The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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jazzo
Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2013 12:02 am

Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Proje

#701 Post by jazzo » Sat Feb 25, 2017 9:20 am

Also, just took the kids to see THE RED TURTLE at Toronto's Lightbox Theatre, and they were mystified by what, again, is essentially a purely visual narrative. It's absolutely as masterful as zedz notes in the best of 2016 thread, but I will add that an early sequence involving the fall of the man into an enclosed/flooded rocky pit is one of the most uncomfortably intense scenes I've seen in any movie, animated or live action.

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Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Proje

#702 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Mar 29, 2017 11:34 pm

Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995): Until this point I'd only seen a single anime, Akira, but the upcoming release of the live-action remake of Ghost in the Shell prompted me to finally watch this one. The movie suffers from a seemingly paradoxical flaw, in that it is both too full and too empty. There's so much going on here in terms of plot, character, and ideas that the scant eighty minute run-time is not enough to contain it. To fit in all the above elements, the movie settles for tracing only the bare outlines, making the whole thing feel like a pair of episodes from the middle of a television season. The aspect most affected by all the elisions are the ideas. This is the kind of movie that routinely gets called a 'meditation' or 'examination' of ideas like identity, biology, technology, interconnectedness, existence, etc., but it's not that at all. It doesn't explore any of its ideas, it only raises them. Granted, it at least raises these ideas explicitly rather than merely allowing the situation to generate an impression of them that the film is otherwise uninterested in highlighting (eg. The Island). But the film cannot tell you about any of its ideas because there isn't enough time, certainly not with all the time spent on establishing its cyberpunk style. So all of its general ideas remain skeletal, and its specific ones--namely, whatever it is that's driving the Puppetmaster--are cryptic and under-explained. The only thing in the movie sufficiently developed is its style, which didn't do a lot for me (it feels very familiar) but was skillfully done. The movie really ought to've been two hours, and risked, like Akira, being incomprehensible for trying to explain too much rather than too little. There is just not enough movie here to justify itself, and it makes me wonder why this has gained such a high reputation. It just feels so light.

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Feego
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:30 pm
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Proje

#703 Post by Feego » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:43 pm

TCM will be airing an evening of rare animated shorts this Sunday, April 9. Unfortunately, their online schedule offers no helpful info about any of the films beyond their years of release, so I listed them below with their directors and a synopsis (when I could find one) from Letterboxd or IMDb. Looks like there will be quite a few Canadian shorts.

Mail Early (1941, Norman McLaren)
This publicity clip for Canada Post is Norman McLaren’s first film for the NFB. For this animated short, McLaren drew symbols by pen onto clear 35 mm stock, which was then superimposed on a photographed painted background. Benny Goodman’s rendition of Jingle Bells provides the accompaniment.

What on Earth! (1966, Kaj Pindal & Les Drew)
The Martians speculate on the nature of Earth’s apparent dominant life form, automobiles.

Chairy Tale, A (1957, Claude Jutra & Norman McLaren)
An ordinary looking chair refuses to be sat upon.

Boogie-Doodle (1941, Norman McLaren)
An animation film, made without the use of a camera, in which “boogie” played by Albert Ammons and “doodle” drawn by Norman McLaren combine to make a rhythmic, brightly colored film experiment. The main title is in eight languages.

Lines Vertical (1960, Norman McLaren & Evelyn Lambart)
An experiment in abstract film-making, this short film (as it name implies) consists only of vertical lines, drawn directly onto each film frame, that change in response to music.

Very Nice, Very Nice (1961, Arthur Lipsett)
Arthur Lipsett’s first film is an avant-garde blend of photography and sound. It looks behind the business-as-usual face we put on life and shows anxieties we want to forget. It is made of dozens of pictures that seem familiar, with fragments of speech heard in passing and, between times, a voice saying, “Very nice, very nice.” It was critically acclaimed and plays frequently in festivals and film schools around the world.

Walking (1968, Ryan Larkin)
A cinematic portrait of people walking in their individual ways.

Fine Feathers (1968, Evelyn Lambart)
Two duelling birds get the urge to change their plumage. A blue jay wants to be decked out in the green of cedar, and a loon dons the burnished red of oak leaves, but neither bird foresees the consequences of vanity.

Mindscape (1976, Jacques Drouin)
In this short, an artist creates a painting of the landscape he sees, then finds he can literally climb into the picture to see the fantastic world inside.

Hot Stuff (1971, Zlatko Grgic)
This tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale by Croatian director Zlatko Grgic traces man’s checkered history with fire, and shows how growing carelessness in the form of overloaded sockets, smoldering cigarettes and other fire hazards can have highly undesirable consequences.

Owl Who Married a Goose, The (1975, Carline Leaf)
An owl marries a goose. They have off-spring, but somehow their habits of life are not compatible.

