Tag: animation

Categories
Animation Art Exhibitions Movies

LAIKA
FRAME x FRAME

Pic: Toby Lewis Thomas, courtesy LAIKA and BFI

*****

Exhibition shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) accompanied by the Stop Motion animation season including all five LAIKA feature films and much, much more

In the best part of two decades, US-based Laika Studios – named after the first dog in space – has carved itself a niche as arguably the foremost producer of stop-motion animation puppet films. That’s distinctly different from the other leading company in the stop-motion field, UK-based Aardman Animations, who specialise in plasticine animation. The difference is that plasticine is a malleable substance that can be reworked and remodelled one frame at a time, whereas although puppets can be moved a frame at a time, they can’t be remodelled.

Laika have consistently (and deservedly, in this writer’s opinion) picked up Oscar nominations for each of their five features, a remarkable achievement that speaks of the high quality of their work. Their five features (with a sixth forthcoming) are:

  • Coraline (2009): A young girl is lured into a darker, parallel world.
  • Paranorman (2012): A boy who can speak with the dead, ostracised by his local community, must save his town from dark forces by righting centuries-old wrongs.
… Read the rest
Categories
Animation Features Movies

Noah’s Ark
(Arca de Noé)

Directors – Alois di Leo, Sergio Machado – 2024 – Brazil, India – Cert. U – 96m

**

Two musical performing mice attempt to board Noah’s Ark, where a despotic lion and his thuggish entourage attempt to lord it over the other animals in a singing contest –animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 23rd

Two mice – Tommy (voice: Marcelo Adnet) who sings and his accompanist pal Vini (voice: Rodrigo Santoro) who plays a four-string guitar – appear to be at the pinnacle of success, but when the lights go down, they are revealed to be playing the empty bar of Mrs Ferret (voice: Rachel Butera), from which they’re unceremoniously ejected.

On the lam, one of them overhears an old man in the desert wilderness remonstrating with a voice in the sky at its wits end – “I tried my best, it says, but what’s a God to do?” – and being instructed as per the Biblical myth to build an ark and fill it with male and female members of each animal species. “How do I tell the animals?”, asks the bewildered Noah (voice: Ian James Corlett), for it is he. “Well,” says God (voice: Luis Bermudez) in a rare moment of wit uncharacteristic of the screenplay overall, “I can get the invitations out.”… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Hundreds
of Beavers

Director – Mike Cheslik – 2022 – US – Cert. 12 – 108m

***1/2

A ruined drinks purveyor reduced to hunting beavers (played by actors in onesies) attempts to kill the amount required to buy a trader’s daughter’s hand in marriage – visually astonishing slapstick comedy is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Tuesday, July 9th and on Blu-ray from Monday, August 5th

Opening with what is essentially a music video extolling the bibulous virtues of the booming, farm home of Jean Kayak’s Acme Applejack, this shows a simplistic caricature of a prosperous nineteenth century business when the wooden supports of one of Kayak’s gigantic barrels of beverage is nibbled by a beaver causing it to roll down a hill on which it’s situated into his house at the bottom of the hill, causing it to burn down his hillside apple orchard.

Leaving aside such questions as, why store the huge barrel on top of a hill above your house? – the answer, so it can roll down a hill, catch fire and burn down your orchard to get the plot going, proving less than satisfactory – this leaves the ruined Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) homeless in midwinter and forced to survive by hunting animals.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Kensuke’s Kingdom

Directors – Neil Boyle, Kirk Hendry – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 85m

***1/2

A British boy and his dog are stranded on a desert island alongside a Japanese man looking after a colony of apes – animated adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s book is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

With his parents having lost their jobs, Michael (voice: Aaron McGregor) is sailing round the world with his family. They are somewhere in the Pacific. Mum (voice: Sally Hawkins) is the skipper, with dad (voice: Cillian Murphy), Michael’s elder sister Becky (voice: Raffey Cassidy) and Michael himself as crew. He is homesick, missing his dog Stella. Well, not missing her, actually, because he’s secretly smuggled her on board and has her holed up in the cupboard at the front of the deck. Which is why the ship’s supplies appear to be dwindling – he is sneaking her food out of them.

