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Director: Michael Mills
Release date: 1971
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Evolution’ is Michael Mills’ cartoony take on the biological concept. The short features several fantasy creatures, starting with single cells in a pond (which all look like eye balls).
Mills depicts the origin of sex, the struggle of life, and the colonization of land, but none of his images are remotely serious, and most scenes consist of short gags. Unfortunately, the short is not too funny, and feels a little empty, ending quite abruptly and disappointingly.
Five years later Bruno Bozzetto did a much better job when depicting the same subject in his Boléro section of ‘Allegro non troppo’ (1976)
Watch ‘Evolution’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Evolution’ is available on the DVD ‘Best of the Best – Especially for Kids!’
Director: Lee Mishkin
Release date: November 8, 1974
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
This short video clip is an all favorite of mine, perfectly illustrating Roger Glover’s rather hippie-like hit song from his concept album for children ‘The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast’, which in turn is based on a poem with the same title.
Both the original poem, the record were designed by Alan Aldridge, and so is Halas & Batchelor’s animation film, with charming results. Harold Whitaker has turned these images into charming animation very well, and Lee Mishkin does a good job transferring the lyrics to faithful, if often surprising images.
Young Ronnie James Dio’s voice is given to a minstrel frog, who walks to the Butterfly Ball itself, together with a number of a masked animals. Three drunken salamanders provide some comic relief, as does a fat toad at the ball itself. The slightly surreal images are a delight throughout and the clip is over before you know it. I wish the whole record was transferred into animation this way.
Watch ‘Butterfly Ball (Love Is All)’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Butterfly Ball (Love Is All)’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Halas & Batchelor Short Film Collection’
Director: Jeroen Jaspaert
Airing date: December 25, 2017
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘The Highway Rat’ is the sixth animated Christmas special by Magic Light Pictures. Like all the others (save ‘Revolting Rhymes’ from 2016) the film is based on a children’s book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, and like all, narrated in rhyme.
The film boasts the same charming stop-motion-like computer animation and elaborate real sets as the others, and features excellent music by René Aubry, but frankly, the film’s source material is less engrossing than for example ‘The Gruffalo’ (2009) or ‘Room on the Broom‘ (2012). The first half consists of the highway rat taking away food from passing animals only, and the creature’s punishment and reform feel rather obligate and uninspired.
Nevertheless, the film remains a wonderful thing to look at, as neither the animation nor the visuals cease to charm. Especially entertaining is the silent comedy, mostly provided by the Highway Rat’s horse. Done with great subtlety and excellent use of eye expressions this is animation at its very best.
Watch an excerpt from ‘The Highway Rat’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Highway Rat’ is available on DVD
Directors: Tim Johnson & Karey Kirkpatrick
Release Date: May 19, 2006
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
Based on a comic strip, ‘Over the Hedge’, Dreamworks’s sixth computer animated feature, is a charming, if unassuming film, which belongs to the better half of the Dreamworks features, if barely so.
Unlike the unappealing movie ‘Shark Tale’ (2004) for example, all the actions of the characters have their origin in real animal behavior: they hibernate, they forage and they’re threatened by a human environment to which they have to adapt.
The film’s story is original in that it’s not found in the comic strip on which the movie is based. However, at the same time the story is not too original as it contains some standard, almost obligatory scenes, a feature that hampered more and more American animated feature films from 2005 on.
Nevertheless, the film’s story is well executed: the storytelling is lean, the contrast between the two likable protagonists, the brazen raccoon RJ and the cautious turtle Verne, is well-played, as are the two villains: the mafia-like bear Vincent and the Verminator. Even the side-characters are developed enough to like and to care for them (unlike the many personas in Blue Sky’s ‘Robots‘ (2005), for example).
Even though it contains some very realistic effects, like the animation of fur, the animation generally is not very lifelike, and more akin to the jerky animation of Tex Avery films than to the flow of Disney. Especially, the animation of the ADHD-squirrel Hammy is frantic. This character is also responsible for the highlight of the film, in which Hammy, on caffeine, has sped so much that he sees the world practically motionless.
‘Over The Hedge’ is by no means a classic, but it’s entertaining and well-told. In the world of American computer animated features this is already a plus.
Watch the tailer for ‘Over the Hedge’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Jan Švankmajer
Release Date: 1967
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
‘Historia Naturae, Suita’ is an abstract, yet morbid and disturbing film.
It uses drawings, models, skeletons, stuffed and live animals, which change into each other and which perform morbid dances. Their antics are interspersed with a close up of a man eating meat.
We see molluscs (Aquatilia, foxtrot), insects (Hexapoda, bolero), fish (Pisces, blues), reptiles (Reptilia, tarantella), birds (Aves, tango), mammals (Mammalia, menuet), monkeys (Simiae, polka) and man (Homo, waltz), successively.
It shows us that we, men, are made from the same mortal matter as the rest of the animal kingdom, which in this film appear to us only as collectibles or food. This unsettling reminder is emphasized by the last shot, in which the human is replaced by a skull, eating…
The music is a perfect match to the surrealistic imagery, with its rather abstract, uncanny and atonal renderings of the dance forms mentioned.
Watch ‘Historia Naturae, Suita’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.totalshortfilms.com/ver/pelicula/379
‘Historia Naturae, Suita’ is available on the DVD ‘Jan Svankmajer – The Complete Short Films’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 