Old Box, An (1975, Paul Driessen)
During Christmastime, a bum discovers a magical box.

Street, The (1976, Caroline Leaf)
This film deals with a Jewish family in Montreal, Canada as they care for a dying grandmother and the young boy who is impatient to get the room he was promised as soon as she kicks the bucket.

Monsieur Pointu (1975, Andre Leduc)
Monsieur Pointu would like to play his fiddle. But the fiddle has other ideas.

Family That Dwelt Apart, The (1973, Yvon Mallette)
A family of seven lives on a New England island with nobody else. One winter, they got stranded because the bay froze over. This didn’t much matter to them, but someone on the mainland remembered them and launched an aerial rescue mission; an unfounded story that one boy had appendicitis results in a larger rescue mission, with the situation rapidly escalating into a major catastrophe all because of the rescue mission.

Zea (1981, Andre Leduc & Jean-Jacques Leduc)
A superb visual trick that will mystify its audience, this animated film transforms the commonplace into magic.

Log Driver's Waltz (1979, John Weldon)
A short illustrating a traditional Canadian folk song about a woman’s admiration for the agility for her boyfriend, the log driver.

La Plage (1978, Suzanne Gervais)
(No synopsis)

Big Snit, The (1985, Richard Condie)
A couple plays Scrabble. He’s stuck with seven E’s and getting nowhere fast, so she decides to do some housework. While she’s out of the room, he glances at her letters; she catches him at it and an argument ensues. Meanwhile, a nuclear war is breaking out, with chaos in the streets as people try to escape the city before bombs fall. The couple’s argument escalates; they bring up their pet peeves – “you’re always shaking your eyes,” “well, you’re always sawing the furniture!” Can there be reconciliation before annihilation? And, what about the Scrabble game?

Every Child (1979, Eugene Fedorenko)
This animated short follows an unwanted baby who is passed from house to house. The film is the Canadian contribution to an hour-long feature film celebrating UNESCO’s Year of the Child (1979). It illustrates one of the ten principles of the Declaration of Children’s Rights: every child is entitled to a name and a nationality. The film took home an Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film.

Why Me (1978, Derek Lamb & Janet Perlman)
Nesbitt Spoon, who’s a bit of a nebbish, tells us about his day, which is fairly average up until the moment that his doctor tells him he has only five minutes left to live.

E (1981, Bretislav Pojar)
A giant statue of the letter “E” arrives in the park. One man sees it as “B”; they are preparing to cart him off to the looney bin when a doctor arrives and determines the man needs glasses. Then the king arrives; he also sees “B”. He tries on the glasses, sees “E”, and pins a medal on the doctor then has his goon squad come and bash on everyone’s head until they too see “B”

Sea Dream (1979, Ellen Besen)
(No synopsis)

Sweater, The (1980, Sheldon Cohen)
A French Canadian boy endures the terrible shame when he receives the hockey sweater of the wrong team.

Les Iris (1991, Suzanne Gervais & Jacques Giraldeau)
(No Synopsis)

Blackfly (1991, Christopher Hinton)
A young surveyer, new to Ontario, encounters the blackflies. Over and over again, he encounters those blackflies.

Bob's Birthday (1994, David Fine & Alison Snowden)
Margaret Fish is planning a surprise party for her dentist husband, Bob. Meanwhile, at the office, Bob his having a mid-life crisis while insects munch on what’s left of his plants. When Bob returns home, Margaret has a terrible time getting him into the room where everyone’s hidden until he’s halfway through changing clothes and talking about how horrid all their nebbishy friends are (the same friends hidden all over the room).

When the Day Breaks (1999, Wendy Tilby & Amanda Forbis)
A rooster has his last biscuit for breakfast and goes grocery shopping. A pig prepares her breakfast (potato peelings, with the potatoes thrown in the trash) and discovers she needs more milk. Their paths cross, a lemon falls into the sewer, and both lives are changed.

My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts (1999, Torill Kove)
A personal interpretation of Norwegian history – starring a grandmother who during the Second World War loses her job ironing the King’s shirts. Instead she gains access to the enemy’s uniforms, and inspires her own brand of resistance fighters, the “Shirt Guerillas”.

Cat Came Back, The (1988, Cordell Barker)
The Cat Came Back is a 1988 animated film by Canadian director Cordell Barker, produced by fellow award-winning Winnipeg animator Richard Condie. Based on the children’s song The Cat Came Back, it concerns the increasingly desperate and lonely man named Mr. Johnson, an old man who attempts to rid himself of a small, yet extremely destructive, yellow cat that will not leave his home. The attempts to get rid of the cat become more comical, and the cat becomes increasingly destructive, until Mr. Johnson resorts to an explosive solution.

