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Director: Masaaki Yuasa
Release date: June 10, 2019
Rating: ★★
Review:
One of the most interesting animation directors to come from Japan is Masaaki Yuasa. He brought us very idiosyncratic movies as ‘Mindgame’ (2004) and ‘Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ (2017). Both features have striking visuals that make them stand out within the vast anime canon.
‘Ride Your Wave’, Yuasa’s feature film from 2019, is remarkably normal compared to these earlier features. True, the human designs are strangely elongated, there are some distorted shots, and strange perspectives, and the color designs are brighter than usual in anime, but the background art is much more standard anime fare. The story, too, has nothing of the mind-blowing qualities of the earlier features. In fact, ‘Ride Your Wave’ is a disappointingly normal love story with a supernatural element, an almost obligate story ingredient in Japanese feature animation.
‘Ride Your Wave’ tells about a surfing girl who falls in love with a fire fighting boy, but then disaster strikes… Yuasa uses standard montage techniques to tell of the lovers’ bliss, and equally standard flashback techniques and repetitions of what people had said to make his message come across. This makes the film all too explanatory and heavy-handied. In fact, there’s little to enjoy in ‘Ride Your Wave’ besides the designs and some shots, and the film doesn’t rise above the standard fare. From Yuasa we certainly expect better…
Watch the trailer of ‘Ride Your Wave’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Ride Your Wave’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Earl Hurd
Release Date: January 28, 1923
Stars: Bobby Bumps & Fido
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
I was already impressed with ‘Fresh Fish’, but Earl Hurd’s next Bobby Bumps picture, ‘Chicken Dressing’ is even better.
Earl Hurd, jr. again is a director at a “large film company”, in which Bobby Bumps and Fido co-star a live action cat, rabbit and chicken. These real animals interact marvelously with the cartoon starts, and one immediately believes they’re movie stars, as well.
Only after 4 minutes the ‘real’ picture starts, with Bobby Bumps and Fido being firefighters, rushing to the fire on a live action-rabbit pulled cart, and assisted by the real life cat, while the chicken plays the damsel in distress. Highlight is when Bobby Bumps takes out one of the smoke drawings, handles it as if it were a spring, and complains to the director about this badly drawn smoke.
Soon some real smoke enters the picture, making Bobby faint. The director asks Bobby whether he wants to go to a real life hospital or a cartoon hospital. After imagining the first (also starring two live action children as a doctor and nurse, respectively) , Bobby wisely chooses the latter. In the end the whole cartoon appears to have been the chicken’s dream.
‘Chicken Dressing’ is an absolute delightful cartoon, mixing live action and animation to a satisfying end, and providing some great gags along the way. Earl Hurd makes great use of the animals, sometimes superimposing drawings on them. This cartoon shows that Earl Hurd should be counted among the animation greats, and not only remembered for his cel patent.
Watch ‘Chicken Dressing’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Chicken Dressing’ is available on the Blu-Ray/DVD-combo ‘Cartoon Roots: Bobby Bumps and Fido’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 