For the end of year celebrations, why not introduce, or rediscover, the work of a filmmaker by offering a DVD box set? The film critics of Monde have made a choice among the releases for this month of December.
Tex Avery
Droopy
We won't be surprised: here is a box set that has been lying around in stores and their electronic avatars for god knows how many decades. Warner, in varied guises, plays it and replays it without tiring or tiring, a sign of a certain timelessness of the product. We're talking about the complete Tex Avery (1908-1980), the craziest animator in the history of cinema, author of around sixty cartoons whose heroes are called Daffy Duck, Droopy, The Wolf, Willoughby the dog, the bears George and Junior, we go through some of the best. Eccentricity, sophistication, wildness: here is Disney reduced to the flavor of a pot of yogurt. The art of diversion reaches new heights with Blitz Wolf (1942), an adaptation of Three Little Pigs with Hitlerian sauce, then with Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), a hypersexualized contemporary parody of Little Red Riding Hood. As for why this complete is titled “Droopy” – certainly one of the coolest and most pataphysical characters in the Averyan Zoo Madness – Warner itself doesn't have the answer! What’s up, doc ? Jacques Mandelbaum
Damien Odoul
Pantheistic cinema
“Independent filmmaker” is undoubtedly the most overused expression in cinematographic vocabulary. It is not for Damien Odoul, because the singularity of his creation and the freedom from which it arises induce the feeling that his work really does not resemble anything we know. He is 56 years old, is a poet and photographer. His cinema work, which has remained confidential, includes nine feature films made over a thirty-year career. Morasseix (directed in 1992, released in 2004), produced by Patrick Grandperret and signed at age 23, was the first. The author plays César, a young countryman whose relationship with existence stems from a powerful desire for rebelliousness and enjoyment. In this sense, programmatic of a work whose latest avatar to date – Théo and the metamorphoses (2022) – features a young person with Down syndrome in search of vital experience and holds Songs of Maldoror. Break with society, communion with the living, deliverance through sex govern this pantheistic and liberating cinema which risks, it is true, setting the tree on fire. The edition – books featuring short and enlightening texts as well as photographic work – is perfect. J.Ma.
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