ihatemusic

I hate enjoying animation and wishing to discuss animated films on the Internet where everybody has the biggest hard-on for Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks/[adult swim] or anime (but not good anime just the boring junk (almost all of it)) and will dismiss anything you have to say if you even hint that Up is a substandard picture (to be honest it's a piece of shit).

From the looks of it this forum is full of elitist assholes that sometimes post every few days. My kind of crowd.

Are any of you into animation?

Have you seen Feherlofia? You should. It's a Hungarian movie about a strong guy and some other strong guys who battle--ooooh, colorful. Some Hungarian folk legend done in a very vibrant abstract style. I've watched this several times because it's the first thing I think of when people want to know something good to watch stoned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dN_vwI8Vqg

What about Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, the classic Chinese film? Or anything released by Shanghai Studios back then - Havoc in Heaven and the Sun Wukong movies, Secrets of the Heavenly Book?

Kihachiro Kawamoto, Jan Svankmajer, Jiri Barta, Yuri Norshteyn, any of those names sound familiar?

Also this is great:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEMwnBGrRrA

I enjoyed Fear(s) Of The Dark when I saw it recently.



Call it nostalgia, naivety or whatever but I've yet to see anything that's blown me away like that first viewing of Akira...

I've never seen Akira actually. My anime exposure is pretty dim.

I didn't like Akira much, saw it in the theater when it came out (back when I used to go to the theater).

maybe it's too mainstream for mr. aaarg, but I've been getting into some of the Ghibli stuff recently. Spirited Away is probably still the best, but Pom Poko is much lesser known and also quite awesome.

Pom Poko was great! I hated the ending, but I loved the movie as a whole. I don't remember much of Spirited Away but I enjoyed it. Nausicaa was pretty good, the one with the castle in the sky was pretty good, Ponyo was terrible (to be fair I only had the option for the english dub and that makes a big difference).

Oh, and Kiki's Delivery Service! That one was awful, too!

I have nothing against Ghibli and I'll be seeing the new one whenever it comes to DVD... well, sometime after it comes to DVD, as I still haven't watched The Illusionist though I really like that guy's other work.

aaarg wrote:I still haven't watched The Illusionist though I really like that guy's other work.

I enjoyed The Illusionist although it's a little twee/mawkish in places. It was probably of more interest to me as it was 'shot' where I live, which made location spotting quite fun.

I'd like to watch Grave Of The Fireflies at some point.

aaarg wrote:(to be fair I only had the option for the english dub and that makes a big difference).

huge, I won't even watch these personally, and find it a bit hard to believe that in 2012, the only option to see the new one in NYC seems to be dubbed.

sure, here is a couple of short favourites

Hedgehog in the fog by Yuri Norshteyn (1975)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW0jvJC2rvM

L'homme sans ombre by Georges Schwizgebel (2004)
not on youtube

aaarg wrote:everybody has the biggest hard-on for Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks/[adult swim] or anime (but not good anime just the boring junk (almost all of it))

I've never seen Akira actually. My anime exposure is pretty dim.

Hmm, I wonder why people in discussions are dismissing your considered critique?

It's unfortunate that this discussion got kickstarted with such an elitist rant, as there's so much good stuff out there that would deserve a less dubious treatment. Personally I think Pixar have done a number of great films, particularly Wall-E and Up. Actually I kinda pity a film buff who has descendent so deep into an attitude of a cynical critic that he can no longer be charmed by something like Up. Not that everyone should automatically like it, but your post does portray a very tense viewing stance which seems kinda sad to me.

On a different note, speaking of Studio Ghibli, I found Arrietty quite charming as well, in a low-key way. It had fantastic sound design as well, to the extent that I edited out a 10 min chunk from the audiotrack around 1/3 into the movie for later use as sample material. Although it doesn't reach the level of my Ghibli favorites, which are Nausicaä, Mononoke and especially Spirited Away.

