Hot, steaming pantomime on order today for the FAM as we present The Triplets of Belleville (Les Triplettes de Belleville), the surreal animated adventure from 2003, written and directed by Sylvain Chomet.
Triplets tells the story of Madame Souza who is raising her son, Champion. Noticing his sadness one day, she purchases for him a dog named Bruno and though this does cheer him up, his joy is short-lived. It is only after she realizes his interest in bicycle racing and gives him a bicycle of his own that Champion finds real happiness. Fast forward and, years later, Champion has become a world-class cyclist, competing in the Tour de France. It is during this race that a mafia boss kidnaps Champion and two other cyclists, bringing them to the town of Belleville in North America and hooking them up to a virtual-reality cycling machine, allowing patrons to gamble on the races. Madame Souza and Bruno follow, of course, attempting to rescue him from the mafia’s nefarious clutches; meeting along the way the titular triplets, a trio of retired cabaret singers.
It’s a strange arc, then. Triplets starts off easily enough, slow and methodical, but upon the kidnapping of Champion things surge into overdrive, getting progressively weirder and the two don’t quite mesh as well as they perhaps should. It’s almost like they stitched together to different films. That said, this observation does little to detract from my enjoyment of the film. Chomet has created a beautifully realized world here with his characters barely uttering a single word. The version above features no English subtitles, an omission you will hardly notice. Every emotion and thought is spoken with subtle, expressive animation. In addition, the movie features an outstanding soundtrack inspired by the jazz of the 20s and 30s (the film even goes so far as to reference both Django Reinhardt and Josephine Baker in the first few minutes.)
In animation at least, I find myself drawn to pantomime. It strikes me as a testament to an animator’s talent, this ability to abandon the spoken word. In that way it’s interesting to note that Pixar, who’s Finding Nemo beat out The Triplets of Belleville for best picture has begun incorporating this aesthetic more in their recent films, most notably Wall-E (perhaps my favorite from them). Chomet’s new film, L’Illusionniste will see a release in the States in December and I find myself just as anxious as when I first saw a trailer for The Triplets of Belleville. I just can’t see his oeuvre losing its charm.
From Trevor Jimenez comes the story of a man’s deadly addiction to one sugary, citrus dessert. 2007′s Key Lime Pie features a heavy, film noir veneer, complete with a hardened narrator who sounds as though he’s smoked since birth or, perhaps, needs to eat more fiber. Also, consider this: Death in a trench-coat sporting a Thompson submachine gun scythe. How can you resist?
French sculptor and Coilhouse Issue 02 featured artist Stéphane Halleux is trying his hand at a new medium – animation. In response to countless questions, pleas, and threats he’s created a digital character after one of his leather and scrap metal sculptures, Monsieur Hublot. There is no word yet on the release date of the eponymous, seven-minute short, but we do know that Mr. Hublot [named thusly as a nod to Jacques Tati’s tragically inept Monsieur Hulot] is a bachelor accountant suffering from a host of obsessive-compulsive ailments. He lives in a small, gadget-packed apartment with his robotic dog, loves his leather trench coat and despises noise.
Together with Zelit Productions, Stéphane hopes to eventually develop the project into a feature-length film. Meanwhile, a frame-sponsoring system is in place, allowing interested fans to take part in the short’s development at up to 9EU per frame. From the Monsieur Hublot website:
In exchange, among other things and depending on the amount of images sponsored, they will get updates on the film’s production, a print of one of their sponsored images signed by Stéphane Halleux, the opportunity to appear in the the credits, etc. As for ourselves, this quid pro quo will enable us to complete the financing of the short film and to prepare the release of the feature film.
I love this idea!
Two charming animation tests from Monsieur Hublot have been released into the wild, so far. Watch below as the character gets his bearings and faces off with a light switch, then check out his outfit in more detail.
It’s another summer holiday weekend, here in the United States. Independence Day weekend no less, the 4th of July being the day when Americans get inebriated and spend the day basting themselves in the hot juices of meats, both various and sundry. Such is the joy we feel when we think about how we could still all be English. We at the FAM are here, however, with you pre-basting. We are unbasted, clean and virginal at least for the moment though this will no doubt soon change. For now, however, you may sit near us and enjoy today’s offering knowing you will be unsullied.
Today the Friday Afternoon Movie presents the first four episodes of Satoshi Kon’s weird and wonderful television series Paranoia Agent (Mōsō Dairinin) from 2004, which represents the entirety of the Complete Collection’s disc one, entitled Enter Lil’ Slugger. Paranoia Agent begins with a mysterious attack on Tsukiko Sagi — a character designer best known for the incredibly popular pink dog Maromi — by an assailant who will become known as Shōnen Batto (Bat Boy in the original Japanese and Lil’ Slugger in English). Soon detectives Keiichi Ikari and Mitsuhiro Maniwatwo become involved as more people report attacks by a boy on golden skates, armed with a golden baseball bat.
