The latest Skwigly piece of mine went up this week, and I can't sing the praises of its focus highly enough. It's a feature on/interview with the Oscar-winning Australian animator/writer/director Adam Elliot, a man whose work manages to be both retro (visually) and progressive (story-wise). His most recent project is "Mary & Max", the fantastic stop-motion feature which I brought up on here a couple years back.
Even though I didn't become aware of his work until I began my MA back in 2006, I was instantly bowled over when I saw "Cousin" as part of a Pictoplasma DVD - somewhat incongruously as the bulk of the collection focused on digital character-based motion graphics.
I think what grabbed me the most about his stuff was, at a time when people throw mental illness and tragedy into their films to disingenuously tug at audience heartstrings, Elliot takes the same subject matter and makes it fucking hilarious. Which, in turn, makes the somber elements all the more touching and honest. I won't go on about him too much here as it's a long-ass article and says everything I have to say far more coherently than these blog ramblings o' mine. But, if by some bizarre happenstance you're an animation fan and haven't encountered him, please give it a read and/or check out his work.
So you went ahead and acted on that nagging impulse to book a holiday to Brazil this July, yet this strange, alarming feeling plagues you. A sense that somehow your visit will be for naught if you don't cross one vital thing off your list...
And yes, predictably, my vested interest in said festival is, as always, down to the inclusion of 'House Guest', much to my delight as I've at this point 'retired' the film from the festival circuit. That it gets one (possibly) last screening pretty much exactly two years after it was finished gives me that warm, tingly feeling the rest of you deadbeats need pharmaceuticals - or, I dunno, human companionship - to attain.
It's in pretty impressive company to boot. Amongst the other included films are Bill Plympton's 'Santa: The Fascist Years' and 'The Cow Who Wanted To Be A Hamburger', Adam Elliot's superb 'Mary & Max' (a film whose virtues I extolled previously), and the recent Bafta-winner 'Mother of Many', a film about midwifery I enjoyed a lot for its candour in regard to what a frontbottom-wincingly grim debacle childbirth really is. But, y'know, in a sweet way.
Many thanks to the Anima Mundi peeps, go check out their website, blog and Twitter. As always the wheres and the whens will be posted when I knows them, fo'sho'.
It's Encounters week in Bristol, and as ever the festival has pulled together a bunch of disasters and triumphs in pretty much equal measure. The locality of this particular festival inevitably guarantees the inclusion of people I know, so there's usually a bit of a celebratory vibe in the air. Going back and forth between debilitating throat pain that sees me prone to screaming in old ladies' faces like that thing in 'Come To Daddy' and happy clappy co-analgesics that see me prone to drooling and giggling at cutlery, I've been mainly housebound and a little more selective in terms of which screenings I attend than in prior years. So far however there have been a few standout moments:El empleo from Hayyam on Vimeo.
A few others of note produced by the Animation Workshop include 'Project: Alpha', 'Trainbombing' and Nicole Gallagher's 'Sheep'. Who doesn't like sheep? 
The main draw so far was a showing of the new Adam Elliot film 'Mary & Max', a feature-length endeavour with Philip Seymour Hoffman. I've previously banged on about the excellence of Elliot's 'Brother'/'Cousin'/'Uncle' trilogy, as well as the fabulous 'Harvie Krumpet'. What ties each piece together are memories, accounts and stories that are fundamentally about living with mental illness.
My absolute favourite, 'Cousin', describes perfectly the frustrations, limitations and awkwardness of cerebral palsy without the merest hint of condescension, and it's apt that his first feature would deal with Asperger's, the psychological disorder du jour*.
I have to confess that I personally tainted this film (almost) with unfairly high expectations and consequently found my mind nitpicking at its small handful of flaws. After a few days though, these issues are pretty inconsequential. Possibly the story could have had better pacing, or the odd voice actor swapped out, or they might have taken it easy with the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Any other issues were very quickly dwarfed by the strength of the dialogue, subject matter and affectionately crude visuals.
