The Animation Show 4

Roughly once a year, Mike Judge (King of the Hill) and Don Hertzfeldt (Rejected) pull together an animation festival that isn’t solely dedicated to poop and fart jokes. This year’s assortment of films is about 50 percent filler, but there are a few great picks among the 20 or so selections. Angry, Unpaid Hooker, is sort of a mumble-core comedy wherein a young slacker tries to explain to his girlfriend why there’s an angry, unpaid hooker in his living room. Jeu, a beautiful, semi-abstract short with swirling, hand-drawn, semi-symmetrical imagery of numbers, balls, musicians and boxes, set to the music of Prokofiev, is reminiscent of the best of 1970s animation. Western Spaghetti is a stop-motion feast wherein toys, felt and toxins dance about in mime of a spaghetti dinner. Also notable are a film about the difficulties of communicating when you’re a bear and you love a penguin, and one featuring the classic theme of what happens when you call the operator and ask to speak to God. Sadly, there are about a dozen films that end with someone getting blown up, shot or launched off a cliff, because that’s the standard cartoon trope.