Annecy Day 2: just 3 screenings, but Golden

Today was a calm day: we attended just 3 screenings, but all of them were superb.

TV-Films in Competition 2

Program details page

TV2 was a short program, But one in which I found every movie/series interesting in some way.

"The Gruffalo" official site is a big 3D TV-Film production from Great Britain, with an all-star voice cast. Character design and animation were very nice. But I especially loved the detail in the set design: sometimes stylized Photorealism, sometimes like photographs of stop-motion sets. Co-director Jacob Schuh is a partner in Studio Soi, who brought us yesterday's gem "The little boy and the monster"
Must-see, and strong contender for the crystal.

OVNI official site looks like a fun little series, I loved that it was sans dialogue.

The director of "Hipira-Kun" obviously likes Crayon illustration style, and transferring it to a 3D look was very successful. Lovely attention to detail in the gothic sets, though they're not afraid to use a dash of color. There were even a few 2D crayon sequences in the "Witch's Notebook" episode.
This was a pilot (youtube link) + 2 episodes, so it did run a bit long, as the story felt a bit slow.

"Commandant Clark" takes a leaf out of "the Jetsons" style guide and mixes that with Star Trek T.O.S. Story Pacing here was too slow to my taste.

"Comme à la mason" by Normaal (there's an ep on their flash site)and "Meat or Die" (youtube link) are typical festival fodder.

"Stromsparen" (direct link) is a nice little stop-motion film visualizing children's ideas on how to economize our energy use.

Short Films in Competition 2

A Lot of great films, and a lot of nice soundtracks. This whole program is not to be missed

First off: "Logorama" official site [excerpt] is an instant classic. What could have been just a nice visual idea, get's a great action-packed story.

"Get the Picture" official site [full movie] was a wonderful film, loved the piano soundtrack, visual style, story. Just heartwarming.

"Let's Pollute" from Geefwee Boedoe, the man who designed the Monster's Inc opening titles. He has a brilliant style: 50's commercial/instructional animation

"Angry Man" youtube clip was a cut-out animation, normally not my style, but the story was gripping, very emotional. Perhaps a Unicef award ? Powerful stuff.

"Whistleless" excerpts on vimeo is a fun kids cartoon, I like the potato-stamped background design. A very good soundtrack .

"The Cow who wanted to be a Hamburger" official site What's Annecy without Bill Plympton ? This is a better than average Plymptoon: a bolder visual style, a good story (he calls it a children's tale), and surprisingly: a great soundtrack.

Finally: "Red-End and the seemingly symbiotic society" official site a stop-motion film pur sang. Normally this is not my style, but this is a triumph. Set Design and lighting are insane. At times it felt like a science-fiction epic a la Metropolis, sometimes a documentary, so the story get's a bit hazy at times, but I was hooked.
Then the end-credits come, and it's all been done by two people. Amazing. Like we say in Belgium "Chapeau"

Featured Film "Kerity, la maison des contes"

The second feature we saw (yesterday we watched Fantastic Mr. Fox)

youtube trailer | official site

Oh what a joy this movie was: the color-palette was riveting. The pure 2D look refreshing. The story made for a great children's movie. Reminiscent of Miyazaki or Neil Gaiman ? Sure, but these are archetypical stories. If you get a chance to see this with kids, go. Strong candidate for the crystal IMO.

Annecy Day 1: Faves

TV Films in competition 1

[Check out the official page with the full rundown.] Overall this was a good program, I wasn't expecting much from the TV-programs this year but there were some gems here:

Mouss & Boubidi [site]: Fast paced slapstick in a slick 2D look. 

"Masha and the bear": I liked the 3D style when I saw the teaser image. But this movie managed to really surprise me: Well animated, great comedic timing (didn't expect such high pace from russian studio), and a rabbit, what else can you wish for in Annecy

Ocelot's "Dragons et Princesses" didn't disappoint. The visual style (2D shadow puppets) really worked well combined with the Backgrounds. Lip-sync animation was IMO insanely great. I love the intro sequence and first scene where we find ourselves in a little theatre with 3 people who want to make a story come alive. That really resonates with me. If anything, It should have been longer than 13 minutes.

"Happiness, on veille sur vous" [excerpt/making of] Excellent writing here. It took a while before it becomes obvious this is a satire of consumerism. Puppetry and voices were top notch.

"Minon Miss Questions" Refreshing composition of 2D in photographed decors. It worked.

"Ema & Gui" was interesting cutout with a textile look to it, but the story was a bit meh.

There were some "lesser works": the 3D Little Krishna was not well animated, Marvo the wonder chicken tried to be slapstick but failed (I think let down by layout and decors), And the Brazilian "Thainne and the Umbrella" is for people who take drugs, not for me.

Commissioned Films

I'm just going to list the ones I liked, that I found online

 Pub:

• Vokle.com, well animated: youtube
• Switch to British Gas: youtube
• Aides / Graffiti: a classic already youtube
• Going West: Books come to life Advertolog (great lighting on paper cutouts)

Music Videos:

• Joshua Radin "I'd rather be with you" youtube
• Sour "Hibi No Neiro" classic music video vimeo
• Massive Attack "Splitting the atom" chilling to see this on the big screen. Clean concept, Brilliant execution. youtube
• ArjanM "Blackhole". Good use of HDRI, the crystalline & microscopic looks very convincing. youtube
• Peter Kay's Animated All star Band: just top notch stopmotion work, very well composited: vimeo

 Trailers/intros

• The Beatles Rockband official site
• "A Kiss from Tokyo" A great pastiche of 60S advertising vimeo
• Slamdance "Sweet 16" youtube

Educational

• Krakebollebilly official site

TV Films in competition 4

Not a great selection, but 1 film makes  this a must see. I was fighting back tears with this beautiful film.

