By Sylvain Chomet

For anyone who hasn't already seen this short film, I'd highly recommend watching it. It's absolutely hilarious, and perfect for brightening your mood.

22 minutes long:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Pa0pBfrev8

For a calmer, more touching and (a bit) sad (full length) movie, I'd recommend The Illusionist (2010). [And this is a good movie for fat bunny week, since it has an awesome fat white rabbit that the main character uses for his magic show]. Very, very beautiful animation.


On a side note, I've been rewatching Miyazaki films, so I recently watched the subtitled version of Ponyo. I was wondering if anyone knows what Miyazaki was trying to do with family relationships in Ponyo, because I found it strange that two 5 year olds were being treated like adults (in the English Dub and Japanese versions). (And Ponyo was rebelling against her parents at the age of 5, but that was placed in a positive light, as if it was a wonderful thing for a 5 year old to do ---- but I understand and appreciate that this was part of the childish-fantastical aspect of the movie). But the really strange part was that Sosuke referred to his parents by their first names throughout the movie (in the Japanese version only) - and that is not a cultural difference, this is not the norm in Japan. Watching it again was really odd (in that sense) with the 5 year old boy giving his mother advice/comforting her, then being left alone to take care of himself/Ponyo/the house, being asked to take responsibility for Ponyo/love her, etc etc (when combined) is just strange to the point that it becomes distracting. I can understand that he was supposed to be some sort of genius (in the Japanese version his father Koichi brags about his son's intelligence) (and Sosuke is also able to identify a lot of the fish species, and is able to identify the time period they come from) but I'm not sure how genius equates to having a well developed sense of responsibility/the ability to be capable of handling these responsibilities.
Also I've noticed that Miyazaki's son has been releasing more movies, and for some reason when they're advertised in the U.S. they claim the movie was directed by THE Miyazaki, even though the movie was directed by Miyazaki's son rather than Miyazaki himself. Lot's of random odd stuff, but if anyone has any interesting information about it, I'd love it if you'd lift some of my confusion. ^_^'