Animated Creatures: ILX's top 100 animated films (results thread)

#5: Up
dir. Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
2009, USA
402 points, 13 votes
http://i.imgur.com/nQ9Jh.jpg
trailer

Love Up, but it ranking higher than either of the Brad Bird's is weird.

Agreed times a million.

Belleville is idk, v impressive stylistically but I didn't really get on with the characters. Champion is just a cipher and the triplets are frankly terrifying.

Am more than happy with Up ranking above Ratatouille and The Incredibles.

Myself also, it just seems odd that any of them are ranking above either of the Toy Storys.

Tho this is sensible as a dictionary compared with what lurks in the remaining 4 - or Belleville above Akira for that matter!

I didn't know Iron Giant was supposed to be good. I'll have to check it out.

Very pleased to see Triplets of Belleville so high. I've used that "vacuum cleaner" jam in techno and house DJ sets before, it's a real trip.

Up is clearly miles better than Ratatouille, and may be better than Incredibles, I can't decide on that one.

Yeah, I find that Up has increasing returns with every viewing. I like ...Belleville, but can't quite square it being in the top 10 when The Illusionist was back at #90, I far prefer that film.

(oh, and great work on the poll and results thread, one for the ages this and full of treasures)

The Incredibles is very "watchy", but it's not that good.

hated UP so much when I watched it, can't believe it placed this high

Really want to watch Akira anew some day -- loved it as a teenager, when this whole anime thing was pretty new to me. This was in the mid-90s, in a small town in Norway, where this stuff wasn't really distributed, so this stuff was almost mythical to us -- occasionally someone would come back from Oslo bearing the gift of a tape or two of some Manga release. The highlights as I recall it were _Akira_ and _Ghost in the Shell_. Also watched _Fist of the North Star_ a bunch of times, but I didn't exactly like it. _Wings of Honneamise_ bored the hell out of me -- clearly it needed more exploding heads -- but I'm kinda curious to see it again now.

Come to think of it, I've hardly seen any of the Disney cartoons that didn't come out in my lifetime. Have some vague memories of having seen _Pinocchio_ at a birthday party and being REALLY disturbed by the donkey stuff. But I might just have read one of the childrens book adaptations of the movie. (Definitely didn't read the -original- book)

_Triplets of Belleville_ is a movie I'm kinda wondering if I disliked so much simply because of the enthusiasm with which it was recommended. I mostly remember finding the drawings really ugly. Oh, and the goddamn voodookaka bullshit songs.

Do we have a thread about early non-cartoon animations? I plan to spend some evening on Youtube and Archive.org watching shit like the 1912 The Cameraman’s Revenge. Figure I should put together a little playlist first.

Really enjoying the thread btw, though I didn't take any part in the voting. So far you've inspired me to order _Paprika_ and the first English omnibus of the Akira comics at the library; vaguely recall digging Katushiro Otomo's _Domu: A Child's Dream_ back in the days.

I wasn't a huge fan of Belleville, but I loved that the dog was tricked into paddling across the Atlantic with a piece of caramel, and was still chewing on it when they arrived on shore in America.

Belleville really got to me as a tear-jerker; as I've said on ILX before, I lost my mother about a year before seeing it, and the tireless selfless love of the mother character just got to me. I also remember finding the dog really charming, and I don't have any general affection for dogs to support that. Fourth-best cartoon of all time, no, but I can see how it racked up a bunch of votes.

I loved Belleville. Perhaps not the fourth best animation of all time, but hey, The Incredibles is DEFINITELY NOT top ten of all time, this isn't a definitive list, it's what ilxors who could be bothered to vote did in fact vote for.

Also, I caught Up on telly over Christmas, and I did actually get a little weepy at the start. Still hate that style of animation, though, and the rest of the film wasn't any great shakes (not terrible, though; I certainly didn't balk at the talking dogs or anything).

I liked Belleville well enough but I didn't find it half as moving as the Illusionist

I haven't seen that, though, so I'm unlikely to be dock marks from a film I have seen and liked in favour of a film I haven't seen.

be

that would indeed be craqueurs

lol

will howl's moving castle place? i like it as much as spirited away.

Are you serious, dog? Even without knowing the results, it's pretty clearly lesser Miyazaki.

Anyway...

