April 11, 2008

Shark Suit: The Musical
The animator and director Brad Bird famously said he felt like punching anyone who called animation a genre rather than an art form in its own right. New York University’s Stephen Neary clearly demonstrates that respect for animation in his loving tribute to animated musicals Shark Suit: The Musical.
Mainstream animation is becoming less and less about telling compelling stories, but more about falling back on pop culture references and ironic self-awareness. After the last hurrah of hand-drawn, 2D animation in the 90s, 3D computer animation is now king, but (with the notable exception of the Pixar films) it seems like many animators today are content to let CGI make their jobs easier, rather than crafting something original with the new technology. In the case of some studios, computer animation has just made the churning out of product that much more efficient (I’m looking at you Happy Feet and Surf’s Up). Where are the dazzling new visuals and storytelling techniques computer animation promised? Well, in Pixar of course, but also in Neary’s student film, which seems to be absolutely in love with the art form itself.
In Neary’s words “Shark Suit is about a guy who wears a shark suit, and he becomes really attached to wearing the shark suit.” Basically, that’s all there is on a plot level. The key lies in the execution. Neary chooses to tell his story of Ethan, the love-struck butcher-shop employee whose obsession over wearing his shark suit may prevent him from being with his true love Daphne, almost entirely in song. “In my Shark Suit I have no cares / In my shark suit I don’t wear underwear!” Ethan sings with glee. What’s amazing is that Neary didn’t just write, direct, and animate the film, but he also co-wrote the music and lyrics. I challenge anyone to watch this film even once and not have that song embedded in your brain forever.
Neary very carefully chooses specific colors to represent the psychological conflict of his characters. When Ethan is first singing about his shark suit, he swings past a fantasy tie-dye backdrop full of pastel pink and orange, indicating his exuberance and love for his suit. When Tai Chan sings about the pain that his own obsession has brought him, Neary uses bold colors (particularly red) to render the butcher’s inner pain over his missed opportunities. And when Daphne sings about her loneliness, not only is her song slowed down relative to the other characters, but she sings against a minimalist, black backdrop conveying her loneliness and isolation. In that moment we realize that a small psychological block can become a big obsession that could threaten everybody’s happiness.
Neary picked up two awards at last month’s College Television Awards in LA: Best Animated Film (for Shark Suit) and the Ruckus Award. It’s well-deserved. The levels of emotional conflict at work in Shark Suit certainly make this film about more than just “a guy who wears a shark suit.” The great thing about Neary is that he doesn’t tell you to look for deeper meaning. He lets you discover it for yourself.

March 7, 2008

'Should Have Stayed in Bed' Review
How does comedy work on film? Usually a singular, instantly identifiable presence guides our emotions. We’re drawn into the world and characters of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Lucille Ball, Jacques Tati, Bill Murray, Steve Carell or any other comedy auteur. Having a singular personality to relate to and follow on a discrete journey builds narrative tension and ups the stakes for our emotional investment.
Aut Phanthavong’s Should Have Stayed in Bed lacks such a clearly defined hero. The closest thing is a fish, who exists wholly in voiceover. What makes the film work, however, is how it creates comedy through cinematic techniques, particularly editing. Rather than just relying on the comic timing, facial expressions, and reaction shots of a single performer, Should Have Stayed in Bed pulls out tricks like a subjective shot from the fish’s point of view as she looks at a plush fish on which she has a crush.
The story of Should Have Stayed in Bed is simple: a goldfish owner named Sebastian wakes up, spends his day navigating his treacherous school life, and because of all his campus-based distractions ends up neglecting his pet. Tragedy might ensue if Sebastian can’t feed her in time.
Phanthavong does a great job building the stakes for Sebastian that we know are going to prevent him from feeding his goldfish: he gets a drink spilled all over him, has car maintenance problems, etc. Even near the beginning, though, it’s clear that all may not be as it appears since he recognizes his goldfish’s faux British voice coming from a girl he meets. Does this mean that everything we’re seeing is a dream? That Sebastian may never have gotten out of bed? Maybe, maybe not. That’s up to you. It can take a couple viewings to come up with a reasonable hypothesis of what is really going on here, but that ambiguity just makes it all the more engaging.
The film is dripping with charm, and even if the characters are not the most memorable, the situations they’re in are. The way that Phanthavong makes everything unfold is the point here, with whimsical flourishes along the way like the exaggerated barbershop quartet vocalizing that provides ironic accompaniment to the visuals.
Should Have Stayed in Bed doesn’t have a particular point or message, but it’s all the better for that. It doesn’t feel any necessity to imbue its narrative with significance or make a statement about animal rights, for instance. If all films had to have “a point,” I think we’d all just want to stay in bed.

