runamokprods Curated by animators Don Hertzfeld and Mike Judge, this is a tremendously wide ranging collection of animation; computer, clay, hand-drawn, dramatic, funny, abstract, documentary. You name it. As with any collection of many shorts the quality is wide ranging too, and personal taste will play a big part in how a given person responds. But the best bits here are quite brilliant, and make this set very worthwhile for fans of animation aimed at an adult audience. Among the best for my taste: Alex Budovsky's gorgeous shadow-play Bath-time in Clerkenwell, Adam Elliot's wonderful 3 clay stop motion character portraits of his screwed up family members: 'Uncle', 'Cousin', and 'Brother' – all 3 are both hilarious and but also truly heartbreaking, Don Hertzfeld's simple, blackly comic 'Billy's Balloon'; painfully, sickly, laugh out loud funny. But even the less brilliant are all interesting, with only a very few real clunkers in the bunch.The collection is available as part of a very reasonably priced 2 DVD set, along with "The Animation Show, Volume 2". For me, this 2 DVD set is more slightly more uneven than the later Volume 3, which has a tremendously high ratio of hits to misses. The set also comes with a nice booklet with a biographical sketch on each of the artists represented, and a decent number of special features and extras.

MartinHafer I recently watched this DVD and was impressed by the overall quality of the animated shorts. There were some definite duds on the disk--the worst of which were THE ADVENTURES OF RICARDO shorts--they were just cruel and NOT in any funny way. However, despite these few, there were so many wonderful shorts that it makes this a must-have DVD. Included among the good are the Oscar-nominate DAS RAD, PARKING (by Plympton), three of Adam Elliot's brilliant shorts (UNCLE, BROTHER and COUSIN), the bizarre but fascinating MT. HEAD (also Oscar-nominated), and some very cruel and very funny simple shorts by Hetzfeldt--and several others that were good but I don't have time to mention. I can't wait to see the next volume.PS--Many of these better animations can be found on other DVD collections. For example, DAS RAD and MT. HEAD are both on the ART OF THE SHORT FILM DVD by Film Movement.FYI--There are, at present, three volumes to this collection. My review was based on the first one. The second, was far inferior--with very little humor and too many "artsy" films. I'd rate that one a 5. The third was very different--less funny but very surreal and amazing--I'd score it an 8.

almondbrot -- Light spoilers ahead --This is a collection of original and entertaining animation shorts, which I recommend for viewing without any reservations. There are very few parts which do not live up to the overall standard, and only while watching "Cathedral" I was longing for a fast-forward button. Highlights are the shorts by Don Hertzfeldt, especially the "Rejected" part, where he pretends to show his rejected commercial attempts for advertising the Family Learning Channel and some stupid consumer products. This is hilarious and over-the-top humor, sprinkled with gratuitous violence and cruelty (sometimes maybe a bit too much), very enjoyable. There is also a beautiful French short with music by Berlioz and drawings which look like impressionist paintings morphing into one another, though with a very dark and depressing mood to it. Then there is the Japanese flick about a man growing a cherry tree on his head, a German short about very slowly living stone people watching human civilization inventing the wheel, growing and finally destroying itself. There are beautiful and funny "short shorts" by Mike Judge, clay animation in "Ident", a great piece by Tim Burton on a boy identifying himself with Vincent Price (narrated by Vincent Price himself, all in verse), too much to be told here. Go and watch it, you won't regret it.

Valeyard-2 In a year of regurgitated ideas and mindless sequels, The Animation Show proves that there are still value left in the art of moving pictures. Don Hertzfeldt's simple yet excruciatingly genius segments hurdle you through a gaggle of shorts produced with love and thought. I was a bit surprised to see Mike Judge's contributions were small, but they are still welcome.The excerpt from Ward Kimball's "Mars and Beyond" animated film proves how the Disney company could once produce, in just a few minutes, something that contained more ingenuity than an entire 2 hour animated Disney film today. I still haven't mentioned the thought provoking shorts Mt. Head or Ident. And I'm sure this doesn't give justice to some of the other animated segments that deserve credit in this wonderful anthology.I beg of you all to see this collection while it is still in theaters so we may be blessed with a second volume come next year. Enjoy it while you can!