SWEET Animation Festival!

Ray and I just got in from an awesome animation show at The Loft! Man that place is the coolest...they've always got the craziest, most obscure, indie stuff. This one was called, er, "The Animation Show". I wanted to put in here for posterity the films that were in there that I can remember. It was like a dose of speed into your veins, there were a TON of films in like an hour and a half.

Show Opener: Joel Trussell - The Old People on the Cruise Ship Going Death Metal opener

The Life and Times of Tim/The Angry Unpaid Hooker: Steve Dildarian

Operator: Matthew Walker - calling God while eating a toffee apple and asking why he can't lick his elbow

Voodoo: Gobelins School of Animation - explorers get blasted to sea and eaten when they try to blast open an old ruin

Blind Spot: Gobelins School of Animation - an old woman is blamed for a hold-up gone awry because the videocamera missed the assailant the whole time

Burning Safari: Gobelins School of Animation - robot takes picture of monkey and monkey freaks out

Cocotteminute: Gobelins School of Animation - the racing kitchen chicken opener from Annecy (!!! :)) 2006

Hot dog: Bill Plympton - the little dog that tried to be a fire dog

This Way Up: Smith & Foulkes - two undertakers who try to deliver a coffin when their hearse is squashed by a giant boulder

Western Spaghetti: PES - one of the coolest, wackiest stop-films I've seen, using Pick-Up sticks for spaghetti (which come out as rubberbands), rubics cubes and dice chopped up, foil for oil, tomato pincushions squashed for tomato sauce...very cool

(3) Psychotown: Aussie Dave Carter - paper cut-out guys and their shenanigans...the Oranges game, a psychiatrist session, and staging a coup using the government's army against them

Lovesport Paintballing: Grant Orchard - crazy computer-like game of paintballing where the paint can ultimately annihilates everyone then feeling dismayed shoots himself only for everyone else to get up after the fact

Jeu: Georges Schwizgebel - neither Ray nor I liked this one; way too much going on with the animation constantly turning into something else, made our heads hurt

Speaking of Ray...Raymond: BIF Productions - scientists develop drops to stimulate certain actions and dropping them on Raymond's head stimulate him to do some very strange things...it wasn't one of my favorites yet I probably laughed the hardest on this one

Key Lime Pie: Trevor Jimenez - bizarre spy-type flick, I guess film noir genre, about yes, Key Lime Pie

Prof Nieto Show: Nieto - wtf, beetles for a group of scientist students, a monkey, and beetles that play soccer...a fly pulls a red card...just...wtf

(3) Yompi: Corky Quakenbush - definitely not a fan, could live without this being in existence at all...Yompi this creature thing with a dung-like swirl on his head looks sweet then bites your crotch. And that's it. Ok.

(2) Usavich: Satoshi Tomioka - not too sure about these; first the driver's not paying attention on a cliff road and hijinx ensue, in the second it's about the combined sound effects of the road. Weird characters made for a weird viewing experience.

Lastly mine and Ray's two content-favorites:
Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker: Stefan Mueller - one of the best drug trip portrayals I've ever seen, and a pretty unique take on a film and pov. The neighbor calls the cops on loud music, and between the man being dominated in one apt, and the drug lab in the second, somehow between here and there Mr. First Neighbor ends up with a tab of acid in his coffee and the cop is like wtF is going on with you people??

And the one that takes the cheese:
John and Karen: Matthew Walker - polar bear and penguin. Very simple but very awesome. These animation festivals are so crazy.


Holy god, that's 25 films. No wonder we felt exhausted afterward - but happy! We might even go again this week to see it, even though it doesn't even start til 10p. Anyway that list wasn't meant to be a comprehensive review just a bit to jog my memory in the future. It was an awesome time, and fun to think back on all the fun events we've been to just in the past few months: tonight was the animation festival, Tuesday we went and saw Mongol (cool flick about the rise of Ghengis Khan), the Poetry Slam, the LunaFest women's film festival, the outdoor film festival, the Aloha festival, the Short Film Fest...and there's always so many more things going on! We veered away from them for awhile to build up the savings but I think it's time to jump back into whatever we can and enjoy it. :)

Tonight was definitely a great start!

:) :) :)