Great Film overall

Good concept, poorly executed.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

I was shown this by a young claymation filmmaker, someone I like. She's doing a claymation Dante and I'm sure it will be something important to some of you.What she likes about this fellow is the purity of his life and therefore his art. There is no room at all for reflecting on meaning or greater perspectives, what people often call "intellectual." His heart is in his hands, that is essentially his entire life and this is impressive because we can see both. Each endorses the other.The first remark I might make is about what we are intended to see and know: that this was a wounded soul, shot through in several ways and apparently both autistic and obsessive- compulsive. Like Crumb, a similar personality and the subject of a similar movie, his slightly interesting art takes on a grander meaning in this context. Both had a younger brother kill themselves.But I walked away from this with another perspective from the fourth metalevel. The first level is that this is art about other art, continuously morphing among recognizables. The second is his life as art. The third is the film artifact that was distilled as a whole thing itself as a documentary. The fourth is the context I was seeing it in, with a talented young claymationer.There are only three main ways of telling a story. Only three roots. These can be cleanly traced back to Shakespeare, Cervantes and Dante, each of which defined a language, a literary tradition and a method of reflection and folding. You might usefully characterize these are being based on adjectives-adverbs, verbs and nouns respectively.Those that makes the most effective literature and film to my mind, a conscious mind, are the first two. Indeed this film itself is in the Cervantes tradition: a world that defines a person with urges.But the man within is distinctly in the Italian tradition of storytelling: humans live and in living invest their surroundings with life. These humans bump into each other. They don't merely illustrate life, they ARE life and any story worth telling is attached to lives.What this man has made with his little scenes are different hells and purgatories, very much in the Dante tradition but without the resonant references. I am convinced that this can be engaging storytelling, but it can never be art, surely not using cinema. Yes, I know: Antonioni, Bertolucci, Scorsese, Pasolini, Coppola, even Fellini. Each had one success, and that was when they escaped their Italian constraints. Unless they change the world somehow — and it would have to be by a great man (sadly, a man) — they won't be able to ever have lifealtering art in this tradition. Only empathic tales.Watch this for tools, not lives.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I'm a fellow director and my film actually competed against this one. I missed the premiere at Slamdance, but felt compelled to see the film that, well... beat mine! I hadn't ever heard of Bruce Bickford, and am not much of a fan of animation, but the story was solid enough to keep my attention. It had a fitting pace that matched it's subject; slow but intense. The subject was interesting and his animation nothing less than AMAZING!!! Overall the film stayed in Bruce's world and was true to it's past, just the way history BIOS should be told. I'm glad this film is doing well, for it's independent in spirit and is inspiring for artists to keep doing what they love, despite the world outside them. Congrads Brett...

I was unfortunate enough to be exposed to this abomination at a film festival recently. I don't know who Bruce Bickford is, but somewhere, an asylum is missing an inmate. This guy's claymation art, while skillfully done and painstakingly detailed, is truly disturbing. The images are almost unbelievably violent and gory; little clay torture chambers, be-headings, disembowlings, and other atrocities are performed on the inhabitants of his claymation universe. God knows the stuff isn't suitable for kids, and even some adults would be turned off by the sheer enormity of his violent, surreal and grotesque work. On another level, the film is just plain, well, bad. A documentary is supposed to educate and inform; this film really does neither, and instead is a simple collection of "interviews" with Bickford in his home, expounding on matters metaphysical and real, all interspersed with snippets of his claymation films. I was left feeling that I knew little about Bruce Bickford, and didn't want to know more.

This is one of the best and most entertaining documentaries I've seen in a long time. An examination of the life and work of legendary clay animator Bruce Bickford. Bickford is an animator and an outsider artist in the truest sense of the word. Like Promethsis, he creates worlds from clay. With an amazing visual style and a light touch, Ingram and Haverkamp bring us into Bruce's onion-like universe. The filmmakers use of stop motion techniques are a perfect compliment to the stop motion used in clay animation. This film deals with questions about creation and creativity, destruction, life, death, the violence of the cold war and it's countercultural aftermath. It is also an examination of the deeply complex relationships that make up family. Winner of the best documentary at Slamdance this year, I hope that it gets some distribution of some kind. Well worth checking out.