DVD Reviews

The Animation Show: Volume 3

The first two volumes of The Animation Show, that carnival of the cel, were so filled with innovative ideas and possibilities that I claimed they would spur others to create animated shorts. With DIY celebrations like Be Kind Rewind and Son of Rambow so recently on the radar, that feeling resonates more than ever in volume three of this series. The difference, of course, is that these shorts are anything but slapped-together. Considering how much labour goes into a few minutes of product, it's incredible that the animators' sense of wonder and joy comes through at all.

But come through it does, if not quite as strongly as in the previous volumes. Once again, our ringmasters are Mike Judge of Beavis & Butthead and King of the Hill fame, and Don Hertzfeldt, a rising legend nominated for an Academy Award and a Palme d'Or. Once again, it's an international line-up skewing towards the UK, and a cavalcade of animation styles, ranging from hand-drawn scribbles to mixed-media mashups to CGI marvels, and concepts ranging from abstract colour shows (Collision by Max Hattler) to scripted farces (Dreams and Desires by Joanna Quinn).    

While technically masterful, conceptually there are fewer jaw-dropping moments and a higher dud-to-hit ratio in this volume. One D and No Room For Gerold are both nice ideas (a world that exists in one dimension; a group of talking jungle animals sharing an apartment) that never go beyond their one-joke setup. Carlitopolis by Nieto, in which a lecturer puts a hamster through increasingly bizarre perils, may be a commentary on animal testing, but is far too ephemeral to leave a lasting impact. Even Pes, the master of the found object, who blew the (symbolic) roof off the joint with his previous transformative pieces, offers a lacklustre tribute to early video games. And Judge's Beavis & Butthead intro seems like an obligatory scrap included because there's no other Mike Judge piece available.

Jaw-droppers? Tyger by Guilherme Marcondes, which combines live puppetry and oddly old-fashioned characters as an immense jungle cat transforms a city into something from Where the Wild Things Are. Throwback images also figure in Run Wrake's Rabbit, where two children in a Dick & Jane-style reader discover a jam-scarfing golden idol inside a rabbit's stomach. It gets weirder from there. Dark genius or complete insanity rules Abigail by Tony Comely, a surreal allegory (I think) set on a freefalling jetliner filled with singing evangelicals and stewardesses who look like the protagonist's lost love.
 

Abigail is the lone film that gets a "behind the scenes" feature. The screen is split four ways, showing different stages of creation in each quadrant playing at once: the storyboard scene, live actors on-set, rotoscoping, and the final print. Of the interviewed artists, Joanna Quinn is the most engaging, taking us into her world of fleshy physicality with some humour and passion. CD-ROM text interviews don't always suit a DVD, especially when one doesn't watch DVDs on one's computer. I'm just saying.

In fairness, the first Animation Show release had two decades worth of material to pick from, so it's meaningless to say whether the newest volume represents a decline in overall quality of animated shorts. Also, the theatrical program going from town to town offers more films than the DVD. But if there are better films currently on offer, it would be nice to have all the home-runs on one disc.

Review By Michael Rottman