I just found two animated movies that I REALLY want to go see! The first is The Triplets of Belleville.
Behold a tale of true love (between a boy and a bicycle), of tireless courage (from a bitty grandmother with a clubfoot) and of a shocking new definition of sexy (three wizened matriarchs who ravenously slurp down frogs). Sylvain Chomet's feature debut is an animated extravaganza of Gallic wit and soul that delivers more wild humanity than many of the year's live-action features. The "simple" plot entails a freakish lad who is kidnapped while racing Le Tour de France and must be rescued by his grandma and their obese dog, but go for the atmosphere and music, an orgy of influences including Hayao Miyazaki, gypsy jazz and Jeu
net & Caro. In particular, relish the eponymous trio — it seems safe to say that there haven't been cooler old ladies in cinema in recent tim
es, possibly ever. The movie could well be the finest animated film of 2003, if not one of the best in any category.
— Gregory Weinkauf, SF Weekly
I've watched a few clips of it on YouTube and I believe the dog is my favorite character thus far. It reminds me heavily of the Russian cartoons I used to watch on IFC. I had forgotten exactly how much I really enjoy foreign animation, and it's nice to see interesting animated movies with stylish animation coming from countries other than Japan. Don't get me wrong I love a lot of animated movies that come from Japan-it's just nice to see the rest of the world finally catching up! It was part of the 2003 Cannes Film festival and has a long list of awards AND it's French!! Woot! Go my French
brethren!!
The second movie that I am very excited about is The Secret of Kells. It is about a young boy Brenden who must use his new found gift of Illumination in order to defeat Vikings that are closing in on his abbey. The animation is very reminiscent of Samurai Jack for me, as well as holding it's own flavor. It looks like the pages of the Book of Kells itself coming to life. The music is also exquisite. I can't wait, March 6th!
Beautiful artwork!
5 comments:
I *just* saw how you've described the link to my blog. That cracked me up!
Well, it's true! Will you go see The Secret of Kells with me next week? Pweeeeeeeease!!!
WOW? Next week? I think it's two weeks out, if it comes out on the 6th. Which is Giuli's birthday.
Can the three of us go see it?
I know nothing of the latter but Triplets is GORGEOUS! It's got all of, like, one line of dialogue in the entire film and otherwise it's all music, sound effects, and pantomime. It's really great. My only (minor) gripe are some CGI explosions composited into a sequence near the end. Very disappointing after seeing the beautiful, hand-animated explosions from Gurren Lagann.
Maybe I could set it up on the projector here for you if we could figure out a good time. It's definitely worth seeing on a big screen if you can. (Well, most movies are better on a big screen, but still...)
That would be totally awesome! [Sorry, Ninja Turtles moment!]. I read that it had very little dialogue, which I like because then it forces the story to find more creative ways to tell itself. Wall-E is like that, and I really enjoy it. It takes more creativity and ingenuity to tell a story without dialogue in my opinion.
I'm glad you like it. I trust your opinion, and you should look into The Secret of Kells. It seems very interesting both story wise and stylistically. Did you ever watch Samurai Jack? One of my favorites because of the unconventional animation style, and lack of gobs of dialogue like all the other hyper-inflated stuff that seems to be on CN at the moment...I ramble, off to work!
Post a Comment