Torchbearer (2005)
Genre : Animation, Horror, Fantasy
Runtime : 25M
Director : Václav Švankmajer
Synopsis
The mechanism that propels the cycle of the sun and the moon has failed, and endless night falls. A nameless and silent hero must find his way through a dangerous labyrinth of traps, fierce creatures, and mysterious sentinels to restore the mechanism.
Wallace rents out Gromit's former bedroom to a penguin, who takes up an interest in the techno pants created by Wallace. However, Gromit later learns that the penguin is a wanted criminal.
Wallace's whirlwind romance with the proprietor of the local wool shop puts his head in a spin, and Gromit is framed for sheep-rustling in a fiendish criminal plot.
Wallace and Gromit open a bakery, accidentally getting tied up with a murder mystery in the process. But when Wallace falls in love, Gromit is left to solve the case by himself.
Cheese-loving eccentric Wallace and his cunning canine pal, Gromit, investigate a mystery in Nick Park's animated adventure, in which the lovable inventor and his intrepid pup run a business ridding the town of garden pests. Using only humane methods that turn their home into a halfway house for evicted vermin, the pair stumble upon a mystery involving a voracious vegetarian monster that threatens to ruin the annual veggie-growing contest.
When Shaun decides to take the day off and have some fun, he gets a little more action than he bargained for. A mix up with the Farmer, a caravan and a very steep hill lead them all to the Big City and it's up to Shaun and the flock to return everyone safely to the green grass of home.
Dug, along with his sidekick Hognob, unite a cavemen tribe to save their hidden valley from being spoiled and, all together as a team, to face the menace of a mysterious and mighty enemy, on the turf of an ancient and sacred sport.
Wallace and Gromit have run out of cheese, and this provides an excellent excuse for the duo to take their holiday to the moon, where, as everyone knows, there is ample cheese.
The Short Films of David Lynch (2002) is a DVD collection of the early student and commissioned film work of American filmmaker David Lynch. As such, the collection does not include Lynch's later short work, which are listed in the filmography. The films are listed in chronological order, with brief descriptions of each film. The DVD contains introductions by Lynch to each film, which can be viewed individually or in sequence. # 1 Six Figures Getting Sick (Six Times) # 2 The Alphabet # 3 The Grandmother # 4 The Amputee # 5 The Cowboy and the Frenchman # 6 Premonitions Following an Evil Deed
Tired of scaring humans every October 31 with the same old bag of tricks, Jack Skellington, the spindly king of Halloween Town, kidnaps Santa Claus and plans to deliver shrunken heads and other ghoulish gifts to children on Christmas morning. But as Christmas approaches, Jack's rag-doll girlfriend, Sally, tries to foil his misguided plans.
A beautiful princess born in a faraway kingdom is destined by a terrible curse to prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a deep sleep that can only be awakened by true love's first kiss. Determined to protect her, her parents ask three fairies to raise her in hiding. But the evil Maleficent is just as determined to seal the princess's fate.
Set in a 19th-century European village, this stop-motion animation feature follows the story of Victor, a young man whisked away to the underworld and wed to a mysterious corpse bride, while his real bride Victoria waits bereft in the land of the living.
When the young orphan boy James spills a magic bag of crocodile tongues, he finds himself in possession of a giant peach that flies him away to strange lands.
A movie that starts out with the "Man in the Mirror" music video, it then changes to a montage of video clips of Michael's career. Next comes a parody of his Bad video by children, and then Michael is chased by fans in a fantasy sequence. 2 more videos are shown, and then a movie in which Michael plays a hero with magical powers. In it he is chased by drug dealer Mr. Big and saves three children. Videos included in the movie are "Smooth Criminal" and "Come Together".
Un Chien Andalou is an European avant-garde surrealist film, a collaboration between director Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali.
A postman, S.D. Kluger, decides to answer some of the most common questions about Santa Claus, and tells us about a baby named Kris who is raised by a family of elf toymakers named Kringle. When Kris grows up, he wants to deliver toys to the children of Sombertown. But its Mayor is too mean to let that happen. And to make things worse, the Winter Warlock lives between the Kringles and Sombertown.
Wallace and Gromit try out ten of their latest inventions—which rarely work as planned.
On Halloween 1997, two estranged teen skaters embark on a surreal journey through their memories, dreams and fears.
When a princess is shrunken by an evil wizard, Sinbad must undertake a quest to an island of monsters to cure her and prevent a war.
In 5th Century Britian, a young Merlin struggles for his place in his known land under the tutelage of The Mage, a local wizard whom sees the young man's potential for magic, as well as face off against his evil former friend, Vendiger, whom plots with a feudal warlord king to conquer all of Britian using an army of flying dragons, and only Merlin with the alliance of the local Prince Uther and Ingraine and a pair of mystical goddesses, can have the power to stop the evil from taking over the land.
When the warren belonging to a community of rabbits is threatened, a brave group led by Fiver, Bigwig, Blackberry and Hazel leave their homeland in a search of a safe new haven.
A short story of the most important emotions of life, from birth to death, love and sexuality through pain and fear. It is a tribute to art and his disarming beauty.
