Tuesday, June 6, 2017

BSA306, 1990s animation part 3, 6 June, 2017

A Bugs Life  v. Antz  (1998)
Both films deal with a little ant who rebels against the colony system.
Antz made it to theatre's first and was the 2nd 3D animated film to be released.
Pixar/Disney accused Dreamworks of stealing their idea as Jeffrey Katzenberg left Disney to form Dreamworks around the time Pixar was planning A Bugs Life.

A Bugs Life was more successful ($363 million) than Antz ($171.8 million) but both received critical praise.

Gorillaz (UK)
Bamon Albarn from blur and Jamie Hewlett from comic Tank Girl created the band and it's animated characters in reaction to what they thought of as mindless MTV music videos.  They hold the Guinness World Record for most successful virtual band.
Tomorrow Comes Today music video

Perfect Blue (1998) Japan
Satoshi Kon
psychological study of mind of a pop star with multiple confusing perspectives to mirror her troubled state of mind.
USA cartoons (1999)
Futurama (Matt Groening creator of The Simpsons)

Family Guy (Seth McFarlane- often accused of ripping off The Simpsons)


Spongebob Squarepants (Stephen Hillenburg)


The Periwig Maker (1999)
took Steffen Schaffler 5 years to make and was nominated for Oscar, stop-motion
The Old Man and the Sea (1999)
Oscar-winning film by Alexandr Petrov- made by finger painting slow drying oil paints on multiple panes of glass.
This is the most watchable version of the story I've ever seen.  I think I read it in school and found it dull and interminable.  I love how the director chose to change the time of day, above and under the waves and to go back in time to illustrate the old man's struggle with the big fish.


The Wolfman (1999)
short film by Tim Hope
also made animations for The Mighty Boosh

Sink (1999) Satoshi Tomioka

Pixar Shorts
these short films allow Pixar to try out new technologies and new directors.
Geri's Game (1997)

For the Birds (2000)
directed by Ralph Eggleston

This is the best of the Pixar shorts that I've seen.  The story is short and simple- little birds on a wire get mad when a bigger bird joints them.  These birds could be completely identical but instead lots of work went into giving them different expressions and responses to the big bird and to the middle birds attempt to bully it into leaving the line.

Father and Daughter (2000)   Dutch British co-production
directed by Michael Dudok de Wit
influenced by Eastern European animation, Tintin, and Tibetan monk art
no dialogue- young girl watches her father row out to sea and enver return, cycle back to same spot and wait for him over the years.
won BAFTA and Oscar for Best short film

The Man with the Beautiful Eyes (2000)
won BAFTA for best animated short
made non-digitally, shot on film using paint, ink, and collage.






Review of The Man with the Beautiful Eyes
based on a poem by Charles Bukowski, a series of child-like drawings illustrate the ruminations of a man thinking back to this childhood and the strange house with the man who he and his friends were convinced was wonderful and that their parents were out to destroy.  Several very interesting sequences show time passing by using tear-off calendar pages for the kids to skip over or run past. Each sequences of thoughts uses a different combination of paint strokes to show water, bamboo or a scruffy beard.  I'd recommend this to my dad who likes animated films of all sorts.  It's short but very peaceful to watch as the narrator's voice soothingly relates the story and the paint strokes swirl across the screen.

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