labels: events  We admit it: fps is in a love-love relationship (there's no hatin') with ACM SIGGRAPH, and that applies no less to the local Montreal chapter of the international organization. (Feel the love here, here, here, and here.) While some people think computer animation (they're thinking strictly 3D) is the be-all-end-all, and others think it is the cartoon equivalent of the Apocalypse, ACM SIGGRAPH, while fostering interest in computer graphics and interactive techniques gets that all animation is part of a continuum. Therefore, entire styles and trends cannot always be discretely separated or pitted against each other. Many types of movements in art and innovation are associated, not always in the most obvious ways, with each other and border-crossing can occur at the most unexpected - and resultingly breathtaking - moments. This is why the Montreal chapter executive hardly batted an eyelash when they decided to partner with fps for our most recent Animation Innovator event with stop-motion animator and director Mike Johnson. When it comes to animation, they can see the connections many seek to deny. Every event I've ever attended has been interesting, and I expect no less tomorrow: Wednesday, November 23rd at 6:00 p.m., Montreal ACM SIGGRAPH hosts Creating Digital Animation: Needs, Challenges, Technology and Tools at the Society for Arts and Technology. The night is sponsored by Toon Boom Animation. If you've read fps issue 5, and you've been infected with the do-it-yourself spirit, you'll be interested in participating. The presentations will include a look of Toon Boom's tool suite (with a special emphasis on its latest product, which, in my personal opinion, is a wonderful tool for lone animators or animators working in small groups) and provide an alternative context for creating animation: the demoscene. You know, last winter, Louis Marcoux of Autodesk explained the possibility that Quebec is such a hotbed of art, technology and its bastard children because for several consecutive months, it is just so cold that a higher proportion of the population is forced to stay indoors and find something interesting to tinker with or a creative outlet rather than go outside. Considering that the first demoparties were held in Scandinavian countries, and the first North American one was in Montreal, I think he might be on to something.  In recent weeks, I've been asked a few times how I got into anime (which just goes to show they didn't read my editorial in fps #3). Each time, I've surprised people by telling them that in the 1970s through to the late 1980s, Quebecers got a lot of anime on French-language TV—so much so that people of a certain age who wouldn't consider themselves anime fans can recognize Maya's apian smile on sight.It elicits even more surprise when I point out that Goldorak (originally UFO Robot Grendizer) was pretty huge over here. I'm still sad that I couldn't get the 24-inch–tall Goldorak figure I spotted at the drugstore, complete with shoulder-mounted astro-hache ("astro-ax," literally) blades, just like in the show. But I was able to console myself with stickers, notebooks, and other tchotchkes, though I passed on the various soundtrack albums. Yeah, good times. And I'm not the only one who remembers: every so often in Montreal, people get the opportunity to catch these old shows on the big screen. One such occasion is coming up this weekend. This Saturday and Sunday, Théatre National will play host to Télé Rétro, which will include screenings of Goldorak, Capitaine Flam (Captain Future), Albator (Captain Harlock), Astro le petit robot (Astro Boy), Lady Oscar (The Rose of Versailles), and others. (I should mention that it's not just an anime event; Astérix and Gumby will be among the non-anime titles.) There are some great extras as well; DJ XL5 will present his Retro Zappin' Party, which I expect will be every bit as entertaining as the Zappin' Parties he's presented at Fantasia. There will also be a guest appearance by Flora Balzano, voice of Astro, Mini-Fée's brother Dany, Petit Castor, and Vic the Viking, plus a few other surprises. November 19, 2005
 (We've already reviewed Mind Game in an earlier print edition; but I'll add my two cents, if only because the movie is so damned good.) The critically acclaimed Japanese film, Mind Game, was on the menu tonight in Waterloo. The film is the product of Tokyo's Studio 4°C. The studio was co-founded by master animator Koji Morimoto (Robot Carnival, Akira) and the studio's feature credits to date include: Memories, Spriggan and Steamboy, but they are perhaps better known in North America for overseeing the Wachowskis' Animatrix project. The studio's CEO, Eiko Tanaka, was on hand tonight to introduce the film. It's fair to say Tanaka is veteran of Japanese animation. She used to work for Studio Ghibli and was line producer on My Neighbor Totoro. Tanaka warned us that Mind Game is manga, but the kind of manga that is "not very popular in Japan." Indeed, this film takes all the anime cliches you can think of and soundly ignores them. The story follows a young manga artist to death and back, on a frenetic ride that is both ribald and exhilirating. It's is a melting pot of a multitude of animation styles, that somehow all work seamlessly together. Mind Game is highly recommended for fans of innovative storytelling of any kind. Labels: anime, festivals, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC  Just finished viewing the 30 minute CG film, Fragile Machine. Check out Brett Rogers' eloquent and in-depth review of the film for details. I'll add a few notes about the film, which is two parts Blade Runner, two parts Wong Kar Wai, and one part Ghost in the Shell. The film is produced by aoineko studios, which is basically a guy named Ben Steele working out of his apartment in Phoenix, Arizona. Fragile Machine follows the life cycle of a woman as she is engineered into an android. The film moves through dreamlike futuristic vistas set to Evanescence-style songs. I had a chance to talk to Ben about his film over lunch. "Our idea for the structure is based on Dante's Divine Comedy. It's the moment where every soul takes the journey from hell to earth to heaven." The film is drenched in style, and explores new ways of thinking about depth, motion and design with only the occasional clue that it was not a high-budget, major studio release. "We were trying to create a moving painting. The illustrator, Yoshitaka Amano was a huge influence." Ben admits he's more interested in art directing and achieving a visual style than the human details that animation demands. "We've got a character animator now. So the next film is going to be a lot more kinetic with more emphasis on getting down the subtleties of human movement." The visuals for Fragile Machine have been described as "groundbreaking." I asked him what he used to develop the film. "LightWave. It's a very good program for indie stuff because it's very easy to use. It takes so long to do anything in Softimage, which is fine if you have a huge budget and a team of dozens of animators, but if you're just sitting in your room, LightWave works the best." Check out aoineko studios to find out more about Fragile Machine or purchase the DVD. Labels: anime, festivals, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema
Today, I'm writing from the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema. The great news is that Waterloo's ultra-cool Princess Theatre (which is hosting most of the festival films) has wireless internet. So, when most people get up for popcorn - that's when I'll be posting and checking my email.