#4: Duck Amuck
dir. Chuck Jones
1953, USA
439 points, 11 votes
http://i.imgur.com/K12Jl.jpg
film

#3: What's Opera, Doc?
dir. Chuck Jones
1957, USA
448 points, 14 votes
http://i.imgur.com/pHS7H.jpg
film
higher res film (US-only?)

Triplets of Belleville is the first since #20 Coraline that I haven't seen and the first since #45 The Wizard of Speed and Time that I haven't even heard of. I guess I was living in some cultural black hole in 2003. And for every mention of it I should surely have come across since...

Triplets of Belleville is great but not top 10 material imo.
Duck Amuck & What's Opera, Doc? however i can get 100% behind. good job!

chuck jones did fantastically in this poll

It kind of disappeared (until the Illusionist came along), why is why some of us are a little surprised to see it that high.

v happy with the current two, really second guessing myself about the #2 slot (assuming Spirited Away takes #1)

All of Chuck Jones' (apart from 8-Ball Bunny) are written by Michael Maltese as well, though I confess I don't know the system well enough to know if he is a hyper-genius, or just the guy who got his name on the credits for the work of a team.

Still kicking myself for not pushing harder to get Svankmajer's Faust accepted as a nomination, tbh. It's my favourite of his, and easily as animated as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and by all rights should be making an appearance around now in a true and correct poll.

will howl's moving castle place? i like it as much as spirited away.

Are you serious, dog? Even without knowing the results, it's pretty clearly lesser Miyazaki.

Really? It's much much better than Kiki, which placed. And I'd say it's way better than Totoro in pacing and story, though Totoro has the edge in CATBUS level characters.

Rewatching "What's Opera, Doc?" right now for the first time in, I dunno, a decade. Discovering all the dialogue is tattooed on my soul.

I'm not a huge fan of Chuck Jones (heresy, I know), but both of those are classics, and I'm kind of pleased that old-school comic animation has placed so high. I am disappointed that not much of the early/experimental/arty stuff has placed throughout the poll, though.

I think Totoro's unconventional pacing (and the effect this has on the story) is one of the things that its fans really love about it!

I would like to have a view on Howl more nuanced than "Go cry, emo kid", but to be honest that pretty much covers it.

so Wall-E is going to be No. 1 then. Hmmmm

I think Totoro's unconventional pacing (and the effect this has on the story) is one of the things that its fans really love about it!

Haha, really? I guess I'm not that steeped in the critical discourse around this stuff. It is probably because I am horrendously mean and evil, but I find "kids with ailing parent find refuge in a magical world" to be a terribly clichéd and trite storyline, so the pacing of Totoro doesn't really do it any favours for me. Still... CATBUS.

A hi-quality Duck Amuck on Vimeo.

Kiki is a million times better than Howl!

cool, so mind game in the top 2, psyched!

I mean I get that Howl has its fans, but I really remember the latter as being kind of a mess, with inscrutable characterization, an incoherent conclusion, and too much striving for the "overflowing of magical wonders" that Spirited Away made look easy. I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it okay while I was watching it but I immediately had no desire to see it again. Whereas Kiki's just grows deeper with each viewing; it's a story comfortable in its smallness and unapologetic about how much the small things can matter to children (or to people generally). Yeah, it finally swings for a big action climax that comes out of nowhere, but the outcome of that sequence depends on stuff that's actually central to the movie and the main character's arc. I can think of very few kids' movies which are as finely executed.

I'm not sure about critical discourse, it's just a slow gentle film where nothing happens and (spoilers) it turns out that even less is happening that it appeared. Some people put up with that for the characters, some people luxuriate in it.

Basically, I liked Howl a lot and thought it worthy of a place. I don't really want to sound like I dislike the others, because I do like them. Even Kiki is a nice little piece, though it's not close to being one of my favourites.

(And on checking, Totoro made my ballot where Howl did not, so, hey, whatever.)

'howl' is the only miyazaki that hasn't done anything for me. there are non-miyazaki ghiblis -- like 'arrietty' -- that i like more.

'totoro' is definitely the best IMO -- there's probably never been a better portrayal of children in any movie, animated or otherwise.

I sorta can't stand much of Totoro. I think all of his post Mononoke movies are stronger.

i kinda quit taking that dork john k seriously when i found out how scornful he and his followers are of chuck jones.

In that interview posted upthread it sounded like John K's a huge admirer of Chuck Jones.