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thirtyframesasecond
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 1:48 pm

Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Proje

#704 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Thu Apr 06, 2017 9:57 am

As good a place as any to ask, but does anyone (MichaelB?) know much about the work of David Anderson, who did some work for Channel 4 in the 80s, and more importantly, where his work is available?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_And ... nimator%29" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Proje

#705 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Apr 12, 2017 1:27 pm

Feego wrote:Bob's Birthday (1994, David Fine & Alison Snowden)
Margaret Fish is planning a surprise party for her dentist husband, Bob. Meanwhile, at the office, Bob his having a mid-life crisis while insects munch on what’s left of his plants. When Bob returns home, Margaret has a terrible time getting him into the room where everyone’s hidden until he’s halfway through changing clothes and talking about how horrid all their nebbishy friends are (the same friends hidden all over the room).
Bob's Birthday is great, and spun off a brief series, Bob & Margaret, five or so years later, of which the best episode is probably the Shopping one, where the couple get trapped inside a monstrous supermarket (it sadly tailed off a bit with the loss of Andy Hamilton as the voice of Bob after the second series, and turned from a UK-Canadian co-production into a Canadian-Phillippines one!)

The ealier short piece by Alison Snowden and David Fine, the Oscar nominated George and Rosemary is just as charming (and much more Canadian!)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Thu Jun 18, 2020 11:26 am, edited 2 times in total.

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movielocke
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Proje

#706 Post by movielocke » Sun Oct 22, 2017 12:45 am

I finally finished watching the last of the animated Walt Disney Treasures series. I have yet to rewatch the Goofy and WWII sets, which I watched when they first came out. but I Finally crossed the last ones off.

Then I started in on the Tomorrowland set, (starting off through the live action sets) and immediately discovered that the first disc are "documentaries" that are pretty animation heavy. the first film, Man in Space is pretty phenomenal, perhaps the only great doc of this vintage that disney cooked up. the next two, Man in space, get heavier with the animation, and become much more speculative (but still excellent pieces, they just jettison being documentaries), and Mars and Beyond in particular ought to be kept in mind for this list, as it has some of the best/most innovative animation Disney ever did in the 50s. All are narrated by the familiar narrator of Donald in Mathemagic Land, and just continually filled me with warm joy. Also, for the most part, the films are lacking in a lot of the increasingly terrible offenses against craft of the Tru Life series.

Our Friend the Atom
(on disc 2) is flat out disconcerting for how overwhelming positive it is, while minimizing the dangers of nuclear weapons. On the other hand, it's got a pretty awesome walk through (for kids) of the development of atomic theory over centuries, and gives a very nice explanation of what is meant by "splitting the atom"

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swo17
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Proje

#707 Post by swo17 » Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:02 pm


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matrixschmatrix
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 11:26 pm

Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Proje

#708 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:14 pm

Just a reminder- check if you supported the kickstarter for this thing a year and a half ago before you actually pre-order a copy, as I very nearly wound up with two coming to me.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#709 Post by domino harvey » Wed Apr 17, 2019 1:41 am

I have no idea why YouTube recommended it to me, but Cat City (Victoria Vincent 2017) is awesome and now I’m recommending it to all of you

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swo17
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#710 Post by swo17 » Wed Apr 17, 2019 1:58 am

Please post more from this rabbit hole

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theflirtydozen
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#711 Post by theflirtydozen » Wed Apr 17, 2019 8:42 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Wed Apr 17, 2019 1:41 am
I have no idea why YouTube recommended it to me, but Cat City (Victoria Vincent 2017) is awesome and now I’m recommending it to all of you
Yep, awesome. Animation style reminds me of Rocko's Modern Life and the jazzy soundtrack of Rooty Toot Toot. I also checked out a few of her other videos from her Vimeo page, of which Bunnyrabbit and kittykat96 were highlights. The latter would make a real interesting short to be paired with Perfect Blue. Definitely going to check out all the rest!

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swo17
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#712 Post by swo17 » Thu Apr 18, 2019 12:19 pm


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domino harvey
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#713 Post by domino harvey » Thu Apr 18, 2019 2:38 pm

I watched all of her other YT vids and unfortunately I didn’t think any of them were remotely in the same realm as Cat City, and the more recent ones have some kinda obnoxious “Important Meaning” posturing that doesn’t help. But Cat City is still incredible and I will just cross my fingers that we receive something else on that level from her again

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swo17
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#714 Post by swo17 » Tue May 14, 2019 10:30 am

This is a pretty cool concept, where the surface on which each still image is captured takes up the majority of the frame