The festival started yesterday, but I just took the train (and bus) down from Montreal today, so that's when I'll start. The print of the first film was late getting to the theatre, so the audience was treated to the work of this year's Sheridan grads. Some of the shorts were fantastic. Especially a little film called... An Eye for Annai  This is an irresistable short story of a one-eyed polygon searching for its second eye. The art is so simple and endearing and the flute score beautifully matches the action. I could keep ranting about it, but you'd do better to see it for yourself as it looks like it's usually available on-line. Bookmark Burst of Beaden The theme for today's films was heavily political but wrapped in whimsy. We took in two Eastern European animated feature films that both had harsh things to say about American foreign policy, but said them in two completely different ways. Frank & Wendy (Estonia)  The heroes of this 2d feature are based loosely on Muldar and Scully prototypes from X-Files fame. In a very appealing minimalist, absurdist style, Frank and Wendy wend their way through a surreal landscape of sausages, shaved monkeys, and obese Americans as they try to uncover an alien plot to replace all living beings with glowing green cubes. It sounds surreal and it is. But it yet somehow remains engaging and at times hugely entertaining. As festival curator, Joseph Chen pointed out in his introduction to the film, it "pokes fun at everyone: its creators, its own country, Europeans, and, of course, the United States." I also wholeheartedly agree with Chen's caveat: "Whether you enjoy this film largely depends on how much you had to drink the night before." The District (Hungary)  This is the first animated feature film to come out of Hungary since 1989. Using a combination of Photoshop, Flash, and 3D software, a team of 15 animators spun this rambunctious and beautifully drawn story of a dysfunctional neighbourhood that finds itself in the middle of an international oil crisis. At first, the film lulls viewers into a sense that perhaps it's fit for families. But as we get to know the motley, multi-ethnic neighbourhood better, we realize this is one to leave the kids at home for. Predictably, the film involves the US dropping an atomic bomb on Bucharest. For a sense of the fresh, complex aesthetic, definitely, check out the Trailer. +++++++ Tomorrow (Saturday) is the big day at the festival. I think I'll be watching about six films and taking in a couple lectures... so check back for more updates! Labels: festivals, Nyocker, reviews, The District, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC November 18, 2005
 Sometimes the nice-to-haves in life coexist nicely with the must-haves. Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult, I have been working as a technical writer for several years. In 2004, I had the good fortune of landing a position at Toon Boom Animation, right here in Montreal, which is the location of many animation houses and leading animation software companies. Working (a must-have) at one of these companies was always a nice-to-have that seemed out of my reach.Animation has always been a compelling art form to me, but I've noticed that many people who share the same passion are invariably drawn to learn something about the people behind the scenes. When I was younger, each new fact I learned about the creators at Termite Terrace or Disney Studios created a deeper respect for them and the images that flashed across my screen. Like many who tried to learn something about animation history, I eventually read about various work conflicts between management and creators that have become much more than a footnote in animation history. These moments are significant, and brought about great change within the industry, but also created an "us-vs-them" mentality in the workplace. Yesterday, however, I realized how we don't often hear the stories about the companies that recognize the entire team because the events of say, the 1941 strike, or the trials of Richard Williams' Thief and the Cobbler. Many people who work in an animation-related company enter situations on guard because they look back on what has been learned from the past. Let's have another look: I'm happy to say that I spent Thursday afternoon with my colleagues celebrating the strides made by Toon Boom - the company, the team - and Joan Vogelesang, CEO and President of Toon Boom (pictured above, holding the company's newly-minted Emmy in that special way), let us know how much she appreciated the work of each and every one of us, and our involvement in Toon Boom being a leading supplier of animation tools. What is remarkable is that this special event did not even have to take place for me to understand that I am valuable, as is each employee who works here and makes a contribution. It is shown to us in many ways throughout the year on a daily basis, in our ability to provide feedback and ability to join the discussion on how to move the company forward. I realize I am now one of the people behind the scenes, although I can't even draw a stick-figure. Animation has always been about people, and everyone has their role to play. The stories mean a lot, but the conditions under which people work also has a significant effect on the final outcome and quality of a product, too. Take the lessons from the times things haven't gone so well in the animation industry, but for each one of those, remember something about the companies who took the time to recognize their own and take heart. November 17, 2005
Actually, 2,870 at last count. Over at Drawn!, Robot Johnny reports that Flipbook.info has a huge collection of vintage flipbooks on display, including clips of them being animated—thumb, forefinger and all. The site's in French, but you shouldn't have much trouble navigating it.
