“A Town Called Panic”

Written and Directed by Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar

Starring: A bunch of mold injected toys

Rating: 0

Whatever you do, don’t “Panic.”

Although this isn’t stop-motion animation, it stopped. I thought I’d experienced every form on motionless cartoon known to cinema. “Clutch Cargo,” “Gumby,” “Mr. Bill,” “South Park,” you name it, I’ve seen it and in each aforementioned case the animation on display is “Fantasia” compared to “A Town Called Panic.”

The stars of the film are three cheap plastic figurines (Coboy, Indien, and draft horse Mouton), similar to those found atop a 9-year-old boy’s birthday cake. The squeaky-voiced trio and their pals act out a series of silly antics cast against an equally inanimate Colorforms background.

“That’s the point,” fans of the movie argue when asked to defend the purposefully bad animation. Camp isn’t made, it’s born, and anyone who sets out to intentionally make a bad movie will find the goal an easy one to reach.

This feature-length version is based on a Belgian TV series that wisely doled out the material in four-minute increments. If you have ever been involved in a serious car crash, you know the time-slowing sensation of living out every elongated second. At 75 minutes, “A Town Called Panic” is the longest animated pile-up on record.

The San Diego Jewish Film Festival

It seems like just yesterday the San Diego Jewish Film Festival (SDJFF) celebrated its Bar Mitzvah. Now entering its twentieth year, SDJFF is offering more films than ever before: 51 to be exact, ranging from shorts and documentaries to narrative features and, for the first time in festival history, an adult cartoon!

The festival runs Feb. 10-21 with the majority of the screenings at SDJFF’s flagship theater, the AMC La Jolla.

Festival producer Sandra Kraus couldn’t wait to talk about the stop-motion feature “Mary and Max.” The animated tale details the 20-year pen pal relationship between a lonely 8-year-old Melbourne girl (voiced by Toni Collette) and a middle-aged, overweight New Yorker (Philip Seymour Hoffman). While it’s not exactly “Fritz the Cat,” Krause cautions that the film “is not family friendly.” The festival wanted to expand its horizons. “I think we’re trying to reach out to that next generation of filmgoers that are not just Jewish,” Kraus said. “I tried to do that this year by bringing in a film like ‘Mary and Max’ that I think will reach a different kind of audience for us.”

This is also one of the rare occasions that the festival is screening a film that already played San Diego. “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe” played a week at the Ken, but Kraus was so impressed by the film that she had to include it in this year’s lineup.

William Kunstler is a name synonymous with defending just about every radical social movement in the late ’60s and early ’70s. The documentary, directed by the famed lawyer’s daughters, Emily and Sara, documents Kunstler’s fight for civil rights alongside Martin Luther King Jr., the infamous Chicago Ten trial, and his defense of prisoners at Attica and Native Americans at Wounded Knee.

It seldom occurs to people the effect a controversial criminal trial could have on the families of the counselors. Both women take turns narrating their father’s story and one soon senses a hint of anger and betrayal. Emily’s nightmare realization came when the thought crossed her 10-year-old mind that that her father “was defending bad people. People accused of rape, terrorism, organized crime and cop-shooting.” This film is as much a story of Kunstler’s life as it is his children’s discovery as to just what type of man their father was.

The Joyce Forum showcases exceptional Jewish-themed shorts, documentaries and features “by student and early-career filmmakers.” One of the outstanding selections in this year’s Forum, named in honor of SDJFF founder Joyce Axelrod, is Nicole Opper’s “Off and Running.” For her second documentary feature Opper turns her attention to an adopted African American teenager being raised as a Jew by lesbian parents. The title’s double meaning is a take on the young girl’s exceptional track and field skills, as well as a harbinger of her eventual liberation after that family becomes divided.

So why should an Uptown resident make the schlep all the way to the La Jolla to watch films at SDJFF? Ms. Kraus responds, “Simple. It’s worth the trek to La Jolla because in many cases this is the only chance you’re going to get to see some of these films with an audience and on the big screen.”

For a complete list of films, venues and show times visit: sdcjc.lfjcc.org/

[Ken, once you decide which one you want to use I can write a real cutline.]

Photo credits: A scene from “From Paris with Love.” (Credit: Lionsgate)

A stagnant scene from “A Town Called Panic.” (Credit: Zeitgeist Films)