A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Moya Lyubov (My Love)

Date Viewed: 2/18/08

Details:

Director: Alexander Petrov

Score: +

The Review: Animation; drama. Adolescent fantasies upon reading Turgenev, the attraction of a young student to two very different women.

Excellent, flowing, water-color-like artwork, but the lush imagery doesn't translate altogether smoothly into animated frame-transitions (hand-drawn art such as this would be difficult to do in a cel-based fasion); the often jerky result makes it hard to track. It was all the more difficult because the English subtitles change rapidly against this stuttering artistic landscape. I wish my Russian were better, so I might have followed it in its native language --the visuals were so distracting, but so beautiful, I cannot really complain -- but I was only able to catch a few phrases here and there, and definitely not enough to understand the entire piece without English clues. Reminiscent -- not because of style, but because of the quality of the story and imagery of a different sort -- of last year's short animated feature The Danish Poet.

Russian. This is one of this year's (2008) five Oscar-nominated animated shorts, along with Meme les Pigeons vont au Paradis, Madame Tutli-Putli, I Met the Walrus, Peter and the Wolf, all available to the general public via digital video release into selected theatres (for the third year) from Magnolia. The highlights for me were My Love for artwork and Peter and the Wolf for characterization, but in general, this year's collection didn't seem to click quite so well as in previous years. Yes, each has its own distinctive signature quirk, animation style, and twist on the expected storyline -- it's easy to see why this broad representation was nominated. But it's hard to know what else was in the running through the year, and there's nothing that sticks out as prominently as my memories of The Passenger (from 2007), or especially 9 (from 2006). Maybe it's because there was no Pixar entry? The collection was reasonably good, overall, and an entertaining mix.

(22-Feb-08)

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