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Director: Oh Sung-Yoon
Release date: July 28, 2011
Rating: ★★★
Review:
I once grabbed a copy of this film from a Tesco’s in Northern Ireland because it looked visually interesting. But I must be one of the very few people who have seen this movie: the film remains totally obscure: I’ve never encountered this feature on any animation festival, review site or such, and it’s not even getting 1000 viewers on the IMDb. This film certainly deserves better, as we shall see below.
‘Daisy, a Hen into the Wild’ turns out to be a Korean film: it was made by Lotte Entertainment and Myung Films, both based in South Korea, and indeed the film’s visuals are a strange mix of Western and Eastern tropes. Especially the character designs are a mixed bag, with some animals looking very Disneyesque (e.g., the little Duckling), others genuinely Asian (e.g., the barnyard ducks and the otter mayor). Most ridiculous is the heroic gander Wilson, who’s a strange combination of a duck and a handsome anime hero, with a waving hairdo.
Nevertheless, ‘Daisy a Hen into the Wild’ is a very attractive film to look at. The coloring is bold and glowing, with bright oranges and greens popping from the screen. Moreover, all characters have an airbrushed coloring, rendering them soft and rich in color. Even better is the background art, which consist of soft, poetical story book-like painting, unlike anything you’ll encounter in either American or Japanese cinema. In fact, the background painting style reminded me most of Jimmy Murakami’s films based on Raymond Briggs’s stories. Some of this background art is extraordinarily beautiful and a real feast to the eye. The animation is of a high level, too, if not too outstanding, often strangely blending naturalism with both Disneyesque character animation and Japanese anime animation styles. There’s a splash of functional computer animation, most interesting when showing moving sceneries.
The story is very surprising, too, and unlike any American animation film. The story takes place within one year, and tells about Daisy, one of countless hens in a battery cage. Daisy’s clearly pining away in this depressing environment. At the start of the movie, she looks sickly and sad, and yearning for the outside world, especially that of some prime fowl that can walk the barnyard freely. At one point she plays dead to escape. The escape succeeds, but if you’d think this would be a film on freedom, you’re mistaken.
It soon becomes clear the loud and naïve Daisy is ill-suited for the outside world. The barnyard fowl expels her and there’s a one-eyed weasel roaming about. Luckily, the gander Wilson helps her, as does the otter, mayor of a large pond, even though the waterfowl despise the newcomer, too. Then things take an unexpected dramatic turn, and the Daisy’s tale becomes one of motherhood, selflessness and even sacrifice.
It’s best not to reveal too much, for this film’s story takes surprising directions up to a final twist unheard of in any animation film from the Western world. For example, Daisy faces some real limits to her possibilities in the outside world, so unlike the limitless American Dream so often depicted in American animated cinema. Even if she wanted to, she can’t be everything she wants to be, and part of the film is about making brave decisions, nonetheless. The only cliché part all too familiar to Western eyes is that of an outsider winning an important competition.
The story is surprisingly serious, and the film contains very little comic relief (only in the form of the otter and some of the barnyard fowl). The Korean makers don’t shun the cruelty of nature and show that every creature has its own very good reasons for what it does, even if it’s killing other species. And they’re able to do so in a moving tale with an attractive visual design.
In all, ‘Daisy, a Hen into the Wild’ is an original and unconventional film that deserves to be seen more. The movie shows that South Korea can have a strong own voice in the animation world, independent of either Western or Japanese animation traditions, or least blending these to a unique style of its own.
Watch the trailer for ‘Daisy, a Hen into the Wild’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Daisy, a Hen into the Wild’ is available on DVD
Director: Pascale Hecquet
Release Date: June 9, 2012
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Duo de Volailles, Sauce Chasseur’ is a short comedy film in which a white and a black chicken are threatened by a fox in their own home.
The film is is black and white itself and tries to play with the idea that the white chicken is invisible in light and the black chicken invisible in the dark. Thus the film features a lot of on and off switching of lights.
Unfortunately, the film never succeeds in getting funny. Hecquet’s facial designs on the fox are more trite than funny, and his timing is sloppy. It certainly doesn’t help that at one point the two chickens start dancing a tango. How this deludes the fox is beyond me, because both thus remain visible to the fox throughout. Hecquet’s use of split screen is a rather petty try to make the action more exciting than it really is. The end result is a disappointingly tiresome film that never lives up to its clever premise.
