A Town Called Panic

[John-Locke]

Just stumbled across this hilarious series of animated shorts from Belgium about a Cowboy, an Indian and a Horse, it's absurdist humour at it's best and has had me laughing my ass off for the last 20 minutes and I've only watched 3 of them so far.

UK Zoners might recognise the cheap animation style, it's made by the same people who do the hilarious Cravendale Ad's (which is how I stumbled upon this tonight), for those of you not familiar with the ads you can find them Here and Here

Anyways as ads I think they are pretty funny but they are nothing compared to the brilliance that is A TOWN CALLED PANIC

Enjoy

[Bob Samonkey]

These were on Nickelodeon a while back and I laughed very hard. Nice to see them again!

[John-Locke]

Just updated the URL as the Atom Films site seems to have changed a little and the original link no longer worked.

I'm disappointed that this thread hasn't garnered much of a response, these shorts are hilarious I tell you.

[magicmonkey]

I watched one about cake... it was interesting, but are there better ones? It was insane.

[John-Locke]

Just watch them all, Cake is probably one of the least funniest actually.

[Bob Samonkey]

It is a weird humor but it grows on you...

[Ribbons]

The M/C Review: 'A Town Called Panic': The Movie!

Cowboy and Indian and Horse share a house. When Cowboy and Indian realize they've forgotten Horse's birthday, they decide to order bricks off the internet so they can build him an outdoor barbecue. They make a small mistake during the ordering process, though, which results in 50 million bricks being delivered to their house.

So begins one of the most effortlessly likable films of the year, "A Town Called Panic," which played both Fantastic Fest and AFI Fest in the last few weeks, and which is now in the mix as a possible candidate for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars this year. I hope it ends up as one of the five nominees. It won't win, but that nomination could get a whole lot of people to take a chance on the film when Zeitgeist Films releases it for a limited theatrical run, and that would be a very good thing indeed.

The film by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, based on a charming series of shorts they created for TV, is pretty much a delight from end to end, whimsical and silly and delightfully strange. It's stop-motion animation, but very limited. It looks like a bunch of toys by different manufacturers and of different sizes, all dumped together at random. You remember the moment in "Where The Wild Things Are" where Max is telling his mother the story about the vampire whose teeth fell out? And the way his story lurches from event to event without anything like a conventional narrative to hold it all together? That was one of the best examples I've ever seen of the way children invent stories as they play, and "A Town Called Panic" is the same sort of thing, a film that feels like it unfolds with the purity of a child playing, and the effect is intoxicating. So often, filmmakers are locked into certain narrative shapes, so even the most skilled of filmmakers can fall into the trap of predictability. Here, anything can and does happen, and it's incredibly winning as a result.

Full review

[zeitgeistfilms]

A Town Called Panic trailer and clips now available!

The website for our surreal stop-motion feature, A Town Called Panic (based on the cult Belgian TV shorts you all love), is now live with some great clips and the trailer for the upcoming film. An Oscar contender with rave reviews from Cannes, Toronto, Fantastic Fest, and the AFI Fest so far.......anyone seen it yet? http://atowncalledpanic.com/

Panic, opens at the Film Forum in New York Wednesday December 16 for two weeks only. But be sure to check our website for other playdates as we roll across the US in 2010, and as more updates are announced.

[Ribbons]

Viewing Instructions

Step 1: Make sure that you are sober before beginning your viewing experience.*

Step 2: Watch 5-10 minutes of A Town Called Panic.

Step 3: Pause to confirm that you are in fact still sober. *

Step 4: Resume playing.

This movie is bizarre and borderline insane; I kind of liked it. You'd have better luck predicting the plot by playing Mad Libs than making any sort of intelligent guess, but somehow you still think "Yeah, I guess that makes sense" when it happens.

More than that I just really liked the style. You could totally buy that little Belgian kids were making this story up with their actual toys, despite a couple references to drinking and the odd "salope" thrown into the script. There's a whimsical, lighthearted vibe to the village, with its three houses and weird hybrid cast of humans and animals and giant mechanical penguins. It was just a lot of fun to watch. It felt like a series of vignettes stuck together sometimes, but in this case I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

*optional