CineTV Contest #18: Animations to enjoy, think and discuss. (Heavy Metal, Animal Farm, Tomb of the Fireflies, The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Emperor's New Groove.
As a movie freak, it is impossible for me to leave aside certain animated films that I consider classics and cult, some of them are animations aimed at adult audiences rather than children, full of references, sexual, violence, musicals, reflections on war, totalitarianism, christmas, halloween, individualism, generosity and crazy adventures of a Latin American emperor. All are works that represent the talent and genius of their creators and animators:
1.- Heavy Metal.
In 1974 the science fiction and horror comic Metal Hurtland was created in France. The founders of the magazine were the cartoonists Jean Giraud, Jean Pierre Dionney and Philippe Druillet.
The magazine brought together different fantastic stories by various authors, including the founders themselves, but also others such as Alejandro Jodorowsky, Milo Manara and Serge Clerc.
The success of the publication in Europe led to its American version being renamed Heavy Metal.
In 1981 the animated film Heavy Metal was released. Among the producers of the film was Ivan Reitman, future director of Ghostbusters. It was directed by Gerald Potterton who was one of the animators of the animated film of The Beatles: Yellow Submarine. The well known Moebius and Dan O'Bannon, among others, collaborated in the making of the film .
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There is a common nexus through which the different stories unfold. The plot begins with a story by screenwriter and director Dan O'Bannon. An astronaut lands in a vehicle, and before he dies, he gives his daughter a kind of sphere of power called Loc-Nar. This sphere is the source of all known evil and will be responsible for telling the girl five stories:
Harry Canyon . The first of them is a detective story starring a cab driver from the future, which would later inspire Luc Besson to make The Fifth Element, and the representation of the City of Los Angeles in Ridley Scott's science fiction classic Blade Runner.
In New York in the year 2031 Harry Canyon is a cab driver who witnesses a shooting in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and rescues the daughter of an archaeologist, who is murdered. The girl is pursued by an interplanetary mafia that wants to take over the Loc-Nar. The police are corrupt, and Canyon hides the girl in his house, learning from her how to find the coveted artifact in a desert.
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Den. He is a teenager who encounters the evil sphere and is transported to another world, being transformed into a burly warrior, who confronts two tribes and saves a prisoner from being sacrificed. Here there is a crossover with science fiction and H.P. Lovecraft.
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(Only up to 1 minute and 41 seconds).
Captain Stern. There is a trial of one of the most corrupt men in the galaxy, and one of the witnesses against Sternn transforms into a giant creature that devastates everything in its path. In the end we see that it was all a trick of Stern to avoid prosecution.
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B-17. It is a story scripted by Dan O'Bannon (Guonizo: Alien, Dead and Buried, Total Recall and Lifeforce, collaborated in the special effects of Star Wars, and directed The Night of the Living Dead). During World War II, the Loc-Nar is introduced in a bomber in which the two surviving pilots of an air battle face their comrades, turned into the living dead. Suspense and terror in the 2nd World War mixed with zombie cinema.
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So beautiful and so dangerous. It's nonsense from beginning to end. At the Pentagon, a secretary wearing Loc-Nar as a pendant is kidnapped along with a libidinous scientist. Suddenly a spaceship appears and abducts them both. On the ship are two drug-addicted aliens and a robot. The robot, seduces the woman and decides to marry her.
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Taarna. The Loc-Nar corrupts one tribe to wipe out another. Taarna is summoned by the elders of the village to protect it from a group of murderous and mutated barbarians, she arrives too late and before the death and destruction that she observes, she decides to destroy the source of evil. She is the last of a race of warriors called Taarakians.
Being badly wounded and tortured she manages to kill the leader of the mutants with the help of a pterodactyl, then they go to a volcano where they immolate themselves and manage to defeat the Loc-Nar. In this story the influence of Moebius (this is the pseudonym of Jean Giraud, cartoonist, screenwriter, and designer of cinematographic characters in films such as Alien, Tron, The Fifth Element, The Abyss, Wilow, Masters of the Universe, and The Empire Strikes Back) is noticeable in its animation and illustrations.
