Cartoon Fever: The World’s Greatest Animated Shorts (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS (1992 & 1995)

Even now, The Spirit of Christmas is funny as hell (and, uh, REALLY dirty...so if you haven’t been fired already, you might want to think twice before clicking the above clip at your workstation, unless of course you work in a Tourette’s ward). But way back in 1995, before Trey Parker and Matt Stone were famous, before South Park was a basic cable staple and before Stan, Kyle and Cartman were allowed to curse like cardboard cut-out sailors in their R-rated big-screen debut, this short (commissioned as a video Christmas card by a Fox TV exec who’d seen Parker and Stone’s college short “Jesus Vs. Frosty”) was a jaw-dropping revelation, a blend of comic provocation, pop culture geekery and relatable humanity that became the animators’ signature style when the cult popularity of their seemingly primitive debut catapulted them to infamy.

THE WRONG TROUSERS (1993)

One of the risks with animation is that the work it takes to create a finished film will bog down the story the film tells. But this has never been a problem for the films of Nick Park. With his beloved characters Wallace and Gromit, Park created some of animation’s most enduring films, which use a veddy British sense of humor to leaven some truly awe-inspiring flights of fancy. Nowhere is this more the case than in the second Wallace and Gromit adventure, The Wrong Trousers, which finds the dotty Wallace taking in a new boarder, with disastrous results. Armed with plenty of sound effects but only a single speaking role, Park tells his story almost completely through his images with a visual flair and storytelling efficiency that puts most features (animated or otherwise) to shame. The film even builds to an action-filled climax so assured that it reportedly inspired David O. Russell at one point when he was editing Three Kings. The Wrong Trousers demands multiple viewings -- not only because you might miss something the first time around, but also it’s hard to pay attention to Park’s bravura technique when you’re being so thoroughly entertained.

LUXO JR. (1986)

Other animation studios might make as much money as the geniuses at Pixar, but no American animation outlet can boast their critical cachet, a testament to the care with which they make their films and their ongoing quest to pursue new horizons. Even in their early days, Pixar was always experimenting, something that was in evidence as early as their second short film, Luxo Jr. Partly out of necessity, director John Lasseter and his team of animators didn’t use any of the cute animals that dominated the Disney model of animation, but rather a pair of everyday desk lamps. But while this decision was no doubt due to the fact that living creatures are much more difficult to animate via computer (a problem Pixar has long since resolved), Luxo Jr. nonetheless finds life in its inanimate protagonists. By finding possibilities for personality in the handful of possibilities presented by the lamps -- little more than a bulb, a swiveling head, a hinged arm and a base that hops around (complete with a power cord tail) -- Pixar established a knack for animating seemingly limited characters, something that would serve them well later on with such creations as Toy Story’s Mr. Potato Head, Monsters, Inc.’s Mike Wazowski, and even WALL*E and EVE. Pixar still cranks out a new animated short in conjunction with their features, but none they’ve made since has had the same level of charm as Luxo Jr.

NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN (1940)

Alas, not all old-school animation techniques have managed to survive. When husband-and-wife Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker created pin-screen animation- which involved manipulating a screen holding hundreds of thousands of pins and photographing the images a frame at a time- they couldn’t have known that their painstaking process would only end up being used on roughly half a dozen projects. But while pin-screen ended up requiring more work than most filmmakers were willing to give, it’s hard to argue with the results. In Alexeieff and Parker’s very first completed pin-screen short, Night on Bald Mountain, there’s a kind of expressiveness that can’t be found in any other form of animation, a smooth yet eerie sort of shadow play that, in the cast of this particular short, suits the material perfectly. It takes some searching to find Alexeieff and Parker’s other works (their best-known effort can be found at the opening of Orson Welles’ The Trial), but for fans of animation, it’s well worth the effort.

FAST FILM (2003)

Given the time required to make an animated film today, it’s understandable when animators use computers to aid them in their work. Still, it’s bracing to see an animator who attempts something impossibly ambitious without resorting to digital assistance. Perhaps the best recent example of this is Virgil Widrich’s Fast Film, a thirteen-minute piece from 2003 which integrated images from classic movies into an animated framework. Watching moments such as the one in which various movie-themed boxcars race down a track, it’s easy to think Widrich accomplished them with CGI. But think again- Widrich printed over 65,000 frames of film onto sheets of paper, folded the sheets into various three-dimensional objects to be placed into the image, and shot them in the proper frame order. Granted, after a while all the virtuosity on display here becomes a little overwhelming. But that seems a small price to pay for a work of such jaw-dropping ambition.

Click Here for Part One, Part Three, Part Four & Part Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark

YouTube Cabinet of Curiosities: Night on Bald Mountain (1933)

Paul Clark — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

We're all firming up our lists of the best new films of 2007- at least, I know I am. But I think it's also important to look back at the classics we finally caught up with this past year. I've seen some real corkers, but none has stuck with me quite like the 1933 animated short Night on Bald Mountain. Directed by husband-and-wife team Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker, this short made excellent use of Modeste Mussorgsky's composition, beating Fantasia to the punch by seven years. While Alexeieff and Parker lacked Disney's resources, the film is nonetheless one of the most visually ravishing animated films I've ever seen.

But while one can appreciate Night on Bald Mountain without knowing anything about it, knowing about Alexeieff and Parker's animation technique makes the film feel like something of a miracle. The film was the first to utilize "pin screen animation", a technique pioneered by Alexeieff and Parker. Pin screen was a form of stop-motion animation that used a large screen filled with thousands of pins (hence the name). Images were created by moving the pins in and out as needed, as lights shining from the side of the screen would provide greater illumination to the pins that were pushed out than the ones that were pushed in. The filmmakers would then photograph a single frame, move the pins slightly, and start again.

Understandably, this was a painstaking process, and it took months and even years for Alexeieff and Parker to complete their short films. Because of this, the filmmakers only finished six pin screen shorts in their lifetimes. In addition, Orson Welles fans (and I'm assuming the great majority of you fall into this category) will recognize the technique from the prologue to Welles' 1962 adaptation of The Trial. Alexeieff and Parker demonstrated the technique for posterity in the film Pin Screen, which can be found on disc 7 of the DVD set Norman McLaren: The Master's Edition. Many of Alexeieff and Parker's other films can also be viewed on YouTube.

So what were some of the best classics you saw for the first time in 2007? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.

The Screengrab : night on bald mountain

Cartoon Fever: The World’s Greatest Animated Shorts (Part Two)

YouTube Cabinet of Curiosities: Night on Bald Mountain (1933)