By the way, if you're af flipbook fiend, you might be interested in Ruth Hayes's article on making your own flipbooks and zeotropes in the latest fps. Also, stay tuned for more info on the Cinémathèque québécoise's upcoming flipbook exhibition.
Death is an inevitable, intrinsic part of life. I accept that. But some years just seem particularly bad for those of us who love animation, or just value the people who contribute a lot to the world around them. I've been trying, with little success, to pull my thoughts together to write something cogent on the recent passing of Derek Lamb (who spent decades producing animation for Sesame Street and, more notably, the NFB). On a more personal level, I just learned that former Animation World Network associate editor Wendy Jackson Hall died suddenly on Monday.
A memorial for Derek Lamb is being planned in Montreal. Ruth Hayes reports that a memorial service for Wendy will be held at 3 p.m. this Saturday (November 19th) at the Seabold United Methodist Church, 6894 NE Seabold Church Road, Bainbridge Island, Washington (360-692-7694). Messages to her husband Porter can be sent to porter [at] jacksonhall [dot] com. Labels: National Film Board of Canada, NFB November 16, 2005
Another long-in-planning change has been implemented: Festival Watch now features news on upcoming and recent festivals. There will, of course, also be links to our own photo galleries and reports.
 Author Amid Amidi is preparing a fancy new book called Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation, and has created a blog to accompany it. The book will be out in April 2006 from Chronicle Books, but you can get a sneak peek at some of the hip, cool and happening graphics that obviously inspired him to write it by clicking on over to the blog.Internet hubley. Get it? Get it? Oh, I slay me. November 14, 2005
 Looking for something to do next weekend? Take a plane, train or automobile to the 5th annual Waterloo Festival of Animated Cinema (WFAC). Unlike many other animation festivals, which tend to focus on animation shorts, WFAC concentrates on feature films.Each year the festival is a little more ambitious than the prior one, and is growing at a steady and healthy rate. Five years of patient work have paid off: this year's selection is even more jaw-dropping than the last. Knowing they would have to beat the 2004 lineup, which included guest speakers, Canadian and North American premieres and screenings of the new Appleseed, Rock & Rule, Kaena: La Prophétie, Steamboy, the first animated African feature Legend of Sky Kingdom, and Hair High among others, the organizers have managed to outdo themselves: Thursday, November 17th, 2005 The Place Promised in Our Early Days (Japan) Terkel In Trouble (Denmark) Friday, November 18th, 2005 Frank and Wendy (Estonia) The District! (Hungary) Saturday, November 19th, 2005 Alosha Popovich and Tugarin the Serpent (Russia) Fragile Machine, free admission (USA) Mind Game (Japan) Sunday, November 20th, 2005 Strings (Norway) Wait! That's not all! Emru's heart probably stopped when he read that the festival includes a Kihachiro Kawamoto retrospective. One of the Japan's greatest animators will be featured, including a screening of the anthology Winter Days, although you'll be able to see shorts throughout the festival before other feature screenings. Most people would have stopped here. Probably long before. WFAC will have the honour of receiving Mike Nguyen for a special lecture and a screening of his work-in-progress My Little World. For free. Cripes! The reasons to attend are many. If you still need more: there will be other guests; The District! and Mind Game were among my favourite cinematic experiences of the year; it's easy to get there (okay, if you live in Quebec, Ontario, Michigan, upstate New York or New England); it's affordable to check out the entire festival or just one or two films. The best reason to go is to support this incredible undertaking, and to ensure that there is a festival next year. I need to find what they'll do in 2006. Revive Walt Disney and Osamu Tezuka for a celebrity death match? Based on their track record, if they announced it, I'd believe it. Labels: anime, events, festivals, Nyocker, The District, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC November 13, 2005
While Dallas, Texas isn't exactly a hotbed of animation (although I'm told that DNA Studios started out in the bedroom of a house about four or five blocks from my home), it does have one significant claim to fame: Fred "Tex" Avery came from here. He graduated in 1928 from North Dallas High School and, according to a PBS special from years back, the catch phrase "what's up, doc?" was a slang greeting the NDHS students had for the teachers there and Tex recycled it when they needed a smartass reply for Bugs Bunny to use. So it was appropriate for the Deep Ellum Film Festival (now in its seventh year) to hold the first annual Tex Avery Animation Award at the NDHS auditorium today. The first receipent was Brad Bird and the award was presented by Nancy Avery Arkley, Tex's daughter, and he was introduced by William Joyce (children's author and illustrator and creator of Rolie-Polie Olie, George Shrinks, and the art director for Robots).
