parakkum

This Friday, Littlestar and I attented our second (annual) viewing of highlights from the Ottawa International Animation Festival, courtesy and in support of Shrunkenheadman, the San Jose State animation/illustration club.

Last year's festival highlights ranged from interesting to scarring, and this year's ended up repeating the pattern. The trauma was just as traumatic this year, and once again left me wondering "Why?" This year I was driven to look at the Ottawa Festival site to see if they have any explanations about why certain selections were chosen as winners. As it happens, they do, but I'll let you decide if you want to look for yourself. Rather than go hunting for online videos of this year's trauma, I'm going to stick to what I actually liked, starting with just over four minutes of pure awesome:

Music video for the Jason Forrest song "War Photographer," done by Joel Trussell. Made my evening.

Eclectic, creative and beautiful:

You can download a higher-quality version of this one ("Tyger" by Guilherme Marcondes) from their website.

Great execution:

That one's "Lightning Doodle Project [pikapika]", by Takeshi Nagata & Kazue Monno. And yes, they did it all by moving lights in front of cameras, as far as I could tell.

Other fun movies that I can't find links to included the drug-induced "Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker" by Stefan Mueller, the excellent-camera-POV trip of "Dreams & Desires: Family Ties" by Joanna Quinn, and the well-characterized "The Possum" by Chris Choy of Cal Arts.

You can, of course, watch the show at an upcoming venue. Be warned, there's some trauma mixed in with the fun, and the show is probably not really good for kids.

Apparently, there are plans for three live-action movies based on the excellent animated series Avatar: the Last Airbender.

I am a huge fan of this show. It's literally the only television program I actually keep up with.

I'm not really thrilled about live-action movies.

I'm less thrilled by the idea that M. Night Shyamalan is going to direct them.

The big Hollywood news, though, is that James Cameron also has an SF/F movie titled "Avatar," and Fox is not planning on let anyone other than him touch that title.

A trailer for the upcoming Clone Wars TV series is available. You can see it by clicking here.

This CG series sort of attempts to mimic the visual style of the original, Genndy Tartakovsky-produced Clone Wars series, but pretty much only in the visual design for key characters. The environments and machines look like they were ported over directly from ILM's work on the actual films. They've added enough additional rendering to the characters so that this disparity isn't too odd, although I'd have to see more actual character acting before I decide whether it works or not.

This one could be a lot of fun. And hey, Asajj Ventress is back.

If you're around my age, you may have watched Robotech as a kid. Robotech is an amalgam of three Japanese animated series, Super Dimension Fortress Macross (which became the "Macross" portion of Robotech), Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross (which became the "Southern Cross" portion of Robotech), and Genesis Climber Mospeada (which became the "Invid Invasion" portion of Robotech).

My favorite part was always the Invid invasion portion, and I now own the original Japanese series, which benefits from being disentangled from the overarching story used to stitch the three series together for the American show. Only in the last couple years, talking with my friend Tim, did I realize something kind of odd.

Mospeada is a kids' primer on insurgency.

The basic plot of Mospeada, which you can review in more detail here, here, and here, goes as follows:

An alien species known as the Inbit (Invid in the American version), invade and take over Earth. Those humans who weren't on-planet at the time flee to the sanctuary of Mars.

Thirty years later, the humans send an invasion fleet to retake Earth. They lose badly.

Three years after that, they send a second fleet to retake Earth. They also lose badly. A survivor from this fleet, Stig Bernard (Scott in the American version), decides to carry on the fight as an insurgent. He nucleates a group around him, incorporating people who grew up under the occupation and other former military personnel from the crushed first invasion fleet and before.

Through the bulk of the series, the protagonists ambush Inbit patrols, steal supplies, and generally carry on a normal insurgency. Notably, the show even deals with issues of collaboration with the occupying power, with some communities selling out insurgents for offers of safety. The picture I used, above, is from an episode in which a former military hero is revealed as a collaborator, handing over other insurgents in exchange for peace for his adopted community (alien on the left, collaborator on the right). Naturally, Stig is having none of it, and things don't go well for the collaborator.

What's most striking about Mospeada is that the humans don't win militarily. They do, at the end of the series, send a third invasion fleet to retake the Earth -- and that fleet, too, does poorly. At the end of the day, the Inbit leader, the Refless (Regis in the American version), decides that the humans are just too much trouble, and leaves.

In other words, the insurgency succeeds by making the occupation cost too much for the occupying power. How's that for a lesson for little kids?

Edit: Fixed an error in the sentence above that makes it seem like I'm opposed to the show. Oops. Also, see comments for notes on how insurgencies make an appearance in every Robotech element.

I saw this at the San Francisco Film Society's 3rd SF International Film Festival. The trailer should give you a feel for the movie. I think it was impressively done, covering its topic thoughtfully and carefully.

Here's the official Waltz with Bashir site.