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At the end of the film we see again the girl who is given the Loc-Narc at the beginning, this begins to collapse and at the same time the house is destroyed, the girl escapes and finds Taarna's pterodactyl, she rides it and her hair begins to turn white and on her neck the mark that Taarna possessed appears, which indicates that her spirit has transcended through the Universe.
In the soundtrack of the film we can hear many groups that would define the musical genre of heavy metal, there are also songs by soloists. Many of the songs were written especially for the film and these musical themes sound amazingly good and give ambience to the film.
These are the musical artists and bands that participated in the film: Riggs, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult or Journey, Cheap Trick, Stevie Nicks, Trust, Don Feldel, Grand Funk Railroad, Sammy Hagar, Nazareth, Donald Fagen and Don Felder. The film features a remarkable incidental score by the prolific Elmer Bernstein.
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No computers were used in the making and adaptation of this film, with more than 1,000 artists working hard on it. This film paved the way for science fiction animated films for adult audiences.
When this film was released I was thirteen years old and the movie was released with a strong censorship in Venezuela, and if I am not mistaken it did not have the expected success so it was removed from the billboard very quickly. Additionally, I was already beginning my love for rock so I bought the respective soundtrack of the film, with the bad luck that the disc was badly pressed and the needle seemed to be surfing on it, the songs sounded distorted.
However, through a friend's older brother I managed to obtain a cassette with the songs recorded directly from the record imported from the United States. I remember that at that time the use of Betamax began in the country, and the first video rental stores opened. My uncle-in-law had a Betamax and would send me to a store called CTC to pick up the videos he had rented. In those days very few original movies were marketed and most of the time these Betamax cassettes only had the title of the movie on a horrible label written in pen and typewriter, the covers were those of the companies that marketed blank tapes.
One day, I was very surprised when I saw the title of one of the videos: Heavy Metal. I was allowed to watch it and immediately began to recognize its soundtrack, until I managed to get into the movie and marveled at the animation style of that film, its high doses of violence, and its abundant sexual content, however I noticed that it was a bit irregular in its content since some of the stories were not so good. I was pleasantly impressed by the story of Harry Canyon the cab driver and Taarna. The former I related much later to two science fiction classics such as Blade Runner and The Fifth Element, the former for its story so similar to the animation and the latter for the staging of the city of Los Angeles that at times seemed to me to resemble the animation.
Taarna's story exudes violence and sensuality on all sides and exemplifies the eternal struggle between good and evil.
As time went by, in 1995 I acquired a special edition of the film that included Heavy Metal 2000, (an average film that lacks the magic and appeal of the original), I watch it from time to time on a big TV and with spectacular sound on my Home Theater.
2.- Animal Farm.
Animal Farm is an animated classic from 1954 that impeccably adapts a novel by George Orwell.
At Manor Farm, in England in the fifties. Tired of the mistreatment given to them by the brutal Farmer Jones, the animals unite and activate a rebellion that excludes all humans: Animal Farm is born. But initial enthusiasm turns to disappointment when the pigs, led by the dictatorial Napoleon, take control of the revolution.
Joy Batchelor and John Halas, directors of the feature film, present the animals with great expressiveness. In terms of their actions the pigs resemble men and the humans shown act like pigs.
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This adaptation of George Orwell's novel was financed by the CIA, and was part of the propaganda efforts to criticize communism.
Nevertheless, it works as a denunciation of authoritarianism, and effectively portrays the path to a totalitarian regime: the search for a common enemy, the use of force versus intelligence, and the death penalty. Many of the issues he denounces are still in force: the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, the control of the means of production and distribution, the exploitation of the working class, all of which are still present in capitalist systems.
