Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Continuing my “Best of . . .” list: (films, sites, books or works of art that inspired me or caused me to at least think in a new way about the animation) #4 is a tie going to the two puppet animated features: The Corpse Bride and Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. If you took the two and merged them into one, I think you’d come up with something great.

There is in the Nick Park work some magnificent invention and detail. His film is generally charming and inventive, but it came off a bit light to me. His casting is dead-on: the voices of Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter were hilarious and were well exploited in the visuals. There’s a lot of well-developed character in the clay animation. It has a lightness to it despite the clay’s weight, and any cgi used was well hidden and well done.

However, in a feature film, I look for a greater story. The film was lacking that under-story which would have made it deeper and richer. Unfortunately, this is a complaint that I could make for most of the films produced today – not just the animated films.

Tim Burton‘s The Corpse Bride had plenty of under story but was lacking in the story, itself. It was a simple Russian tale told with lots of complications but never felt complete.

The voices were well cast, and the acting was superb; Emily Watson and Albert Finney were exceptionally good. The animation showed some bits of character, but I wasn’t taken by most of it. Too often it felt like I was watching puppets, and I never got into the head of any of them or felt any of them alive. However, it is probably the most stunningly Art Directed puppet film ever done. This is all I think about when I try to remember the film. If only the Oscars would take notice of animation in such categories as Production Design. Perhaps Eyvind Earle might have been nominated once upon a time. (The one fault I felt was design of some of the characters: too many with hunched backs.) Otherwise, this film’s design certainly stands up with the best – live action or animated.

I felt more inspiration in these two puppet animated films than I did from any other cgi film. In both you could feel the fingerprints of the animators in the life of their puppets. Someone touched the objects on the screen, and that helped them breathe.

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