The ceremony started with the showing of a Bugs Bunny short (Tortoise Beats Hare) and a Droopy and Wolf short. Then Nancy Avery Arkley came out and talked for a bit about her dad. Then they showed a short clip of a documentary about Avery where he was asked if he made his cartoons for children to which he replied, "I never thought of children. If I could make the other guys in the studio laugh, then I went with the idea or joke." Then William Joyce came out to introduce Bird and talk about Avery's influence. He started by saying that as a kid he used to watch cartoons and all cartoons were pretty much the same to kids, but he rememebered once watching Red Hot Riding Hood while his mom was in the room with him. As the story progressed his mom said, "I don't like this cartoon. I don't think it's good for you." "And you know what?" grinned Joyce. "She was right. It wasn't good for me. And I loved it." He talked about how Avery's vision was one that was more absurd than the rest of the cartoons he watched. "He had wolves chasing human girls, interspecies attraction. He warped a lot of kids with things like that." He pointed out that he feels animation is the purest form of cinema. "Where else do you start with a blank frame and create the whole world from scratch, and then do that over and over again at 24 frames per second?" He then went on to talk about how Bird is a fitting recepient of Avery's award by giving the short review of The Incredibles that his son gave him after he'd seen it: "You know, Dad, how a lot of movies have a scene where you think they're going to do a cool thing, and then they don't?" "Yeah." "Well, in this movie, they always do the cool thing." After a short montage of clips from various Brad Bird films (ending with the kid on the tricycle in The Incredibles saying "That was wicked!" Brad Bird came out and Nancy Avery Arkley handed him the award (which looks like an Oscar statue, but is Avery's Wolf character). Then he and local film critic Gary Cogill sat down for a 45 minute chat. I cribbed a few notes on the back of a sheet of paper I had so these are just some random "best of" comments and are not necessarily word for word quotes. Bird started by commenting that just getting the cool Wolf statue was almost as good as getting the award itself. Then he talked about how earlier they had been looking at the school yearbook for Avery's senior year where he did all the artwork. "Even then you could see he was a trouble-maker." He said he really liked Avery's quote in the documentary where he said he didn't make the cartoons for kids. Bird said his work is partially targeted at kids, "but you do much better work if you assume that the kids who are watching your stuff are smart." Then Cogill had hm go through his own career history. He went to Cal Arts and got to work with some of the Nine Old Men. Unfortunately he arrived at Disney's nadir where, as he put it, "Disney's motto at the time was 'Let's not do anything to embarass ourselves.' If something was funny in a film, they said 'let's tone it down.' If it was exciting, they said 'let's tone it down.' They smoothed the storyline down to where it was flatlined, and that meant it was dead." He pointed out that one of the few great pieces from that time was the bull fight scene in The Fox and the Hound. Everything else had been "flatlined" but they ran out of time to redo that scene, so the animators poured their hearts and talent into it. He pointed out that animation was good in the 1960s because all the folks in the industry had come from the studios. Even the limited TV animation was being done by folks who had been trained in the bug studios. But as those folks started dying and retiring, you started getting animators whose only experience was TV animation "and then you started getting horrible stuff on Saturday morning." He left Disney to do independent work and it was a "Sophie's choice" for him. "Do I stay where I can do technically beautiful animation that is boring and has no heart or do I go into the world of limited animation where it doesn't look polished but I can make something fresh?" He ultimately ended up working for the first 7 or 8 years on The Simpsons. Joyce had quoted him earlier by telling the story where someone asked him exactly what he did on The Simpsons? Bird replied, "My primary job is to remind the writers that this is a story with characters and plot, not just gag lines." After that he went over to Warner Brothers and did The Iron Giant. He arrived at a bad time. They were just finishing Quest for Camelot and had poured millions into it. Iron Giant was one of the projects in development at Warners when he came in and he liked it and wanted to do something different from the orginal treatment. He pitched it to them as "What if a gun had a soul, and didn't want to be a gun anymore?" Iron Giant was already greenlighted and underway when Camelot crashed and burned and the suits decided to close the animation division. But it was cheaper to let them finish than to kill the project midway through. "It was like being on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Sure you were part of the steerage, but all the rich people had left and you had the run of the ship now as long as you didn't mind the fact that the deck was tilting. One of the floors was the administration and every week another executive would be fired until there was no one left. So you started seeing people bringing their dogs into work, you could run around naked if you wanted to, and there was no one to tell you to behave." He said the final 20 minutes of the film were his favorite because they were a challenge to hit so many different tones and moods and make it all work. He also got them to put the original Warner Brothers logo back on the film instead of the newer one with Bugs on it. And the irony was that he'd learned today that Tex Avery was the artist who designed the classic Warners logo. He talked about how Pixar had brought him in "to shake things up." "To their credit they were making hit after hit and they were worried that they were going to get into a rut. 