As one of the first alternatives to Disney films, its importance in the history of animation is enormous.
When in 1995 the movie Babe the Brave Little Pig was released, several animated and live action movies about talking animals were put on sale, and in a popular market the cover of this movie caught my attention, it looked like an old Disney movie and I bought it at a price almost as a gift.
I got home, put it on DVD and started to watch it, my eyes were like two fried eggs when I saw what a wonderful movie it was, with a totally palpable and very current political subtext (it still is). Despite the good animation of the film, I do not think that any child under 13 years old can really understand the message of this animation that speaks of totalitarianism, communism and even the flaws that drag democracy.
3.- Tomb of the Fireflies.
The Tomb of the Fireflies from 1988 is the adaptation of the novel of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka.
From Seita's ghostly point of view, the viewer witnesses the story of his life, following the traumatic experiences that both the protagonist and Setsuko, his little and endearing sister, will experience in a Japan completely devastated by a now almost concluded World War II.
Seita and Setsuko, children of a Japanese naval officer, during a bombing, do not arrive in time to the bunker where they would meet their mother. They find her badly wounded and she dies. After these events, their aunt takes them into her home, but after the mistreatment they flee and wander aimlessly and without a home.
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Seita finds himself forced by the circumstances of war to grow up too quickly, deal with the loss of a loved one, and take care of another life in addition to his own. Fire. Smoke. Death. Desperation looms and hysterical people flee without looking back.
We will see a terrible story of abandonment and survival of two children who find around them a lot of selfishness, lack of solidarity, and coldness of the adults around them.
Seita's aunt abuses the children with her constant bad temper and also takes advantage of the children's mother's belongings to sell them and get food in exchange, which she does not distribute properly. A plantation owner beats Seita brutally and reports him to the police for stealing vegetables. The doctor who examines Setsuko and confirms her malnutrition status does not show any compassion and does not even share any advice with the children.
Seita creates an invented reality in a world whose only inhabitants are him and Setsuko, in this way he tries to ensure the mental well-being of the little girl and forces himself to live separated from the entire population. It is here when the mysticism that surrounds the figure of the fireflies is born, which depending on our interpretation can represent happiness. The siblings play happily at night with the fireflies, but their death the next morning is a sign of the beginning of the end, as illness and malnutrition strike hard against little Setsuko.
They come back to life, as a sort of spirits that, thanks to flashbacks, tell us their story and how they came to such degradation and suffering.
The film despite being very sad, makes us enjoy very poetic moments enhanced by an excellent music.
Magnificent anti-war film, and masterpiece of animated cinema.
This is a film that I had not seen until the mid 90's, at that time I was looking for the films of Studio Ghibli, being this the first one I found. It is a somewhat depressing but very beautiful and risky film that shows the horrors of war and its consequences on society.
I watched it with a feeling of sadness and a lump in my throat, I was on the verge of tears when I saw the selfishness and mistreatment of defenseless children by a hysterical and fearful society in times of war.
The best anti-war film I have seen with the permission of Schindler's List.
4.- The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Tim Burton is the creator of the timeless and beautiful movie Nightmare Before Christmas. The film was directed in 1993 by Henry Selick, but it is Burton's responsibility to make it happen.
The Disney company took risks with this film by producing a dark and unconventional story, all thanks to the insistence of Burton, who by then was already a star director.
Jack Skellington, the most admired character in the town of Halloween, year after year, celebrates the holiday of the same name with great enthusiasm and excitement. He spends the 364 days after the party organizing the next Halloween.
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Jack is tired of Halloween and gets lost deep in the woods amidst bitterness and regret. And after a long walk he ends up in Christmas town, he is so surprised that he tries to import the Christmas celebration to his own town, with extremely catastrophic results. Jack Skellington doesn't really understand the meaning of Christmas, and neither do the Halloween townspeople.
