Touring programs of short films are an endangered species in the age of Internet distribution, but Mike Judge continues to nurture a theatrical audience for independent animation. Not surprisingly, the creator of "Beavis & Butt-head" and Fox's long-running animated sitcom "King of the Hill" compiles his annual "Animation Show" with an emphasis on outré comedy for grown-ups who refuse to grow up.
Featuring more than two dozen works from around the world, "The Animation Show 4" includes a few artistically redeeming shorts for a touch of class, but goofy mayhem still gets top priority. Judge has also commissioned four original works exclusively for this year's program, each reflecting the seemingly unlimited variety of techniques and styles that have become a staple of Judge's yearly compilations.
Even when you account for juvenile trifles like "Yompi the Lovable Crotch-Biting Sloup," it's an entertaining showcase for ingenuity, beginning with Joel Trussell's wacky "Show Opener," a manic tribute to heavy-metal air guitar.
"Yompi," the brainchild of clay animator Corky Quackenbush, resembles a yellow mutation of the Pillsbury doughboy. In three separate one-minute shorts, this paunchy little charmer snuggles up to his victims, batting his puppy-dog eyes before baring a mouthful of nasty-looking fangs and chomping his favorite part of the human anatomy. Resistance is futile: Your inner 12-year-old will be laughing out loud.
Commissioned from Australian animator Dave Carter, three one-minute "Psychotown" shorts are equally childish but irresistibly hilarious, using simple cutout figures in a staccato barrage of nonsensical dialogue and wanton absurdity. In stark contrast, the humor from award-winning British animator Matthew Walker is perfectly droll and understated: "Operator" features a young man's pleasant phone chat with God, while "John and Karen" presents the amusingly low-key reunion of an unlikely couple: a polar bear and a penguin.
Steve Dildarian's "Angry Unpaid Hooker" is the basis of a new, 10-episode animated series premiering this fall on HBO ("The Life and Times of Tim"), employing simple animation and deadpan dialogue as the main character must explain the presence of a cranky prostitute to his disapproving girlfriend.
France's Gobelins School of Animation is the source of several new works from gifted young animation students, the most impressive being "Voodoo," in which an overconfident adventurer becomes the unwitting pawn of a mischievous witch doctor. France is also represented by "Raymond," a zany dose of slapstick in which a lazy swimming instructor is jostled about like a toy on a string, the unwitting guinea pig in an experiment involving high-velocity manipulation of his body.
Some of the best shorts in "The Animation Show 4" are computer-generated marvels like "This Way Up," commissioned from the celebrated animation team of Smith & Foulkes. But there's also the poetic, low-tech simplicity of "Forgetfulness" (an effectively grungy meditation on fleeting memory), the stop-motion cleverness of "Western Spaghetti" (in which everyday objects become the ingredients of a colorful meal) and the geometrically abstract swirl of colors and shapes in the Swiss short "Jeu" (also shown at SIFF earlier this month).
Tim Burton fans will love "This Way Up," a visually inventive, madcap Gothic tale of two undertakers and a decidedly uncooperative corpse. The use of CGI to resemble old-school animation is further indication that all kinds of animation are thriving with the introduction of new and increasingly accessible technology.
Jeff Shannon: j.sh@verizon.net
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