Film is Truth 24 Times a Second

A recently added animated gem currently graces the new arrival shelf in FIT, Princes and Princesses, a 2000 French release by animator Michel Ocelot. In the same style as one of the first full length animated films ever made, Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed, (Germany, 1926) Princes and Princesses uses cut out black silhouette animation against saturated jewel tone backdrops to relate six stories of royalty from an array of time periods and places in the world. Although the initial idea of 70 minutes of black cutouts dancing across the screen may strike some as tedious, the movement and stylistic detail of the art direction make turning away from the film as difficult as putting down a well crafted children’s book halfway through. The vignette-style presentation of the stories, laden with delicate props ranging from magical diamonds to Egyptian figs, assists in creating an entrancing all-ages flick.

If you’re like me, and you enjoy animation for grown ups, you owe it to yourself to check out the breathtaking, surreal and groundbreaking work of Bay Area underground animation giant Larry Jordan, the greatest cartoonist you’ve probably never heard of.

I didn’t know a thing about Jordan’s work until seeing a smattering of reels a few years back, including Sophie’s Place, which you can check out a fairly low quality print of on YouTube here. ( A caution here - though animated, Jordan’s works are not for kids. Consider yourself duly warned.) I was hooked. Jordan’s stop motion collage animation, culled in large part frm paintings, etchings and engravings, was mesmerizing, a kaleidoscopic array of colors, shapes and themes that collide, fade, vanish and transform, only to return later as something entirely new. It was bizarre, yes, and calling it inscrutable is probably being a bit generous, but Jordan’s work transcends a need to entirely understand it. Comparable to Cocteau in his imagery and symbolism and Rauschenberg in his sense of color design, the films of Lawrence Jordan defy simple explanation. They are by turns challenging and carefree, mystical and lurid and always supremely rewarding.

After my brush with Jordan’s work, I found myself trying to hunt down copies of his other films with at best marginal success, occasionally lucking into a third generation copy or sub-par internet clip. Luckily, the fine folks at San Francisco’s Canyon Cinema have released a new boxed set representing the entirety of Jordan’s 40 year filmmaking career. Whether they know it yet or not, animation fans everywhere are in their debt.

Culled from archives across the nation, many of these works are seeing the public eye for the first time in years, bringing new and deserved attention to animated classics like the Orson Welles narrated Rime of the Ancient Mariner or the magical documentary The Sacred Art of Tibet. Also included is Jordan’s live action work, including the only existing footage of reclusive surrealist assemblage artist and filmmaker Joseph Cornell, for whom Jordan worked as an assistant for a brief period. If you’re interested in surrealist art, avant garde cinema, the history of animation, or just having your mind blown, I cannot reccomend this collection highly enough. And of course, you can find The Films of Larry Jordan in our New Arrivals section this week here at Film is Truth.

There are so many well known strikes against the Fox Network that I don’t feel obliged to go into them here. You can insert you own gripe if you feel the need. Or if you’re feeling low on ammo, just come in and rent Outfoxed, a terrific documentary that will give you a whole new list of reasons not to like Rupert Murdoch. But no matter what you have to say about Fox, there’s one thing they’ve always done pretty well – cartoons. For all its warts, this is the network that nursed The Simpsons from a bit of rough time filler between psychiatrist jokes on the Tracey Ullman show to a pop culture leviathan that will surely one day devour us all. They had the good sense to swallow their pride and bow to popular demand, bringing back Family Guy after an early cancellation and letting the show become a short attention span classic in its own right. And despite their short runs, Fox shows like Futurama late Fox pick up The Critic have cemented their own places as cult classics of prime time animation.

And naturally, much of Fox’s best animation work was geared toward kids. They debuted the fondly remembered Animaniacs, a cartoon series that featured both a children’s song that named every single country in the world and a healthy dose of classic Warner Brothers cartoon violence. It also managed to simultaneously parody The Day the Clown Cried and Apocalypse Now in one episode, earning the show’s creators movie nerd points to the end of time. Also making its small screen debut on Fox was the film noir inspired Batman: The Animated Series. Moving swiftly from weekday afternoons to primetime, the show garnered a string of Emmys for its sharp writing and groundbreaking visual style. But what about Saturday mornings, the traditional bastion of sugar coated breakfast cereal and brightly colored moving pictures?

