Talk to the Snail

Images from Jean-Christophe Lie’s “L’Homme a la Gordini”

I’m back from the Ottawa International Animation Festival. Hats off to Chris Robinson, Kelly Neall, and the team behind the screens for organizing another fine festival. Also, thanks to Dave Levy who invited me to sit on a development panel along with Linda Simensky, Fran Krause, and Heather Kenyon. It went well, and I used two different dating analogies in answering questions.

It was a strong crop of shorts this year, I think. However, even though I took advantage of the screenings-on-demand, I still fell short of seeing all the animation I would’ve liked to have seen. Favorite films? Again, I didn’t see nearly everything (I missed the Student Screening, for example), but I’d give the blue ribbon to “L’Homme a la Gordini”, the first short film by Jean-Christophe Lie, and a cartoon I wished would’ve gone on longer. I also enjoyed pretty well Adam [Read more…]

 Yo Gabba Gabba - “The Train Ride”

Okay. Thursday afternoon’s Short Competition #5 ends and I head over to some theater in a mall to take in the next screening, Kids Competition – TV. I’d say there were around 200 folks in attendance, with maybe a dozen kids under the age of thirteen. With a 5:00 p.m. screening on a Friday, you’d kind of expect that, I guess. I don’t know how many kids turned out for the competition’s repeat on Saturday afternoon.

Sixteen cartoons were shown, a full eleven of which were music videos from Yo Gabba Gabba! That’s fine, I guess. They were all good (you’ve probably seen a bunch) and they deserved to be there. And, since I wasn’t going to make the Yo Gabba Gabba! presentation Saturday morning (’There’s a Party in My Tummy”), this was another way for me to get in on the Gabbapalooza. The YGG! filmmakers included Kangaroo Alliance, [Read more…]

“The Control Master”

On Thursday, after the Canadian Showcase at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, I stuck around the ByTowne Cinema for Short Competition #5, the second of five shorts screenings, again with fifteen films of various media (ex. cut-outs, ink on paper, CG, and, for the first time this year, a pair of Flash films) in a range of categories (ads, narrative shorts, experimental, student work, etc.) with a bunch of countries represented (Japan, Scandanavia, France, the USA, and so forth).

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“Wanted”

Thursday morning’s screening at Ottawa’s ByTowne Cinema showcased fifteen Canadian shorts, hence the title Canadian Showcase.

You know, often when I’m at a festival, or watching a cartoon pitch here in Burbank, or even a DVD of shorts at home, I’ll use a “morning after” test. Sure, the films could be a lot terribly interesting as you’re watching them, but, more often than not, when you try to remember them the next morning, they start to blur around the edges. So today, four days after the Canadian Showcase, I’m not surprised I need to go back through the festival catalog to remind myself what I watched. This says less about the specific films and their filmmakers, but more about how difficult it is to create a memorable pieces of work, ones that will leave lasting impressions, like “The House of Small Cubes” and the festival’s winner of the Grand Prize for Best Student [Read more…]

“The House of Small Cubes”

Well, I’m back in beautiful Burbank after a four-day trip to Canada for this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival. I always look forward to this event – the city’s beautifully historic/historically beautiful, I always meet new filmmakers, and, if I’m lucky, I can grab a plate or seven of poutine in between screenings.

I landed in Ottawa around 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday, forcing me to rush to the hotel, then to the city’s Arts Court Building (pictured below) to pick up my pass, then to the ByTowne Cinema to catch Shorts Screening #1 at 9:00 p.m. It turns out I had plenty of time – there was about forty-five minutes of talking and stuff before the animation began. I would’ve gladly done without most of it, but Emru Townsend’s sister gave a touching tribute to her brother, who underwent a stem-cell transfusion just the day before. Get well soon, Emru.

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