Moonbird

The first time I saw this movie, it had me cracking up. I have a two year old so I could really identify with the baby in the movie. Everything about the baby reminded me of my son; the way he talked, his mannerisms, and when he cried to dig the hole.. HAH. I couldn't stop laughing. This movie is absolutely adorable and I would recommend it for all ages, especially children or people with children or grandchildren. I have never seen a cartoon so cute, and endearing. I honestly can say I've never watched a better one. The animation is a little different, but I think the artists did that on purpose to put the viewer in a more childlike mindset.

The older brother in this video reminded me a lot of the kids I used to babysit where the older sister would always boss the little brother around, but in a nice way. It was cute that the older brother was helping his brother and was very tolerant and patient with him. Definitely a must see movie. I found it on a DVD my son got for his birthday, on a Pop Eye DVD w/ various other old cartoons on it. They're sold at Walmart for 1 buck! Who can beat that? It's better than watching the same thing over and over and over.. lol.

A young boy and his baby brother find their bird has escaped and so in the middle of the night, the take their bag of bait into the garden where they hope to lure it back into it's cage. The snag is that the younger sibling is a bit noisy. He speaks loudly. He cries loudly. He walks loudly. He is to stealth what Herod was to childcare. Speaking of that gentleman, I did find the extremely accurate imitation of the baby speech - especially the eye-watering rendition of "I've Been Working on the Railroad" did get under my fingernails to the point where I'd have readily summoned one of his soldiers. The animation, though, is creative using the darkness and shade as well as a ghostly style to represent the two children quite effectively as the colourful, ostrich style (and size), bird arrives on the scene and the bairn has to try to be quiet. Well good luck with that! The last scene is quite funny, but...

While the style of this cartoon was unique (enough to help it get the Oscar for Best Animated Short), this cartoon signaled to me the death of animation. It wasn't until the 1980s that a resurrected respect for decent animation occurred and fortunately today animation is once again respectable. In the interim, studios like Hannah-Barbera, Trans-Lux and Lou Scheimer reveled in horridly low frame-rates, cheap repetitive backgrounds and simplistic animation. Heck, to call some of this animation is a joke--it was more like a fast slide show since the frame rates of 24 fps were reduced in half or worse! While I can't blame MOONBIRD completely (after all, Columbia studios, Creston Studios and others produced cheap animation well before MOONBIRD), it is shocking when you compare the ultra-simple Eric Carle-style cartoon here with gorgeous MGM or Looney Toons cartoons in their heyday.

However, MOONBIRD manages to do something these other hack studios didn't. In this film they basically let two toddlers prattle non-stop and they animated it. The problem is that 2 and 3 year-olds aren't that interesting--at least not for 10 minutes straight!! Watching this film is like being locked in a room with an obnoxious small child who has always been told by his parents that he/she is the next Judy Garland or Marlon Brando. To me, this was about as welcome as a year-long migraine. Do yourself a favor and don't watch this film.

I viewed a screening of this animation last night at the "OSCARS IN ANIMATION: THE MOVIES" as part of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 75th year celebration of on-going events of films that became standards of performance over those same years. The chatter and banter of two boys in their surrealistic evening hunt to capture a bird was indeed original, creative and lead the viewers back to their own childhood. The animation floated in a very minimalist manner, forcing one to focus on the dialogue between two boys caught up in their simple vocabulary, misspoken words, sibling dueling while pretending to be adult, and pure fun. And I am sure the bird won all of those issues in the closing moments. This short film was well worth the 10minutes of its existence on the screen.

The animated short films of John and Faith Hubley (here credited as Faith Elliott) have an air of improvisation about them. While some, like 'The Hole (1962)' and 'Voyage to Next (1974),' were nonetheless structured around a central theme, the husband-and-wife pair were not averse to simply recording the conversations of their own children and animating whatever flights of fantasy happened to transpire. Of this type of film, 'Windy Day (1968),' in which the Hubleys' daughters make surprisingly profound observations on the nature of love and death, is the most impressive I've seen. 'Moonbird (1959)' won John Hubley the first of his three Oscars (also the first of seven nominations), a victory that signalled the wider acceptance of a more experimental, minimalist style of animated film, as opposed to the vibrant cartoons of Walt Disney and Warner Brothers. With 'Moonbird,' the Hubleys animate the improvised late-night adventure of their two sons, Mark and Ray, in which the pair exchange ideas for capturing a giant "moonbird" in their backyard.

The film has a rough, somewhat scrappy, animation style that isn't necessarily aesthetically attractive, but nonetheless complements the nature of the story – which is that of a hastily-scrawled flight of imagination, a spontaneous improvisation of fantasy. The two main characters appear transparent, as though having been artificially transplanted into their dreamworld. This idea sits at the film's heart. Above all else, 'Moonbird' stands as a tribute to the power of imagination, which is most extraordinarily powerful in one's younger, impressionable years; when Santa Claus was an annual visitor, and one's toys each had a distinct personality. The film does perhaps run a few minutes overlong. The Hubley sons say less of interest than their female siblings a decade later, and, rather than wondering aloud about their emotions and ambitions, instead engage in a charming kind of power-play in which the older son issues orders to his rebellious younger brother. All in all, this is a delightful animated short, and a good introduction to the work of the Hubleys.