Netflix It: Sita Sings the Blues

Available on Netflix, or free on the film's website: Sita Sings the Blues, written and directed by Nina Paley

Synopsis from AllMovie.com:

Two women having troubles with their men, separated by several centuries, find their stories coming together in this animated comedy-drama from artist and animator Nina Paley. A female cartoonist moves from the United States when her husband gets a new job in India. While acclimating to her new life in India, the cartoonist becomes fascinated with the Hindu folk tale "the Ramayana," in which a beautiful woman named Sita, who was created spontaneously from the Earth, is adopted by King Janaka, pledged to a brave warrior named Rama, and is kidnapped by the demonic leader Ravana. Sita's story is given two visual interpretations at once -- a visually striking abstract version and another which employs a whimsical, cartoony approach and uses vintage recordings of jazz singer Annette Hanshaw for Sita's voice. As the film jumps back and forth between two adaptations of the Ramayana, the cartoonist discovers that her sojourn in India has taken a turn for the worse when her husband falls in love with another woman. Sita Sings The Blues was an official entry at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.

In a word: trippy. Nina Paley is just as creative with her take on copyright law, as she explains on the film's website.

My Dog Tulip

Showing at the Toronto International Film Festival: My Dog Tulip, directed by Paul Fierlinger and Sandra Fierlinger

Synopsis from the TIFF website:

My Dog Tulip is a profound and beautiful love story that just happens to involve a man and his dog. The film is based on the celebrated 1956 novel by J.R. Ackerley, whose other book about the relationship between a dog and its owner, We Think the World of You, was adapted into the 1988 film starring Alan Bates and Gary Oldman. My Dog Tulip is a vivid animated feature that never fails to stimulate the senses with its artistry.

Middle-aged Ackerley (Christopher Plummer) has failed in his search for the “ideal friend” with whom to share his life. Though he never considered himself a dog lover, he comes to adopt an eighteen-month-old German shepherd named Tulip. What follows are the adventures of a devoted yet bumbling dog parent and the animal that becomes the love of his life, that ideal companion he thought he would never find, as they navigate their fourteen-year relationship. Through Tulip's cycles we confront the facts of life, sometimes in vivid and startling detail; Ackerley minces no words, even as he weaves a touching memoir.

Animated by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, this dog story captures the particular feelings of pet owners without being overly mawkish. At once a portrait of the dog lover and a provocative meditation on the wonders of nature, My Dog Tulip is a playful and moving ode to man's best friend.

With their whimsical and visionary style of animation, the Fierlingers convey this sensitive subject with humour and a strange sweetness. They are pioneers in the use of animation for documentary purposes, having created many projects for PBS, including segments for Sesame Street, and autobiographical works such as Drawn from Memory and Still Life with Animated Dogs. My Dog Tulip is the first animated feature to be entirely hand drawn and painted using paperless computer technology. Featuring the voices of Plummer, Lynn Redgrave and Isabella Rossellini, this is a delightful animated tale that evokes lasting images about a man and his relationship with a biter, barker and defecator.

The movie's website is here.

$9.99

Opening this weekend: $9.99, directed by Tatia Rosenthal

Synopsis from the New York Times website:

The Israeli writer Etgar Keret possesses an imagination not easily slotted into conventional literary categories. His very short stories might be described as Kafkaesque parables, magic-realist knock-knock jokes or sad kernels of cracked cosmic wisdom. When such vignettes are strung together into a feature — as in Jellyfish (2007), which he directed with his wife, Shira Geffen, and now in Tatia Rosenthal’s $9.99 — they become even more elusive and strange. To watch these films is to enter an eerily realistic parallel universe where people and emotions are at once perfectly recognizable and completely bizarre. This effect is doubled by the extraordinary technique used in $9.99 to bring Mr. Keret’s world to life. Ms. Rosenthal, an Israeli animator, has cast some of Australia’s finest actors, including well-known performers like Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia, to provide voices for figures made of modeling clay.

The film has its own cute but frustrating-to-navigate website.

Interview with Tatia Rosenthal here.