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Show Spectrum The Summer Chronicle - Page Six Wednesday, August 16, 1989 Festival retains with amazing, amusing aniimattion -- Short subjects range Classic thriller tells from simple to bizarre deception in post-Worl- d By Pamela Choules Chronicle Film Critic Well kids, the Festival of Animation is back in town; and its just as unique, creative, outrageous, entertaining and amusing as ever. The gallery of animated shorts begins with Max Fleisher's Snow short rendition of the Snow White, a very old White story with Betty Boop as Snow White. Despite its age, it is black-and-whi- The Third Man London Films Directed by Sir Carol Reed Produced by Sir Alexander Korda and David O. Selznick Screenplay by Graham Greene Welles, Valli, Trevor Starring Joseph Cotton, Orson ' Howard te , Film Review quite entertaining and contains some surprisingly bizarre images (for instance, a monster being pulled inside out by his tongue). As the festival plunges on into more contemporary entries such as Cordell Barker's The Cat Came Back and John Lasseter's Academy g Tin Toy, I found myself wondering (in between fits of laughter), "How do these people come up with this stuff?" Tin Toy is just a simple idea, what toys think of babies, that is made hilarious when brought to life by Lasseter's computer animation. He makes a cute little baby into a huge, gurgling monster when shown through the eyes of a toy. Another festival highlight is Chris Miller's Lea Press-oLimbs, which spoofs commercials using a style of animation reminiscent of the '50s and a large dose of black humor. And simplest of all is Primiti Too Taa, by Ed Ackerman and Colin Morton, which was nothing more than a voice reading a primitive-sound- s poem and animation done on a Remington typewriter. it still managed to induce loud giggling in Despite its simplicity, " the audience. All of the shorts are masterfully manipulated by their makers to create completely new worlds and realities that both amaze and amuse. This is definitely required viewing. The Festival of Animation is now playing at Cinema in Your Face at 5:15, 7:00, 8:45, and 10:30 p.m. It will continue through Aug. 24 Admission prices are $3 before 6 p.m., $4 ($3.50 for students) for evening showings, and $3 after 10:30 p.m. If you're sick of waiting in long lines to pay $5.50 to see films with increasingly rude and obnoxious audiences, or if you aren't very impressed with this summer's lineup of new releases, or if you're broke like me, or if you are looking for video entertainment for whatever reason, I thought I'd review a classic film which is currently available on ' video., '., . The Third Man is a superior thriller, both by todayVstandards and by those existing when it was Award-winnin- , 7 n 't released in 1949, and it's probably one of the greatest films of all time. The film is about a rather naive American writer of cheap Western novels named Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotton) who travels to post-wVienna to visit a childhood friend. Upon arrival in Vienna, Martins finds out that the friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), has been killed in a car accident, leaving Martins grief stricken and without ar a dime. : War Vienna II falls in love with Lime's mistress, Anna (Valli), and finds out that Lime isn't really dead and is in fact the unidentified "third man" that witnessed Harry's By Pamela Choules Chronicle Film Critic stylized story of W .(::'';;:'.'. Then, to make matters, worse, the police tell Martins that Lime was one of the worst racketeers in Vienna who had sunk so low as to sell watered down penicillin on the black market. Martins doesn't believe the police and sets out to prove them wrong, which leads him on a treacherous journey full of deception and betrayal, through the dark and war-tor- n streets of Vienna. In the course of this journey, Martins meets and death. Vienna in 1948 was divided into four zones: British, French, American and Soviet with each power taking turns a month at a time administering control over the inner city (the international zone), which was policed by patrols made up of four soldiers, one from each power. Not only was the city and its people besieged by the political tensions created by these four foreign powers, but it was still trying to recover (as was most of Europe) from the destruction and economic upheaval caused by World War II. Alexander Korda, hoping to make a contemporary film set in this devastation, sent, popular novelist Graham Greene to Vienna. Greene combined the first paragraph from a story with the corruption of Vienna's street life and the beginnings of Cold War tensions there and created a beautiful web of suspense and mystery. Then Korda handed the story. to director Carol Reed, who had worked with Korda and Greene on another excellent film, The Fallen Idol. Reed combined several different visual styles to create his own visual style for this film. His location shooting in the streets of Vienna give the film a feeling of realism. The expressionist lighting and the overtly a stylized camera angles immediately recall Wellesian style,' and the mysterious shadows, half- -' lit faces and great number of night scenes (most of them chases) gives the film elements of film noir : .;. -- also.!', , .;, ; TheThird Man won an Academy Award for its ; cinematography. It was a huge commercial success - and is considered by respected film scholars and critics to be one of the best, films ever made. The film is well worth seeing. ; long-abandon- ed - ? Video stores which have collections of old films will have it in stock; or if you are willing to suffer through watching it on a tiny screen, you can see it at me Marriott Library's audiovisual department. |