Entries Tagged 'animation' | Indie Eye

Entries tagged “animation”

"In a Lonely Place" by way of Atari's "Crystal Castles"...

By Alison Willmore on 03/04/2009

Filed under: Watchy

...with a touch of Chris Ware. That's the easiest way to sum up David O'Reilly's fantastic "Please Say Something," which won the short film Golden Bear at Berlin this year. (In an interview, he compared it to "Breaking the Waves" and "Persona," but pointed out "There's also a nod to Funny Games." A blockily animated cat and mouse live together in a blustery, geometric, largely monochromatic future, communicating in subtitled squeaks. Despite these trappings, the film's actually a half absurd, half genuinely sad story of the couple's troubled domestic life, one that runs through and refreshes every cliche of emotional... MORE »

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Sundance 2009: "Mary and Max."

By Alison Willmore on 01/16/2009

Filed under: Festivals

The opening night slot at Sundance is customarily considered one of doom, and in that tradition "Mary and Max" is a disappointment, though just a mild one. The film, animator Adam Elliot's first feature, has many of the elements and motifs of his splendid, award-winning shorts -- a distinctive portraiture-inspired look, heavy voiceover, characters with mental or physical disabilities, misspellings, insulting newspaper headlines, accident-prone pets -- while demonstrating why, as it is, Elliot's style is better kept to a briefer form. MORE »