THE BEST OF THE 2004 OTTAWA INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL **** (out of ****) 2004 (unless otherwise noted) NR (should be R)
	SON OF SATAN J.J. Villard 12 min 2003 CATCH ME IF YOU CAN Oliver Kuntzel and Florence Deygas 2002 SADDAM AND OSAMA from SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE David Wachtenheim and Robert Marianetti CATS OR DOGS? from CREATURE COMFORTS Richard Goleszowski 2003 REVENGE OF THE CRABS Arthur de Pins 5 min A ROOM NEARBY Paul and Sandra Fierlinger 27 min 2003
			THIS LAND Gregg and Evan Spiridellis 2 min A MUSICAL SHOP Sonya Kravtsova 12 min CANDY VENERY Sergei Aniskov 2 min LA PICCOLA RUSSIA Gianluigi Toccafondo 17 min 2003 THE SHINING IN THIRTY SECONDS (AND RE-ENACTED BY BUNNIES) Jennifer Shiman 1 min
It’s animation, but it’s not maudlin Disney, washed-out violent anime, obscene internet stuff, or sitcom Pixar!  Hooray!  I really do like animation, but for a medium with such limitless potential, which could be so abstract, so many limits seem self-imposed.  What about drama, romance, science-fiction, anything quiet, pure cinema, or silence?  The costs of feature-length mainstream animation have put it beyond all but the most commercial concerns.  “Waking Life” and the forthcoming “A Scanner Darkly” are only weird because they’re made on the cheap.  Who knows the story behind “Triplets of Belleville,” but it was bloody brilliant. So this past Friday I couldn’t resist a chance to see “The Best of the 2004 Ottawa International Animation Festival.”  I’m not sure if this particular compilation will ever be available on video, appear on IMDb, or should even be in quotation marks.  But I’m reviewing it anyway.  The anthology is set up to alternate between comedy and tragedy, long pieces and short pieces, and made for a great evening. The “Best of” kicks off with Audience Award Winner “Revenge of the Crabs,” a parable from France about how predictable and routine life can be.  A certain species of crabs, according to “Crabs,” can only move side-to-side and can’t adjust this at all, even slightly.  From the place of their birth, they can only go left or right.  One with missing legs can only go in a circle.  One born between two rocks is doomed to cover the same foot of ground forever.  The piece is in black-and-white, but reversed, with white outlines and black backgrounds, and is humorously grotesque in much the same way as “The Triplets of Belleville.” Russia wins the “Best Film for Children” with an adorable tale of two grasshoppers who open a music store, only to be beset by a mother fly convinced her two spoiled children can do anything without trying.  The resolution is suitably Russian in its resignation.  The figures seem largely cut from still pictures, but somehow more magical and mobile than that, especially as they fly and dance to the instruments they’re trying to peddle. We are reunited with our old friends from Aardman animation (“Chicken Run,” “Wallace and Gromit”) in a new episode of “Creature Comforts,” winner for Best Television Series for Adults.  The premise is the same as the previous, Oscar-winning “Creature Comforts:”  the voices of working class Londoners, talking about anything, are recorded, then set to clay animals who reflect the words and attitudes of the speakers, however obtusely.  This time the topic is whether dogs are better than cats, or vice versa.  The Aardman animators achieve some of the best animated faces through exaggeration; Aardman characters seldom close their mouths all the way because their teeth are too large.  I can’t wait for “Wallace and Gromit:  The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” “La Piccola Russia,” (“The Little Russian”) is an Italian short, winner of Best Narrative Short Film Under 35 Minutes, and a brilliant composition of fat, black brush strokes, like a thousand impressionist rough drafts done in water color all running together.  Sinister, mysterious, and surprisingly erotic, the piece is like a condensed “Crime and Punishment,” except its protagonist is an unthinking ogre, driven to crime by lust and laziness.  Flashbacks and women transform into birds, everything runs together like a memory, and the sounds are dreamily distant and indistinct.  It was not a crowd-pleaser when I saw it, but it’s still the best of the anthology. The crowd at the art museum found the internet-style cartoons easier to digest.  But, when surrounded by bleeding water colors, dancing clay, and lively pencil drawings, Flash and Photoshop struck me, not as bad, but shallow.  Still, “The Shining in Thirty Seconds (and Re-Enacted by Bunnies)” is pretty deliriously funny (winner of the Best Internet Series), and the war satire “Candy Venery,” focusing on two young princes eating lollipops, is direct and punchy in its cynicism.  It won Best Animated Short Made for the Internet.  The anthology wraps up with internet animators JibJab doing “This Land,” their parody of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”  Puppet-shaped pictures of George W. Bush and John Kerry are animated to sing “This Land is My Land” and a comic compression of the men’s personalities and the entire red state vs. blue state nonsense ensues.  “You can’t say nuclear!” sings Kerry, referring to his opponent.  “That really scares me!”  It won Best New Media award. Shorter shorts also include a European music video, in which doodles on a coffeeshop table come to life, and the animated opening titles for Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can.”  If you’ve seen that film then you know how good they are, but viewing them in this context drove home how well they summarize the entire film and era, albeit heavily abstracted. Page two of "2004 Ottawa Animation Festival."                             Back to home.