Tag: production line

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Animation Features Movies

Memoir of a Snail

Director – Adam Elliot – 2024 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A young woman recounts her life story to her newly freed pet snail after her best friend dies – stop-frame animation marvel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 14th

Following a bravura title sequence which consists of a camera moving around (a scale model set of) detritus from a life, everything from soap on a rope to snail poison, with various objects bearing upon themselves various credits for the film, a young woman has tears in her eyes as her bedridden friend Pinky (voice: Jacki Weaver from Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell, 2012; Animal Kingdom, David Michod, 2010; Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir, 1975) breathes her last, briefly coming back to life to utter the legend, “potatoes”. But what can this word mean?

Taking her pet snail Sylvia (the name is painted on the back of the creature’s shell) out of a glass jar and setting her free to cross Pinky’s garden in the course of her subsequent narrative, the woman remembers her childhood down to the smallest detail, and starts to recount it to the liberated gastropod. She was born prematurely as Grace Prudence Pudel (voice: Sarah Snook from Steve Jobs, Danny Boyle, 2015; Predestination, The Spierig Brothers, 2014), shortly followed by her twin brother Gilbert (voice: Kodi Smit-McPhee from Maria, Pablo Larraín, 2024; The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion, 2021; The Congress, Ari Folman, 2013; ParaNorman, Chris Butler, Sam Fell, 2012).… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Chicken Run

Producer-Directors: Nick Park, Peter Lord – Producer – David Sproxton – 2000 – UK – Cert. PG – 84m

*****

Which came first – the chicken or the egg? Plasticene stop-frame animation house Aardman Animations’ debut feature film reconceives The Great Escape with chickens – review originally published in year 2000

Aardman Animations’ A Close Shave (1995), the third half-hour outing for Nick Park’s popular Wallace & Gromit duo, exhibited several danger signs – specifically its close resemblance to brilliant, immediate precursor The Wrong Trousers (1993). Clearly aware of such pitfalls, Park and founding Aards Sproxton and Lord shrewdly signed a five-picture deal with Dreamworks but refused to rush into a first feature. Their caution has paid dividends: this first full length Aardmovie proves an unexpectedly wondrous odyssey.

It’s The Great Escape reconceived with chickens: familiar WW2 prison camp is reconfigured as North of England chicken coop with impenetrable fencing, rows of huts and a motley assortment of portly hen inmates. Ginger (voice: Julia Sawalha) wants to escape, but several disastrous attempts lead to solitary confinement (where she bounces a ball off the wall Steve McQueen style). Other chickens can’t see a problem – Bunty (voice: Imelda Staunton) simply keeps on laying eggs, while Babs (Horrocks) busies herself with constant knitting.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Lone Ume Tree
(Ume Kiranu Baka,
梅切らぬバカ)

Director – Kotaro Wajima – 2021 – Japan – 77m

*****

New next door neighbours pose challenges for a man with learning difficulties and his carer mother – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2022 between Friday, 4th February and Thursday, 31st March

Chu-san (Muga Tsukaji) gets up with his alarm, saying “it’s 6.45”. He folds up his bedding into a neat pile, starts to unbutton his pyjamas. By the time he’s saying, “it’s 6.56”, he’s heading for the loo. Everything runs on a rigid time grid. There’s only two minutes for his mother Tamako (Mariko Kaga) to shave him between 7.01 and 7.03; if it doesn’t get done, she has to stop. At breakfast, she tells him, “chew 30 times.”

Outside their modest house and courtyard, an Ume tree overhangs the fence, a public hazard. One of the removal men helping the new neighbours the Satomuras move in next door bangs his head and drops a box of things, out from which, unnoticed, falls a child’s ball. The husband Shigeru (Ikkei Watanabe) tells his wife Eiko (Yoko Moriguchi) that she – or he – needs to talk to the neighbours about the tree.… Read the rest