[ONE WEEK ONLY] The Cartoon Network-sponsored convention that's bringing together more than 300 animators and computer whizzes from such studios as Disney, Pixar, Nickelodeon and Aardman continues through the weekend. Highlights include a screening of the 1941 Chinese epic (2 and 9 pm Friday, June 29) and an afternoon of conversation with Portland's newest cartoon talent, Henry Selick (2 pm Saturday, June 30). Portland Center for the Performing Arts and the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.
$10 per screening, or $50 for a full-day pass. Visit platformfestival.com for program details.
[REVIVAL] A relic of those post-9/11 salad days when America hadn't entirely squandered international sympathy, this 2003 production contains 11 vignettes, each 11 minutes long, from directors across the globe. Most of it is pretty tepid and vaguely passive-aggressive stuff, from Mira Nair's cute Iranian schoolchildren pondering God's will to Ken Loach's letter from a sympathetic Chilean who would like everybody to remember that the date in question is pretty infamous in his country too. (The CIA sponsored a bloody coup to install Pinochet on Sept.
11, 1973.) The worst effort, by far, comes from the home front, where Sean Penn contributes a saccharine fable starring Ernest Borgnine and a potted plant that gets an extra dose of sunlight, blooming when the towers fall. Cute.
) At the other end of the spectrum is Alejandro Gonz lez I rritu's sound collage, which distills the horror in lower Manhattan into the noises of falling bodies. It's a testimony to I rritu's skill that the movie's strongest segment is a black screen. It doesn't say much for the rest of the project, though.
[ONE WEEK ONLY] The Cartoon Network-sponsored convention that's bringing together more than 300 animators and computer whizzes from such studios as Disney, Pixar, Nickelodeon and Aardman continues through the weekend.
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