The Puppet Films of Jiri Trnka (with The Emperor's Nightingale)

1951 Czech animation that none of my 4 1/2 readers will care about

Rating: n/r

Plot: Contains five short films and one feature-length film based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

The Emperor's Nightingale, narrated by none other than Boris Karloff, was boring. I watched it last, and maybe by that time, I had had enough of the puppet films of Jiri Trnka, a guy who needs to buy a vowel. The shorts though? Well, it's Czech animation, so it's up one of my favorite alleys. The first, "Bass Cello," is from the same Chekhov story that John Cleese used in Romance with a Double Bass, a cute little skinny-dipping tale. The puppets, like in most of these movies, are simple in a charming way, but Trnka still manages to make the characters expressive. I also like his backgrounds, how he simulates cloud movement and water reflection. With the wizardry of Henry Selick and other modern animators, there's not much in this that's going to drop your jaw, but Trnka's work does show off a technical genius. The wild west romance adventure parody called "Song of the Prairie" used sparse backdrops and more of those expressive but simple puppets for some funny moments. Nice touch with a playing card at the end during the villain's death. "Merry Circus" was more cut-outs than puppet stop-motion, little paper talented seals, mischievous clowns, a monkey, trapeze mayhem, a performing bear, a one-man band, a woman on a horse. Cirque So-Bear! Abbey watched this one with me and really seemed to enjoy it. These are less experimental/surreal than Svankmajer/Barta (although "The Hand" was sort of an existential nightmare), more in the vein of Mr. Roger's puppet friends than copulating animated meat. The weirdest one might have been "A Drop Too Much," a short about drunk-drivin' Bill that was like a creepy public service announcement. Worth watching if you're into this sort of business, but trust me--you don't really need to watch The Emperor's Nightingale no matter how much you like puppets or Boris Karloff. Maybe it needed a puppet Boris Karloff?

The Ossuary and Other Tales

Svankmajer shorts from 1964-1988

Rating: n/r

This collection has some great stuff but might not be as consistently great as the other collection. "The Last Trick" features a pair of dueling wooden-headed magicians and their surreal acts. "Don Juan" is marionettes, sometimes sans strings, in elaborate stage settings. "The Garden" has no animation at all; it's an absurdest gag about a fence made out of people. "Historia Naturae" is visually interesting with its rapid shots of the kibbles and bits of eight different species, but after a while, I was glad it was a short short. "Johann Sebastian Bach" is rock music. Well, it's Bach set to images of animated stones. Oft-beautiful, but not exactly memorable. The one in the title ("The Ossuary") isn't a tale at all but a commissioned glimpse at an ossuary in the Czech Republic, a church/mass-grave with art and architecture constructed from tens of thousands skeletons of Black Plague victims. That one is exactly memorable, not because of anything Svank's doing but because it just might be the most beautifully depressing place I've ever seen. Svank doesn't animate (some of those rapid fire shots and weird camera movements are there though), but this place is as Svankmajer as a place can be. I might have liked it more if the female tour guide voice wasn't in it. She's entertaining as she repeatedly begs field-tripping children not to touch the bones and eventually threatens them, but it kind of takes away from the experience a little. "The Otrants Castle" was a dull pseudo-documentary. There's some cut-out animation that isn't very interesting. "Darkness Light Darkness" is an extra on Alice. It's creative, risque, and bizarre fun with clay and is great from a technical standpoint (watching clay hands mold with clay is just cool) and for anybody looking for some avant-garde slapstick. Finally, "Manly Games" is a hilarious look at soccer. You can't accuse Svank of being pretentious after watching that one, a mish-mash of animation styles (some cut-out stuff, some clay) that looks at the sport in a grotesquely humorous way.

I'd say three-and-a-half of these are vital. For fans, the others are worth checking out once.

Buster Keaton Saturday: Arbuckle & Keaton Volume One

Comedy shorts from 1917-1919

Rating: n/r

Plot: Five Fatty/Buster shorts. They're bell boys, butchers, bartenders, and candlestick makers who fall down more than the average bell boys, butchers, bartenders, and candlestick makers.

Was Fatty Arbuckle the first Will Ferrell? With Ferrell, it seems like producers just think of a new job for him to do in every movie. "Let's make him a basketball player." "How about we make him a race car driver this time?" "Hey, he hasn't been a weatherman yet!" Seems to be the same with Fatty, an actor I hadn't seen much of until now. He's fine. He's likable enough for me not to be bothered by Buster only getting a supporting role. Arbuckle's mainly funny because he's a fat guy. It just seems too easy at times. I mean, aren't all fat guys funny? Sometimes I just sit on a park bench waiting for a fat guy to come along so that I can point and laugh. Does that mean I should tape him and have Kino release it? What if the fat guy in the park was in a dress like Fatty is in "The Butcher Boy"? These things aren't terribly funny, barely mildly humorous even. The comedy and what passed as a plot in silent nineteen-teen's shorts are both really typical. There are a lot of clever bits and the physical comedy with both of the players is good, but a very small percentage of this made me laugh or even crack a smile. A couple of these use parody with uneven results. "Out West" pokes fun at the Western, and the humor actually gets pretty black. "Moonshine" has the weirdest title cards I've ever seen, ones that break the fourth wall and continually remind the audience that they're watching a movie. John Coogan, father of Chaplin's The Kid's kid Jackie Coogan, plays a policeman in The Hayseed. There probably aren't a lot of people to whom I'd recommend these, but I do have a second volume I'll get around to watching some time.