Spike and Mike's
Classic Festival of Animation

These sure ain't Saturday-morning cartoons.

The venerable Spike and Mike have once again brought their wares to town, and this time the operative descriptor is "classic," not "sick and twisted." There are even a couple Oscar winners thrown in for added cachet. Nonetheless, a few entries might be more at home in the festival's other incarnation -- "Billy's Balloon," the simplistic short in which a red balloon lifts a toddler to dizzying heights and repeatedly drops his limp and battered body, say, or the scarifying head trip that is Chris Landreth's "Bingo," wherein an unsuspecting Josef K-like dupe is informed by superfreaky clowns that, despite his better judgment, he is in fact Bingo -- BINGO THE CLOWNO!!! Yikes.

Irrespective of subject matter, every one of these films is visually arresting and well done. From elegant and minimalist line and watercolor works like British animator Emma Calder's "The Queen's Monastery" to hyper-realistic computer-generated eye candy like "The Art of Survival" (by students from the University of Washington) and Chris Wedge's Academy Award winner "Bunny" to Marv Newland's infamous 1969 cult classic "Bambi Meets Godzilla" (betcha can't guess what happens), there's a lot of talent represented here and a little something for all tastes. In short, it's an ideal Saturday night.

-- Mike Miliard