'If we ever start talking like we have the magic formula, we're dead,' they told me, and so they wanted me to help them branch out and do something different," He talked about how animation was more than just talking animals and magic and the idea of "why do it animated if you can do it live action?" He answered it by saying that the artist still brings his vision and viewpoint to the work. "Why does a Hirshfield characature of a person look more like that person really is than a real photograph? You can't show me a live action image or scene of someone getting aroused that is more effective than Avery's Wolf having his eyeballs pop out." He also got into a riff about "studio notes" and how dumb they were elsewhere, but how good they were at Pixar. When he was working on Iron Giant he got a note from a studio executive suggesting that Kent be an alien. They also wanted make it a contemporary setting and have rap music in it. "Whenever I hear a studio executive saying 'I want to make this movie exciting' I think of them having a subtitle below them that says 'I want to make this movie lame.'" He then got to the Q&A and I got to ask him about animators from outside the US that he admired and was influenced by. (Okay, I was angling to see how much anime he was familar with...) He did mention Miyazaki of course, and Bill Plympton and Nick Park, but his favorite was John Hubley and pointed out that the "Maypo" commercial in Iron Giant was a tribute to Hubley's work. "He did commercials to pay the bills, but even there he was great." He was asked about Richard Linklater and Waking Life. He doesn't like that sort of animation. "When you're animating a character, you are in control of making that character come to life and act, but when you're rotoscoping or even doing motion capture, then someone else is creating the action, not you. So it's not real animation." Finally someone asked him why his films had a "retro future" feel to them? "When I was growing up they were promising us a great future where we all had jet packs to fly around with, and we're still waiting. So in the meantime, I'm making movies about that future."  These days the video-enabled iPod gets all the news, as well as the deals various companies have swung (Central Park Media has released assorted anime episodes and previews as free QuickTime downloads; Frederator Studios has started Channel Frederator, a podcast of original shorts). However, there's another player that's been quietly lurking behind the scenes. EZTakes provides DVD content you can order, download and burn yourself to play on any DVD player. (Clearly this is for people who either have broadband or are very, very patient.)Most of the content is cheap, some is free. The service also includes animation. I downloaded a free DVD of four Fleischer Superman shorts, and compared The Mechanical Monsters to my WinStar Home Entertainment version. The EZTakes version is just barely sharper, and MPEG artifacts are noticeable if you look for them; and it lacks the audio enhancements and extras that the WinStar DVD has (as well as all the other shorts). But you can't beat the price and the near-immediate gratification. If you've never seen a Fleischer Superman short, all you need is a little time, a few gigs of drive space and a Windows machine (because, I suppose, Mac and Linux people don't want to download movies). EZTakes' selection is pretty sparse overall, and the animation section has only four titles: the Superman shorts, Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels feature, Paul Grimault's The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird, and Jiří Trnka's The Emperor's Nightingale. But it might be worth keeping an eye on the site. A little site called eMusic had a similarly small selection when it first started out, and it's since evolved into my favorite location for music downloads just a shade out of the mainstream. If EZTakes is similarly successful in building relationships, they could be serious contenders.
I celebrated my newly-clean closet by actually watching the Gargoyles 10th Anniversay DVD I purchased...oh...9 months ago. Only had time to keep myelf awake listening to the commentary, though. fps readers know how much Greg Weisman and Keith David rave about the show, but I was hoping that co-producer Frank Paur would have more to offer about the overseas animation process. 100 minutes later, all I know is:
-Disney's Tokyo studios handled the animation for the 5-part pilot (yet we don't know how much footage came back from the "Additonal Production Facilities" listed in the credits. -A shot in Part 3 with Demona hiding in the shadows of Xanatos' castle was a flub on the part of the animators. Frank admits that she was supposed to be completely obscured, but the aniamtors ran out to time to do the retake. -There were arguments not only between Greg and Frank over the show, but between Frank and the Japanese animators. Context: unknown. Greg does reveal that the Japanese animators had something to prove to Disney. "Coming off of Ghost in the Shell and Akira," Frank notes, these animators jumped at the chance to do an action drama for the snuggly soft Disney studios. "This is manga to them." -The animators loved how the gargoyles cloak themselves with their wings. It saved the trouble of animating them with their wings flapping about all of the time. -The animators hated having the gargoyles run on all fours. Too complex. -The gun (pea shooter) pointed at Goliath during Part 3's conclusion becomes a big honkin' automatic weapon at the beginning of Part 4. Greg caught me sleeping on that flub. Apparent was decided that "we need a bigger gun". (To which Frank replied, "the guntoter was really happy to see Goliath".) -Elisa is "hot", acording to Greg. And Keith David. And all of the 10-year-old boys (and boys at heart) watching. November 11, 2005
