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GHcool 
"Forever a curious character."
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 Posted - 07/17/2007 : 08:46:54
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I just came back from a screening of Broadcast News at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences building in Beverly Hills. Before the movie, they showed an animated short that was nominated for the Best Animated Short Oscar the same year Broadcast News was nominated for Best Picture. It was called "Your Face" and I found it grotesque, funny, oddly haunting, and kind of shocking. I found myself thinking about that 3 minute short as I was driving home more than I was thinking about Broadcast News.
"Your Face was produced by Bill Plympton, an animator that seems to work only with colored pencils and paper! The technique in "Your Face" and Plympton's other work I found on You Tube looks so simple that a clever 9 year old could do it, but its not. It takes a mastery of the craft to make this kind of stuff. Plimpton's "How to Kiss" also has a couple of good reviews on FWFR, although the reviews don't do the film justice to its strangeness.
A small warning though: these kind of cartoons might not be everybody's cup of tea. They're grotesque to the point of shocking. I wouldn't call them sexual or violent because they defy those kinds of "normal" categoizations. I would say that if you like Terry Gilliam's animation bits in "Monty Python's Flying Circus," you might like Bill Plympton's stuff, which goes a couple of steps further than Gilliam ever did. |
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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 07/17/2007 : 09:19:28
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quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
I just came back from a screening of Broadcast News at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences building in Beverly Hills. Before the movie, they showed an animated short that was nominated for the Best Animated Short Oscar the same year Broadcast News was nominated for Best Picture. It was called "Your Face" and I found it grotesque, funny, oddly haunting, and kind of shocking. I found myself thinking about that 3 minute short as I was driving home more than I was thinking about Broadcast News.
"Your Face was produced by Bill Plympton, an animator that seems to work only with colored pencils and paper! The technique in "Your Face" and Plympton's other work I found on You Tube looks so simple that a clever 9 year old could do it, but its not. It takes a mastery of the craft to make this kind of stuff. Plimpton's "How to Kiss" also has a couple of good reviews on FWFR, although the reviews don't do the film justice to its strangeness.
A small warning though: these kind of cartoons might not be everybody's cup of tea. They're grotesque to the point of shocking. I wouldn't call them sexual or violent because they defy those kinds of "normal" categoizations. I would say that if you like Terry Gilliam's animation bits in "Monty Python's Flying Circus," you might like Bill Plympton's stuff, which goes a couple of steps further than Gilliam ever did.
What a brilliant piece of work ... led me to view some of his other displays on YouTube ... too many links to post. All equally original and startling.
Thanks, GHC ... I'd heard of Plympton but never had the chance to see his stuff. 
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 07/17/2007 : 10:06:20
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Ah yep, he's great. I was introduced to Plympton's work in the early '90's when the Animation Celebration compilations did the cinema rounds on an annual basis. I hadn't seen Your Face but had seen some of his others. I first saw Creature Comforts in Animation Celebration. 
Actually, it was in Animation Celebration that I realised that 'realism' or visual animation quality was largely irrelevant to the end result; which was to shock you, make you laugh, make you cry etc. Plympton's 'scruffy' pictures still shock with their surreal concepts, South Park's simple pictures still crack me up, and Ghibli's watercolours mesmerise or rip me to pieces.
I recall Isao Takahata (of Studio Ghibli fame) saying that animation has the power to cause stronger emotional reactions than the use of real life actors, because the animators can force the viewer to concentrate on whatever they want them to see, e.g., the eyes, the nose, the background, a wound etc. Inevitably when using live actors the viewer is distracted by other details on the screen that are impossible to remove. I didn't believe him until I watched Grave of the Fireflies. 
Bill Plympton is a cross between Dali and Warhol.  |
Edited by - Sean on 07/17/2007 10:13:01 |
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Bill Plympton
