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Finally, there's an animation festival with the artists themselves at the helm. Following the critically acclaimed theatrical tour of The Animation Show we bring you The Animation Show Volume One on DVD! Kicking off in the spring of 2004, The Animation Show Volume One is a collection of the best animated short films from around the world, personally programmed by co-producers Mike Judge (Office Space, and King of the Hill) and Academy Award nominated animator Don Hertzfeldt. This year's DVD line-up spans eight countries, featuring everything from 2003 Academy Award winner Adam Elliot's three claymation films Brother, Cousin, and Uncle to the very latest in computer animation - with four recent Academy Award nominees (including Mt Head, The Rocks, Fifty Percent Grey, and The Cathedral), brand new films from Mike and Don, plus extra surprises. Never before has such a visually stunning and hilarious collection of animation been gathered together in one program. Each year the Animation Show plans to follow its new theatrical tour with a DVD compilation packed with award winning animation from around the world. Starting with this first volume Mike and Don have asked the filmmakers involved to share insight into their individual technique with an amazing assortment of special features. This is the first animated compilation to take such an indepth look into the inner workings of so many great filmmakers. There is an enormous surplus of great animation that rarely sees wide distribution or exposure. This DVD series will function to spotlight these hidden classics as well as showcase older animation greats that have yet to find their way to DVD. The Animation Show has put together a new ongoing volume of work that will catalog the greatest animation created and present this work to movie goers and animation fans for years to come.
All films in a printable format
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Welcome to the Show
directed by Don Hertzfeldt
USA,
Animation,
2003,
Traditional 2D Animation combined with Stop-Motion,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:03:00
The little fluffy guys from Rejected are back and here to host a brand new festival of great animation from around the world. This is the first of three new pieces created for "the Animation Show."
... more info
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Mt. Head (Atama Yama)
directed by Koji Yamamura
Japan,
Animation,
2002,
Traditional 2D Animation combined with CGI,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:10:00
After a stingy man eats some cherry seeds, a cherry tree grows on his head. A modern interpretation of the traditional Japanese Rakugo story, "Atama-yama", set in contemporary Tokyo.
... more info
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Brother
directed by Adam Elliot
Australia,
Animation,
2000,
Claymation,
B&W,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:07:50
The childhood memory of a brother, his cigarette butts, asthma and head lice.
... more info
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Parking
directed by Bill Plympton
USA,
Animation,
2002,
Traditional 2D Animation,
Color,
00:05:16
A single blade of grass in an otherwise pristine parking lot sparks an escalating war of wills..
... more info
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Adventures of Ricardo, The
directed by Corky Quackenbush
United Kingdom,
Animation,
1996,
Claymation,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:00:00
Three shorts from the wild mind of Corky Quakenbush introduce us to the misguided world of Ricardo and his adventures. ... more info
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Moving Illustrations of Machines
directed by Jeremy Solterbeck
United Kingdom,
Animation,
2000,
Computer Animation,
B&W,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:09:30
Inspired by the cloning and birth of Dolly the Sheep, Moving Illustrations of Machines is a painstakingly detailed animated film. It consists of hand drawn ink artwork completed over a span of nearly four yea... more info
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LA COURSE À L'ABÎME (The Ride to the Abyss)
directed by Georges Schwizgebel
Switzerland,
Animation,
1992,
Acrylic paint on cel,
Color,
Optical Stereo,
00:04:30
"The Ride to the Abyss"... Two riders on galloping horses disappear and reappear, alternating with other animated images moving to the same rhythm...... more info
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Billy's Balloon
directed by Don Hertzfeldt
United Kingdom,
Animation,
1998,
Traditional 2D Animation,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:05:22
A boy and his balloon.
... more info
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Cousin
directed by Adam Elliot
Australia,
Animation,
1998,
Claymation,
B&W,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:04:40
The childhood remembrance of a cousin, his special arm, pet rocks
and shopping trolley.... more info
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Cathedral, The
directed by Tomek Baginski
Poland,
Animation,
2002,
3D Animation,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:06:30
Based on the novel by Jacek Dukaj, the Cathedral is the story of a pilgrim who arrives at the edge of the world at the end of a long journey. Here he finds the Cathedral, a place full of secrets. The Cathedra... more info
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Intermission in the Third Dimension
directed by Don Hertzfeldt
USA,
Animation,
2003,
Traditional 2D Animation combined with Stop-Motion,
B&W,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:03:00
Our fluffy friends explore the exciting theoretical land of space and time known as the third dimension.... more info
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Fifty Percent Grey
directed by Ruairi Robinson
Ireland,
Animation,
2001,
3D Animation,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:02:46
A dead solider wakes up to find himself with his gun, a widescreen TV,
and a whole lot of time...
