Best Animated Film

[nonfiction]

1. Grave of the Fireflies
2. Waking Life
3. Neon Genesis Evangelion: End of Evangelion
4. Princess Mononoke
5. Bambi

[ie]

A more current list of my favorite movies with animation. There are a couple that feature extensive animated or CGI animated sequences, so I would count them, but if there was just a scene like Kill Bill, apparently, I would not count that.

11/10
Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

10/10
Beyond (the Animatrix)
Noiseman Sound Insect

Spirited Away (2001)
Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
My Neighbor Totoro (needs a rewatch)
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

Most of the Animatrix
Waking Life

9/10
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)
Triplets of Belleville (2003)
Sin City (2005)
Tron (1982) (if it counts)
The Incredibles (2004)
The Iron Giant (1999)

8/10
Steamboy (2004)
Original Child Bomb (2004) (if it counts)

7/10
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Treasure Planet (2002) (toward the very bottom because it is very flawed, but it had some good points)



The rest I either haven't seen (Princess Mononoke), haven't seen in a long time (Toy Story) or don't have much interest in revisiting (Disney movies).

[wkw]

ie said:

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)

Smack!
What? The only good thing about that movie is the CGI. The story is nonexistant and the pacing is ridiculous. And yes, I've beaten the game, and the story still makes no sense.

[ie]

I'll fell your argument with one word.

wkw said:

ie said:

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)

Smack!
What? The only good thing about that movie is the CGI. The story is nonexistant and the pacing is ridiculous. And yes, I've beaten the game, and the story still makes no sense.

Music.


You have your opinion and I have mine.

[sacrilegend]

Spirited Away
Princess Mononoke

[criterionmaster]

My new favorite would probably be Grave of the Fireflies.

[blackmoses]

Mine is Spirited Away

[PTAhole]

Princess Mononoke still.

[ie]

Same for my favorite (animated) feature length.
You've heard it ten thousand times before, so I don't need to plug it again.

My favorite short is Beyond from the Animatrix. Morimoto Koji is such a creative director.

[criterionmaster]

Someone should upload that on YouTube, if it isn't already there, then maybe I could watch it.

[Clark Nova]

Probably The Incredibles for me.

[ie]

Beyond Part 1 and Part 2 is easy to find.


Clark Nova, Akira (#143) is higher ranked than the Incredibles (#147) on your list, so perhaps either Akira is your favorite, or, you need to move the Incredibles up.

[criterionmaster]

Thanks. I will watch it sometime soon and post my thoughts, I look forward to it.

[ie]

Well, when you post your thoughts, post them somewhere where I'll see them. I don't bother with the "Rate the last film you watched." thread, so I might miss it.

[PTAhole]

My favorite of the Animatrix shorts is A Detective Story by far. It's just... awesome.

[malicious32dll]

ptahole said:

My favorite of the Animatrix shorts is A Detective Story by far. It's just... awesome.

Yes. This is about imo the best one in the animatrix.

[ie]

Rewatched A Detective Story on Youtube, even though I have it on DVD. Slightly better than I remembered, but this business of it being the best of the Animatrix is suspicious. Don't trust it.

I'm currently working on re-watching and rating each of the shorts. I'll post the list, and update it once I finish:


Final Flight of the Osiris - 7/10
Second Renaissance 1 - ?/10
Second Renaissance 2 - ?/10
Kid's Story - ?/10
Program - 8/10
World Record - ?/10
Beyond - 11/10
A Detective Story - ?/10
Matriculated - ?/10

Scrolls to Screen doccy - 7/10


If you're very cynical toward animation like most of you kids seem to be, I'd suggest you check out some of the non-Japanese stuff. In particular, Laloux's Fantastic Planet (he's French, so it's a little weird) and and anything by Russian master Yuriy Norshteyn. I haven't seen Hedgehog in the Fog, nor his Tale of Tales, but the latter (Tales of Tales) has won prizes at international festivals since it first appeared in 1980, culminating in prizes in both Los Angeles and Zagreb (in 2002) as the best animated film of all time. (Source) A couple of his shorts should be on YouTube, so give them a shot.

