Animation Snob Thread (no Disney, no Pixar, no mainstream anime, mention Family Guy and you get kicked out a window), puppet films are allowed

Maska by Quay Brothers. Penderecki soundtrack and adaptation of a Lem story.
Just as good as most of their work. I had never seen it before, their BFI compilation is where I've seen most of their short films. This is quite a bit newer.

Jiri Barta's Krysar. Pied Piper legend told in extremely crooked stop-motion imagery and a mixture of other techniques with lovely flute and heavy metal guitar soundtrack. Just less than an hour. Really brilliant.

I love Maska! May I ask where you watched it? I've only been able to track it down in a really badly compressed Youtube video that loses a lot of detail :(

Song of the Sea was a hit with my 3yo niece.

Telephone Thing, it was youtube.

More Jiri Barta.

A Ballad About Green Wood shows pieces of splintered wood having their own life. A crow eats some of the wood and becomes a part wood embodiment of death with a scythe tail. Lots of imagery about changing seasons.

Golem is a very impressive effort from the mid-90s with an old man observing a town that he seems to remember from a long time ago. The town shifts and morphs into a hostile mocking place and sprouts faces from the walls.

Vanished World Of Gloves shows gloves of different classes. My favourite part was the wealthy party with the fancy glove wanking a candle till it covers itself in runny wax.

The Last Theft is live action but uses animation techniques to alter things. A bunch of ghosts take a thief in their house and lure him into a false sense of security. This is really beautiful, great soundtrack. Has all the qualities I go to old European animation for.

Club Of The Discarded shows old shop dummies embracing all the crass things of modern life.

You can get these on a Jiri Barta dvd and I'd like to get it sometime.

He done a feature length film called Toys In The Attic that had famous actors voicing.

Yuki Onna is his most recent film but I can only see trailers for that.

Watched "When Marnie Was Here" in a theater a day or two ago
i have thoughts

Extravagant puppet film with cgi assistance from Taiwan.

https://vimeo.com/132423166

Arti: The Adventure Begins.

thunderbirds are whoa

that's a really strange combination. i like the idea of going mega with the thunderbirds stuff, but the CG creatures aren't much better than video game level

https://youtu.be/vo1qGR5DDw8

Вперед, время! / Forward march, time! - 1977 soviet film based on the poems of Vladimir Mayakovsky

This upcoming film The Red Turtle looks interesting, it's a co-production between French studio Wild Bunch and Ghibli amongst others. Director is Michael Dudok de Wit who won an Oscar for this short in 2000 http://youtu.be/hVg5elLgSM8
http://www.catsuka.com/news/2015-09-15/the-red-turtle-premiers-petits-extraits-via-arte

Belladonna Of Sadness got lovingly restored and coming on bluray!

http://www.tcj.com/belladonna-of-sadness-interview/

never heard of that, looks amazing!

I talked about it earlier in the thread. It's pretty good.

the opening credits for the upcoming Lupin show has some pretty sweet animation http://youtu.be/dvaosZlQqrY

Has he always had such hairy hands?

1982 doc with interviews with bay area animators:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cul_G3PJBos

Features: Marcy Page, Jeff Hale, Sally Cruikshank, Bud Luckey, Rudy Zamora, John Korty, Vince Collins, Drew Takahashi

Not sure if this belongs on an animation "snob" thread, but here's the pilot episode of Super Science Friends, a new series by Brett Jubinville and Tinman Creative Studios:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjKGWvdSamQ

It's a little rough in the way pilot episodes often are, but it's really funny and charming, and I'm looking forward to seeing more!

at the risk of being kicked out, this is awesome
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6CAXKwexNA

Maybe worth noting here for Region 1 ilxors (I think the disc is region-locked but can't verify) that the Quay Brothers shorts are out on blu-ray now- the new stuff is a surprisingly non-intrusive and well-done documentary short from Christopher Nolan (his superfan backing got them a touring 35mm exhibition and this rerelease, so I really can't complain), Through the Weeping Glass (their Mütter Museum documentary, previously only available as a limited R1 PAL DVD for some fucking reason), Maska, and Unmistaken Hands (Ex Voto F.H.). I haven't had a chance to watch yet but the thought of seeing Maska in HD and Unmistaken Hands at all is exciting as hell. All I know about Unmistaken Hands is that it's working through the same Felisberto Hernandez obsession as Piano Tuner of Earthquakes.

