| | MichaelBarrier.com -- Commentary: The Triplets of Belleville (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) |
 | | In the opening minutes of Belleville Rendez-vous, the feature-length cartoon released in the U.S. in November 2003 as The Triplets of Belleville, the French animator-director Sylvain Chômet reveals his program for the entire film, although it's not clear for a while just how sly and subtle that program is. |
 | | Those opening minutes, fl-and-white animation in the style of Max and Dave Fleischer's Talkartoons, echo the Fleischer cartoons' squirming animation and cheerfully bizarre transformations. |
 | | It's relatively easy now to capture the surface of that early-thirties Fleischer styleit was done very well a few years ago in the animated music video The Ghost of Stephen Fosterbut much harder to capture its essence, because the circumstances that resulted in such peculiar cartoons were themselves so peculiar. |
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