The Triplets of Belleville
Tue, Mar. 2nd, 2004 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterWeirdest movie ever.
I went to see it partially because of the Oscar song. Mostly I've been meaning to see it ever since I saw the blurb in EW, because I will go see any animated movie, especially if it's not made by Disney or Dreamworks. It's not that those are bad, I just want to see ones that aren't quite as... traditional.
First, "Destino" was shown kind of as a starter, the animated movie originally begun by Salvador Dali and Walt Disney (weird combo!), I think storyboarded by Dali. It looked like people finally picked up his sketches and animated them. Lots of CG animation, use of cell-shading I think, whatever that animation technique is that they used for Zelda: Wind Waker. Really, really gorgeous animation. The entire thing was beautiful and fluid and colorful, and really, really disturbing, a la Dali. One of the images that freaked me out the most were the ants crawling out of a crack in the man's palm. Ick. Incredibly surreal and strange and yet, beautiful.
Then Triplets started with that fake black and white footage they showed a little of at the Oscars (which made me desperately want to see it). I love animation, and sometimes the best way to get me to watch something new is to show me a clip of it. I adore how the people moved in the beginning clip, all wiggly lines and curves, like the early Disney Merrie Melodie shorts where it looked like no one had bones or joints. Then it goes into the real story, and the animation gets very realistic in a surreal way -- everything is exaggerated, but in a way that seems to bring out the essence of a character in a way that a straight portrait might not have. The dog and the boy are all nose, and the boy has these giant shadowed eyes. And the grandma (who's awesome!) has got her stump walk because one leg's shorter than the other, and a sort of flat, wrinkled, expressionless face. It's not a very comfortable movie to watch -- the people are all teeth or all leg muscle (the bikers) or all shoulders (the really funny men in black). And the boy was quite grossed out about the frogs, but I thought that was kind of funny.
I also loved the music, how random noises like a newspaper or burping would suddenly coalesce into rhythm and tune, like the opening of Cell Block Tango in Chicago the movie. Also reminded me of Blast, a British musical type thing I watched, which I've heard is a bit like Blue Man Group?
Just so many strange parts. And really, not much of a plot. The grandson is kidnapped by evil men in black for a nefarious purpose, and the grandma and the dog go after him. The boy said whoever drew it must have had a dog their entire life because they got all the weird little dog twitches and noises just right. Some really great visual gags too. Also, most of it was silent, just music and sound and the occasional grunty noise from the people, so I don't think there was any dubbing or subtitling at all.
Watching Triplets and Destino reminds me why I love animation. Plus, if I ever had a class or something on it, I would show people that to make a point that animation is a very different art than the movies, just like painting and photography. Some guy freshman year used to piss me off by saying animation was pointless because we can show real people on the screen! And I thought about that, and then it was just... well, we didn't throw away pencils and paintbrushes when we invented the camera! There's just this certain visceralness in good animation that film can't quite do, because the animator has to express so much through a character's movement (and sound, for the voice actors). So things are distilled into essential ticks or movements, and I love watching that. I also love the fluidity, the way things can shift from one thing to another. And I love when they choose not to use movement and just do little tableaus almost, like they do in anime a lot. And it's just cool watching and thinking that instead of filming a dog and making the dog do stuff, the animators had to look at dogs and deliberately decide every single move of the dog. And that makes the sheer dogness of the dog so much niftier for me, because it was all conscious. I think sometimes that the problem with more "traditional" Disney type animation is that everyone is so worried about making the people look real. But they don't, because they're concentrating on the physical or something. The characters here look so fake that they are real somehow.
Hee, now I want to watch Spirited Away again. Or Lilo and Stitch.
I went to see it partially because of the Oscar song. Mostly I've been meaning to see it ever since I saw the blurb in EW, because I will go see any animated movie, especially if it's not made by Disney or Dreamworks. It's not that those are bad, I just want to see ones that aren't quite as... traditional.
First, "Destino" was shown kind of as a starter, the animated movie originally begun by Salvador Dali and Walt Disney (weird combo!), I think storyboarded by Dali. It looked like people finally picked up his sketches and animated them. Lots of CG animation, use of cell-shading I think, whatever that animation technique is that they used for Zelda: Wind Waker. Really, really gorgeous animation. The entire thing was beautiful and fluid and colorful, and really, really disturbing, a la Dali. One of the images that freaked me out the most were the ants crawling out of a crack in the man's palm. Ick. Incredibly surreal and strange and yet, beautiful.
Then Triplets started with that fake black and white footage they showed a little of at the Oscars (which made me desperately want to see it). I love animation, and sometimes the best way to get me to watch something new is to show me a clip of it. I adore how the people moved in the beginning clip, all wiggly lines and curves, like the early Disney Merrie Melodie shorts where it looked like no one had bones or joints. Then it goes into the real story, and the animation gets very realistic in a surreal way -- everything is exaggerated, but in a way that seems to bring out the essence of a character in a way that a straight portrait might not have. The dog and the boy are all nose, and the boy has these giant shadowed eyes. And the grandma (who's awesome!) has got her stump walk because one leg's shorter than the other, and a sort of flat, wrinkled, expressionless face. It's not a very comfortable movie to watch -- the people are all teeth or all leg muscle (the bikers) or all shoulders (the really funny men in black). And the boy was quite grossed out about the frogs, but I thought that was kind of funny.
I also loved the music, how random noises like a newspaper or burping would suddenly coalesce into rhythm and tune, like the opening of Cell Block Tango in Chicago the movie. Also reminded me of Blast, a British musical type thing I watched, which I've heard is a bit like Blue Man Group?
Just so many strange parts. And really, not much of a plot. The grandson is kidnapped by evil men in black for a nefarious purpose, and the grandma and the dog go after him. The boy said whoever drew it must have had a dog their entire life because they got all the weird little dog twitches and noises just right. Some really great visual gags too. Also, most of it was silent, just music and sound and the occasional grunty noise from the people, so I don't think there was any dubbing or subtitling at all.
Watching Triplets and Destino reminds me why I love animation. Plus, if I ever had a class or something on it, I would show people that to make a point that animation is a very different art than the movies, just like painting and photography. Some guy freshman year used to piss me off by saying animation was pointless because we can show real people on the screen! And I thought about that, and then it was just... well, we didn't throw away pencils and paintbrushes when we invented the camera! There's just this certain visceralness in good animation that film can't quite do, because the animator has to express so much through a character's movement (and sound, for the voice actors). So things are distilled into essential ticks or movements, and I love watching that. I also love the fluidity, the way things can shift from one thing to another. And I love when they choose not to use movement and just do little tableaus almost, like they do in anime a lot. And it's just cool watching and thinking that instead of filming a dog and making the dog do stuff, the animators had to look at dogs and deliberately decide every single move of the dog. And that makes the sheer dogness of the dog so much niftier for me, because it was all conscious. I think sometimes that the problem with more "traditional" Disney type animation is that everyone is so worried about making the people look real. But they don't, because they're concentrating on the physical or something. The characters here look so fake that they are real somehow.
Hee, now I want to watch Spirited Away again. Or Lilo and Stitch.
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Wed, Mar. 3rd, 2004 02:13 pm (UTC)Good old Salvador - a strong surreal image is always worth repeating. This one also occurs in the Dali/Bunuel surrealist Un Chien Andalou (along with the famous eyeball-slicing scene).
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Wed, Mar. 3rd, 2004 02:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Wed, Mar. 3rd, 2004 05:47 pm (UTC)*shudders* Dali's things disturb me... I saw a picture book of jewelry he's designed, and yikes1