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Boosmahn
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#715 Post by Boosmahn » Wed Jun 17, 2020 5:02 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Wed Apr 17, 2019 1:41 am
I have no idea why YouTube recommended it to me, but Cat City (Victoria Vincent 2017) is awesome and now I’m recommending it to all of you
vewn/Victora Vincent just uploaded a new short: the 10-minute Twins in Paradise, based on her "Tennis Girls" she's featured in some of her prints. Cat City remains my favorite of hers, but this one might creep up closer to the top on rewatches!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#716 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Jun 17, 2020 6:29 pm

That was terrific, they're pretty difficult to compare but I agree it's impressive enough to call her second best, easily

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swo17
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#717 Post by swo17 » Thu Dec 24, 2020 10:14 pm

Do people know about the bevy of Starewicz animation that's been released in France by Doriane Films? There's this set, this disc of early shorts featuring the couple's daughter, and this one with mostly '50s work. It's all from the French period (so no Cameraman's Revenge) but it seems to collect nearly all of it other than the feature-length Le Roman de Renard*. All told there's more than 8 hours of immensely watchable animation here, all of it English-friendly (with one lamentable exception, as noted below). So you get about 6 times more films than the old OOP Image release (still essential though for the two Russian films) and picture quality is probably about that much better as well. My favorite discovery in the set was what is billed here as Fétiche 33-12, which is actually the original version of Fétiche (or more specifically The Mascot--note that the whole 5-film series is presented here) which runs twice as long as the subsequent version! This is sadly the one exception to the English-friendly rule, though I dare say the dialogue is only of secondary interest. Anyway, buy with confidence!

*Doriane also put out the old standalone DVD of this film, but I see that a new version was released a few years ago. Has anyone seen it?

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brundlefly
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#718 Post by brundlefly » Fri Dec 25, 2020 9:28 am

That's the Renard DVD I have, but it's the only release of that film I've seen so I can't compare to previous ones. This disc has both the French and German versions, both with English subs. The French is the one that's been restored and is very clean (didn't find any digital scrubbing distracting, but I'm not the best judge of that) and uniformly gray; the German is dirty and specked and can be very high-contrast, so it's not like they reconfigured the restored material to fit that. Special features are minimal but include a silent half-minute deleted scene.

I've had the 5-disc Doriane set (plus the old Image and Milestone DVDs) but didn't know about the two released last year. Thanks for that!

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swo17
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#719 Post by swo17 » Fri Dec 25, 2020 12:37 pm

Of the newer discs I think my favorite film is La Petite Parade. There's this trippy way they integrate their daughter into the animation that's thrilling to watch. And lots of cool devil puppets to boot

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brundlefly
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#720 Post by brundlefly » Sat Dec 26, 2020 3:13 pm

Excellent. The devil/underworld parts were the clear highlights of The Mascot.

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jazzo
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The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#721 Post by jazzo » Sat Dec 26, 2020 9:23 pm

This dropped very quietly into the retail market about three weeks ago.

Image


It’s a beautifully designed package, and as my kids and I finally make our way through the final “Future” season, I have to say that Rebecca Sugar’s creation truly is one of the great humanist artistic achievements.

At least for me.

Image


I love it so much.

Image
Last edited by jazzo on Sat Dec 26, 2020 9:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#722 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 26, 2020 9:34 pm

That looks like a nice package, but it seems to be continuing the trend of DVD-only TV releases

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jazzo
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The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#723 Post by jazzo » Sat Dec 26, 2020 10:52 pm

It is DVD only, but it contains everything; the series, the movie, the epilogue series, and all of the extras. It’s very nice to have it all in one place.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#724 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 26, 2020 11:29 pm

Yeah I’ve long given up on waiting for blu-ray releases from many of these network TV series, so I’ll probably pick it up if only to fill my drive to be an Aimee Mann completist

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

#725 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:56 am

I'm trying to fill in some of my Karel Zeman blind spots, and going through the Mr. Prokouk shorts has been a chore overall with a lot of moving parts in each but almost nothing amusing or funny to make the hard work seem worth the effort. However, perhaps unsurprisingly I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Prokouk in Temptation. The short introduces Prokouk trying to build a house in solitude only for a strange man to show up tempting him with liquor. What ensues is an incredibly dark comedy, as Prokouk doesn't merely relent on a conscious level to drink and then pay the consequences, as we may expect from this set-up, but instead finds himself rejecting the booze with determined confidence and subsequently coerced into forfeiting his resolve under a rather unsettling spell. Prokouk spends the remainder of the short literally trying to outrun the force of alcohol, powerless to escape its inebriating effects, and if this isn't a harrowing meditation on "drinking without your own permission" in the throes of alcoholism, I don't know what is. It's an exciting, debilitating, hilarious, and nightmarish psychological adventure, with some pretty intense surrealist visuals- a welcome treat exercising the possibilities of the medium across an eclectic range of tones, that also manages to get a lot right about the condition its examining.

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