Moonbird

This cartoon deservedly won an Oscar for Animated Short in 1959. It came about in an intriguing way-John and Faith Hubley taped their two sons at play and structured the animation around the conversation between the two. Fascinating though this is (and the animation is excellent), toward the lattr part of the short, the dialogue starte to become tedious and distracting, at least to me. This technique would be used again to quite good effect in later shorts. Still an excellent short and most recommended.

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.

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.

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...

Two little boys go for a secret nighttime adventure and have an encounter with a MOONBIRD.

This absolutely charming little film is based on the (apparently) unscripted dialogue between two young brothers, Mark & Hampy Hubley. Created & designed by their parents, John & Faith Hubley, the effervescent quality of the conversation is matched by the limited-animation format which takes the simple story into flights of fancy.

Winner of the 1959 Oscar for Best Animated Short.