Many months ago, fellow Morlock Suzi Doll raved about Sylvain Chomet’s THE ILLUSIONIST.  Based on her recommendation, I sought it out eagerly—and found myself with a strange, conflicted reaction.  Perhaps if I knew nothing of Jacques Tati, and merely came to THE ILLUSIONIST as a fan of THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE, I’d have been unreservedly entranced.  THE ILLUSIONIST is certainly a proper follow-up to TRIPLETS—both highlight washed-up showbiz has-beens reluctantly confronting the changing entertainment landscape and pining for their glory days.

But the film doesn’t want me to forget Tati—not only was it written by Tati (a long time ago), the main character is named Tatischeff (Tati’s real name); in one scene he attends a screening of MY UNCLE and is perplexed to see “himself” depicted on screen.  The cartoon Tatischeff is as close to reanimating Tati as you could imagine.  He’s just ink and paint, but the drawing looks like Tati, and even more remarkably moves like him.  Tati’s physical soul is manifested on screen, without restraint.  It is truly magical—and for that alone, Chomet deserved an Oscar.

But that achievement is also the source of my discontent.  The script Tati wrote is out of alignment with the films for which he became famous—perhaps that is one reason he never made it himself.  The cartoon illusionist resurrects Tati, only to employ him in the service of a film that feels alien and unfamiliar.

This week, I vent myself, and explore what Tati means to me—and what hints of that man do peek through the panels of THE ILLUSIONIST.

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I’m not a fan of contemporary animated feature films for a couple of reasons. First, the various types of computer-generated animation—from motion capture to Pixar’s three-dimensional photorealism—lack the formal artistry and painterly beauty of hand-drawn animation. With its flat, generic colors, computer animation looks mechanical, creating imagery devoid of atmosphere and style. Second, the writing in contemporary cartoons has been dialed down—way down—to a child’s level, with some notable exceptions. At best, animated features seem to be sentimental tales of lost toys and wayward children that are peppered with monotonous Randy Newman songs; at worst, they are hackneyed stories with forgettable characters that are peppered with cringe-inducing one-liners about bodily functions.

A rare exception among today’s generic rubble is Rango, the animated feature directed by Gore Verbinski currently in the theaters. Verbinski directed the original trio of the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks, a franchise that I found rich in imagery and rife with references to films of the past. Johnny Depp reteamed with Verbinski to provide the voice of Rango, a bug-eyed, scrawny-looking chameleon in search of an identity. Verbinski cowrote and directed Rango, and it was his name that pulled me into the theater to see this clever cartoon that works on one level for adults and another for children (though this cartoon is not for pre-schoolers). Studios are prone to advertising their animated features as being “fun for the whole family,” which is marketing speak for “adults could probably tolerate this cartoon and not want to gouge their eyes out.” And, some parents have tried to nudge me onto the Pixar bandwagon by confessing how much they related to films like Toy Story 3. But, “relating” to a cartoon is not the same as enjoying one that has been scripted on two levels. Those of us who grew up with such Warner Bros. masterpieces as Duck Amuck or The Rabbit of Seville, which cleverly wrap the intellectual depth of high art within the entertaining framework of low art, understand the difference.

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Three months ago we lost a major talent in the world of animation. Satoshi Kon was only 46-years-old when he died of pancreatic cancer. He was the Japanese anime director behind Perfect Blue (1998), Millennium Actress (2001), Tokyo Godfathers (2003), Paranoia Agent (2004), and Paprika (2006). He was on pre-production for The Dreaming Machine when he passed away. With his death, all work on that film was suspended. Kon had asked the production company to promise him they’d finish the film even in the face of his demise, and last week Madhouse Studios announced that production would resume on The Dreaming Machine, with former chief animation director Yoshimi Itazu at the helm.  READ MORE

If you are like millions of Americans, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade may be playing as video wallpaper in the background of tomorrow’s holiday hubbub in your household. In between stuffing that turkey and unsuccessfully averting your eyes from the crasser, materialistic moments of the television broadcast, it is still fun to catch sight of those unwieldy balloons straining while remaining afloat above the crowded street. Depending on luck, fashions in pop culture and our memories of balloons past (where is Underdog?) these gargantuan floating creatures seem as familiar as that stained recipe card you may be consulting. Yet, as the above image from a 1930s Macy’s Parade illustrates, they were not always quite as cuddly as they seem today. Just as these helium behemoths sometimes elude their handlers and occasionally deflate, the origin of these now familiar fixtures is not well known. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the originator of these unique inflated fantasies dipped a toe into the movie business just as it started to take off as an art form.

