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

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!

So Your Name is pretty much a game-changer. I could see it be almost as important as Spirited Away in widening the idea of what anime can be in the west. It's not quite that good, but what is?

It was kinda funny to me that the press material called Shinkai the new Mamoru Hosada. Well, he will probably overshadow Hosada, at least in the west, though they are quite alike, and the film is a lot like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in a way.

I had much higher expectations for Kubo & The Two Strings. It's no Book Of Life, I'll tell ya.

Got the Spirit Cabinet disc with The Mill At Calder's End and The Narrative Of Victor Karloch. The stories aren't very interesting, they're fairly nice exercises in Victorian ghost horror style. The puppets are very impressive, there's a little bit of unnecessary computer facial animation. Barbara Steele, Elijah Wood, Christopher Lloyd and some others lend their voices and likenesses for the puppets. I look forward to what this team does in the future.

I watched the second disc of Quay Brothers - Inner Sanctums (I've seen everything on the first disc on the earlier compilation). I'm less fond of the museum documentaries, which can be a little too slow but their regular puppet stories are still some of the most beautiful and mysterious films being made, some of them are literary adaptations.
The short Christopher Nolan documentary is really just the Quay Brothers giving a tour of their amazing storage room.

re mamoru hosada - summer wars is worth watching. it's a little goofy at times but is visually great and overall worth checking out.

http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2017/04/04/women-in-british-animation-petra-freeman/

enjoyed the Red Turtle. Very beautiful, very slow-moving, but charming and thought-provoking.

Kevin McTurk's series of samurai horror
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/935772123/the-haunted-swordsman-a-ghost-story-puppet-film?ref=creator_nav

Ferenc Cako's sand animation is really good.

https://youtu.be/QAJGRGYxc98

Jumping Joan by Petra Freeman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KooxsCp_52I

Forgot about this thread. A few I've been enjoying recently:

Not at all new, but I suspect that The Log Driver's Waltz, a National Film Board clip set to a delightful Kate & Anna McGarrigle rendition of a classic Canadian folk song, isn't that well known outside of Canada.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upsZZ2s3xv8

More recently (and still in Canada), I really liked Dam! The Story of Kit the Beaver, an admittedly Disney-esque story made as a collaboration with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, who have performed the score live as an accompaniment to the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKcEwCxoxYY&t=2s

I also thought the recent Best Animated Short nominee Revolting Rhymes (based on Roald Dahl) was pretty great. Of course, it lost the Oscar to that stupid Kobe Bryant thing.

Let me try Dam! The Story of Kit the Beaver again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upsZZ2s3xv8

UGH!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKcEwCxoxYY&t

anyway, its on YouTube

Anyone have opinions on the Thunderbean Animation DVD/blu-ray label? They're doing a lot of really early animation. Apparently some of their stuff is, like, DVD-R w/ no cover art though, and fuck that.

Recently watched a 1990 version of Quest For Olwen, Russian animated for welsh television. Very nice style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QB6EsHAih8

This by Ideya Garanina is the most beautiful animation I've ever seen and it wasn't available when I started this thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTzQSxFMyYo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fm8Xn_GNHQ

Anyone have opinions on the Thunderbean Animation DVD/blu-ray label? They're doing a lot of really early animation. Apparently some of their stuff is, like, DVD-R w/ no cover art though, and fuck that.

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, April 9, 2018 5:05 PM (one week ago)

I would say that they do have high quality but they work very slow. I wouldn't mind owning a blu-ray of Flip the Frog restored but that project has had no updates in forever.

Cool, will check some of their stuff out. My backlog of stuff to watch means all I have is time, anyway.

Saw a couple films circa 1950 by Czech master Jiri Trnka today. This retro will tour after NYC, apparently.

https://www.filmlinc.org/series/the-puppet-master-the-complete-jiri-trnka/#films