 When I was editing Armen Boudjikanian's article "Sifting Through Layers of Illusion" for our most recent issue, I thought its underlying premise—that "2D animation," as a term, is ill-defined and still largely unexplored—would have best been served with an accompanying DVD, so that readers could get an eyeful of the array of techniques out there.It looks like the National Film Board agreed: within days of fps #5's drop date, they released Mindtravel, a compilation of eight recent (and two less recent) animated shorts by eight different artists, using eight different techniques. The DVD release coincided with the International Day of Animation, and it's a fitting selection; these films are all wordless or close to it, so they showcase the art of animation with minimal distraction. (Of course, it's impossible to be distracted while watching Craig Welch's Welcome to Kentucky; the precise linework and its slow but inexorable rhythm are mesmerizing.) Some of the shorts struck me as particularly outstanding. Nicolas Brault's Islet (with a story that reminded me of Mark Baker's The Hill Farm, but with Inuit characters) was completely drawn using a graphics tablet, yet it looks as sketchy and vibrant as pencilwork. Lejf Marcussen's Angeli looks like an extremely clever application of 3D CGI; actually, 98% of it is an even more clever application of great drawing and composition skills. I'd seen some of the shorts before, but found that repeat viewings didn't hinder my enjoyment at all. Last year I praised Jacques Drouin's Imprints for its revolutionary use of the Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen; watching it a second time, I actually liked it more. Similarly, Geroges Schwizgebel's L'Homme sans ombre (The Man Without a Shadow) held my attention more than when I first saw it. Most of the film is painted on glass, a technique that requires destroying the previous frame in order to paint the new one. This results in an energetic, straight-ahead style of animation, but Schwizgebel takes it farther than most by keeping the camera moving at the same time. In the first few minutes of the film, the camera circles, swoops and dives as the action continues, with one scene transforming into another. It's a little vertigo-inducing, but this time I was more appreciative of how it contributed to the dreamy, fablelike quality of the story. The only thing missing? Commentary tracks. I'd like to hear what each artist has to say about his or her work, especially since some are so open to interpretation. The best we have are artist biographies, which provide only the tiniest insight, as well as show once again that the strangest things can spring from the minds of seemingly ordinary people. Mindtravel National Film Board of Canada 98 minutes Buy Mindtravel from the NFB Store Labels: National Film Board of Canada, NFB, reviews  One of my biggest disappointments in Disney's Atlantis (aside from, you know, most of it) was that visually, it had a fantastic springboard—Mike Mignola's artwork—and it just ended up watered down. Years later I wondered how the live-action version of Mignola's Hellboy comic could retain more of Mignola's aesthetic than Atlantis, even though animation should lend itself more to Mignola's graphic style.Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro himself floated the idea of an animated Hellboy shortly after the movie's release, and while I would love to see an animated Hellboy based on Mignola's style, I didn't hold my breath. I never believe anything until a signature's on the dotted line. Just yesterday, I read that IDT Entertainment had licensed Hellboy from Revolution Studios for an animated adaptation, but that it wouldn't be in Mignola's style. So what's the point?, I thought. Then I saw the picture above, created by Sean "Cheeks" Galloway, who has been tapped as Hellboy's lead character designer. It's not Mignola, but it has his sense of design. I was intrigued, did a little sniffing around this afternoon, and hit upon Tad Stones' Hellboy Animated production blog. Bookmark it now. The first of the two direct-to-DVD movies is scheduled for next October. Can't wait. November 10, 2005
 You already know about our job board, right? (No? Take a look.) Well, starting next week, we—that is, CreativeHeads and fps—will be kicking off a new newsletter that will keep you up to date on new job postings in the video game, animation, TV, film and software tools indsutries. You can sign up for it on our newsletter page.  The PDF magazine Brickjournal is a must-read for Lego freaks (like, er, me) but the recently released second issue has got a special treat for animation fans. Nearly a quarter of the magazine is devoted to building mecha out of our favourite plastic bricks. I was particularly interested in Adam Silcott's article explaining the importance of proper joint construction, especially as it appears to be the first in the series.Budding stop-motion animators can use these articles as a great starting point in building their own armatures using relatively inexpensive materials. Beginning CG animators can also learn some lessons on realistic skeleton construction. And everyone can see the benefits of strong poses and silhouettes. Time for me to get the bricks out. Labels: Lego November 9, 2005
Our readers have spoken, and this year's online charity auction will benefit the Canadian Cancer Society. The auction will run from November 24 to December 1, so start saving your pennies. If you're wondering what we're going to have for sale on eBay this year, check out our ever-growing list of auction items. It's sparse now, but there's definitely more to come.
Labels: auctions November 8, 2005
 Hey, Lady!According to the invaluable resource TVShowsOnDVD.com, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot will be soon perpetrating random, senseless digital mayhem, as Animaniacs cartoons are tentatively scheduled for DVD sometime in the new year. Details are sketchy at this point, but: Industry sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, have let us know that Warner Home Video has both of these long-awaited, highly-anticipated shows on their radar screen for a possible mid-2006 DVD release! Look for a multi-disc set for each series, with around two dozen episodes per box. Now that's comedy!We couldn't agree more! Also expect to see a similar Pinky and The Brain set around the same time. Which leads inevitably to the following exchange... "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" "I think so Brain, but how will we fit the Betamax tape into the Laserdisc player?" Developments as they happen! Okay, we love you, bye-bye. November 5, 2005
For most of this year, we at fps HQ have been giving a lot of thought to the direction of fps—not in terms of mandate, but in how we achieve the goals we've always had.
