Computer Animation Festival
If you ever played a video game back in the late '80s or early '90s you'll get a sense of whatComputer Animation Festivalhas to offer. In this day and age of virtual reality and a more accomplished Nintendo and Playstation mentality, this DVD is strictly shareware and historical archive. Though it contains 19 of the "best" of computer animation shorts, almost everything in the volume feels dated, and at least one of the shorts has been a part of the national "Spike and Mike" Animation Festival, which rents out to local roving theaters on an annual basis. That said, the color, tone, and quality of this DVD are excellent, and not surprisingly the best works in the package are those that have the biggest budget; the stuff that is a part of the MTV oeuvre (such as the Pet Shop Boys' "Liberation" and Mike Oldfield's "Let There Be Light") really shines. Yet so do the clever, decidedly unmusical "Card Trick," "The First Political Speech" (which seems to have predicted President Clinton's crisis of character), "Rolling Stone," and "Mercury." The rest--even a Will Vinton Claymation vignette--feel antiquated after just a few short years, like we could just log onto "Space Invaders" or a similarly old-school site and experience more or less the same thing.--Paula Nechak