Pigeon: Impossible

A special agent takes possession of the nuclear football – a suitcase containing all manner of devices but, crucially, the big red button which can be used to start thermonuclear war. He cannot resist giving the contents a look but when he does a pigeon, innocently wanting food, ends up trapped inside with access to all the controls.

With a look of Pixar about it, Lucas Martell's film is pretty good and has a sense of humour that would see him fit in pretty well at that studio even if this film is nowhere near their standard. The crux of the film is funny in that it is a battle between a secret agent and an anthropomorphised pigeon with his finger, er, foot, on the button. This produces some good laughs in the short running time and I generally liked the idea – the problem I had throughout was the suitcase itself. The human and the pigeon are easy to understand and nice characters – the suitcase is not. What it is capable of becomes the whole short film and the film never lets me forget how odd it is – to the point that I was distracted by it being essentially a flying saucer with a handle. It sounds odd to criticise a film about a crafty pigeon battling an human for being "unrealistic" but unfortunately this is what is wrong with the suitcase side of it.

Of course the whole thing is unrealistic but the pigeon and the human and the setup I can buy within the context of the film – the film didn't manage to do that for the case, it always seemed odd even within this animation. It is still a fun film though and it is very well made by Martell, but it was just that aspect of the idea that I felt was holding it back.

The clumsy Junior CIA Agent Walter Beckett specialist in electronics and software receives a briefcase with state-of-art defense equipment from another agent in one street of Washington D.C. He sits on a park bench on the sidewalk to eat a donut but is attacked by a starving pigeon that wants his doughnut. When the pigeon is accidentally locked inside the briefcase, he activates the defense system bringing chaos to Washington.

"Pigeon: Impossible" is a very funny parody of spy movies by Lucas Martell. The debut of this director, who is also the writer, producer and responsible for visual effects, animation and sound departments, is promising and I look forward to see his next work.

I saw this animation in the following address: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=jEjUAnPc2VA

My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Shorts are the door to access to movies; is a fight against time that you have to win by knock out. Shorts also show the goals of the new generation of filmmakers, and certainly are a great source of ideas, fresh narrative, and an inspiration for many directors. Martell chooses animation; an expression that besides having ideas, you have to show a great technique, and express it through hours, and hours of work. Pigeon Impossible has many of those virtues; is a satire of spy stories, with a great sense of humor. I tasted this short in 33o Montreal World Film Festival, honored as best short by the jury -besides many other recognitions- and I was very pleased to discover that this work is one of the most creative shorts of 2009. The animations shows with great technique camera moves, rhythm, music, story, and a cinematographic language according to an orthodox way of telling stories: In 6 minutes takes the spectator from presenting characters, to a climax, and then surprising ending... and the most important: In a very amusing way! Congratulations to young Austin Texas filmmaker Lucas Martell…you have stories to tell, and you also know how to tell them...even in 6.12 minutes. You have a great future! Leopoldo Soto

Comedy is a specially good genre to work in animation. That's because the concepts of gimmick, or situation comedy, or unreal interactions between elements (like animals or objects) gain new possibilities. In a row, in the same session of Cinanima, i saw two comedy animations. Two different visions of how to use the tools. This is the less interesting of the two (the other one was 'chumps & clumps'). It's not that the ideas they pursue here are less interesting than the ones in chumps. They simply don't manage these ideas they chose as well as the guys in chumps do with their options. So here they basically trust the success of the comedy in the relation between the pigeon and the james bond, and the unpredictable things the pigeon can do because he is small enough to be inside the killing suitcase. Animal-human interaction, and awkward scale relations. That's it. Some gags are good, but the sense of style and the visual sharpness of the jokes is not so developed. It's good fun though. My opinion: 3/5

...and a briefcase. Enough for aspectacular war between a CIA agent and a pigeon . Imaginative and well crafted parodz, it is just lovely.