February 1, 2008

White Lies
Writers are often told, “Write what you know.” That can be difficult when you’re still a college student and haven’t had much life experience. Actually, some of the best writers haven’t experienced anything close to what they write about. But when a story comes around that’s as genuine as Jessica Dito and Frank Sun’s White Lies, you know that it’s key themes and ideas are woven somehow into the fabric of their experience.
White Lies is about a grown woman thinking back to the lies her mother told her to protect her from the harsh realities of the world. There was Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. Then there was the lie that her cat Gus had just “gone away for awhile” to a “nice place.” Finally, though, when her serviceman father is killed, there’s no way to shield her from reality any longer. But understanding now what her mother was trying to do, that she was trying to preserve for her daughter the innocence of childhood, makes her appreciate her mother’s love for her all the more. “I forgave my mother, and I hope someday my daughter will forgive me too.”
Whether or not the actual events of this film occurred in the lives of Sun or Dito is less important than their grasping at universal truths. Everybody’s parents lie to them at some point, not out of malicious deceit but from benevolence, from the knowledge that falsehoods can be easier to take at a young age than harsh reality. That Sun and Dito have made a film about universal truths that is also so attuned to nuances of the human experience, shows a master’s ability to capture both the universal and the personal, the general and the specific.
What could have been a pedantic film about “making a point” becomes much more interesting because of the personal nature of what happens on screen. The film starts off with the little girl staring out of her car window, then cutting to close-ups of her late father’s flag, her mother’s wedding ring, and her mother looking in the rear-view mirror to check on how her daughter is doing. It was a smart choice not to let the voiceover narration play too large of a role in the film, but rather use it just to set up the basic ideas. Instead, setting up the relationships between the characters and what they are doing through the visuals is a much more effective choice. Right away, we know that someone close to the little girl (probably her father) has died in combat because she is holding the flag, and that it’s her mother driving the car because of the concern she shows looking back at her daughter through the mirror.
Sun and Dito handle the montage of moments where her mother lies to her extremely well. When the narrator mentions Santa Claus, a left-to-right tracking shot surveys the scene of Christmas morning then smoothly dissolves into another tracking shot of the girl discovering that the Tooth Fairy left her money before dissolving to yet another shot of the mother’s face obscured in shadow, with only her eyes illuminated by a key spotlight. That one shot of her mother covered in shadow but for her eyes, conveys such longing and hope for her daughter that she will never have to know pain or despair, but understanding that sadness is inevitable and a part of the human experience.
While all-too-many student filmmakers are merely making genre parodies full of inside-jokes for their friends, how refreshing it is to see a student film break out of merely the student experience and grasp at a greater humanity. White Lies isn’t just a great student film, it’s a great film.

December 28, 2007

Review of Robin's Cage
How much control do we have over our own lives? That seems to be the central question in director Tim Aumun’s Robin’s Cage, a collaboration between five students at Juniata College and submitted by Jigar Patel. Aumun seems to be questioning how much freedom we have to script the itinerary of our existence, and whether, in fact, we’ve become such prisoners of routine that we’re as trapped as a robin in a cage, unable to soar.
The film is about a young man named Robin who awakens every morning at the sound of his alarm to undergo the same routine: school, homework, chores........

October 26, 2007

"It's Alive!" A Review of Bennett Cain's Seed
A mask-like figure stares out into the unknown. Dead and lifeless. Viny tendrils crawl achingly into the frame, ready to ensnare. The crackling, scurrying footsteps of insects punctuate hollow mechanical music. Is this a tomb? Was that a death mask? Wait…the mask turns toward us! In the words of Dr. Frankenstein, “It’s Alive!”
I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed stop-motion animation this much. Bennett Cain’s Seed (Savannah College of Art and Design) is a stop-motion animated film on the level of the best work of the Brothers Quay (Street of Crocodiles). It presents an organic world hollowed out by mechanization, where if you step into it, you too might be transformed…to become a cog in a machine.
Seed is a purely visual experience. Cain doesn’t clutter up the narrative with explanatory dialogue or narration. He shows you what’s happening, rather than tells you. That’s the mark of a great filmmaker.
On a literal level the plot ........