Film animation has come a long way since a certain mouse made his debut in the late 1920s. A very, very long way, as viewers will see in The Best of Ottawa Animation Festival 2010. The traveling show delivers the top animated shorts from the festival celebrating stylistic and technical innova-tion. It also includes enough sex and violence to slap a for mature audiences only warning on it.
The 2010 lineup includes David OReillys grand-prize winner The External World, a surprisingly gory and angry look at life. One of the first scenes in External World shows an elderly man slipping on a banana peel. He falls flat on his face and the banana peel jumps on the mans head, turning it into a bloody stain on the floor. Mostly silent, The External World strings together unconnected scenes showing humans, human-like animals and weird creatures engaging in random acts of sex, violence and weirdness.
Theres also the suspenseful Love & Theft, the heartfelt Prayers for Peace, the audience favorite Sinna Mann (Angry Man) and the warped A Family Portrait. Check out some adult animation with nary a talking toucan, car or martial arts-practicing panda in sight. 7 p.m. Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-639-7515 or visit www.mfah.org. $6 to $7.
Sat., June 11, 7 p.m.; Sun., June 12, 5 p.m., 2011
This article appears in Jun 9-15, 2011.