... more info
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Uncle
directed by Adam Elliot
Australia,
Animation,
1997,
Claymation,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:06:08
The biography of a humble man, his lemon tree, chihuahua and crumpets.... more info
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Early Pencil Tests and Other Experiments
directed by Mike Judge
USA,
Animation,
1990,
Traditional 2D Animation,
B&W,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:05:00
A collection of never-before-seen character animation and experiments 'from the archives' of Mike Judge, plus the very rare early short film, Huh? and the first Office Space animated short with Milton - later... more info
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Aria
directed by Pjotr Sapegin
Canada,
Animation,
2001,
Stop Motion Animation,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:10:32
An animated short inspired by Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly. The puppet Butterfly lives alone on an island, until a white ship brings the handsome sailor Pinkerton. Their love affair grows until Pinkerton ... more info
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Bathtime in Clerkenwell
directed by Alex Budovsky
United Kingdom,
Animation,
2002,
Computer Animation,
B&W,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:03:15
The cuckoos have taken over London and no one is safe! These Little Napoleons and Kaisers get a whimsical Metropolis-type assembly line going that will have you tapping your toes to the beat. This Vaudeville ... more info
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The Rocks (Das Rad)
directed by Chris Stenner, Heidi Wittlinger and Arvid Uibel
Germany,
Animation,
2001,
Stop Motion Animation combined with CGI,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:08:30
The stone people have seen a lot in their everlasting lives atop their mountain, so they're only mildly amazed by the comings and goings inside the valley below. But when Mankind begins to progress and grow, ... more info
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End of the Show, The
directed by Don Hertzfeldt
United Kingdom,
Animation,
2003,
Traditional 2D Animation combined with Stop-Motion,
B&W,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:03:00
As the first installment of "The Animation Show" draws to a close an epic battle unfolds featuring deadly robots.... more info
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This DVD has never been screened
Reviews and Other Info:
-Audio commentaries by animators Bill Plympton and Corky Quackenbush.
-Deleted pencil test by Mike Judge
-Special effects commentary and production art galleries by Don Hertzfeldt.
-"Mt. Head" galleries of concept art and character design.
-"The Cathedral" motion tests, animatics and production art.
-"The Rocks" production photo album.
-"La Course A L'abime" storyboard to scene comparison.
-plus much more!
2006-09-26 Educational Media Reviews Online
By Christopher Dunham
With a few additions and deletions from its Fall 2003 theatrical release, The Animation Show, Volume One (http://www.animationshow.com/dvd.html) has something for everyone, from casual viewers looking for entertainment to students and faculty studying film or the themes and stories. It showcases a collection of 20 shorts from 13 directors hailing from 8 countries and uses a wide variety of techniques: claymation, stop-motion animation, three-dimensional computer animation, computer-generated imagery (CGI), and traditional two-dimensional animation. Together, the films have no set theme except to promote the work of animators and the genre as a whole. Independently, they address issues as varied as death and dying, religion, ecology, cloning, handicaps, and history. The films and their directors have won various awards at festivals all over the world, with four of the films (Fifty Percent Grey, Katedra, Mt. Head, and Das Rad) nominated for Oscars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Don Hertzfeldt’s (USA) trio produced exclusively for The Animation Show (Welcome to the Show, Intermission in the Third Dimension, and The End of the Show) are clear examples of humorous surrealism and his well-known Billy’s Balloon (1998) anthropomorphizes a seemingly innocuous child’s toy into an evil and malicious entity [note: this film’s soundtrack was off-sync on one of two players used]. A trilogy from Australian director Adam Elliot (1999’s Brother, 1998’s Cousin, and 1996’s Uncle) portrays one boy’s family life. Funny at times, each is spare and simple (black-and-white, claymation), yet remarkably poignant tribute to family hardships. Germany’s 2001 Das Rad (The Rocks) by Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel, and Heidi Wittlinger is a light-hearted look at history from the viewpoint of a pair of cairn-like rock piles. Also subtitled, Mt. Head (Japan, 2002) took Koji Yamamura six years to create and is a modern interpretation of a traditional Japanese Rakugo story, “Atama-yama”.
More than one-third of the films have little or no dialogue, but their stories are no less powerful. Parking is an unintentional ecological fable; the director, Bill Plympton (USA, 2003), was simply trying for humor in the style of Chuck Jones and Tex Avery, according to his commentary in the disc’s special features section. Moving Illustrations of Machines is Jeremy Solterbeck’s (USA, 2000) black-and-white portrayal/commentary on the convergence of organic machines and their man-made counterparts, originally conceived as a response to the cloning of Dolly, the sheep. Katedra (The Cathedral) (Poland, 2002) uses multiple computer techniques to tell Tomek Baginski’s science fiction vision of Jacek Dukaj’s story, in which a pilgrim visits a beautiful cathedral on a distant planet. From Ireland comes Fifty Percent Grey by Ruairi Robinson (2001) which generates questions on religion, war, and death using a simple premise and thought-provoking ending.
Three of the films - La Course a L’Abime (Georges Schwizgebel, Switzerland, 1992), Aria, and Bathtime in Clerkenwell (Aleksey Budovsky, USA, 2002) - are essentially music videos; one classical, one opera, and one popular, respectively. Each portrays the music ably, with Pjotr Sapegin’s Aria (Canada, 2001) shining in its retelling of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with stop-motion animation.
Another series, three “episodes” of The Adventures of Ricardo by Corky Quakenbush (USA, 1996) seemed out of place among the rest, but created an interesting contrast in style and content. Fans of Mike Judge’s work (Beavis and Butt-Head, King of the Hill, Office Space) and those looking at the development of animation will enjoy the Unfinished Early Pencil Tests and Other Experiments (USA, circa 1990) and the special features section on the disc, which includes trailers, commentaries, deleted and experimental shorts, and production art galleries totaling more than 30 additional minutes of footage and stills. |
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Exhibition:
Microcinema is not authorized to represent this title for exhibition. Write us for this contact information |
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The DVD is not yet rated however some films may not be suitable for children under 12. |
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All Region DVD |
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Mike Judge & Don Hertzfeldt present: the Animation Show Volume One
SYNOPSIS
