Foreign Animation Thread (Past / Present / Future)

[Piggles]

Taking a break from anime since I’m hitting the road again, and with Annecy the hots right now, I finally got around to watching my dvds of Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor & Other Fantastic Films and The Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal.

A Country Doctor opens with the titular short which had won a nomination at Annecy 2007 and deservedly so since it's a thoroughly creepy and Poe-esque tale. The other highlight is Mountain Head, which won the award at Annecy 2003 and various other competitions as well as an Oscar nomination (also the same year Spirited Away won the gold). Other than The Old Crocodile, the other shorts are random "nonsense" which are alright, but nothing that I enjoyed too much.

I didn’t really care for the Kabals much either. I don’t know if the animation technique has a name, but I liked it. But I got bored about halfway through.

In semi-related news, I also watched this which I found at a thrift store earlier this year.




Apparently, it’s a collection of graduating students’ projects and despite the crudeness of the art for the time, the majority of the shorts are pretty entertaining. I don’t know Korean, but thankfully only a couple had dialogue, most notably the 1st of the 2D set which is about a man and woman trapped under the rubble of a collapsed building. My favorites were:

511 Kinderheim - “Blah Blah” (their translation) - 2 boys at a cafe marvel at a man meeting with multiple girlfriends at different times.

Never Give Up!! Dream of Toys - similar to the part in Toy Story with Sid

Dust - 3 dust blobs try to evade a man trying to get rid of them

Money Carnival - in a world of living piggy banks, one attempts to strike it big at a casino

Salesman - a rabbit pitches a shiny new dishwasher and diningware with a glamorous song and dance number to a turtle

[Show spoiler]they end up being toy sets

There’s also one that involves a boxing match between a wolf and sheep and appears to pay a little homage to Hajime no Ippo.

The school’s Youtube channel probably has decent stuff but I haven’t checked it out.