Michael is the misfit of the crew; you sense that the other three family members are enjoying the experience of the trip, but he’d rather be back at home. Mum and dad try to make him feel better – mum ordering him about as skipper but giving him time with her as “mum” to talk about anything that might be bothering him.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Diplodocus
(Smok Diplodok)

Director – Wojtek Wawszczyk – 20234 – Poland, Czechia – 84m

****

A young diplodocus must save the comic book in which he lives from being erased by the artist who created – from the 2024 Annecy International Animation Festival in the Annecy Presents section

Animation. A bookworm (English voice: Wayne Greyson; Polish voice: Tadeusz Baranowski) appears, a “respected devourer of picture stories”. His function is not exactly that of a Greek chorus, more like a comic interlude who occasionally wanders into the narrative as light relief, to leaven the whole. Not that this likeable romp, is any need of leavening, but it’s a nice touch which nicely sets the tone for the whole piece. It’s about characters in a comic book whose very existence is threatened by the originating artist’s run-in with his commercially driven but artistically clueless lady publisher.

Beyond a vast, bubbling, primeval swamp in a crater, an inventive and adventurous, male diplodocus child (English voice: Julian Wanderer; Polish voice: Mikołaj Wachowski), Diplodocus as the credits calls him, nicks snails off a frog to use as climbing suckers. A butterfly flies past. Diplodocus gets sent to his room by his essentially conservative parents (English voices: Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld, Marc Thompson; Polish voices: Monica Pikuła, Grzegorz Pawlak) for wanting a life of adventure.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The King and the Mockingbird
(Le Roi et L’Oiseau)

This triple review was originally published in Third Way, April 2014.

The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi et L’Oiseau)

Director – Paul Grimault – 1980 – France – Cert. U – 83m

UK release date 11/04/2014

*****

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

Director – Ignacio Ferreras – 2011 – Spain – Cert. 15 – 89m

UK release date 18/04/2014

*****

The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu, 風立ちぬ)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2013 – Japan – Cert. PG – 126m

UK release date 09/05/2014

****

Animation is all-too often regarded – if not dismissed – as a children’s medium, yet it’s no more (or less) so than live action. Animated features aimed at a grown-up audience are rare. Incredibly, three are released this month.

The first, The King and the Mockingbird (1980), originally released here thirty years ago as The King And Mr. Bird and known equally by its French title Le Roi et L’Oiseau, may contain nothing you wouldn’t want children to see but is actually a remarkable fable about overcoming a totalitarian regime. Considered among the greatest animated films ever made, it’s a major influence on Miyazaki (see below). This labour of love by director/animator Paul Grimault, based on a poetic screenplay by Jacques Prévert (Les Enfants Du Paradis, Marcel Carné, 1945) deals with a despotic king in a towering castle festooned with trap doors which he uses to dispose of anyone and everyone who disagrees with him.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

This triple review was originally published in Third Way, April 2014.

The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi Et L’Oiseau)

Director – Paul Grimault – 1980 – France – Cert. U – 83m

UK release date 11/04/2014

*****

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

Director – Ignacio Ferreras – 2011 – Spain – Cert. 15 – 89m

UK release date 18/04/2014

*****

The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu, 風立ちぬ)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2013 – Japan – Cert. PG – 126m

UK release date 09/05/2014

****

Animation is all-too often regarded – if not dismissed – as a children’s medium, yet it’s no more (or less) so than live action. Animated features aimed at a grown-up audience are rare. Incredibly, three are released this month.