One manifestation of this rethink is the Animation Innovator series, which fulfills our goal of bringing the inner workings of animation to the public. Our first two (with guests Ray Harryhausen and Mike Johnson) have worked out very well, and we're busily planning four more for next year. The second manifestation is visible right here. Since the relaunch of the magazine, I've been thinking about how to balance the content of the magazine with the content of the website. Our solution: the four sections in which we divided articles (Reviews, Features, Commentary and Festival Watch) are, as of now, pretty much preserved in amber. The reviews, spotlights, interviews, commentary and festival overviews that we carefully consdier, write, reconsider and rewrite will for the most part be reserved for the magazine. Photo galleries from fests and conferences will continue to appear in Festival Watch, and the promised final instalments of our Rock & Rule interview (still being painstakingly transcribed) will appear in Features. All other written content will appear in the blog, which is now the landing point for fpsmagazine.com. This includes reviews (as evidenced by my recent writeups of Chicken Little and Kakurenbo), commentary, festival reports and announcements, but they'll be more immediate. Formerly my own little area to write comments, the blog has been opened up to include a team of writers: Tamu "Kino Kid" Townsend, fps publicist and media maven; Marc Hairston, anime scholar; Marc Elias, fps's longtime anime skeptic and original design guru; and Jason Vanderhill, who made his debut with a fantastic interview with Tadeusz Wilkosz that appeared in our fourth issue. Others will eventually join the roster. Meanwhile, fps has been expanding in other areas. The magazine's page count has been steadily increasing. Our three-month-old careers section, powered by the fine folks at CreativeHeads.net, connects job seekers and employers in the animation industry. Our nascent audio archive contains fps-related audio files; right now, there are three recent radio interviews in MP3 format, but a wider range of material will fill the section out in the coming year. And there are still more developments on the way. Incidentally, one by-product of this reorganization is that our old RSS feed for site updates will soon go dark. However, this blog has its own feed, so you can still stay current. (If you're already subscribed to the In-Betweens feed, you don't have to do anything—you're already here!) The year 2005 has shaped up to be one of fps's best, but so far as we're concerned, this is just setting the stage for 2006. Come along for the ride. November 4, 2005
I'll do my initial post here talking about the cable channel Turner Classic Movies showing a Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli festival next January. In case you haven't heard, every Thursday evening in January will be devoted to showing most of the feature films from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. (Only Grave of the Fireflies, Kiki's Delivery Service, The Cat Returns, and Howl's Moving Castle will be left out.) The films will be shown twice in each block. The first block will be shown with the English dub and the later showing will be in Japanese with subtitles. (The only exception here is Only Yesterday which doesn't have an English dub, so it will be shown subtitled both times.) Here's the schedule (note that all the times are eastern standard):
Thursday January 5 (Miyazaki's birthday, he will be 65) 8pm Spirited Away (dub) 10:15pm Princess Mononoke (dub) 1am Spirited Away (subbed) 3:15am Princess Mononoke (subbed) Thursday January 12 8pm Nausicaa (dub) 10pm Castle in the Sky (dub) 12:15am Nausicaa (subbed) 2:15am Castle in the Sky (subbed) Thursday January 19 8pm My Neighbor Totoro (dub) 9:30pm Porco Rosso (dub) 11:15pm Whisper of the Heart (dub) 1:15am My Neighbor Totoro (subbed) 2:45am Porco Rosso (subbed) 4:30am Whisper of the Heart (subbed) Thursday January 26 8pm Only Yesterday (subbed) 10:15pm Pom Poko (dub) 12:30am Only Yesterday (subbed) 2:45am Pom Poko (subbed) And since this is TCM, all of them will be shown in wide screen format. It's nice to see these films getting the proper treatment they deserve, but over at Nausicaa.net we've been scratching our heads over some of the odd things here. First off, according to our contacts at Disney, there are no plans to release Only Yesterday on home video, so taping it off the air may be the only way US fans will ever see it. (On the other hand, maybe this means they're considering a home video release at some point in the future.) The second odd thing is that the showing of Totoro and Whisper will be the first time (outside of a couple of film festivals) that the new Disney dubs of both films will be shown in the US. Both are scheduled for home video releases later next spring, so it's odd that they would allow them to be broadcast before the home video release. And last, why are they showing up on TCM and not on one of Disney's own channels? My personal guess is that this class treatment on TCM is to showcase Miyazaki's and Ghibli's films to an audience that is serious about film and film watching. And it would be showing these films just as some of that audience are sending in their ballots for the Academy Awards. And it's a foregone conclusion that Howl's Moving Castle will be one of the nominees. (Though personally, I'm betting on Wallace and Gromit to win.) So it wouldn't hurt to remind folks (or introduce a lot of them) of the oeuvre of Miyazaki while they're considering their choice. Whatever the reason, I'm thrilled to see them getting this attention and I know where I'm going to spending my Thursdays in January. Labels: anime, Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli, Totoro  Geeks tend to be into space travel, anime and comics, and computers, right? So I suppose it's no surprise that Daisuke Enomoto, a young otaku who made his fortune at an Internet firm, is spending $20 million to become a space tourist, with his hair dyed blonde and wearing an outfit so he can look like Mobile Suit Gundam antagonist/revolutionary/stud muffin Char Aznable.The key question that no one seems to have asked: is Enomoto going as mysterious Char or metrosexual Char? Labels: anime  Things have been pretty busy in the last month, between our fifth issue and the recent Animation Innovator event. So I didn't quite get around to watching Kakurenbo as quickly as I'd intended, though I'd been quite taken with the teaser I saw at the Japan Media Arts Festival screenings at this year's SIGGRAPH conference.Kakurenbo concerns seven children playing hide & seek on the streets of Tokyo after dark, in defiance of their peers' warnings that demons wait for exactly those conditions to take children away. (One of the characters has personal reasons: his sister disappeared one night). They start out recklessly brave, but when strange creatures manifest and start to hunt them down, it quickly turns to fight or flight for the hopelessly outmatched kids. As an atmospheric, short horror film (it's a mere 25 minutes) that leans heavily on digital animation (the characters are cel-shaded 3D CGI), Kakurenbo's most obvious spiritual connection is to Production I.G.'s Blood: The Last Vampire, another short horror film that leans heavily on digital animation. Both are