Critic's Notebook

Graphic transformation: Animation rises, CGI sinks in 2009

By Dennis Harvey

Science fiction has often dwelt upon the fear that machines will overtake man—which of course they kind of have, from the Industrial Revolution through the Digital Age, in terms of lessening the need for manual labor or even organic brainpower. But while technology may have taken some jobs, polluted our environment, etc., it hasn’t yet completely stolen humanity’s place in the scheme of things.

Except, one could argue, in the realm of movies. With this year’s summings-up extended to considering our first post-millennial decade, it’s a good moment to consider where mainstream cinema has gone since CGI sank its bloodless talons into the already less-than-exquisite corpse.

Some of 2009’s biggest hits reflected how much worse off we are for the ever-greater refining of such illustrative graphics. What could be more astonishing than the spectacular sights in, say, that Transformers sequel and 2012? Or at least they would be, if the supporting ideas weren’t so bankrupt. Fantastical imagery of a realism cinema was never capable of before, robbed of any real emotional/narrative context or buildup beyond cartoonish current formula, reverberates no more than the colors and bells of a pinball game. (I’d say “video game,” but the distinction between those and much blockbuster cinema has grown too slim for the comparison to retain any punch.) It’s overstimulation that signifies nothing, and feels more aggressively braincell-destructive than the myriad kinds Hollywood has purveyed to date.

But there’s a bizarre flipside to that equation. As mainstream live-action films have gotten dumb and dumberer, animated features (mainstream and otherwise) have gotten smarter and smarter. The latter’s majority (current hand-drawn Disney flashback The Princess and the Frog being an increasingly rare exception) make even fuller use of the extraordinary technological palette that’s rendered so many live-action films partly “animated” ones, via motion-capture, etc.

So why are so many fully animated films today good-to-exceptional, while live-action fantasy struggles to reach that totem pole’s lower regions? (I say this while allowing that this year’s entries in the FX-heavy Star Trek and Harry Potter franchises were both deftly crafted delights.) Beats me. Are post-*Star Wars* generations simply more tolerant of sophistication in an allegedly juvenile form, while they shrug off the infantilizing of a hitherto mostly-adult one? Or is it simply that fanboys (and girls) who’ve turned into animators are more sophisticated than ever before, influenced by the serious adventuring of many graphic novels and unfettered by fear that audiences won’t accept complex ideas packaged in animation.

Spectacular proof of “cartoons’” maturing was on offer in 2009: One could easily argue that the best of this year’s U.S. animated features constitute a stronger group than the best of its live-action efforts. Among movies I haven’t seen (yeah, shame on me), Princess, Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo, and Robert Zemeckis’ 3-D motion-capture Christmas Carol have all been raved about in certain quarters. (And that leaves out several popular releases that got just mixed critical reception, like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.)

The ones I have seen, though, already constitute a brilliant year for the art form. Consider the following, a list I’m sure isn’t exhaustive:

Sita Sings the Blues
Ex-San Franciscan Nina Paley’s one-woman feature is a dazzlingly original, funny mix of autobiographical baggage (hewing from when her onetime boyfriend left her) and brilliantly re-imagined myth (drawn from The Ramayana). Think Betty Boop meets Woody Allen meets Chris Marker…yup, I’m grasping here. For complicated legal reasons Sita is already widely available for free online. (It played 2008’s SF International Animation Festival here and also played a couple gigs at SF’s Red Vic Movie House). So why aren’t you watching it right now?

A Town Called Panic
Though it doesn’t open in the Bay Area until January, this Belgian feature (an entry in SFIAF 2009)—based on a popular TV series—is easily the most hilarious ‘toon in any language this year. Its French-speaking characters are plastic toys jerkily animated via stop-motion. Hard to describe, impossible to resist.

Up
Pixar triumphed yet again with this mixture of the expectedly cute and unexpectedly profound, with more thrilling hairpin-escape action than the non-"animated" films of 2012 could muster.

Fantastic Mr. Fox
No matter that his animators complained he was an exasperatingly hands-off, long-distance director—the results are Wes Anderson’s best since at least The Royal Tenenbaums. Perhaps even Rushmore. Or…ever? Loosely derived from Roald Dahl’s children’s book, it’s very droll stuff, beautifully designed in a stop-motion technique you’d never imagine was akin to that used in Panic.

$9.99
Ditto this claymative curio, made in Australia by Israeli Talia Rosenthal, based on stories by her countryman Etgar Keret. Conspicuously grownup in the tradition of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, it’s a collection of interwoven apartment-block stories that equally recall Raymond Carver and Angela Carter.

Coraline
Gorgeously designed, Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick’s adaptation of a Neil Gaiman story took family entertainment several steps farther into the macabre. What would Walt have thought?

Monsters vs Aliens
A benign slapstick spin on Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and other 1950s drive-in horrors, in IMAX 3-D, with voice talents including Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Colbert and Paul Rudd. A few years ago this would have seemed insanely cool—in 2009 it’s just a solidly enjoyable ‘toon in a year of great ones.

topics: animation, anime, bay area, comedy, cult cinema, filmmakers, genre films, hollywood, independent film, internet, red vic movie house, sf international animation festival, world cinema, youth

12.22.2009