During the mid to late 90’s, Fox had some clever bunny executive working for them whose job it apparently was to buy the rights to some of the best and little known comics being produced and develop them into absolutely brilliant pieces of Saturday morning animation. I’d like to shake this person’s hand, because they’re responsible for some of the smartest, funniest and most subversive cartoon series ever created, like super hero parody The Tick and The Adventures of Sam and Max: Freelance Police, the entire series of which hit rental shelves this week. (more…)

The Motion Picture Academy has announced the twelve films that will be vying for a nomination for best Animated Feature Film. The list:

• Alvin and the Chipmunks
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
• Bee Movie
• Beowulf
• Meet the Robinsons
• Persepolis
• Ratatouille
• Shrek the Third
• The Simpsons Movie
• Surf’s Up
• Tekkonkinkreet
• TMNT

The three nominees will be announced in January. My early predictions: Ratatouille, The Simpsons, and Persepolis.

Michel Gagne is a cartoonist, children’s book creator and a contributor to several animated films. Originally from Quebec, he’s lived in Bellingham for a couple years now, and he’ll be giving a free presentation at the Whatcom County Museum of Art this Thursday, October 11th at 10:15 AM. Check it out if you have a chance.

There’s a very interesting article (”oral-history”, actually) about The Simpsons available at Vanity Fair’s online site here. I haven’t seen any new episodes of the show in about five years, but I remember loving the first half-dozen years or so when it was originally broadcast. The DVD sets are up to season 9, which is just about when I stopped watching regularly, so it’ll be interesting to see how the quality fares as I catch up with the years I’ve missed — the few later episodes I have seen have been pretty poor: frenzied, scattershot, desperate, etc. (it’s fascinating and sad to follow the predictable course of great satirists like Matt Groening… eventually, almost without exception, work that was personal, subversive and meaningful becomes diluted and compromised. Even artists in other mediums less prone to success and scrutiny - such as the underground/alternative comics where Groening humbly began his career - aren’t immune to this decline.) Anyway, the show is still a remarkable achievement, if not for what it is, then at least for what it once was.

And it must have the most astonishing cast of characters in the history of television; even the “walk-ons” or throwaway characters are instantly memorable and well-defined. My favorite - by far - is C. Montgomery Burns (named after Groening’s cartoonist pal Charles Burns) followed by The Comic Book Guy, Moe The Bartender, Kang and Konos, etc. It’s worth mentioning the contributions of the voice artists here; I once saw a panel discussion/interview with the voice cast and it was clear from the spontaneity and wittiness of their ad-libbing that they are nearly as responsible as the writers for the formation of the characters.

My favorite episode is “Lisa’s Substitute” from season 2, which I think is one of the most touching things I’ve ever seen on TV. Yes, it makes me cry. The episode guest-stars Dustin Hoffman as the titular substitute teacher, though for some reason he’s credited as “Sam Etic”… which I can only assume is a reference to Hoffman’s Jewishness (?)

The Simpsons Movie will be released to theaters - after years of speculation, rumor and wishful thinking - on July 27.

I just read, via this link, that Ryan Larkin died last week. His career at first seemed precocious (creating several highly idiosyncratic and influential shorts while still in his twenties) but his fate was ultimately tragic — both aspects of his life explored in the very strange, Oscar-winning documentary DVD Ryan, which also includes examples of his startlingly intuitive work. His short films were lovingly (and time-consumingly) drawn by his own hand and provide a poetic alternative for personal expression in a medium generally used to sell toys and indoctrinate children (and unwary adults).

Larkin worked with Norman McLaren (who was actually Scottish-born) at the National Film Board of Canada, and whose work we have available on a two-disc set called Norman McLaren: The Collector’s Edition. This is some truly brilliant stuff, no lie — the range of styles (and the uncanny command of each) that flowed from this one man’s hands is awe-inspiring: traditional character animation, Oscar Fischinger-esque musical abstractions, Brakhage-like film painting and chemical experiments, gorgeously choreographed dance photography that brings to mind the pioneering styles of Muybridge or Edgerton, ahead-of-its-time use of raw electronic signals and computer animation, and on and on. I can’t extol the excellence of this collection highly enough. If I had to live with just one animation DVD for the rest of my life, this would be it.

A third animator of note from the Great White North is Grant Munro, who also collaborated with McLaren. Cut-Up: The Films of Grant Munro features his own work, which is just as varied (if not as virtuoso and accomplished) as McLaren’s.

All three discs are highly recommended — and if you’d like additional suggestions of experimental animation, please ask, as I’m working on a more thorough list to be published here… eventually.