If the phrase “My spoon is too big” either makes you fall over on the floor laughing or reply with “I am a banana,” you must have seen the deadly-funny cartoon “Rejected” by Don Hertzfeldt. We recently got a copy of Bitter Films, Volume One, a collection of six of Don’s animated shorts including “Rejected,” “Lily and Jim,” “Billy’s Balloon,” and “Ah L’Amour.” Even though I’d seen all but one of them before, I laughed so hard that I had trouble breathing during three of these cartoons.
Besides the classic shorts and some other minor gems, the DVD also features a few short Don Hertzfeldt “bookend” animations produced for The Animation Show, a festival-formatted collection of animations produced by Don in collaboration with Mike Judge (of Beavis and Butthead fame).
The Animation Show is now in its third year and the first two years are available on DVD. Even if you’ve already seen the Hertzfeld animations from it, it’s worth getting Volume 1 of The Animation Show just to see the music video “Bathtime in Clerkenwell” by the band (The Real) Tuesday Weld, featuring sublime and surreal animation by Alex Budovsky. If you like that, you may also enjoy Return I Will to Old Brazil, also by Budovsky and (The Real) Tuesday Weld, which is a music video and new recording of the classic song “Brazil.”
