Bathtime in Clerkenwell

I love these come'on titles. One of these days, I'll do an entire essay about the way movie-makers have figured out how to suck in festival goers and online viewers with provocative titles. "Bathtime in Clerkenwell." (You may have to look in the short films archive at AOL). I just had to know what THAT was about.

I admit, the resulting 3-minute animation of silouetted clock-cukoos going about their mad takeover of London, surprised me. It reminded me of the classic animations in the first half of the last century (early Disney and Warner's Merry Melodies) where music drove the action and the whole took on the quality of an animated ballet.

I really enjoyed this clever and oddly mood-enhancing piece. It's a rapid tour-de-force. I don't like to read too much into a 3-minute short, but it does have something to say about the mechanization of society and the way mechanical things can take over our lives.

The way the animator includes clocks on the trains the cuckoos drive, the mechanical aspect of things - an animated shower making the water resemble bullets for instance -- adds a subtle layer to this piece.

It's directed by Alex Budovsky, a Russian native who moved to NYC in 1994 and was graduated from Brooklyn College with a BA in film, directed the movie in 2002. It has a bit of that Eastern European look despite his years here.