My friend Paul thinks going a month without posting because you’ve been busy writing professionally is a long time. Try an entire quarter because you stopped, then realized you had spent so long without posting, the three readers you had probably moved on.
At any rate, I wasn’t going to let the year end without something, so courtesy of the aforementioned friend, comes a remarkable animation short by Rodrigo Blass, an animator at Pixar, entitled Alma. Enjoy.
http://www.vimeo.com/4749536
Up was the best Pixar movie I’ve seen outside of The Incredibles.
It’s very rare to see this level of story development in a so-called “children’s” animated feature and I defy any parent to explain how their five year-old understood anything in the first ten minutes, never mind how it relates to the central conflict within the protagonist.
This is another prime example of how animated films can be for everyone, not just (and even not primarily for) children without having to resort to prurient sex and violence.
Carl’s struggle is timeless and, more likely than not, prone to be something we all have to encounter at some point. However, as moving as it was, it’s certainly not something I would wish on my niece, for example.
It’s time to start chipping away at the idea that animation is for children. Not that they should be robbed of their own content, let me make that perfectly clear, but rather that we ought to be able to enjoy the pleasures of the medium ourselves, without it being “dumbed down.”
I might make an exception for the marketing department, however. Based on the trailers, I can only imagine they were struck deaf and dumb at the idea of selling a piece of art as if it were Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych. Honestly, I pity them.
-K
