THE ANIMATION SHOW 3 [NR]
There comes an age in every animation fan’s life when they realize that the festival that once got them to drive an hour-and-a-half in the rain — The Spike & Mike Festival of Animation — is just plain gross. At that age, they also realize that the midnight movie brand name has little to do with art, and a hole lot to do with fart. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
For those who want a bit more of an existential punch with their big-screen flip books, there is The Animation Show, an annual festival featuring some of the best and funniest animated shorts from around the world. The 2007 touring show, presented here by festival co-founder Mike Judge’s former bosses at MTV (he did a little show for them in the ’90s called “Beavis & Butt-head”), is a great complement to the previous two volumes (available as a bundle), and has a little something for everyone.
Like any compilation, some of the content is bound to be forgotten, especially when contrasted with the heavy hitters. At least half of the line-up here is bound to be remembered, and not just at the water cooler on Monday, rather, blindsiding you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.
After the new, fun “Beavis & Butt-head” intro, there’s Rabbit by Run Wrake. The antique storybook cutout characters look innocent enough (labeled with halo-like descriptors), but the action soon turns dark when two children capture a wish-granting imp and learn the consequences of covetousness. Judge’s partner-in-sublime, Don Hertzfeldt, contributes another deep and delicious treat by way of Everything Will Be OK, the tale of a seriously ill man ruminating on his plight. Hertzfeldt’s signature style of simple stick figures is paired with some filmed cutaways and inserts to great atmospheric effect, and the short is alternately hilarious and tragic. (Sadly, the roster for the fourth installment does not include any new work from this brilliant minimalist.)
Fan favorite Bill Plympton, with his trademark color etchings, contributes two films. Guide Dog, about a canine whose human wards all meet sad ends, is classic Plympton, almost too much so. There’s not much of a story, just a series of predictable gags. He counters it, though, with Shuteye Hotel, a noir-ish horror tale about a room that mysteriously decapitates its guests. If Poe ever wrote comedy, it would be Shuteye Hotel.
Tyger by Guilherme Marcondes is a real treat. It features an articulated “Lion King” style tiger puppet (with the two black-suited operators in view) that rampages through a miniature city set, transforming all its denizens into animals of some kind. It’s got a simultaneously apocalyptic and majestic feel to it, suggesting that once we’re no longer in the mix, nature will reassert herself. Joanna Quinn’s Dreams and Desires, which follows a wannabe filmmaker’s disastrous day as a wedding videographer, dallies with both gross and gorgeous, and looks beautiful doing it.
Perhaps it’s because we’re at war right now, but this set is surprisingly bloody (unrated but a hard “PG-13″). Rabbit comes right out of the gate, slashing and shooting, and Carlitopolis, about a hapless lab mouse that’s bound to twist the knickers of the PETA People, is grotesque if viewed out-of-context. Chris Harding’s Learn Self Defense, while a biting indictment of the Bush 2 administration, takes the subtlety damper off and doesn’t let up, even after we’ve wiped the viscera off our faces and cried, “Uncle!” Despite the heavy tone, though, The Animation Show 3 is quite amazing, and is some of the most enriching fun you can have at 24 fps.
*SPECIAL FEATURES: Interview - Gaëlle Denis (“City Paradise”); Interview - Joanna Quinn (”Dreams and Desires”); Tony Comely’s “Abigail” animatic; Full-length text interviews with 11 of the filmmakers
*TRIVIA TIDBIT: The Animation Show co-founder named the character of paranoid hero Dale Gribble on the long-running Fox series “King Of The Hill” after the late Spike & Mike guru, Mike Gribble. Judge’s “Frog Baseball,” the first “Beavis & Butt-head” short, first found an audience with Spike & Mike.