[criterionmaster]

I am really dying to see Fantastic Planet ever since I posted those pictures in the MoC thread I have wanted to see it. His animation style looked so different and original, that MoC DVD looks so nice. I swear I heard some celebrity really liked the film or something. I could be wrong though. Haven't watched that film yet, I have been sick with so much homework, and now I am in school, but I will try and watch it before the end of the week and post it in this thread. If I like it I will check out the one ptahole and malicious32dll think is the best as well.

Might give that other dude a shot as well, never heard of him before.

[ie]

I have decided that I will now put more focus into watching and learning about/from animated movies. They work really well with me, I enjoy the art that is put into most animated movies, and it's a specific genre I already know a thing or two about.

I'd also be great to see animation that's not Japanese in origin, because anime in general is a big focus for most people, but like I've brought up before, the French animated movie Fantastic Planet is on that 1001 Movies To See Before You Die list, and Yuriy Norshteyn is very well celebrated, so I've definitely got some options.


I'd recommend that you give Norshteyn a shot. Look for Tale of Tales, specifically (even though I haven't seen it), because I've heard that's his most well regarded movie, so you know, the others could be great(er), but that's the one that most likely people have seen.


edit: I knew I forgot something. I'll just reply to it here: Winter Days - Isao Takahata's segment. I thought it was really good, although I don't really understand what's going on. Good animation.

[criterionmaster]

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I had no clue what was happening, but it did look really nice. He really needs to go and make another film now, which was his last if ptahole was correct in telling me so.

As I probably said before, I really want to see Fantastic Planet. I will try and check it out soon, I hope it has a region one DVD (?), and not just that MoC release. If it does then I can rent it, if it doesn’t it will take me much longer to see it.

[ie]

I didn't really have anything to reply about, but here's something I wanted to mention:


One thing that I really like about animated movies is that there's much more of a focus on the artistic aspect. I feel that cinematography is more important than in other forms of movies (especially when the director is the key animator, which isn't always the case). Because everything has to be built from scratch, I feel that sometimes directors are able to include little touches that may not be relevant to the overall story but do add to the feeling of the scene itself, or the movie overall. Those touches still happen in live action movies, but I don't see them as often.

Also, when you step back and think about the animation process, seeing an animated person fluidly walk across a room is more impressive than seeing a human being fluidly walk across a room. However, the animation process does have its downsides.

First, animators like Peter Chung (of AEon Flux fame, which he made in direct response to animating Rugrats) will tell you that after drawing a person walking a hundred times, to get the effect of fluidly walking across a room, it's done. There's no magic in drawing that anymore. Second, if the animation style does not appeal to you, it makes it all the easier for kids to be like "oh man, everyone's faces look so weird in Voices of a Distant Star, why would I want to like that at all?!"


In other news, here's a Russian animated short that I came across today: Welcome. An English dubbing is also available on YouTube. The effect is called paint-on-glass animation. The artist of this short is most famous for remake of the his Old Man and the Sea (the DVD of which I ordered from Amazon last night). Oh yeah, Welcome is based on a Dr. Seuss story.

[PTAhole]

While I'll admit that Peter Chung is an excellent animator from a technical standpoint, I think his design is ass ugly, so I usually have a hard time watching his stuff.

[ie]

Yeah, he does make some ugly characters, and all of his characters look the same. When I saw Marticulated from the Animatrix, which I think was really well done by the way, I was like "Hey, wait a minute, these people are from AEon Flux!"

Rugrats was easy to watch when I was growing up, though. I was surprised myself when I found out that he did most of the animation, but it makes sense looking back on it.

[PTAhole]

Matriculated is actually my least favorite of the Animatrix shorts, maybe I'm biased, but I just didn't enjoy it at all.

