Garden Party

The film consists of showing a variety of frogs and toads enjoying their time in a stagnate swimming pool as well as within a a deserted mansion.

This French animated short was nominated for the Academy Award. We'll soon know if it's won or not, though I would assume it's only an outside shot at the Oscar. This is because although the animation is among the best I've ever seen (and it is a visual delight), the story itself if rather gross and off-putting. In other words, after seeing so much beauty and enjoying the visuals, the story itself was not particularly pleasant or good...at least to me. And, I assume others will feel the same. I would like to say more about WHAT and WHY it was so unpleasant but this would spoil the short for you.

The level of detail of this animation is completely astonishing. It looks so realistic. I thought only video games could do that. I don't know what the guys that made this happen "rendered", but they are awesome. Every little inch was perfectly crafted and delivered to us, the audience. I must admit that, the crew, that polished this masterpiece, are the next big thing in animation.

'GARDEN PARTY': Four Stars (Out of Five)

A 7-minute French animated short film about a small group of clumsy and hungry amphibians, who invade a luxurious villa in order to feast and relax there. Then they suddenly discover where the owner has disappeared to. It was directed by Victor Caire, Gabriel Grapperon, Lucas Navarro, Theophile Dufresne, Vincent Bayoux and Florian Babikian. This short is filled with breathtaking animated visuals, and it's always fascinating to watch. Being an animal lover, I can enjoy watching any film about animals, even if there's no dialogue in it at all. The short gets really dark, and somewhat gruesome towards the end, but it's still all done in a fun, but twisted, way. I had a good time watching it definitely.

Quite a tour de force to say the least. Several frogs form a kind of ballet which has them going after food and other things. The animation is more technology than convention. But in the end, it is a bit too much.

In a deserted villa, frogs leap about the pool and grounds, entering the kitchen, bumping against switches, gradually revealing what has happened.

If there was a "best technical animation" Oscar, this would get it. The entire movie, in retrospect, was created in a computer, yet created with a photorealism that even now I find confounding. Yet I am left with the question: is animation what is left over when you are done photographing what is happening in the real world? I find that too all-encompassing to be useful, resulting in the vast majority of special effects in the history of cinema being animation. Something inside me whispers that animation must somehow be about content.... not about trick photography that could have been done by the Disney Organization in their True-Life Adventures in the 1960s, or even photographed by Len Powers for Hal Roach's Dippy-doo-dads in the early 1920s.

Or maybe I'm just a stick-in-the-mud arguing that they didn't do things that way in my day, by cracky. It's not the story that is revealed. I'm a big boy and I've seen worse things. I just don't think it's an animated story, even if they tell it that way.