And a quick update. I sold my DVD copy of the previous Zeitgeist collection (subtitled "Phantom Museums") before the blu-ray's specs were announced, but if you're in the same boat and considering an upgrade, hang on to it. Aside from the commentary tracks, none of the DVD's extras have been ported over. Most of this is minor (an interview, "The Summit," their entry in Peter Greenaway's The Falls) but also includes some animated work (a BBC ident, "The Calligrapher," and "Nocturna Artificiala," their earliest surviving film). Kind of sucks that they couldn't or wouldn't port those over, even if it was a question of leaving them in SD.

Don't let me scare you off, though, everything looks fucking AMAZING. I watched Maska and Anamorphosis to sample it. Maska is a revelation in HD with the full range of color (I'm ecstatic to see where they take this in Unmistaken Hands; starting with In Absentia they've done things with light that I didn't even know were possible, let alone in stop-motion), and Anamorphosis (chosen since we've just started in on Hans Holbein in one of my classes) looks brand-new despite being over 20 years old and is bookended with a clever detail I'd literally never been able to see before- the broken lute string in Holbein's The Ambassadors is made into an actual wire that extrudes from the surface of the painting.

I really wish there were more opportunities to see this stuff for animators who don't want to resort to vimeo. I'd like to see Unmistaken Hands.
Does netflix do much short animation?

Watched the BFI Jan Svankmajer collection. Never been into his work that much. There's a mundane yuckiness I can't get into but still admire his talent.
I liked Don Juan, I thought it was the most visually satisfying one, the ghost with his face cut off and candles embedded in his head was a good design.
Castle Of Otranto, Down To The Cellar (the girl in the dark corridor, scary adults and black cat) and the first part of Dimensions Of Dialogue (the materials eating each other then vomiting into new forms) were all impressive.

I've seen the feature length Little Otik and that's gross in a few ways.

A big big thankyou to Dave Fischer for recommending Son Of The White Mare. It's one of the best films I've seen this year and really deserves a Criterion and Eureka dvd. There's just so much happening visually that it becomes a very rich experience. Starting out it seems like a fairy tale but it becomes a strange heroic fantasy myth. I urge you all to see it.

Marcell Jankovics has a bunch of films on youtube, which I'm looking forward to but there's also a lot of interviews with him. He appears to be quite famous in Hungary.

Watched the first Jankovics feature film Johnny Corncob, based on an epic poem by Sándor Petőfi. Another heroic fantasy but less outlandish and psychedelic than Son Of The White Mare (but so are most things), but still very imaginative. Contains some racial caricatures of Indians.

Got the most recent Jankovics film on dvd, Tragedy Of Man, a Christian voyage through history and the future. It's not as consistently good looking as the other films but it goes through a much bigger array of art styles and its full of constantly changing symbolist images. The dialogue also is so full of meaning that it's hard to keep up with, especially in subtitles.

april and the extraordinary world (based on comix by Jacques Tardi) just opened in NYC, looks like tintin via miyazaki
will try to see this week
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FP0lzeCJEs

Trying to remember an animated film, art house (?), black and white, maybe, foreign. I remember a man climbing a building, and there were lots of men, all doing the same thing in a line. Maybe something to do with clocks or gears? Anyone know what I'm thinking of?

There was no speech or narration, I think.

thief and the cobbler pencil tests?

BLOOD TEA AND RED STRING

Watched this last night, been meaning to see it for years, it's very beautiful and quite sad. It's a lot like stop motion from the 70s for children but with a goth touch. In the countryside humanoid birds with pig ears that play nice flute music, humanoid mice ride turtles, a humanoid toad magician, flowers with human faces and a couple of other odd creatures. Mostly concerns a doll that is used like an oven to give birth to things, one of the humanoid mice falls in love with the doll.
On the dvd there's two short films that share a lot of the same ideas, in fact most of what Christiane Cegavske does seems to feature at least something seen in Blood Tea And Red String.

Cegavske is working on the sequel (second part of a trilogy), planned for 2022 (that's dedication).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNNbIiFsPzk

http://christianecegavske.com/

Inner Sanctums - Quay Brothers: The Collected Animated Films 1979 - 2013 (Blu-ray)
Films by The Quay Brothers

Since the late 1970s, the identical twin Quay Brothers have made a unique contribution to animation in general and the puppet film in particular. Filtering arcane visual, literary, musical, cinematic and philosophical influences through their own utterly distinctive sensibility, each Quay film rivets the attention through hypnotic control of décor, camera, lighting, music and movement, evoking half-remembered dreams, fascinating and yet deeply unsettling in turn.

This comprehensive two-disc set provides an overview of the Quays' career, containing twenty-four of their short films - three UK premieres and five world premieres - and also includes Christopher Nolan's new short documentary, Quay (2015), revealing the inner workings of the brothers studio.