[ie]

Could be biased. (Just wondering, what do you think of the Rugrats, from a nostalgic point of view.)

I'm still working on my ordering of the Animatrix, but my least favorite of the shorts is Final Flight of the Osiris. It's just basically bits from the second or third Matrix movies in CGI. Square Pictures did some impressive things, but you know, I can't admire a visually impressive animated movie if there's nothing behind it, and in this case, there is some meat to it, but that meat just happened to be associated with the second and third Matrix movies.

Speaking of the Animatrix, the packaged-in documentary Scrolls to the Screen wasn't that impressive, though. When you have people speaking authoritatively on anime, it'd help if they pronounced words correctly. The first time I saw it, I thought it had some good information, but the more I learn and the more times I come back to it, the less impressive it is.

[PTAhole]

Rugrats, sure I like Rugrats. It was fun (at least until the first movie), but that wasn't a Chung-designed show. He just worked on it.

[ie]

Actually, no.


"My first directing gig was with Rugrats. I directed the pilot episode, which actually got the series sold. I did a lot of design work for that show. I designed Angelica and some of the recurring characters." - Source

"...show's creator (and former Rugrats animator), Peter Chung." - Source

Not to mention the interview he did on the Animatrix DVD where he said he created AEon Flux in response to the Rugrats, where he felt the Rugrats was too stiff, and he wanted to draw characters that were more fluid.

He wasn't a main creator or anything, but his work is there and it does have his signature style all across the series.


I liked the show myself as a kid, but I revisited it a few months ago and just wasn't impressed with it. So it's one of those childhood memories kind of things.

[ie]

So, I've seen a bunch of animated movies over the past while. Still haven't seen Princess Mononoke, even though I actually now do have the DVD of it. Here are some noteworthy ones that I've seen recently:

9 - 9/10 (no pun intended for the USAn 3D animation)
Aachi and Ssipak - 10/10 (South Korean 2D/3D animation)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed - 9/10 (German silhouette animation)
Bambi Meets Godzilla - 8/10 (Canadian 2D animation)
Digital Juice - 8.5/10 (Japanese 2D/3D animation)
Eoghan Kidney's Stars - 9/10 (Irish 3D animation)
Fantasmagorie - 7/10 (Early French animation)
Fast Film - 9/10 (Austrian/German filmed on stop motion animation)
Here Lies Evolution - ?/10 (vicious Portuguese 2D animation)
MIND GAME[/URL] - 9.5/10 (Japanese everything animation)
My Beautiful Girl, Mari - 10/10 (South Korean 2D/3D animation)
Tale of Tales - 8/10 (Soviet Russian stop-motion animation)
Tokyo Godfathers - 9/10 (Japanese 2D animation)

Oh, and since I marked the ones that don't count under your stereotypical Japanese animation / anime, you actually have no valid reason not to at least click those links and check them out. Ha.

[PTAhole]

ie, have you seen any of Satoshi Kon's other films? If not, check out Perfect Blue, Millenium Actress, and Paranoia Agent. (and Paprika when it comes out)

[ie]

I didn't feel like adding to that list, but I saw Princess Mononoke finally. It only took me almost twenty-one goddamn years.

And it was the holiest of sweet. A Miyazaki movie with a knife fight? ;D ;D ;D ;D

ptahole said:

ie, have you seen any of Satoshi Kon's other films? If not, check out Perfect Blue, Millenium Actress, and Paranoia Agent. (and Paprika when it comes out)

I do need to check out of his movies. I've seen Paranoia Agent, which is really more of a short series than a movie (I count FLCL as a series). I think Kon reuses a lot of his characters, but he's not the only animator or even regular director to do so, so it's not too bad. I do really like his work, though, because he goes for emotional and intellectual depth and does superflat work. It's good stuff.

I'm not sure if I'll be going opening weekend to Paprika, but I'll definitely be seeing it in the theaters. Wikipedia has its release date for May 25th, so maybe it will be coming out soon?