UPAC Cinema showcased some of these with The Animation Show on Friday night. Renowned animators Mike Judge, of “Beavis and Butthead” fame, and Don Hertzfeldt, programmed the collection of short animations and added some of their own.

Without question, the best animation in the show was the 2001 Best Animated Short Film Academy Award Nominee, Hertzfeldt’s now-famous short Rejected. Rejected is a nine and one half minute film about rejected commercial spots that eventually destabilize and get sucked into a black hole on the film. Before that happens, though, some of the funniest lines ever heard in animation, such as “I’m feeling fat and sassy,” “My spoon is too big!” and of course, the unforgettable line “For the love of God, and all that is holy, my anus is bleeding!”

There were many other excellent animations as well. Das Rad, which means The Rocks, created by Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel, Heidi Wittlinger, and Georg Gruber, seamlessly integrates stop-motion techniques with computer generated imagery. The story is that of two rock-creatures, who experience time much more slowly than humans do. They see human civilization begin, rise in the blink of an eye, and vanish just as quickly. Watching Das Rad, it becomes clear why it was nominated for Best Animated Short Film for the 2003 Academy Awards.

The first film shown was one of the more interesting ones. Strange Invaders tells the story of a childless couple whose prayers are answered when an odd childlike being crash-lands in their living room. Things are wonderful until life begins to grow ever more hectic, and eventually the child builds a signaling device and calls in extraterrestrial forces. The ending is a cliche as far as twists go, but the overall effect is heartwarming.

The prize for best storytelling goes to Parking, by Bill Plympton, a film about the proud new owner of a parking lot who does battle with an errant weed. Reminiscent of the Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons, Plympton elevates it to a story about good triumphing over evil when the plant’s stubborn survival eventually turns the parking lot into a park.

Cathedral, a computer generated fantasy film directed by Tomek Baginski, had the best animation. Set under the eternal gaze of a foreign sun, a warrior arrives at a gargantuan bluff to find a cathedral. Exceedingly real, Cathedral is a finely tuned masterpiece that will send your creepy-o-meter off the scale.

A 1982 Tim Burton creation, Vincent was the literary masterpiece of the show. Narrated by horror movie star Vincent Price, the six minute cartoon goes on a tour of a young boy’s horrific imagination, drawing from Price’s own life. It ends with a nod to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven: “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor/Shall be lifted nevermore.”

Older still was the excerpt from the 1957 Mars and Beyond, created by Disney animator Ward Kimball. The film is a surreal exploration of what life on Mars might look like if the planet were capable of supporting it, such as migratory plants, animals that live on the minerals in Mars’ dust, and crystal towers that form overnight.

Hertzfeldt produced three additional shorts for the show; a trilogy that forms the introduction, intermission, and conclusion to the program. All three embody Hertzfeldt’s usual irreverent humor, but the end of the show is especially funny, when one of Hertzfeldt’s trademark fluffy stick figures embarks on a long discourse on the artistic value of serious animation, and its power for expression, only to be interrupted by a shout of “Robots!” and several minutes of gratuitous battle scenes between large, vicious robots and fluffy stick figures.