Fantastic Fest 2012 Review - Drawn and Quartered: Animated Fantastic Fest Shorts

Continuing my post from yesterday, I'll be highlighting my top five favorite animated shorts from the Drawn and Quartered block of programming during Fantastic Fest. As always, these are my favorites and don't necessarily reflect badly on any of the other films. Check them out after the break.

BOBBY YEAH (Dir. Robert Morgan, 23 min., UK)

This terribly bleak and disgusting short might be my favorite of the bunch. As I was telling Marc from GoSeeTalk, I liked the act while I had no clue what the fuck was going on half of the time. I know that the director and visual designers had a completely focused vision that allowed them to make this completely twisted little movie. As far as I can tell, there's plot involving a theft, lots weird allegorical penis imagery, and creatures where some random winged baby can infect a creature with a button that will mess a person up if they push the aforementioned button. It's beyond fucked up, gross to look at, and I absolutely loved it. How it didn't win the Fantastic Fest Award, I will never know.

FOLLOW THE SUN (Dir. Teddy Dibble, 4 min., USA)

I love the juxtaposition of old-timey media with the darkest aspects of that time period. This one has what appears to be a standard concession stand commercial slowly and then frantically degenerating into a spiral of macabre imagery filled with symbolism and commentary about life back in the "good ol' days", and its fixation on endless consumption that prevails even today.

PAPERMAN (Dir. John Khars, 6 min., USA)

 I will admit that the Q&A with the director had a little something to do with my liking of this short. It will be playing before WRECK IT RALPH, and it deals with a cute "boy meets girl" story set in the 1930's major metropolitan city. What really wins me over is the beautiful visuals that were a mix between CGI and hand drawn animation that actually ended up taking longer than either one of the methods.

POSTHUMAN (Dir. Cole Drumb, 6 min., USA)

I must confess, I've seen this short quite a few times before and after the festival. I like the modern anime-inspired style. Part of the reason why I dig this short so much is that you feel like you're watching a random episode or section of a larger body of work. The world building was very well done, as was the super-violent animation. The short deals with a reconnaissance operation in a futuristic world where there's a war going on and psychics are being exploited for malicious purposes.

TRAM (Dir. Michaela Pavlatova, 7 min., Czech Republic)

This is one of the funnier and dirtiest love stories I've seen in a while. We take a look into the life of a train car driver's...wandering imagination as she goes on through her day taking generic businessmen to and from work. This short was the runner-up to the Fantastic Fest Awards.

The rest of the Drawn and Quartered block was all pretty solid. The only one that really bugged me was MI BURRO. I'm not sure if I'm just tired of seeing Mexico depicted as a shit hole of a country, but I just didn't care for it especially since the animation made it look like a second-rate Adult Swim show. Look for my final recap of the Short Fuse shorts block tomorrow.

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