Watch ‘Duo de Volailles, Sauce Chasseur’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Duo de Volailles, Sauce Chasseur’ is available on the Belgian DVD ‘Haas & Hert en andere verhaaltjes’
Director: Émile Cohl
Release Date: April 28, 1910
Rating: ★
Review:
Émile Cohl’s ventures into stop-motion form the weakest part of his prolific output, and ‘Le petit Chantecler’ is no exception.
The film is told in four acts, but it remains utterly inexplicable what happens on the screen. For the most part we just watch stiff statues of roosters, chickens, chicks, a pheasant, a pig, some ducks, and even eggs move in front of an equally static backdrop painting.
There’s an obvious suggestion of story, but it’s completely lost on the audience. Only with the arrival of Władisław Starewicz, and his groundbreaking film ‘The Cameraman’s Revenge‘ (1912), there would arise a real master of the stop motion medium.
Watch ‘Le petit Chantecler’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Le petit Chantecler’ is available on the DVDs ‘Émile Cohl – L’agitateur aux mille images’
Director: Wilfred Jackson
Release Date: June 8, 1932
Stars: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In this film Mickey and Minnie are farmers, which makes the film a little like a remake of ‘The Plow Boy‘ (1929).
First we watch Mickey planting seeds with help from Pluto, and Minnie milking a cow. Then Mickey decides to scare Minnie by stepping inside the scarecrow. A string of gags leads to Mickey playing the bagpipes on three geese. This starts a musical number, which is almost Silly Symphony-like in its directionless musical fun at the barnyard. We watch cows, lamb, ducks, pigeons, turkeys and chickens moving and dancing to the tune of Turkey in the Straw.
But then we cut to several chickens laying multitudes of eggs, except for poor Fanny. At this point suddenly a story develops, with Fanny laying an enormous egg, which attracts a lot of attention from her fellow chickens, the other animals, and finally, Mickey. Mickey rushes to bring his camera to make a picture of it, but unfortunately, he uses too much flash light powder, and everything explodes. This final gag was also used by Floyd Gottfredson in the Mickey Mouse comic strip, published on March 13, 1932.
‘The Musical Farmer’ is one of the weaker Mickey Mouse films of 1932. Like e.g. ‘Mickey Cuts Up‘ and ‘The Grocery Boy‘ it’s uses the part-musical-number-part-frantic-finale-formula, but by mid-1932 shots of dancing animals had become a bit tiring and old-fashioned. Moreover, Fanny’s story feels a little out of place, and I suspect that part of this film was intentionally designed as a Silly Symphony, which apparently never really took off.
Watch ‘Musical Farmer’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Mickey Mouse cartoon No. 42
To the previous Mickey Mouse cartoon: Mickey’s Revue
To the next Mickey Mouse cartoon: Mickey in Arabia
‘Musical Farmer’ is available on the DVD ‘Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Black and White Volume Two’
Director: Charles Nichols
Release Date: July 21, 1950
Stars: Pluto, Bent-Tail & Bent-Tail junior
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
‘Pests of the West’ is the second of three cartoons featuring the coyote Bent-Tail and his dopey son.
In ‘Sheep Dog‘ (1949) they’d tried to steal sheep; this time the hungry duo is after the chickens. Pluto is only the straight man in a cartoon, which is devoted to the delightful interplay between father and son.
Although not as classic as ‘The Legend of Coyote Rock’, ‘Pests of the West’ is a funny cartoon. The short is packed with gags, some being quite Tex Averyan, like the son hanging in mid air until his father knocks him down. However, its highlight is the great scene in which Pluto and Bent-Tail fight for a chicken. The wonderful and jazzy soundtrack enhances all the fun. It was composed by Paul Smith, who had been an arranger for Disney since the late 1930s, and would become a noteworthy composer on the studio’s True-Life Adventures.
Watch ‘Pests of the West’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Pluto cartoon No. 38
To the previous Pluto cartoon: Puss-Cafe
To the next Pluto cartoon: Food for Feudin’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 