By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)
The National Film Board of Canada is getting ready to take on Annecy International Animation Film Festival with five shorts going into competition. This event takes place in France from June 11 to 16th, and is considered by many as a great event to premiere unique animated works. This year, they are honouring Brazilian animation and music in this art form will be the spotlight. Fantasia and Allegro non Tropo are classic works, and to learn the composers behind them will be talking about the process will make for a nice contrast to the sneak peaks I have seen from the NFB.
Filmmakers Alison Snowden and David Fine have a screening of Animal Behaviour (Zoothérapie), and it has a sweet charm to it that I like. This team is better known for the celebrated Bob and Margaret, and I am very reminded of the same type of humour in their short. The series follows the lives of these titular characters in a mundane manner and by the end of an episode, the feelings that emerge are from 70’s TV show, Happy Days. Viewers are simply left smiling. With the short, caricatures of today’s concerns can be found. Are we truly in control of our lives? Cheryl, the praying mantis, has boyfriend problems; Lorraine, a leech, suffers from separation anxiety; Todd, a pig, has an eating disorder, Jeffrey, a bird, has pangs of guilt; and Linda is an obsessive-compulsive cat.
By Ed Sum
Sunao Katabuchi’s In This Corner of the World (この世界の片隅に) is arriving this week, on November 14th, onto home video. Anime enthusiasts will most likely have picked up this title by now, and for those who have not, this title is worth putting into the collection for the poetic journey Suzu (the protagonist) has to face. She has no knowledge of the grander picture. She knows the wartime situation in Japan is dire, and she adjusts by staying completely naive to the whole drama. In what she does have to face, her strength and perseverance shine.
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