
Shadow Life, evokes folklore and communist festivals. The vignettes are performed by shadow puppets; the form of the hand is a synecdoche for the manual labor of workers and peasants, while the silhouette medium allows quick metamorphoses of a grandstanding dictator to a barking dog, a swaying tree to a crane transforming the landscape. A remake of a 2000 Russian pop hit serves as the sound track to the third part, Transmigration—a farcical rejoinder to Mao’s cover of Marxism-Leninism.

Shadow Life, evokes folklore and communist festivals. The vignettes are performed by shadow puppets; the form of the hand is a synecdoche for the manual labor of workers and peasants, while the silhouette medium allows quick metamorphoses of a grandstanding dictator to a barking dog, a swaying tree to a crane transforming the landscape. A remake of a 2000 Russian pop hit serves as the sound track to the third part, Transmigration—a farcical rejoinder to Mao’s cover of Marxism-Leninism.
2011-07-08
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6.4A white dropout struggles to become a cartoonist and filmmaker, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. Still sharing his rundown apartment with his middle-aged parents, an oafish slob of an Italian father and a ditzy nutcase of a Jewish mother, he's ridiculed and looked down upon by his friends, hypocrites who run with violent gangs and the Italian Mafia, and a shallow Black girl who makes her living downtown with the pimps and pushers. The cartoonist gets a chance to pitch a film idea to a movie mogul, but the story proves too outrageous: a far-future Earth, depleted by war and pollution, where a mutant antihero challenges and kills God.
7.0Across different eras, a poor family, an anxious developer and a fed-up landlady become tied to the same mysterious house in this animated dark comedy.
7.3Tired of always playing the same roles, Little Red Riding Hood, her grandmother and the Wolf demand a new version of the tale. The story then plays out in a more contemporary urban environment, with Little Red Riding Hood working as a pin-up girl in a night club.
7.2Short film to a song of love lost and rediscovered, a woman sees and undergoes surreal transformations. Her lover's face melts off, she dons a dress from the shadow of a bell and becomes a dandelion, ants crawl out of a hand and become Frenchmen riding bicycles. Not to mention the turtles with faces on their backs that collide to form a ballerina, or the bizarre baseball game.
6.0An animated retelling of ‘Night of the Living Dead’, in which a group of people in a rural farmhouse struggle to survive the threat of bloodthirsty zombies.
6.8A Shrek parody of Michael Jackson's Thriller song and music video, with Donkey singing.
6.1In this anime visual album, a mysterious driver heads deep into a postapocalyptic hellscape toward a ferocious showdown with two monstrous opponents.
6.8Cis and Duo discuss leaving the real world while during a samurai sword fight. Part of the Animatrix collection of animated shorts set in the Matrix universe.
7.5Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life.
6.5A narrator sings the opening stanzas of the classic poem while we see the house at rest. Santa lands on the roof, comes down the chimney, and opens his bag. The toys march out and decorate the tree, with the toy soldiers shooting balls from their cannon, a toy airplane stringing a garland like skywriting, and the toy firemen applying snow. A blimp delivers the star to the top. Meanwhile, Santa fills the stockings. His laughter awakens the children, who sneak out. The toys rush to their places, and Santa escapes up the chimney just in time.
6.8Ordered to teach a martial arts class of rambunctious bunny kittens, Po tells stories of each of the Furious Five's pasts.
7.4The clock strikes midnight, the bats fly from the belfry, a dog howls at the full moon, and two black cats fight in the cemetery: a perfect time for four skeletons to come out and dance a bit.
6.6The film follows the journey of Kitty, the imaginary friend to whom Anne Frank dedicated her diary. A fiery teenager, Kitty wakes up in the near future in Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam and embarks on a journey to find Anne, who she believes is still alive, in today's Europe. While the young girl is shocked by the modern world, she also comes across Anne's legacy.
7.0When the four Willoughby children are abandoned by their selfish parents, they must learn how to adapt their Old-Fashioned values to the contemporary world in order to create something new: The Modern Family.
8.3Created for Disney's 100th anniversary, the short features Mickey Mouse corralling a gallery of legendary Disney characters for a group photo.
6.5The last of Tex Avery's variations on "Red Hot Riding Hood" (1943), in which the country wolf visits his city cousin, who tries to teach him the rudiments of civilized behavior when watching girls in nightclubs - without, it has to be said, a great deal of success...
5.8Once the ruler of an entire universe, the Great Spirit Mata Nui finds himself cast out of his own body, his spirit trapped inside the fabled Mask of Life, hurtling through space. After landing on the far-away planet of Bara Magna, the mask creates a new body for Mata Nui, who unwillingly gets caught up in the furious battles of the nearly barren and dangerous planet.
6.1Of the famous Three Little Pigs, Heimlich is the one porker who finds a conspiracy around every corner. When The Big Bad Wolf moves in next door, Heimlich tries to warn his piggy pals Horst and Dieter that this may not bring a fairy-tale ending. Tired of hearing him 'cry wolf,' they ignore Heimlich's warnings until it's almost too late for them to live happily ever after. The chase is on!
7.4Exiled artist and poet Mustafa embarks on a journey home with his housekeeper and her daughter; together the trio must evade the authorities who fear that the truth in Mustafa's words will incite rebellion.
7.1From the moment she was born, Vaysha was a very special girl. With her left eye she can only see into the past, and with her right she can only see the future. The past is familiar and safe, the future is sinister and threatening. The present is a blind spot. In captivating parabolic imagery, the award-winning animation artist Theodore Ushev illustrates the world through Vaysha’s eyes.