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The Best of Ottawa 2005

Dark collection of animated shorts

By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | April 11, 2006

3.0 Stars

PSYCHIC ENERGY: "The Best of Ottawa 2005" includes post-apocalyptic scribblings, sinister chestnut sellers, and puppets trying to reanimate a corpse.

Animated shorts — at least the ones assembled for the MFA’s three-part animation program — tend toward the macabre. The samplings from “The Best of Ottawa 2005” include post-apocalyptic scribblings, sinister chestnut sellers, and puppets trying to reanimate a corpse. JJ Villard’s Chestnuts Icelolly, one of the best of the batch, has a Maurice Sendakian feel; a lonely kid gets boxed into working for a chestnut seller. In Reuben Sutherland’s music video Phoenix Foundation Hitchcock cars dance as electricity- and gas-guzzlers battle and chase. Bruce Alcock’s At the Quinte Hotel is an animated interpretation of Canadian blue-collar poet Al Purdy’s poem by the same name. Purdy’s voice — in one of his final recordings — as he talks about beer, yellow flowers, and barroom brawls both soothes and haunts.

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Topics: Reviews , Entertainment, Movies, Animated Films, More

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