Spike and Mike are back, with another selection of outrageous animation - except, it seems a little tame this year, with few real "Ewwwwww!" moments for the crowd to savour (though discovering why old ladies drive so slowly, will take quite some getting over...). As ever, the range and style on view was unsurpassed. And, as usual, the quality too varied hugely. Especially lame were heavy.com's Behind the Music That Sucks - oh, my, slagging off Eminem and Britney Spears, how dangerous - which should have been retitled, "Behind the Animation That Sucks". At the other end, Spumco's Fuck Her Gently was lushly animated, and S&M regular Bill Plympton's Eat was his usual elegant yet weird self, but lacked a decent punch-line. At the opposite end, technically, were Don Hertzfeldt's A Bitter Tale and Rejected, getting a well-deserved repeat runout. Little more than stick-figures, they still raise fabulous observations on love, life and advertising - the line "My anus is bleeding!" has now entered the TC vocabulary. Also worthy of praise: Timmy's Lessons in Nature from Mark Simon & T.J, and Radar Films' When Chickens Attack, the shortest film on the program. But as this show proves, animation is truly a medium where size doesn't matter - not when you have imagination.
C
