Day 15 bonus: The Old Man and the Sea (1999)

History
I was watching the Oscars the year this won, and when they were announcing the nominees for best animated short, and they showed the clips from this, I was like "I HAVE GOT TO SEE THIS. NOW." Those clips looked so good that I read the book partly because of them. Unfortunately, this movie was nowhere to be found, for a long time. But I found it at the library today, and was like "OH YEAH KOOL-AID."

This is very high quality animation, it's all paintings done on glass, and it took 2 and a half years to make. Wait, did I say that right, they PAINTED A MOVIE ON GLASS? Yes, and it looks fucking awesome. That painting above is directly from the film itself. The primary director/animator is Aleksandr Petrov and he apparently has a lot of experience with this technique.

What's it about?
An animated adaptation of Hemingway's novel. An old man is out fishing in the sea and hooks a marlin, but the marlin is a very worthy and noble opponent, and he won't go down without a fight.

Thoughts
This is some of the best animation I've seen. Unlike in a lot of animation, the backgrounds don't stick out like a sore thumb, in this case it probably has something to do with the entire paintings being changed little by little each frame. That adds a sense of realism to this.

This is just awesome to look at. I was like "!!!!!" most of the time. I read that it was shown on Imax, that must have been a cool experience. On the acting side, the voice acting for the boy is horrible, but the old man is spot on. Other than that, this is great, everybody should see this.

Rating
Aww hell yeah!