SIFF: Idiots and Angels

Bill Plympton is a genius.

No, really.

His past work has just been awesome, but the new piece is just... Well, when he spoke after watching the movie, he said it just came out of a throwaway answer to a question he received after another movie:

Q:  So, what are you working on now?

A:  Well, some guy who is a real ass wakes up one morning to find he has grown wings.

Apparently, he didn't mean it, but he liked the idea and a short time later had a script written and knew what he was going to do.  And that was what became Idiots and Angels.  If you're familiar with his work, he's normally done work directly on film, but this new work was entirely pencil, then scanned in.  Idiots and Angels, a 76 minute film, was made up of 25,000 individual images.

So, you know the basic plot.  An asshole grows wings.  And really, that's the whole movie.  You could try to read alot more into it, like, how the devil redeems himself and becomes the angel he is growing into, while the world around him dissolves into evil, but, really, it's just one big trip.  One big fun trip.  It's a dark trip, but not without it's bursts of humor.

Unfortunately, this movie has not yet found a distributor, so, unless you have a time machine, you're probably not going to catch it anytime soon.  Or if you're in any of the other film festival locations where Idiots and Angels will also be showing, like Seoul, Annecy in the French Alps, or Edinburgh.

The biggest warning I'll give you is that this movie is entirely sans dialog.  I'll admit to having my eyes droop a little, but it was the end of a long week, I was tired.  It could have been Fifth Element and I'd still have been sleepy sitting in the dark.

My vote?  4 out of 5.