MonkeyFunk
05-10-2007, 04:01 PM
Let's all pay tribute to the critics, the historians, the scholars, the enthusiasts and the all-round fountains of wisdom. Here's a brief round-up...
Jerry Beck
"I knew this was a dirty assignment when I took it on. Reviewing TV animation isn't as easy as it sounds. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This week I lose. Big time. Butt-Ugly Martians is one butt-ugly piece of work. This is one of those shows you know, just from the title, is going to stink or surprise. No surprise here. It stinks. I've just watched the wretched first episode, and I'm sitting here with the press kit. I'd rather review the press kit -- it looks more entertaining."
Amid Amidi
"Nobody wants to see a male striptease in animation…EVER."
John Kricfalusi
"You buy any book on color theory today, and it's just complete poppycock. Everybody comes out of school painting pink, purple and green. The whole damn cartoon industry has pink purple and green on their mind."
Chris Robinson
"Lesson #1: Throw ALL DISNEY/Warner/Preston Blair materials into an incinerator. No offense Charlie but these should NOT be taught as if they’re standard texts. I mean first off… this phony attempt at realism is just that… people aren’t soft, round figures with big wide round eyes, they come in all shapes and forms. You’d notice that if you took the time to close the book, turn off Bambi and Linkin Park and SEE the world and people around you."
Paul Wells
"The Japanese anime features Akira and Ghost in the Shell, for example, benefit from their unconditional commitment to the naturalised scenarios they are presenting. Akira's post-apocalyptic world refuses any interrogative approach which is grounded in the material world, and consequently it sustains its own system of philosophic enquiry. Its animated form refuses or complicates generic norms and factual determinacy, but nevertheless sustains an authentic account of its own perspectives. Ghost in the Shell, too, privileges a complex address of the disappearance or illusion of identity in human forms, and its theme of the post-human status is given credibility by the non-objective, non-linear credence of the animated form. Perhaps this is best illustrated by noting Paul Vester's short film, Abductees, which animates the recollections by people, sometimes under hypnosis, of their claims to alien abduction. Vester uses animation to authenticate the non-referential material of subjective accounts, using the associative, symbolic and illustrative function of the form to validate the claims. He effectively subverts 'documentary' by using the visual tropes of science fiction, but revises those generic hybridities by advancing the inherent artifice of animation as the most trustworthy process in verifying the narratives. Like the anime features, the film presents its own system, part-engaging with, part-refusing the idea of genre 'as an infrastructure to film narrative which operates as a mode of order and integration, [which] may be recognised as the determining factor [that] maintains core stories and myths, and ideological stability at the heart of film practice'. Arguably, animation only re-invents genre, or dispenses with its intrinsic principles altogether."
Philip Brophy
"Look deep into the eyes of Astro Boy: what is reflected in those strange abstract ovals which pretend to be Japanese eyes? Stars? Studio lights? Atomic flashes? The white light of death?"
Jerry Beck
"I knew this was a dirty assignment when I took it on. Reviewing TV animation isn't as easy as it sounds. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This week I lose. Big time. Butt-Ugly Martians is one butt-ugly piece of work. This is one of those shows you know, just from the title, is going to stink or surprise. No surprise here. It stinks. I've just watched the wretched first episode, and I'm sitting here with the press kit. I'd rather review the press kit -- it looks more entertaining."
Amid Amidi
"Nobody wants to see a male striptease in animation…EVER."
John Kricfalusi
"You buy any book on color theory today, and it's just complete poppycock. Everybody comes out of school painting pink, purple and green. The whole damn cartoon industry has pink purple and green on their mind."
Chris Robinson
"Lesson #1: Throw ALL DISNEY/Warner/Preston Blair materials into an incinerator. No offense Charlie but these should NOT be taught as if they’re standard texts. I mean first off… this phony attempt at realism is just that… people aren’t soft, round figures with big wide round eyes, they come in all shapes and forms. You’d notice that if you took the time to close the book, turn off Bambi and Linkin Park and SEE the world and people around you."
Paul Wells
"The Japanese anime features Akira and Ghost in the Shell, for example, benefit from their unconditional commitment to the naturalised scenarios they are presenting. Akira's post-apocalyptic world refuses any interrogative approach which is grounded in the material world, and consequently it sustains its own system of philosophic enquiry. Its animated form refuses or complicates generic norms and factual determinacy, but nevertheless sustains an authentic account of its own perspectives. Ghost in the Shell, too, privileges a complex address of the disappearance or illusion of identity in human forms, and its theme of the post-human status is given credibility by the non-objective, non-linear credence of the animated form. Perhaps this is best illustrated by noting Paul Vester's short film, Abductees, which animates the recollections by people, sometimes under hypnosis, of their claims to alien abduction. Vester uses animation to authenticate the non-referential material of subjective accounts, using the associative, symbolic and illustrative function of the form to validate the claims. He effectively subverts 'documentary' by using the visual tropes of science fiction, but revises those generic hybridities by advancing the inherent artifice of animation as the most trustworthy process in verifying the narratives. Like the anime features, the film presents its own system, part-engaging with, part-refusing the idea of genre 'as an infrastructure to film narrative which operates as a mode of order and integration, [which] may be recognised as the determining factor [that] maintains core stories and myths, and ideological stability at the heart of film practice'. Arguably, animation only re-invents genre, or dispenses with its intrinsic principles altogether."
Philip Brophy
"Look deep into the eyes of Astro Boy: what is reflected in those strange abstract ovals which pretend to be Japanese eyes? Stars? Studio lights? Atomic flashes? The white light of death?"