All the characters that appear in the film have an exquisite, creative and disturbing artistic design that endow the whole film with a gray and melancholic aesthetic, giving it a strength and personality that is difficult to compare.
Stop Motion is used, photographing static models frame by frame and changing their position.
The film went on to win an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and a Golden Globe for Best Score courtesy of Danny Elfman. Despite not being a box-office success upon its release, the film became a pop-culture reference, which has sold a very considerable amount of merchandise based on its characters.
Henry Selick has earned a place in the animated film industry for directing films such as James and the Giant Peach and Coraline.
In 1993 I had a video club together with my girlfriend and this tape was rented so many times that we had no choice but to clone it approximately 10 times until it became unusable due to overplaying.
Its characters, although sometimes I found them macabre, managed to fascinate me, and even the songs were very catchy, including the Halloween song, Jack Skellington for me is an icon of animation. I have never seen a Stop Motion film so dynamic and that despite the strange and macabre plot, it shows us the triumph of love.
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5.-The Emperor's New Groove.
In the year 2000 Disney presents the least Disney classic of all the films the company has made throughout its history.
With The Emperor's New Groove, the studios took a risky step by departing completely from a type of film that had brought them much commercial success in the previous decade.
This film was a great challenge for its animators who had to adapt to the simplicity of animation and backgrounds that, reduced to their minimum expression, nevertheless do not lose their effectiveness thanks to the power provided by the expressive use of color that characterizes the entire film.
The film is impregnated with a crazy humor whose main representative is Kuzco, the emperor who becomes a llama, who breaks the fourth wall at will, talks to the viewer and, of course, is aware that he is in a film that tells his story, and not that of Pacha, the peasant who acts as an element of conscience.
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Mark Dindal, its director, translates the hilarious script with an excellent animation, with a very agile rhythm and great expressive capacity. The film reminds us of the classic cartoons by Tex Avery and Chuck Jones for Warner or Metro.
Kuzco is the most selfish being that can exist. He thinks only of himself without caring about others. But he will learn a lesson in humility when he is forced to ask for the help of a peasant named Pacha when he is transformed into a llama by Yzma, his treacherous advisor who will act with the help of his assistant Kronk. In essence the protagonists must reach a place and the story shows all the adventures and misadventures that happen to them before they reach their destination.
Pacha lives in a nice mountain village with his pregnant wife and two small children.
Yzma is old and rather ugly with lousy taste in clothes, and Kronk is his silly assistant who is actually smarter than he looks.
Most surprising of all is that being a comedy film, where jokes and funny situations are constantly present it manages to convey a moral around friendship and not love. The film shows suggestive and intelligent reflections on the struggle between selfish materialism and solidarity generosity.
This is a film that I never get tired of watching, I applaud Disney for daring to make a film that moves away from the traditionalism of their previous works.
In addition to entertaining, animated films can be used as a weapon to transmit ideas and show us not only dreams, but also realities that make us shudder as much or even more than those represented in a Live Action film. We see behind them a lot of recognized talent recognized, and great creative minds.
I mention other films that in this opportunity I have left out: Who Framed Roger Rabitt, Persepolis, Cool Word, American Pop, Book of Life, Dumbo, Rango, The Forbidden Planet, Akira and Bill Plympton's short films.
This is my entry in the CineTV Contest #18: Your Favorite Animated Feature Film Link Here
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Loved this review! Heavy Metal is a classic, I used to buy some of this comics. Thanks
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Thank you for your appreciation. I used to read those magazines hidden, if my mom caught me seeing them I would throw them away!
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Heavy Metal is a fantastic film. I haven't seen it in years, and definitely need to give it another look. The rock and roll sound track for the film is great. I used to read the magazine as well way back in the day. Darn good stuff all the way around. For the film, I remember the Captain Stern part the best. Overall, great film, well worth watching. Thanks for sharing.
Hi. Thanks for appreciating my post this movie is the first adult animation I ever got to see. today, it's a cult movie!. Greetings.