An animated short film from 1987 that deals with the incarceration of a man in a dark cell from where there is no escape.
Arnold's source material is a piece of footage from the 1950s, eighteen seconds long and very typical for the period. A quiet take: A living room, a woman in an armchair. Her husband opens the door, kisses her, then moves out of the picture accompanied by a camera pan, his wife follows after him. In Arnold's film the sequence takes 16 minutes. Cadre by cadre, it becomes an exciting tango of movements. But Pièce Touchée is more than just a matter of forms; The reflections, distortions and delays it displays challenge cinema's stable system of space and time.
A meta-film about a film and the common man in our own political reality. A reality that is just scenes of a film without any cinematic development, but which might be plain reality tomorrow.
Short film by Zbigniew Rybczyński.
A man who no longer can afford his rent is forced to sell his beloved furniture. The furniture can not bear to be parted from their owner and decides to return home. Often confused with Bosetti's film Le Garde meuble automatique (1912).
In a deconstruction of classic Hollywood codes, using repetitive single frame images, the re-editing of teenager movies produces an intense Oedipal drama.
A short film advertising the newspaper Sztandar Młodych (The Banner of Youth), noteworthy for its abstract elements painted directly onto film stock. An attempt at showing the complexity of the world in a capsule, the film reflects the new policy of the openness to the West during the Thaw of the late 1950s in Poland.
Hans, living in Vienna during the Great Depression, intends to drown himself in the river after losing his livelihood. While there he meets a girl named Anna after pulling her from the river.
Two weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945, Indonesian Independence leaders proclaimed “Indonesia Merdeka!” ‘Freedom for Indonesia’ and an end to Dutch colonial rule over the Netherlands East Indies. Internationally renowned Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, in Australia as Film Commissioner for the Netherlands East Indies government in exile, resigned his position in protest against Dutch policy, which sought to re-impose its colonial rule. In collaboration with Indonesian activists, Chinese, Indian and Australian trade unionists, and local artists and filmmakers, Ivens made Indonesia Calling, a film documenting the crucial role of Australian trade union support in the establishment of the new Republic of Indonesia. Ivens’ film was an activist documentary; it actively contributed to the events it depicted. All those who worked on it became ‘adversely known’ to the security services.
A study of traffic movement in Paris.
The building of blast furnaces Magnitogorsk and the Kubas Basin by Komsomol, the Communist Union of youth, as part of Stalin’s first five-year plan.
A robin is shot so the woodland community holds a trial to investigate.
The film begins with an Earth space craft stumbling upon a movie floating in the vast nothingness. The film turns out to be from planet Zog and when people see it, they are shocked and angered by the Zogs (or is it 'Zogians' or 'Zogites'?). It seems that they have their genitals where our heads are and vice-versa. To make things really weird, they eat and drink with their genitals and defecate with their faces.
Lye edited together “swing” versions of the popular Lambeth Walk (including Django Reinhardt on guitar and Stephane Grapelli on violin), combining them with a particularly diverse range of direct film images, scratched as well as painted. He was particularly pleased with a final guitar solo (with a vibrating horizontal line) and double bass solo (with a stomping vertical line). For this film Lye did not have to include any advertising slogans; friends at the Tourist and Industrial Development Association, shocked to learn that Lye and his family had become destitute, arranged for TIDA to sponsor the film – to the horror of government bureaucrats who could not understand why a popular dance was being treated as a tourist attraction. - Harvard Film Archive
A delicate stroll through the Russian wilderness at different times of the year.
The film is an artistically spare depiction of the Greek myth of Sisyphus, sentenced to eternally roll a stone up a mountain. The story is presented in a single, unbroken shot, consisting of a dynamic line drawing of Sisyphus, the stone, and the mountainside.
In a cafe, people talk, their words become expresively-shaped balloons. An older waiter tries to connect with a young woman who's reading. She brushes him off, but gets into an animated and romantic conversation with a young man. A dog goes from table to table drinking beer and wine when people aren't looking. Older men talk about sexual conquests until one of their wives interrupts them. The young couple argues; he starts to leave, she pleads, he leaves anyway. The waiter tries to help. Old guys talk until they nod off. Women chat. Later, as the waiter cleans up, the finds the young woman's book. He sighs, the dog sleeps it off.
I evoke a dancing woman. A woman? No. A bouncing line with harmonious rhythm. I evoke a luminous projection on veils ! Precise matter! No. Fluid rhythms. Why should one disregard, on screen, the pleasure that movement brings us in the theatre? Harmony of lines. Harmony of light. Lines, surfaces, volumes evolving directly, without the artifice of evocation, in the logic of its forms, dispossessed of any overly human sense, allowing an elevation towards the abstract, thus giving more space to sensations and to dreams : integral cinema. —Germaine Dulac
Johan van der Keuken went against the grain in 1980: from Amsterdam (on April 30 with the coronation riots and squatting actions) via Paris, southern France and Italy to Egypt. He made his personal travelogue in three parts for VPRO television. Later, he fused the three parts into one long movie.