The Films:
Nocturna Artificialia (1979)
The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer (1984)
This Unnameable Little Broom (1985)
Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1988)
Stille Nacht I: Dramolet (1988)
Ex-Voto (1989)
The Comb (1990)
Anamorphosis (1991)
The Calligrapher (Parts I, II, III) (1991)
Stille Nacht II: Are We Still Married? (1992)
Stille Nacht III: Tales from Vienna Woods (1993)
Stille Nacht IV: Can't Go Wrong Without You (1994)
In Absentia (2000)
The Phantom Museum (2003)
Songs for Dead Children (2003)
Eurydice, She So Beloved (2007)
Alice in Not so Wonderland (2007)
Kinoteka Ident (2008)
Inventorium of Traces (2009)
Wonderwood for Comme des Garçons (2010)
Maska (2010)
Through the Weeping Glass (2011)
Unmistaken Hands: Ex Voto F.H. (2013)
Special features

Newly remastered presentations
Introduction by the Quay Brothers (2006, 20 mins)
Quay (2015, 8 mins): a film by Christopher Nolan
Quay Brothers audio commentaries for This Unnameable Little Broom, Street of Crocodiles, Stille Nacht l, Stille Nacht ll, Stille Nacht lll and In Absentia
The Falls (excerpt) (1980, 5 mins)
BFI Distribution ident (1991, 30 secs)
The Summit (1995, 12 mins)
No Bones About It! Quay Brothers (2010, 12 mins)
Behind the Scenes with the Quay Brothers (2013, 31 mins)
Unmistaken Hands: Ex Voto F.H. trailer (2 mins)
Extensive booklet containing Michael Brooke's 'A Quays Dictionary' (updated) and the 2013 dialogue 'On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets'
UK | 1979-2013 | colour, and black and white | English language | 305 minutes | Various original aspect ratios | BD50 x 2 | 1080p | 24fps | PCM audio (48kHz/24-bit) | Cert 15 | Region B

Review
'To enter the impossible, haunted night of a Quay Brothers film is to become complicit in one of the most perverse and obsessive acts of cinema' --Michael Atkinson, Film Comment

'Wonderful, brilliant stuff' --Terry Gilliam

'One of art's most ingenious and visionary collaborations' --Artforum

The last collection went up to 2003, so this should be worth it.

april and the extraordinary world was quite alright

I have the older Quay brothers collection, but I guess I'll have to try to afford this one too...

it's only 11 pounds on amazon.couk so it's not a massive investment

Cool.

http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/the-book-of-the-dead/

I watched Kawamoto's Book Of The Dead. I found it very dry and difficult to pay attention and follow, but I could enjoy things about it a bit. Stop motion puppets.

that looks cool, I always liked the puppet storybooks:

http://modernkiddo.com/vintage-bookshelf-rocketship-to-the-moon/

I recently came across The Mill At Calder's End and fell in love with Kevin McTurk's work, even if it is a bit (deliberately?) clunky in places. The Narrative Of Victor Karloch is great as well.

http://www.fanboy-confidential.com/articles/9815/

That looks awesome thankyou, I just watched some clips and I must get the disc collection.
http://www.thespiritcabinet.com/#thespiritcabinet
https://vimeo.com/user3963984/videos

Got the dvd collection The Exquisite Short Films Of Kihachiro Kawamoto. It's 7 films from 1968 to 1979. I don't know why they stopped there, Kimstim also released his last film Book Of The Dead but they could have filled another disc with everything inbetween. I'm not that eager to see the rest but it would have been nice.

I didn't like some of the earliest ones much. Even though he's best known for the stop motion puppets I liked the two films with drawn and painted cutouts most. Much like when I was watching Book Of Dead, I gave up trying to understand early and just zoned out, but I found it more pleasant with these.
One short is based on a Kobo Abe story and another has Toru Takemitsu music.

New Masaaki Yuasa joint coming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5W9eHDxBDc

Spent most of Kubo and the Two Strings thinking it was an above-average CGI movie with a nice japanese setting. then watched the extras and it was all stop motion, including an 18ft skeleton...

(should've remembered having my mind blown by the wardrobe dept on Coraline knitting all her jumpers and gloves)

Just got around to seeing The Boy and the Beast. Ghibli-level imo

Yeah, that one is great. One of those films that are about five times better than it needed to be. Towards the end I was wondering if they were setting up a franchise, as more and more stuff started happening, but they tied it all together really well.

Mamoru Hosada in general is really good.

i really liked The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, should really catch up on his other films

Those two are probably his best, but check out his other ones as well. I really like the way he combines worlds and art styles.

Your Name is getting Danish premiere this May. As it's on it's way to become the most succesful animated film ever, it's probably as mainstream as it comes, but I'm still really excited!