{"id":15776,"date":"2023-07-18T20:00:09","date_gmt":"2023-07-19T00:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=15776"},"modified":"2023-07-16T12:10:38","modified_gmt":"2023-07-16T16:10:38","slug":"animated-shorts-watched-in-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/15776","title":{"rendered":"Animated Shorts watched in June"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bead Game<\/em> (1977, Ishu Patel)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stop-motion beads create a series of creatures devouring each other until inevitably, as most animated films do, it becomes a cautionary tale about senseless human violence. Really impressive work, fast and complex, synched to a percussion soundtrack, and I don’t know how they got that 3D light effect in the final minute. Up for the oscar that The Sand Castle<\/a><\/em> won.<\/p>\n

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\nParadise<\/em> (1984, Ishu Patel)<\/strong><\/p>\n

A completely different kind of thing, bright 2D animation, frames fading into each other to create a slow dreamy blur-motion on everything. All very bird focused. A black bird flies into a magic castle made of a million points of light and sees a human king and a parade of colorful exotic birds. Back in the real world he brutalizes all the local birds and flowers, stealing colors and patterns and props to make himself look prettier, does a crazy dance for the king who locks him outdoors in the cage of shame. After escaping, I guess he lives in harmony with his fellow wild birds. Lost the oscar to a shorter British thing I haven’t seen.<\/p>\n

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\nLabirynt<\/em> (1963, Jan Lenica)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is exciting since I’ve watched the Lenica & Borowczyk shorts<\/a> but not any of his solo work. Man in a wingsuit descends into the city and hides from various beasties and sees different animal-based horrors. Surreal low-motion clip-art animation, full of birds and moths and traps. He’s finally captured, scanned and identified, rescued by his hat-bird, then shredded when he attempts to escape in the wingsuit. Verdict: cool. This won a prize at Annecy, where Borow also won for his Concert de M. et Mme. Kabal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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\nThe Cameraman’s Revenge<\/em> (1912, Wladyslaw Starewicz)<\/strong><\/p>\n

One-ups the Lenica by using actual dead bugs (with wire legs) as stop-motion puppets. A cheatin’ movie, a couple of beetles make out with other bugs and get caught. A jealous grasshopper films the husband with a hot dragonfly – including through their hotel keyhole – and projects it when the beetle couple go to the movies, causing a riot that ends with the beetles in jail. Robert Israel soundtrack on the now-rare DVD.<\/p>\n

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\nThe Frogs Who Wanted a King<\/em> (1922, Wladyslaw Starewicz)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clay frogs, a hundred times more expressive than the insect cadavers. Fed up with democracy, the frogs pray to the gods to be sent a king. He sends them a stone idol and they get pissy, so he sends a stork which eats all the frogs it can find. An original Aesop fable (he sent a water snake instead of the stork).<\/p>\n

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\nLittle Bird Gazouilly<\/em> (1953, Wladyslaw Starewicz)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can’t resist watching another bird short and catching Starewicz forty years later. It’s a beautiful one, adding camera movement to the complex stop-motion. Baby birds are born in the trees over the city, and the bulk of the story follows their first day in the human world, getting into hijinks. A bird gets mad at a mirror, just like my birds did earlier today. Wladyslaw had moved to France after 1917, and this film and many more were co-credited to his daughter Irene.<\/p>\n

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\nThere Will Come Soft Rains<\/em> (1984, Nazim Tulakhodzhayev)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Opens with an egg, but it’s not another bird movie, it’s a breakfast-making machine. The humans have disintegrated but the household automation carries on. The concept (by Ray Bradbury) and illustration is cool, but the animation is nothing much. Aha, it’s a bird movie after all, as a bird flies in the open window while the automation is celebrating the new year 2027, and the anti-intruder robot arm tears the house apart. It doesn’t end great for the bird either. <\/p>\n

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Symphonie Diagonale<\/em> (1924, Viking Eggeling)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Patterns of curved and diagonal lines rhythmically shift and unmake themselves. Good modern soundtrack by Sue Harshe.<\/p>\n

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\nMy Childhood Mystery Tree<\/em> (2008, Natalia Mirzoyan)<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Russian kid whose main fear is that hawks will steal his teddy bear has an intricate dream of human-held cities of junk collectors atop a giant tree. After a dogged chase, he refuses to give up his bear when asked, leading to the collapse of their entire owl-bug society.<\/p>\n

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\nKitty Kornered<\/em> (1946, Robert Clampett)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Porky has too many cats, tries to put them out for the night but they revolt and take over the house. I like that the red-nosed cat’s whole personality was “the drunk one.” Their leader is a proto-Sylvester. A shadow-puppet dog and a martian invasion get involved.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bead Game (1977, Ishu Patel) Stop-motion beads create a series of creatures devouring each other until inevitably, as most animated films do, it becomes a cautionary tale about senseless human violence. Really impressive work, fast and complex, synched to a percussion soundtrack, and I don’t know how they got that 3D light effect in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[96,239,3133,2903,3134,21,3037,590],"class_list":["post-15776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-animation","tag-birds","tag-ishu-patel","tag-jan-lenica","tag-ray-bradbury","tag-shorts","tag-starewicz","tag-stop-motion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15776"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15806,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15776\/revisions\/15806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}