I'm an asshole and I won't deny that. I don't think there's been any "descent" into it - I was the kid that hated Toy Story when it was new (actually I was very disappointed with it because everybody else talked it up so much, which sort of happened with Up). Up was awful and the only thing I liked about it was some of the textures and lighting effects.

And how is it fair for me to be criticized for saying "Up is a shallow movie that had a ten-minute credits roll and somebody on that team had to have better ideas," but it's ok for people to say, of Michel Ocelot's Princes & Princesses, "oh it's in French? So it's gay?"

I don't know, man - bitch and let bitch, I say! I can't openly be a douchebag off the Internet so I have to make up for that online! Haha.

I won't begin to deny that I'm an asshole. I assumed everybody here was an elitist asshole as well and I could communicate without being called out for being a stupid close-minded snob... again. Dang.


Hedgehog in the Fog is pretty cool. Norshteyn co-directed a short with I. Ivanov-Vano with frescoes. P. cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aicvo9lvjn8

I haven't seen the other you mentioned!

aaarg wrote:I won't begin to deny that I'm an asshole. I assumed everybody here was an elitist asshole as well and I could communicate without being called out for being a stupid close-minded snob... again. Dang.

yeah, don't sweat it, just keep bringing knowledge.

aaarg wrote:And how is it fair for me to be criticized for saying "Up is a shallow movie that had a ten-minute credits roll and somebody on that team had to have better ideas," but it's ok for people to say, of Michel Ocelot's Princes & Princesses, "oh it's in French? So it's gay?"

Well firstly that's not what you said. Secondly, and more importantly, where did you get the idea that saying the latter is "ok"? It should be obvious by now that nobody talks like that on this forum and if I'd personally be involved in a conversation where someone said that, I'd be pretty likely to just walk away at that point.

What I find interesting is how much of a social dimension is there in these kind of relatively extreme dismissals of the "common opinion", of the nature of "I'm less conforming than you". That certainly played a part when I started getting into "weirder" music as a teenager, but that aspect has luckily been steadily decreasing for me since then. Your first sentence in this thread certainly had a strong vibe like that, as in your mind everyone else in the internet is into shit animations and are not capable of accepting the truth of the substandard quality of those movies when delivered by you. Personally I'd be quite happy if nothing would be dismissed out of hand on any grounds, be it popularity, obscurity or frenchness.

But I won't derail the thread further. In fact I'm also interested in your suggestions, particularly on those Chinese animations...

yeah, no one said that on this forum and if they did, we wouldn't let it stand. dunno where that came from.

from my own perspective, I don't think I've seen a single Pixar film yet, but I don't see almost any Hollywood films of any kind anymore. what Pixar films would people recommend I check out to start with?

Well with that example I wasn't really referring to the Internet or this forum but somebody has said that to me in person and it was pretty irritating and taught me to keep my suggestions to the Internet, haha.

Sorry, I'm not meaning to stir anything up or be some kind of jerk-off. But I'm a jerk-off!

jon abbey wrote:from my own perspective, I don't think I've seen a single Pixar film yet, but I don't see almost any Hollywood films of any kind anymore.

Yeah I really avoid big-budget things but every so often I get suckered into watching something contemporary! Haha.


RE: Chinese animation.
The old Shanghai catalogue is something I'd be interested in discovering more of, myself. Not knowing Chinese certainly doesn't help! I know several feature length films are (or were) on Youtube in Youtube-quality if that's something you're not put-off by.

Ok! After checking Youtube, apparently the account that had a bunch of great foreign animation got deleted, so now all I'm finding of Nezha Conquers the Dragon King is an English dub (!) and fullversion Mandarin without subs (!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPjquxz5uRU

They apparently made six Monkey King features, but I've only seen three (the first two are typically condensed into one and labeled Havoc in Heaven or Uproar in Heaven).
And apparently that one is still available on Youtube (quality's great, considering the age).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_sYUUz49Fs
The other one I saw, I bought. The title on my copy is "The Golden Monkey King Defeats the Evil" and it's pretty good. Lacking the quality of Havoc in Heaven, I guess they didn't have enough money to devote to this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP0ZoSe50NI

