The Animation Show

I saw "The Animation Show" with Dianne and Justin last night. It's been kind of a tradition for Dianne and I... tradition meaning we did it our freshman year, and then this year. The festival was actually cancelled for whatever reason last year, so that didn't count. It was really fun. They had set up a very large screen in Royce Hall, and the cartoons were better than last year's in my opinion (which is a very valuable opinion indeed). When we got inside Royce, Dianne and I headed straight for the merch table. Yeah, we like merch. She bought the DVD boxset of last years festival (the 2nd one) and the 1st Festival. With it, she got a free poster. She could either choose from this year's or last year's and asked me which one she should choose. I said that I couldn't make that decision for her, but that I knew that only 400 copies of last year's poster were ever printed, and I'm sure they printed much more for this year's. She got this year's. Anyways, the merch girls at the table were so impressed by my random trivia knowledge that they gave me last year's poster. I had told them that I had been looking at the website on-and-off again for months debating on whether or not I should buy the damn poster (because it cost $20... it's quite large though), and that they had made me quite happy.

When we sat down Dianne and I were talking about last year's festival, which we had seen at the Nuart Theatre. I guess the audience had simply outgrown that theatre. We talked about how we had met Don Hertzfeldt and this australian guy who did this awesom e claymation and whose name I can't remember....ah yes, I quick google search of "Ward 13" (the title) produced the name "Peter Cornwell." You can see his cartoon here. It was most definitely one of my favourites from last year. And then Dianne started talking about how we saw the movie Primer. There, we had met the guys who made the film and starred in it. She started talking about how cute, how hot, etc. the guys were, and started asking me if I agreed. "Weren't they hot? Yeah, remember the guy with brown hair, how hot he was?" Wtf was she expecting me to say with Justin right next to me? All I could mutter out was a "Well, I don't really remember how they looked like... I guess... they were just like.... standard white guys I guess." And yes, although they were quite attractive, I'm not going to go off about it in front of Justin. Please, some courtesy would be appreciated.

It was kind of sad being in a big venue. The closest we got to Don Hertzfeldt and mike Judge was seeing their face on the screen giving a generalized, and I'm sure slighty scripted, greeting. I felt betrayed. Last year, I could have a conversation with them. Well, not Mike Judge... but he did stand 10 feet away from me! I like small theatres because they are so much more intimate... you kind of lose that in a place like Royce. And I suppose with the growing success of the festival, it'll just mean less contact with artists and higher ticket prices.

The line-up was really good. Nothing that I didn't like. The last film had a heavy british accent attached to it, so it made it difficult to understand at times, but I still ilked the animation.

"Rabbit" by Run Wrake
"City Paradise" by Gaelle Denis
"Everything Will Be Ok" by Don Hertfeldt
"Collision" by Max Hattler
"9" by Shane Acker (A UCLA grad)
"No Room for Gerold" by Daniel Nocke
"Guide Dog" by Bill Pympton
"Eaux Forte" by Remi Chaye
"Overtime" by Oury Atlan
"Game Over" by Pes
"Dreams and Desires" by Joanna Quinn

I would say my favourites would have to be .... Jesus, I liked so many of them. it hard to say. Probably Rabbit, Everything Will Be Ok, and Guidedog. I don't know. They all had something really special about them. It's hard to compare really different types of animation. Anyways, if you have a chance to catch it this year... well, I guess you can just see the cartoon here, so that doesn't really make that much sense, but don't rely on my for next year! See it!