What follows is tried and true territory for Kon, beginning all the way back in 1997′s Perfect Blue and, some might say, culminating in 2006′s Paprika. Given it’s thirteen episode run, Paranoia Agent gives him the most room to explore it. Kon’s work is primarily concerned with the examination of the lies we tell ourselves and pop culture. It’s the symbiotic relationship between these two aspects of day-to-day life that form the crux of all his films and is firmly entrenched in the story of Paranoia Agent. Indeed, the main thread that emerges, connecting all the attacks by Lil’ Slugger is that all the victims are attacked during a time of great stress and, moreover, seem almost relieved once an attack has occurred. It is this commonality that will eventually lead the detectives to the truth, long after the case has almost completely destroyed both men’s careers and personal lives.
Kon is a masterful storyteller and he proves it here. Nothing is out of place in Paranoia Agent, each episodes fitting in neatly with the others at a measures pace; taking time here and there to focus on events happening at the periphery of the case, only to deftly weave them back in. Best of all unlike many television mysteries of this sort, anime or otherwise, Kon is aware of the importance of a satisfactory conclusion; and while there are still some smaller aspects left open for interpretation, the main plot of the series is lead to a logical, if surreal, conclusion. The rules of Kon’s world may be different from ours, but they are well defined and his tale adheres to them.
Five years out from the English release I still find new things to enjoy in Paranoia Agent. The animation is top notch, the story is of a caliber rarely seen on television, and the acting (at least the Japanese) stays away from what most people think of when they think of Japanese animation. This may be one of the few cases of FAM in which I feel I need to be outright evangelical about the piece on display. Paranoia Agent is a series worth your time. Even if you don’t like anime you should give this a shot. More so than any other director, I feel that Satoshi Kon manages to transcend the medium. The stories he tells, by and large, do not require animation but he uses it to spectacular effect. Few others choose to use it to examine the human psyche in such detail beyond having androids ponder the subtleties of being human in opaque pseudo-philosophical prose. This isn’t a story about what it is to be human; but about just how hard we make it for ourselves.
“BLUE: An Erotic Life is a stop motion animation that narrates the life story of a blob of clay dealing with sexual addiction.” So goes the succinct description of Tibo Charroppin’s delightfully puerile BLUE: An Erotic Life; his BFA thesis at Parsons. It’s a classic tale, examining the drives and addictions that control us, that drive us to the brink, and how, through sheer will, we can be redeemed. Also, it’s about fucking. Lots and lots of fucking. With clay.
It’s all about robots and sugar cubes this afternoon. A crunchy animation with a 60′s space age feel, Une Mission Ephémère was crafted in 1993 by Polish animator Piotr Kamler and scored by experimental/musique concrète composer Bernard Parmegiani. The best part of this clip is watching the way the robot’s facial expressions change as he sculpts playthings and conducts experiments while floating in his little bowl. More clips by Kamler – including Chronopolis, which was his first and only full-length feature – can be found at UbuWeb. Chronopolis and Kamler’s work is often characterized as “science fiction,” but have more in common with Borges than with Star Wars, as one excellent write-up on Kamler notes. [Another hat-tip to Wobbly.]
“I thought only my classmates, mom and dad would watch this,” wrote French animation student Stéphanie Mercier in the Vimeo comments for the clip above after witnessing an influx of visitors from MetaFilter,Daily What, SocImages and beyond. Titled “Girls Suck at Video Games,” the animation presents the challenge of climbing the corporate ladder, maintaining a stylish image, having babies and doing housework though the use of beloved 8-bit/16-bit metaphors: Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter, Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Compare and contrast with Dan the Man.
Anthony Francisco Schepperd’s animated video for Blockhead’s “The Music Scene” imagines “a post human New York where TV and animals rule.” One could also describe it as a pop-culture fueled acid trip. With animals. It’s great either way.
Since I would merely be cribbing their words anyway I shall allow lens culture (who is also selling the DVD) explains the mechanics of photographer/animator Antonio Martinez’s Near the Egress:
First, Antonio Martinez spent a lot of time at a traveling circus, shooting dozens of rolls of 35mm black-and-white film. Then he made over 800 modern dryplate tintypes from the negatives, and then scanned them digitally, and then sequenced them artfully to produce this experimental stop-motion video.
The result of all this photography and video manipulation is a bizarre fever-dream of a circus, something one would imagine entertaining the dead in an afterlife set in a David Lynch film. In other words, it’s fantastic. The project took Martinez 4 years to complete and I would say that the end result has been absolutely worth the time and effort it took to create.
An animated short by Joe Bichard and Jack Cunningham, MARS! tells the story of, well, the planet Mars. Specifically it details the meeting of two groups of creatures. The first is a menagerie of Tetrominoe-esque creatures who inhabit the center of the planet. The second are a flotilla of space-faring ships who land on Mars for more sinister reasons.
