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DonBattery
Reviews
Egon & Dönci (2007)
A nicely animated 3D space journey for everybody in this world
This marvel of Hungarian animation came out in 2007, a year before the over-hyped and terrible-in-all-way Kis Vuk http://www.IMDb.com/title/tt0830861/ (sink that to the bottom of IMDb, and forget it for eternity). So when I was dieing from the brain-cancer Kis Vuk gave me, I discovered the fact: it wasn't the first Hungarian full-feature 3D animation. Then I watched Egon & Dönci, and it gave back my faith in humanity.
The creators were young animators from the advertising industry, with high technical knowledge and skills. But this film was "just" a garage-project, with lot of love, passion, and family-support. So they did not have a large company and strong hardware-park behind them, but still they made an excellent work.
!!!WARNING!!! ----- THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS ----- !!!Warning!!! The story fallows the adventure of Egon (the amateur inventor and astronaut), and Dönci (his silly cat) trough space. They live on a nice little planetoid, a bit bigger then the one in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. One day they find a spacecraft from earth, and they decide to go on a journey, to find out where it came from. They have a beautiful trip all around our solar system, only to have a hard land in Earth's hard future.
!!!SAFE!!! --- NO MORE SPOILERS --- !!!SAFE!!! The visuals are brilliant (almost Pixar quality, except the character animation, witch is a bit puppet like, but still cute), during some scenes I felt, the creators want to show us how many visual tricks are in their bag (but it is not overdone). The film has many video clip-like scenes, where the music plays important role too. And by music I mean real music. I still have almost all the themes from this title on my mp3-player. The characters communicate with each other via childish sounds, and half words (so it could be understood by anyone).
The story is simple, but clever and thoughtful. It can entertain little children (and maybe teach something to them), but contains some serious message about humanity for the older audience. It has almost zero violence, and many cute and funny parts.
Watching this film has restored my faith in humanity (witch has been lost during the horrors of Kis Vuk). There are still good animators in Hungary, and they are working for us, and for our children. This film, and it's soundtrack can be downloaded from their site, in excellent quality, for free of charge! What a gift! I want to shake every last hand of them! All in all Egon & Dönci is a lovely film for everyone, especially who is interested in space-travel, our solar system, humanity, quality animation and funny cats.
Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose (1987)
Magical acid-trip with Yogi Bear
As a child I found Hanna-Barbera cartoons dumb, poorly drawn, and too simple. So I never was a fan of Yogi Bear and his friends.
Yesterday one of my friends show us this movie (he found his old VHS cassettes, and this was one of his favorites). And I must say: it was disturbing and awful.
The story is about Yogi and his friends. They are visiting Evergreen Aviation Museum in Oregon. (And I'm pretty sure, the museum ordered this film, as a commercial.) On the beginning we can see the exterior around the museum (simple photographs, and paints from them), then they sow us the interior of the building, and an interesting blanc&white documentary film about the test flight of Howard Hughes gigantic airplane, the Hughes H-4 Hercules (the Spruce Goose). This is the only good part of the film (+One star for this!).
Then Yogi and his crew accidentally stuck on the plane, and the magic flight begins. The characters are dumber then the usual (or its maybe just me...), some of them are constantly denying the truth, calling it hallucination (why???), and lot of them didn't do anything during the whole time, except telling some unfunny comments. The storyline is full of holes, stuffed with "magic", like the authors cannot come up with better ideas.
I know this is a cartoon for kids, and not for middle-aged men. But for god's sake! I'm not a super intelligent man, I never was. I always liked movies with an understandable, and somehow intelligent story. I'm not against magic, I like fantasy films. But when the writers use magic as filler material, I could brake the TV.
All in all, this film is a soulless commercial for a the Evergreen Aviation Museum and they big attraction, the Spruce Goose. (Anyway I'm sure I could enjoy the museum itself as a child, cos I was a technical-type boy, unfortunately the film don't show any interesting mechanical part of the goose. It could have been +1 star).
Daliás idök (1983)
A Holly Grail of the Hungarian animation
This is an unique paint-animation (it means that nearly all the frames are individual paintings)from Hungary. Directed by József Gémes (his more known works are Willy the Sparrow and The Princess and the Goblin) It tales the story of Miklós Toldi, an original character by the famous author János Arany (1817-1882). He is a tragic hero who has inhuman strength, that coses some serious trouble, but also this and his iron will makes him a legend. The movie is also narrated by him.
The movie itself is very interesting for the fans of animation, because of its unique technique. Just a handful of man dealing with paint-animation in the whole world (maybe the most famous among them is Aleksandr Petrov the Russian genius). The sound and music is not that grateful, but its OK for its time.
The one thing that I cannot understand about this piece of art, why its so unknown? Even in Hungary nobody knows about it, I never seen it on TV programs, or in art-cinemas. When I studied animation (in the same studio where it has been made), I had a chance to watch it, but its an other story...
All in all, if you are interested in rare animation treasures, and have a chance to watch it, do it without hesitation!