FANTASTIC PLANET – Midnights This Weekend at The Tivoli

“Deprived of lessons, I decided to run away.”

FANTASTIC PLANET plays this weekend (June 17th and 18th) at The Tivoli at midnight as part of their Reel Late at the Tivoli midnight series.

I saw the 1973’s French/Czechoslovakian masterpiece FANTASTIC PLANET at the Kirkwood Cinema when it was new. There was a string of adult animated movies in the early 1970’s, Ralph Bakshi et al, many of which have become perennial cult classics. Rene Laloux is the French director of FANTASTIC PLANET and Roland Topor was the animator. The drawings, which were highly artistic and complex, payed tribute to Terry Gilliam, though not as humorous, the “head” styles of “Yellow Submarine,” and even to Bakshi himself, with the anthropomorphisms and even the occasional nudity.

FANTASTIC PLANET is a story of one human “Om” (French for “man”) named Terr, who loses his mother in the beginning of the movie, is taken care by aliens who become his captors. He then escapes from his alien captor family known as “Traags” to a race of humans. With his device of intellectual “Traag” knowledge in his head, he passes that knowledge to the other Oms and frees them from the captivity of the merciless “Traags.”

But if you like animation that is “different,” you may appreciate FANTASTIC PLANET which was a grand prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival and regularly played on USA’s “Night Flight” program 20 years ago (“Night Flight” program was a late-night cable show that specialized in rock videos and cult films). In age where directors can literally do and put anything on screen achieving the desired ‘wow’ factor has become an increasingly rare thing. Laloux didn’t have 3D or CGI at his disposal in 1971; just some extremely talent cartoon artists a seriously funky score and some extremely crazy ideas and today FANTASTIC PLANET still manages to impress. While it may be easy to dismiss FANTASTIC PLANET as some post Hippy movement nonsense complete with psychedelic imagery barely concealable political allegories and very much a product of its time it remains a compelling and indeed visionary oddity. Check out FANTASTIC PLANET when it plays midnights this weekend at The Tivoli and see how fantastic it is.

FANTASTIC PLANET screens this weekend (June 17th and 18th) at The Tivoli at midnight as part of their Reel Late at the Tivoli midnight series.

The Tivoli’s located at 6350 Delmar Blvd., University City, MO. Admission is a mere $8!

A Facebook invite for the event can be found HERE

https://www.facebook.com/events/518490438354451/

The Tivoli’s website can be found HERE

Here’s the midnight line-up for the next few weeks:

June 24 and 25th:          Troll 2

July 1st and 2nd              Jaws

July 8th and 9th              Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Miyazaki)

July 15th and 16th          Rear Window

July 22nd and 23rd       Akira