Like "Extra, Extra Read All About It", this piece employs a lively cast of wind up toys as its heroes. Marroquin uses his crude, hand-drawn backdrops and the clumsy, jerking movements of the chicks, zebras and frogs to make what is actually quite an experimental play with video and media appropriation. The familiar tin animals from the 1950s are put into another kind of animated world, that of Walt Disney and Warner Brothers. Marroquin samples audio and video from existing cartoons and the result falls somewhere between a cartoon, music video, art school project and puppet show. The characters and narrative are not so crucial; instead, Marroquin concentrates upon the use of effects to achieve his own dramatic tension. A blazing fire that suddenly overtakes the…idyllic forest animals is created by video overlays, lighting and the humourosly suspenseful score. By his experimentation with such devices, Marroquin shows us that with the sculptural hand of media production, even a tin squirrel can have cinematic appeal. (Elaine W. Ho) Read more...