Wide World of Comics

Animation
The Triplets of Belleville.

I’d love to be twisted,
utterly twisted,
twisted like a triplet from Belleville.
—from the “Belleville Rendez-Vous” song

This is one of my top favorite animated films of all time! It's just so GOOOOD! It's just so unique and unlike anything else I've ever come across. I love how there is hardly any dialogue throughout the whole film; the mostly wordless characters are then defined by their actions. Each character is stylized to fit them perfectly, whether it's the cyclist orphan who's all nose and thick long legs, the grandma who never stopped clumping along even with her clubfoot and wandering eye, or even the dog Bruno who skitters by on skinny legs barely visible under his huge bulky mass. They push the characters as far as they can to the point where they're borderline abstract. Like the gangsters who are basically rectangles with faces that snap together like Legos to make opposing silhouettes.

I think that the lack of dialogue that I spoke of above really seems to amp up the awareness of everything else that's going on in the film. Simple things are fun to watch and make me laugh like crazy, especially the huge fat people of Ur-City which seems to be a combination of Paris, Montreal, and New York City. On a side note, I think that the fat people themselves tell a lot about American culture (e.g. the Statue of Hamburger). Food stands for money, since only the richest in Belleville have money for food, and are then all obese. Just about everything in this film is loaded with a deeper meaning.

Film
Rene Laloux, Fantastic Planet

This film certainly had an interesting plot, and it's based on a novel that I've never read. It kind of reminds me of King-Kong in space in a way; how the movie opens up with a woman running and a giant hand keeps blocking her. Turns out it's a bunch of Draag children that accidentally killed the human woman they were toying with, and the small child she was holding is orphaned. I really like that turn, I wasn't expecting that at all.

The abstract, or surreal, images in the film are pretty neat-o. I don't usually like film in this style but the story was so odd that I kept on watching. In a way, it not only reminded me of King-Kong, but also James Cameron's Avatar; the giant blue aliens and the lush, beautiful and yet deadly planet.