Issue #58 Vol. 35, May 4th, 2010
| HOME | THE STAFF | ARCHIVES | PDFs | GET INVOLVED | ADVERTISE | RESOURCES |

Arts & Entertainment

One sick and twisted Sunday

This animation festival puts the S&M back into Spike & Mike

By Angela Espinoza

 With the excitement of the Winter Olympics behind us and exams finally done, we have to wonder where those thirty April days went. If you’re anything like me, you went down to The Rio and saw Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation. If you aren’t, it ran from April 1 to 21 and you should’ve gone anyway.

On that particularly bright Sunday afternoon, I took my unsuspecting better half to see what I hoped would evidently traumatize us beyond repair. As one can expect no less from Craig “Spike” Decker and the late Mike Gribble, we were indeed horrified, however, not to the extent that I had perceived.

It wasn’t until the second clip that the show really got going; a beautifully executed piece inspired by Hansel and Gretel called Who’s Hungry? by David Ochs. Drawn in stunning black and white pencil, it tells the story of a little boy and girl as they find themselves captured by a monstrous, cannibalistic ice cream man—with a blender.

Soon came one of many in Greg Ecklund’s disturbing Lloyd series; this one entitled How to Get Pronged. This, for me, was the second most disturbing short in the entire line-up. From a male perspective, however, this was the worst for my partner, who now cringes whenever I speak of it. It’s very graphic, and that’s all I’ll say.

Snowman by Thaddeus Jaworsky is an epic music video to the song of the same name by Daiquiri. Through the use of fast-paced stop-motion and Lego, our protagonist goes on a cocaine binge, which results in sex, murder, necrophilia (in that order) and a final epic coke heist.

Two shorts later came my pick for the most disturbing clip of the night: Chirpy by John Goras. The three-minute sample clip (the actual short is 12 minutes long) features a little yellow bird named Chirpy who unintentionally consumes magic mushrooms. The remaining two minutes and 30 seconds involve a very excited horse.

About half way through we came to Canada’s only entrant, Skylight by David Baas. In a nutshell, it’s a CGI anti-global warming short that bluntly explains that the sun’s rays are going to cook all the animals on Earth into meat products.

Afterwards we were treated to the beloved Internet classic, Dr. Tran: Quiet Log Time by Breehn Burns & Jason Johnson. I won’t say too much about this one since the name of Dr. Tran should already have you searching YouTube for the clip.

Next came the festival favourite from Japan, Chainsaw Maid by Takena Nagao. It’s a gory, gruesome claymation zombie short that features one badass maid.

Gradually we came to Oktapodi by Julien Bocabeille, a CGI short from France. Nominated for an Academy Award in 2008, this clip was one of the most innocent in the whole festival: a cute love story about two octopuses.

The show closed with a clip from the full-length feature, A Town Called Panic by Vincent Patar and Stephen Aubier. The film was in consideration for an Academy Award nomination just this year, but is instead gaining popularity through festivals and, in this case, short Robot Chicken-esque clips.

The festival featured a wide variety of shorts, from traditional 2D animations to awkward, jagged stop-motion. The variety of content also greatly differed, from children-aimed innocent shorts to graphically disgusting clips. Never have I felt so many extreme emotions in one night, and I can’t wait to go again next year!