Everyone says they want short subjects, and several startup-company discs ( like N9, reviewed last year) have tried to fill the gap.  There are decades' worth of creative and entertaining animated films still untapped: anyone who attended college after 1965 knows how popular were the veritable festivals of animation that were shown at all kinds of theatrical and non-theatrical venues.  But this popularity hasn't transferred well to television or even home video.  Bravo cable television, when they used to be a no-commercials haven of great foreign films, once showed interesting European animation whenever a feature didn't fill out an even-hour time slot.  Other than that, just about the only time you can see oddball experimental animation is if you haunt film schools or live in Los Angeles or New York, where they get shown for Oscar competition.

There's always the Film Board of Canada, but their blossoming Best of the Best animation DVD series is just getting started (Just for Kids,  Romantic Tales & Strange Tales), and you aren't going to see any alternative American Animation or work from the traditionally excellent Eastern European animation masters in their compilations.

Cartoon Noir appears to be an effort to fill the gap.  It's name might make one expect the animations to be about detectives or crime, but they're not.  In this case the noir refers to an attitude and a mood.  There's nary a joke to be had in any of these six works.  They aren't about standard entertainment values.  The critical raves on the cover say the usual things ("...beyond Disney clichés..."). while perhaps overstating the impact of the selection.  Avid animation fans might find a treasure here, whereas those looking for pretty pictures or cuteness on any level will be left out in the noir, so to speak.

The First Run packaging barely mentions the directors of these pieces, so I've added some extra info about where and when they were made, which includes some guesses.  The framing on a couple of shorts cropped some info out of my monitor's picture area, and other titles were sometimes too small to read or in foreign languages that I had to guess at.  For instance, The Story of the Cat and the Moon is from Portugal, I think, because there were mentions of Madrid in the credits, but none for Brazil.  If collections of short subjects like this are to succeed, we really need to know a bit more about who made them and where.  Any kind of context will help, if you're not Charles Solomon and already an expert on every school of animation trend on the planet.

Abductees
Paul Vester, USA? Date?

All the films on this disc are odd, but this one clearly has a plan, if not a plot.  Several alien abduction testimonials (heard in authentic-sounding tape recordings) are illustrated with animations that appear to mimic the scribbled drawings provided by the abductees themselves.  This provides an interesting dimension to the phenomenon that is the flying saucer cult, because the abductees's visions reflect more of their own psychological states than any real events that may have happened to them.  Or maybe they were all abducted and probed nasally and genitally by these little almond-eyed guys from saucers right out of Ray Harryhausen.  A thoughtful piece that could have used a little more context; perhaps this was an intentional ploy to remain neutral on its subject.

Ape
Julie Zammarchi, USA? 1992