Hitopadesha: Animated Stories: Fables from the forest · Carlson Fable Collection

Title

Hitopadesha: Animated Stories: Fables from the forest

Description

2008 Hitopadesha: Animated Stories: Fables from the forest. DVD. 60 minutes. 8 fables. Super Audio (Madras). Unknown source.

This DVD is done by the same firm that did the DVD "Aesop's Fables: Animated Moral Stories" in the same year. Here are eight stories listed on the jacket and jewel-box. Again, there is rudimentary animation. Particularly with actions like speaking, the animation here seems primitive by comparison with what one sees, for example, in the late "Silly Symphonies." I enjoyed four stories here. "A Friend in Need" picks up the key episode in the cycle of stories of four friends, the liberation of the turtle caught in a net. "The Clever Idea" comes from the fox and saves two crows, who had twice lost their eggs to a serpent. The animator here has particular fun with the snake's movement. In "The Talkative Tortoise," the tortoise himself, not identified as particularly talkative, comes up with the idea. He dies when he responds to people's question "Does he think he can fly?" In "The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass," the fox brings the ass to the old lion twice and eats his ears and his brain as a way of claiming the reward for his part in the capture. He outwits the lion, as he outwitted the ass by promising an eager bride. Good musical background and good, varied voices.