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Last Wednesday we screened a 35mm print of Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards (1977). The distributor warned me that their surviving print was pretty rough, but I took a chance on it anyway. I first saw it in Jr. High on 16mm back around 1980 in an auditorium packed with kids all somewhere in the 11 – 14-years-of-age ballpark. Whatever teacher programmed it probably thought it was appropriate for kids because it was an animated PG film about a fantasy world inhabited by elves and wizards. Of course, this was back when PG-rated films still had teeth (more like Jaws), and I’m not going to shy away from saying that, heck yeah, as far as we kids were concerned, this was the funnest thing to have happened at Baseline Jr. High since Mrs. Danielson fell asleep adjusting her bra, and was even more entertaining than Mr. Reno’s stories about the finger tips and maggots that mysteriously found their way into people’s sandwiches (our English teacher claimed the former occurred at a Deli he used to work at while the latter came from an automated sandwich dispensing machine). READ MORE

This year, some might wish more longingly for one fewer excursion in search of something perfect for that special someone or for reasons to be rushing around. Whenever the charged emotions and high expectations overwhelm me at the holidays, I find myself looking for some forms of escape, which, of course, may sometimes be a movie.

There’s a part of me that craves the films of my youth at Christmas, even though not all of them have anything to do with the holiday.  This entry in our Movie Morlocks blogathon generally falls under the heading of Movies I Loved as a Kid (and still do). Intellectually, I can see that each of these films acknowledges that there are similar themes in each person’s life of paradise lost, found, and rediscovered, as well as the mysterious serendipitous events  that connect us and and occasionally give us a glimpse of a deeper understanding of the ebb and flow of life. Having seen more in real life–especially this last year–I can also cherish my visceral, wholly instinctive reaction to these stories and the feelings that they evoke as they unspool on film.  Perhaps you can too :

Mighty Joe Young (1949) is indelibly imprinted on my memory’s hard drive. This film, which used to be broadcast every year at the holidays, is a less ambitious successor to King Kong (1933) with many members of the original team lending a hand, including director Ernest B. Schoedsack, writer and producer Merian C. Cooper, and creator of the original Kong models, Special Effects master, Willis O’Brien. Interestingly, the legendary Ray Harryhausen was “first technician” on this movie, and, as he wrote in his autobiography, Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life, he saw “Joe as young, mischievous and unaware of his own strength”. I think that Harryhausen, O’Brien and the other special effects men did a great job of making Mighty Joe a more expressive, sensitive, and less adult creature than Kong was in the 1930s pre-code production.

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I am loath to watch anything twice; I’m a compiler, so anything that I willingly watch over and over again is an exception to my rule.  Therefore, my habit of choosing to view the same movies and programs each Christmas holiday season is unusual.  While not all of the following are movies (in the strictest sense), a Christmas without seeing these shows would be breaking a holiday tradition for me.  So here they are: 

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This week’s Morlock assignment: writing about tragedy, horror, death, or disaster in a Disney film. No problem. I remember hearing about how theaters would wait seven years to refurbish their chairs because that was how often Snow White would hit the screens and after each show loads of kids would soak the chairs from the frights they got from that film. One of my film history teachers (the late Stan Brakhage) even claimed that Walt Disney collected medieval torture devices that were specific for children. (Research? Fetish? Quirky collectibles? No idea.) Regardless, I don’t begrudge Disney for scaring the pants off of kids. In fact, I admire it. He knew how to make an impression. Every Halloween season I aspire to do the same by trying to spook every trick-or-treater that comes to my house. Why? Because I follow the golden rule and still treasure my memories of the horrifying hosts who went that extra mile to make me earn my candy. So let’s talk about the creepy stuff in Pinocchio, shall we? READ MORE