046. Oktapodi (France - 2007)

Another short-length animation. Last film before this long hiatus in which I'm going through a major change in my life, starting my doctorate in English Literature and Film in Florianópolis (I apologise for not having updated the blog in a long while). This one much better and more concise in its purposes than the last one. Two octopuses escape from their roles of attraction and decoration in a restaurant and fight their way through a small town to get to sea. It's a beautiful piece, and very well done in terms of animation, of mechanics. The sound is also synchronised, consonant with the premise of the film. Nice idea and well executed. And the first film on this blog with multiple directors.

Director: Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier, and Emud Mokhberi.

Score
Cinematography: 8.0
(No Acting/Voice Acting)
Editing: 8.0
Sound: 8.0
(No Text)
Concept: 7.5
Premise Execution: 8.0

Average Score: 7.9

045. Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty (Ireland - 2008)

A short film with a cheeky idea. Granny O' Grimm is a naughty old lady who tells her grandson the story of Sleeping Beauty with a whole new concept of horror and evil. The kid, who's already nearly having a heart attack from the fear of the dark itself, almost pisses himself at hearing the story, which is more comic rather than fearsome. Apart from the funny imagery of the story retold by the old lady, nothing interesting stands out from this animation. Bland.

Director: Nicky Phelan.

Score
Cinematography: 7.5
Voice Acting: 7.5
Editing: 6.5
Sound: 6.0
Text: 6.0
Concept: 7.0
Premise Execution: 5.5

Average Score: 6.5

024. Harvie Krumpet (Australia - 2003)

Harvie Krumpet is a constant prototype of subjective disaster. But he's never really dragged in there directly. His life could be much worse, were it not for his tiny fortunes and accomplishments. His constant changes and realisations about his psychological condition. An Adam Eliot's typical, full of the Australian director's motifs, from the unusual ways of life of his characters to the pleasant and cunning narrative, usually uttered by great actors (in this case, Geoffrey Rush). Won the Academy Award for Best Animation in 2003. A finely made animation.

Director: Adam Eliot.

Score
Cinematography: 8.0
Voice Acting: 8.5
Editing: 8.5
Sound: 7.5
Text: 8.0
Concept: 7.0
Premise execution: 8.0

Average Score: 7.9

017.Ubornaya Istoriya - Lyubovnaya Istoriya / Lavatory - Lovestory (Russia - 2007)

A simple but funny animation. A woman indifferently watches her days go by as she keeps a tip jar on her balcony, where she works as a lavatory attendant. She cleans up the place, goes back to her work booth, and anxiously awaits the possibility of a lover when she finds a bouquet in her tip jar. He's nowhere to be found, though. The fun resides in her frantic search for the said gentleman, the mysterious admirer who will finally give her joy in her sentimental life.


And yes, she eventually finds him.
Not bad, but not out of the ordinary.

Director: Konstantin Bronzit.

Score
Cinematography: 7.5

Acting (not present)
Editing: 7.0
Sound: 6.5
Text (not present)

Average Score: 7.0

015. つみきのいえ / The House of Small Cubes (Japan - 2008)

A beautifully moving story.  Often referred to as La Maison en Petits Cubes, it tells of an old fisherman who has to constantly build additional floors for his house because of an evergrowing problem of flooding. As his favourite pipe falls into the water and ends up at the bottom of the ocean, he has to dive to fetch it. On his way down, he revisits old floors of his house and with it, all the past memories of his life. Besides being touching with such a creative plot, the animation also touches by its simple yet calming art: the smooth lines that delineate the old man's facial demeanour bring a sense of peaceful conformation, and triggers some inner switches of longing, of nostalgia in our lives. A gorgeous film that has just the exact length to get hold of your feelings.

Director: Kunio Kato.

Score
Cinematography: 9.0

Acting (not present)
Editing: 9.0
Sound: 8.0
Text (not present)

Average Score: 8.6

008. Kutoja/The Last Knit (Finland - 2005)

A short-length animation telling the story of a woman who can never stop knitting. She knits until her scarf starts hanging from a cliff, becoming heavier and heavier and dragging her down with it; even then, she doesn't stop. Simple enough concept, but quite nicely put in the animation. It's all about obsession, how some people can't stop pursuing something even if something vital to them is in jeopardy. The setting around her is uninteresting and bland, to say the least, following the simplicity of the film to the letter (perhaps due to a possible low budget the team had to make the animation). All in all, nice piece of story.

Director: Laura Neuvonen.

Score:
Cinematography: 4.5

Acting (there is almost none, apart from the protagonist's little reactions): 4.0

Editing: 7.0
Sound: 6.5
Text (there is none, so it does not enter this evaluation)

Average Score: 5.5

003. Mary and Max (Australia - 2009)

On the 12h, me and Jéssica watched this beautiful animation. Mary and Max is a stop-motion film with clay figures that tells the story of a young and lonely girl from Australia and her 41 year-old pen friend from New York as they start writing about the former's doubts about life. It's a film that depicts the innonence of a young girl who is bullied in school and grows to like her only friend, a socially bothered man that suffers from Asperger and eating compulsion from the other side of the world. They support each other in their sociological and psychological conundrums. The writing is beautiful, an honest way of communicating to the viewer that is unusual for relatively big-budget animations such as this one. But so are its tragic happenings throughout the story.

Director: Adam Eliot.

Score
Cinematography: 8.5
Voice acting: 9.0
Editing: 8.0
Sound: 7.5
Text: 9.0

Average Score: 8.4