also short on plot and heavy on atmosphere, but in an appealing way. (Kakurenbo, in particular, has the character of a ghost story being told among children.) The less obvious predecessor is Akira, which also brought out the idea of a nighttime Tokyo as a dark children's playground, combining the modern urban with the ancient mythological. Also, as far as I can tell, Akira is the first commercial anime production to have atmospheric nighttime scenes with truly dark palettes and a wide range of colours within the shadows, providing rich and enveloping textures. (Earlier films like Wicked City still tended to use colours that would pop on a dark background. The only movie that comes close is Osamu Dezaki's Golgo 13, recently re-released on DVD.) The other similarity to Akira is its use of children who aren't particularly sympathetic. Only one kid here appears as an overt brute, from the beginning, but watch what happens when two other kids find themselves boxed in: wordlessly, they arm themselves with a rock and a lead pipe with unnerving familiarity. (We also never see their faces; the kids wear masks throughout the film.) Kakurenbo highlights why teenagers and college students gravitate more toward anime than, say, Disney or Dreamworks. Kakurenbo is all about kids, but isn't in the least bit sweet. Children are put in danger, without the underlying expectation that they'll come out okay just because they're children. (This is also why you should stick with the Japanese language track; the Japanese voices are, or at least sound like, real children. The American voices sound like adults trying to sound like children.) It's also interesting to watch how studios outside of North America experiment with CGI. Kakurenbo, My Beautiful Girl Mari, Sky Blue and The District are four CGI movies that point in four different directions, stylistically and thematically. As much as I liked Chicken Little, it didn't go anywhere new visually or storywise. And neither will Cars, Shrek 3, or Hoodwinked. And that's a damn shame. Kakurenbo: Hide & Seek Yamatoworks/D.I.C./Central Park Media 25 minutes Buy Kakurenbo: Hide & Seek from Amazon.com Labels: anime, Nyocker, reviews, The District November 2, 2005
 Unlike, I suspect, many animation fans, I walked into Chicken Little with no opinion about the movie one way or another. I'd seen an extended clip at during the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival jury, and attended the Disney presentation at the conference itself where Mark Dindal and others spoke about the making of the movie at length. And of course I'd seen the trailer online and on TV. Everything I'd seen suggested that it was a good movie, but I've been burned by clips before. And Disney hasn't exactly earned my trust in the last few years.But there's a lot at stake here for the company. Chicken Little, which they're calling their first fully computer-animated feature (technically true, though it kind of sweeps Dinosaur under the rug), is their one shot at justifying their claim that CGI now rules the roost (sorry) and their shuttering of the Florida and California studios. So with all these conflicting bits of data, I had no real preconceptions as I sat in the cinema before the preview screening. I did allow myself to over-analyze a few things, like the noticeably extravagant prize drawing (an indifferent-looking tween got herself an Xbox 360), and the opening of the film itself, where a narrator rejects two potential openings as trite: the opening moments of The Lion King, and a truck in on an open fairy-tale book. Interesting, I thought. The corporate mantra has been that Disney is embracing its heritage as it moves into CGI, and here the film is explicitly turning its back on it. It seemed a little heavy-handed, as if they couldn't trust the movie to speak for itself. But after that, I stopped watching for portentous signs of Disney's new groove and tried to get into the movie. Believe me, they didn't make it easy. In the first fifteen minutes or so, I found Chicken Little's use of music to be too heavy-handed. When Chicken Little and his dad Buck drive home in more or less awkward silence after a school incident (they're both trying to get past Chicken Little's "sky is falling" faux pas from a year earlier), we're walloped on the head by maudlin piano music and too-loud lyrics that tell us how sad everyone is. I found myself missing Randy Newman's simple and evocative "I Will Go Sailing No More" from Toy Story pretty badly. I also couldn't reconcile the character design (cartoony, symmetrical) with the stylized, asymmetrical mechanics and backgrounds. I can see how it would work on paper, but the crispness of CGI only reinforces the dissonance between symmetrical and asymmetrical designs, at least for me. These were the two problems that I couldn't let go of throughout the film, though the use of music stopped being an irritant as the story progressed and it actually became a plot element. But overall, I've got to say that Chicken Little is pretty darned good. Storywise, it deviates from Disney's established formulas and gives us a few surprises. Most Disney movies from The Little Mermaid onward are driven by the "I want" motive of the protagonist (usually established in a song, and obtained after much hardship at the end). Fairly early on, Chicken Little actually gets what he wants (to save face and earn his father's affection), after some effort; what drives his actions after that is his fear of losing what he's finally gained. I also found I had to reverse an earlier opinion on the film's emotional core. Chicken Little is one of those rare North American animated films that focuses on the relationship between fathers and sons, but I couldn't get into Little's dad's emotional distance at first—there were too many missed opportunities for subtle (and therefore more powerful) interplay. But later, when father and son realize that their initial reconciliation is paper-thin, it leads into more interesting territory—especially for Buck, who doesn't know how to express certain emotions and whose pleading for a return to their too-brief period normalcy feels especially desperate. When the two do really reconcile, he's still not quite sure of how far he can go, which becomes material for some good gags. Chicken Little isn't quite a home run, but it is something that Disney hasn't had in a long time: an honest-to-God family movie that everyone can enjoy without apology. What irks me—infuriates me, really—is that Disney and the people who buy their line will point to Chicken Little and say, "See? CGI is where it's at." The thing is, Chicken Little is a good CGI movie. It's cartoony in an assured way that's head and shoulders above Madagascar, while its compositions, use of colour and framing are certainly "cinematic,"—but in its own way, without being too showy. (No roller-coaster rides here.) But my feeling is that all this extra care was put into Chicken Little because of how much was at stake. In short, Disney was desperate enough to put a lot of care into the storytelling and visuals—the kind of care they should have been putting into most of their movies post-Lion King. Too bad they had to be desperate to get to that point. Chicken Little Walt Disney Pictures 81 minutes Buy Chicken Little from Amazon.com or Amazon.com |
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