Secrets of the Heavenly Book or The Legend of the Sealed Book or Whatever Translation You Like is good, too. YT doesn't have subs, but I know they're out there. I think this is by mostly the same folks who did Nezha, though it seems to take itself less seriously. I'm about due for another viewing of this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g099-Ng5Hlc

There are tons of great old Chinese shorts, too, but I'm bad at remembering those - and worse with titles. The DVDs I have include several shorts with poor subtitles (and a lot of them are just blatant propaganda).
Te Wei made very beautiful stuff, like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuCdZCN3UdI

YT has a bunch of shorts, and plenty of places sell small collections of shorts, full of some pretty sweet bad-subs if you're into that sort of thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtocZ5kNRPM

If you're into DVDs, yesasia sells a couple of things and I bought a few things for good prices off this site: http://stores.moviesville.com/DVDs/Animation/
But you have to go through a lot of Felix the Cat and Disney movies to find the actual Chinese stuff!


That's pretty disappointing about that Youtube account that got deleted. He had good stuff on there - some Czech and French stuff, too.

I know a few months ago a lot of Russian animation was deleted from YT because somebody made mostly false claims about being the copyright holder. Such a shame.

Oh! Speaking of Russian animation, have any of you seen the Soviet version of The Jungle Book? It's a good one (and no singing!). This version doesn't have subs, but they're out there somewhere!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdKTyWK8d28
The DVD I have also includes two other Soviet animations based on Kipling stories, including a version of Rikki Tikki Tavi that I think is a hell of a lot better than the Chuck Jones one. I guess YT has a partial version or a full version with super wiped out colors - and honestly, the color makes this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPZ8HoAnFAo
It's just got much more... style... than Jones. Or maybe I just don't like white people because I am one and I don't like me.


See, I just ramble.

Dan Warburton wrote:

Ugh god no. If there's any Pixar movie to see, it's either Ratatouille or watch half of WALL-E and then turn it off. But ignorance might be bliss in this case, I think the studio's very overrated in general. Some nice imagery and good scenes here and there though.

Poland - like other Eastern Bloc countries - produced a lot of great animated shorts in the 60s and 70s (and beyond), which often have a dark, surreal flavour very far removed from the Disney conception of animation as kids' stuff; it's the same sort of atmosphere also found in Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay. Two of my favourites (with YouTube links), which can both be found on a cheap Polish DVD set:

Labyrinth (Jan Lenica, 1962)
Reflections (Jerzy Kucia, 1979)

Lenica, like his colleague Walerian Borowczyk, pioneered the style of cut-out animation which, following Max Ernst, made use of old Victorian/pre-war found images (e.g. men with large moustaches and top hats) in subversive ways, a style later popularised by Terry Gilliam, who used it for his Monty Python title sequences.

A notable American figure working in a similar vein is Lawrence (aka Larry) Jordan, who combines that sort of Victorian collage surrealism with an interest in Eastern mysticism. Most of the YT uploads look a bit blurry, but here's a sample: Duo Concertantes (1964). Apparently he's still active, fifty years on.

P. Wretch wrote:Poland - like other Eastern Bloc countries - produced a lot of great animated shorts in the 60s and 70s (and beyond), which often have a dark, surreal flavour very far removed from the Disney conception of animation as kids' stuff

When I was young and Channel 4 had just started, they'd play weird Eastern European animation that (and this may be too technical a critique for some) freaked me the fuck out. I especially remember one where a load of whales (or possible a load of whales' ghosts) floated up into space and then started hemmorhaging roses. There was also a strange space epic thing, in a sort of Moebius/Aeon Flux style.

Amazing stuff that I have no idea how to hunt down based on these meagre scraps of reminiscence.

Thanks for the info on the Chinese animations, aaarg, I'll check them out. I'm somewhat familiar with the story of the monkey king, so perhaps I'll start with those...

edit: It seems that at least the first Monkey King movie is also available as a torrent.