Even a boy’s talent for sketching pictures that come to life can’t make him “cool” in this animated fable about the ups and downs of childhood popularity. Joy and Noelle Vaccese have done numerous bumpers for film festivals, and we love their trade name: “Twins are Weird.”
Tag Archives: Animation
SATURDAY SHORT: I MET THE WALRUS (2007)
A brave 14 year old, Jerry Levitan, was able to sneak into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and talk him into a Q&A session. Thirty-eight years later, Jerry worked with Josh Raskin, James Braithwaite, and Alex Kurina to make an animated video to accompany the recording.
“I Met the Walrus” was nominated for the 2008 Animated Short Academy Award, and won the 2009 Emmy for New Approaches.
SATURDAY SHORT: MUTO (2008)
Looking at BLU’s work, one might wonder how many hundreds of spray cans he goes through in a single day. Fortunately, BLU was introduced to house paint early on in his career, so, with a can of paint and a roller, he has been able to cover a larger areas with less time and cost.
BLU started painting graffiti and creating computer animated shorts in 2001. Six years later, he combined the two, and started making animated shorts shot on walls and buildings. With such talent and artistic vision, it’s easy to see how his work draws millions of viewers.
CAPSULE: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: REANIMATED (2010)
DIRECTED BY: Mike Schneider
FEATURING: Karl Hardman, Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea
PLOT: An animated recreation of the classic zombie film, Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated features a number of talented animators filtering Romero’s original vision through their own artistic viewpoints, expressing the universal messages therein in their own mediums.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While aesthetically intriguing and at times very eerie, there never was much that jumped out as being incredibly weird about Romero’s zombie movie. Although it was the first of its kind in what is now a celebrated genre, Night of the Living Dead was always more of a message film than a meditation on the dead rising from their graves. This animated version does indeed add some visual quirks, but there is no real strangeness here.
COMMENTS: For fans of the zombie film, it doesn’t get much more better than the simple-yet-satisfying claustrophobia of the grandpappy of them all, Night of the Living Dead. More than a horror flick, this grainy 1968 indie is a meaningful, smart work of art that pushes the boundaries of what the genre is capable of and what it can stand for. So above any horror I can think of, this one definitely deserves an animated homage that explores it from a stylistic point of view. And Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated doesn’t disappoint in that department.
Using a cadre of young, experimental artists, this exercise explores the original movie nearly shot-for-shot with different styles of animation. The styles are incredibly varied: parts are simply still images, sometimes it’s a comic book-style series of cels, while at other times it takes on an anime quality. One artist takes the real footage from the film and animates over it to generate an eerie reality that blurs the line between realism and otherworldliness. The different mediums at work boggle the mind; whether it’s claymation, pencil sketches, Flash cartoons, or sock puppets, this project has something to evoke just about anyone’s personal aesthetic. It’s amazing what the creators do here to make you think of the movie in a whole new way. The different animators break from the stark reality of the original to steep the entire world in a haunting, eerie mood that was not there before. My favorite style, personally, is when they use the real life baby dolls to simulate some of the action scenes! It doesn’t fit well with the other styles to create that perfect sense of dread and the unknown, but it’s just too funny to leave out!
Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated is definitely a success in my book. The unsettling black-and-white animation combined with the oddly displaced archive voices of the original actors creates a mesmerizing experimental film that goes beyond the norm and pulls off something that few people have. The various styles of animation work fluidly together to pay homage as well as to press the boundaries of the original zombie survival template. My only complaint would be that the ending is the most clinical part of the film, when I thought it should be a bit more erratic in style. In those desperate moments before daybreak, Reanimated doesn’t hit any crescendo notes that the original did not already sound, making the last few scenes almost redundant if you’ve already seen NOTLD. That caveat, compounded with this film’s lack of utter weirdness, knocks Reanimated out of contention for a spot on the List, although it must be considered one of the more impressive movies released in2010.
If you’re a fan of the original, or just a lover of experimental animation, Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated has something for you. It’s a very strong feature that builds upon Romero’s work with a love and a care that is both heartfelt and reverent. Despite its lack of general weirdness, it is still one of the better films in a year devoid of cinematic life, and a must-have for any fans of the zombie sub-genre.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: THE ADVENTURES OF MR. COO #4 (2007)
In this fourth installment of The Adventures of Mr. Coo, Mr. Coo turns into a carrot, explodes as a castle, makes amends with a car, etc. Although this is the fourth episode, it won’t make much more sense than the first three. This series is focused more on awe-inspiring animation than plot.
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