Azur and Asmar.

"Two new films set a new bar for digital animation," writes Doug Cummings: "Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues (which I saw at the REDCAT earlier this week) and Michel Ocelot's Azur and Asmar (a 2006 film released on DVD in the UK that opens in New York City on Friday).... Influenced by Persian miniatures and Renaissance paintings, Ocelot visualizes [his] film through highly decorative backgrounds filled with intricate textures; the digital tools are used to increase the details, filling fields with thousands of carefully drawn flowers or the hallways of palaces with ornate tapestries that frame the action like illustrated manuscripts.... The effect is one that's closer to a handsome storybook than a mainstream CGI film, lending the narrative a significant degree of visual enchantment."

"With its delicate, fairy-tale bones and layer of politically conscious muscle, Azur and Asmar is a sleek and yet slightly unwieldy animal," writes Michelle Orange in the Voice. "Azur's hybrid appeal should be one of its strongest selling points but proves its weakest: The lessons of cultural intolerance are pitched simply enough for children to understand, yet the execution lacks the schmoozy wit and splashy visuals to keep them entertained; adults will find the elegant combination of cut-out and CGI animation bewitching but the thematics unsubtle, at best."

"Despite a stiffness of movement that suggests an upscale take on the cutout animation of South Park, the movie has a terrific flair for arabesque patterning, a gemlike luminosity of surface and a handsome, classical cast of mind," finds Nathan Lee in the New York Times.

"[T]he director integrates visual elements and techniques drawn from medieval illuminations and Arabic art, including painstakingly rendered mosaics and architectural details," writes Elisabeth Vincentelli in Time Out New York. "As the film foreshadows how religious fundamentalism crushed both this art and scientific research, Ocelot honors both light and enlightenment."

"[T]he familiar learning-through-travelling trajectory is simply updated with PC details," finds Benjamin H Sutton in the L Magazine. "In the end it's admirable to be offering us something different from the usual irresponsible drivel, but Azur would have benefitted from more stylized animation, nuanced writing and a competent cinematographer's insightful eye."

Posted by dwhudson at October 17, 2008 7:59 AM