The little boy and the beast official site w trailer 

Also, The Time Compass: Ancient China, was a pretty good educational history show.

The pilot for "High 5" looked very hip and flashy. It's going to be about a street basket crew

"Monk Little dog" reminded me of old Mickey & Minnie cartoons.

Finally, the "Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack - Low Tidings" is a very good Cartoon Network show, and this was a very respectable "Holiday season" episode.

Short Films in Competition 1

Not a super selection...

"Jean-François" is OK: a melancholic little movie official site

"Koisuru Nezumi" has to be seen to be believed: youtube Someone thought it would be a good idea to drop the entire dialogue into Google Translate, and then read the results back using Mac os X text to speech. Freaking Hilarious!

Finally, the only reason we wanted to see this programme: Shaun Tan's "The Lost Thing" official movie site 

Shaun Tan [his site] is now one of my two favourite illustrators (the other is Pieter Gaudesaboos [official site]), and this adaptation didn't disappoint: beautiful textures abound and a quirky story. (3D geometry could have used some subdivision here and there though)

Annecy Day 1: Festival is great, Décascope… not so much

Today we dove right into the festival, we almost managed to attend 6 screenings on day 1, but a late dinner forced us to forgo TV Films in Competition 5.

The day started with TV1 at Décavision, and right off the bat I have to say: I don't think the festival can afford itself to have such lousy projectionists. There was no sound during the introfilms, and even three of the films in competition had no (or extremely quiet?) sound, the rest was too quiet. Painful, knowing that the jury was attending.

At a later screening at Décavision (CMD1), a spotlight aimed at the projection screen, meant to illuminate the screen at intermission, remained lit untill I stepped outside and warned someone of the organization. It took five minutes into the first movie until it got switched off. Again, the (same) jury was attending. Shame.

The screening went on with volumes peaking at 95dB (yes, I measured), We spent a lot of it with our fingers in our ears.

Annecy Day 0: So little time !

It's day T minus 1 at the Annecy Festival International du Film d'Animation. The city was pouring full of students and professionals this afternoon, everyone tried to login to the ticket reservation website (so naturally, it grinded to a halt). But in the end, we managed to get almost all our tickets reserved for the coming week.

That leaves us with little to say or do until the screenings start tomorrow.

Still, a few observations from reading "l'Officiel".

The Jury

The festival has managed to get a very esteemed jury for it's 50th anniversary as you can see on the official jury page. 

A few highlights: 

• Short films: John Musker, writer/director at Disney (Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Frog)
• Feature films: Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir [official site]) and sir Tim Rice (lyrics writer for Jesus Christ Superstar, Aladdin, Lion King etc.)
• TV-films: Max Howard (@mhconsulting [twitter]) who ran Disney Studios, headed WB animation, later exec. producer with Dreamworks
• Graduation Films: Nick Park (Wallace & Gromit), Peter De Sève (illustrator/character designer who gave us Scrat from Ice Age)

Last year it seemed to me we had a more stopmotion-biased jury, but as you can see, there's a lot of heavyweights with big studio and specifically Disney backgrounds. Also, Disney will host a talk about their move back to traditional 2D animation on Friday.

I'm curious how all of this will affect the outcome of the awards this year.

The Programme

Aside from a myriad of retrospectives, there's just an incredible amount of fresh programming to be seen here. And asually, we aim to watch everything in competition (Shorts, Studentfilms, TVfilms, commissioned films), and for Feature Films we cherry-pick what we think we'll like best, often favoring Avant-Premieres over movies in Competition.

However, this year, the discussion-panels, and work-in-progress presentations look amazing! 

Making-of's we will definitely visit:Dragons and Princesses

1. Dragons and Princesses (Michel Ocelot [Picture Gallery] of Kirikou Fame)
2. Disney: The art of traditional Animation (The Princess and the Frog)
3. Pixar: Three Dimensional Storytelling (examples from Toy Story 1-3 and the avant-premiere of the Night and Day short [teaser])
4. Work in Progress of "Une vie de Chat"[official blog] a Belgian/French coproduction with compositing by Izù Troin (le Bûcheron des mots [trailer]) 

Magasin des SuicidesI wish I could see more, "Not the end of the world" looks like it's going to be an incredibly funny British film adaptaton of the book. At the helm are Piet Kroon and Iain Harvey (of the classic T.R.A.N.S.I.T. [youtube])

Also interesting: "Le magasin de suicides" a stereoscopic 2D movie.

Or the Simpsons extravaganza with Matt Groening and David Silverman.

I might even go to a few noon sessions...

Like I said, there's just a crazy amount of stuff I'd love to see here. So: time to go to sleep, I'll post mini-reviews and favourites on twitter, and will try to harvest some links for those of you who are at home.

iPad as a platform / iPad as an appliance

It's been a few weeks since that Apple keynote.

I was able to watch it live, thanks to Leo Laporte's obsessive coverage over at the Twit Network.

My first impression wasn't that positive, because I wasn't convinced the iPad would make a dent outside the US.
As I had tweeted a few days earlier:

"If Apple's slate will be bundled with a whispernet-ish deal, or will be partly subsidized via Content-deals, then we Europeans will be f-ed."

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