i *heart* animation!

this evening, mr. happy stuff and i went to the local (fancypants) sundance theater to see animation show #4. we both loved animation show #1 and seem to have missed #’s 2 & 3 (soon to be remedied via dvd) so we were very excited to be able to watch this on the big screen. as we entered the theater, we were treated to a much more pleasant diversion than the commercials shown before wall-e last week (so very tired of being bombarded by ads!). instead of ads, this theater had a delightful little animation (similar in style to the wondermark cartoons) that showed a theater full of stadium style seating, populated by interesting characters (a fish-headed woman who took a diving helmet off and on, a couple making out in the back aisle, a group of penguins, anachronistically–napoleon dynamite and his brother….) there was no sound and only minimal movement, but it was a great intro the movie.

then the film began (after 2 previews and no annoying mini film with lasers reminding us to turn off our cell phones and please buy giant popcorn) and … loved it! for me, a good collection of short films generally has some that i love and some that are meh and some that are not favorites, but leans more heavily towards delight and smiles than disgust or confusion. this was a good collection. i was especially charmed by a stop action film called western spaghetti (click to see the film in its entirety on youtube) and two shorts by matthew walker–one called “operator” in which a guy calls 411 and asks for god’s phone number and the other called “john and karen” where a giant polar bear apologizes to his very tiny penguin girlfriend. (you can see a small clip here–click on “work”

a lot of the films in this compilation were extremely short (a few minutes or less) and encompassed a wide variety of animation styles and it was just visually delicious. we may have to purchase this one….