The first, The King and the Mockingbird (1980), originally released here thirty years ago as The King And Mr. Bird and known equally by its French title Le Roi Et L’Oiseau, may contain nothing you wouldn’t want children to see but is actually a remarkable fable about overcoming a totalitarian regime. Considered among the greatest animated films ever made, it’s a major influence on Miyazaki (see below). This labour of love by director/animator Paul Grimault, based on a poetic screenplay by Jacques Prévert (Les Enfants Du Paradis, Marcel Carné, 1945) deals with a despotic king in a towering castle festooned with trap doors which he uses to dispose of anyone and everyone who disagrees with him.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Wind Rises
(Kaze Tachinu,
風立ちぬ)

This triple review was originally published in Third Way, April 2014.

The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi Et L’Oiseau)

Director – Paul Grimault – 1980 – France – Cert. U – 83m

UK release date 11/04/2014

*****

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

Director – Ignacio Ferreras – 2011 – Spain – Cert. 15 – 89m

UK release date 18/04/2014

*****

The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu, 風立ちぬ)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2013 – Japan – Cert. PG – 126m

UK release date 09/05/2014

****

Animation is all-too often regarded – if not dismissed – as a children’s medium, yet it’s no more (or less) so than live action. Animated features aimed at a grown-up audience are rare. Incredibly, three are released this month.

The first, The King and the Mockingbird (1980), originally released here thirty years ago as The King And Mr. Bird and known equally by its French title Le Roi Et L’Oiseau, may contain nothing you wouldn’t want children to see but is actually a remarkable fable about overcoming a totalitarian regime. Considered among the greatest animated films ever made, it’s a major influence on Miyazaki (see below). This labour of love by director/animator Paul Grimault, based on a poetic screenplay by Jacques Prévert (Les Enfants Du Paradis, Marcel Carné, 1945) deals with a despotic king in a towering castle festooned with trap doors which he uses to dispose of anyone and everyone who disagrees with him.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Ponyo
(Gake no Ue no Ponyo,
崖の上のポニョ,
lit. Ponyo on the Cliff)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2008 – Japan – Cert. U – 103m

*****

A girl fish spirit takes on human form to become a companion to a human boy – reviewed for Third Way, February 2010

Miyazaki’s animated filmography prior to international crossover item Spirited Away (2001) has scarcely graced UK screens, despite colossal success in his native Japan. Tragically, this includes much of his best work – such films as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), My Neighbour Totoro (1988) and Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) – all released, happily, on posthumous UK DVD – beside which the more recent works pale. Until now: his latest film Ponyo compares favourably to those earlier works, just when one had given up hope he’d ever make another truly great film.

Loosely speaking, it’s Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid as eponymous underwater girl fish spirit Ponyo, rescued after being beached by small boy Sosuke then recaptured by her zealous, over-protective Sorcerer’s Apprentice magician-like father, decides she wants to return to shore and become a human girl companion to the boy. Sosuke lives with his mother Lisa in an isolated, coastal house, while his ship’s captain father Koichi is frequently absent due to work commitments.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Princess Mononoke
(Mononoke-hime,
もののけ姫)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 1997 – Japan – Cert. PG – 134m

*****

Reviewed for What’s On in London when the film appeared in the Barbican’s 2001 Studio Ghibli season. It never got a proper theatrical release in the UK. The review presents a fascinating snapshot of the cinema landscape in the UK from the time when, outside of anime fandom, film journalists, and industry insiders, Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki were largely unknown.

Film critics are occasionally privileged to see incredible films that, for one reason or another, never receive proper UK release. The Barbican is currently hosting a season of 11 films by Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli (Jib-Lee), an animation company as familiar in Japan as Disney is here, that fall into exactly this category. They include Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki’s legendary masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro (1988) and his imaginative fantasy epic Princess Mononoke (1997). Both took the Japanese box office by storm, the latter topping $150m putting it second only to Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Miyazaki’s latest Spirited Away (2001) has topped the Japanese box office for weeks. Ghibli signed a deal in 1996 to distribute their films worldwide through Disney – but it’s been a long wait.… Read the rest