The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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domino harvey
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Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#726 Post by domino harvey » Wed May 12, 2021 10:21 pm

The YouTube algorithm has done it again: Outside In, which both soothes and creates a headache as two unseen voices discuss how to turn a sphere inside out without folding or creasing it as early era CGI illustrates the problem at hand in yellow and purple. Probably once every minute I kind of understood what was going on, only for it to completely lose me and send me like eighteen steps back. Adult Swim before Adult Swim. An incredible whatsit

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swo17
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#727 Post by swo17 » Mon Nov 22, 2021 4:54 am

These are cute--stop-motion animation with wool!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#728 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat May 21, 2022 1:42 pm

It’s been disheartening to revisit many old Looney Tunes sketches in recent stages of adulthood with significantly diminished returns, many of them falling completely flat with slapstick ideas revealed as cheap and uninspired. Though every once in a while, there’s an adult-centered newbie that just hits all the marks right. For me, that episode is Birds Anonymous, a hysterical and thoroughly apt application of self-help addiction programs like Alcoholics Anonymous to Sylvester’s compulsions to eat birds. The skit covers a lot of ground in a short seven minutes: interventions, meetings, relapse, withdrawals, rumination on will power, and a denouement of sky cruelty where Tweety Bird pathologizes the addict with a line that’s both fair and demeaning, depending on how you read it or which perspective you attach to: the addict or the victims of addiction. Wall-to-wall genius.

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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#729 Post by RIP Film » Sat Jul 02, 2022 11:40 am

I finally caught Studio Ghibli’s When Marnie was There and enjoyed it more that I thought I would, being a sweet story with some Ghibli charm. Its themes of loneliness feel more grounded and painful than in say, Kiki’s Delivery Service, but it’s a much more uneven film. While the ending is kind of clever, I can’t understand why this coming of age film veered so much into
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LGBQT territory, only to fake you out at the end. To me there’s a certain bitter taste left over from not capitalizing on what it was obviously building up to, especially in regard to throwing light on the generational pain of those not able to come out.
The denouement is also way too long.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#730 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Jul 02, 2022 12:13 pm

When Marnie Was There, despite some flaws, struck me as a much more rewarding movie than any of Miyazaki's own films after Spirited Away. Not as good as Takahata's last film, of course, but all in all one of the best of the later Ghibli films. I've always meant to read the source book -- but have never gotten around to it.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#731 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Aug 19, 2022 4:03 pm

Wladyslaw Starewicz's 1927 short, Le Rat des villes et le rat des champs, is a lot of manic fun, moving at such an exhaustively zany rhythm that I was beyond impressed at how much spatial awareness had to be planned out in the filmmaker's mind during the creation, rather than just editing process, in order to actualize such a busy composition of stop-motion. I was reminded of the central tunnel scenes in Fantastic Mr. Fox or the intricate tracking of Rube Goldberg activity in Isle of Dogs, and while there are clear limitations to the medium prohibiting the same degree of consistent detailing in those two films, believing this is how Wes Anderson might approach a silent comedy a century ago is as high a compliment as I can give

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domino harvey
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#732 Post by domino harvey » Wed Dec 21, 2022 1:40 am

YouTube's algorithm recommended me another animated short about a cat, and while it's no Cat City (what is), My Cat Lucy is pretty cute and demonic and only a two minutes long. Extremely impressed to learn this was a thesis film by a college student, it looks as polished as a major studio work

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