Tag: animator

LAIKA presents
Wildwood
The Exhibition

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date October 22 2026
No Comments on LAIKA presents
Wildwood
The Exhibition

LAIKA presents Wildwood The Exhibition

at the Design Museum, Kensington, London, to tie in with the release of their new film Wildwood

Like previous Laika offerings, latest production Wildwood (Travis Knight, 2026) is highly innovative, inventive and imaginative, pushing the boundaries of the cinematic and stop-frame mediums into places audiences haven’t seen them go before. It sounds an unlikely proposition, but if you were to remove the magical spectacle of stop-frame animation from Wildwood – or for that matter from any of Laika’s films – you would potentially have an incredible exhibition of small scale sets, puppets and models.

You could augment this using a series of explanatory videos talking about the various processes involved In the filmmaking. In terms of stop-frame, you could show animators at work, bringing puppets into life.

The legendary stop-frame animation company have done exactly that. have done exactly that. Following in the footsteps of the LAIKA Frame x Frame exhibition covering Laika’s first five films at BFI Southbank in 2024, the company have now partnered with Kensington’s Design Museum to put together a fascinating exhibition about the film.

I should declare at this point that I was lucky enough to see the exhibition having viewed the film a few days previously.… Read the rest

Movies Animation Features

Savages
(Sauvages)

Savages (Sauvages)

Director – Claude Barras – 2024 – Switzerland – Cert. PG – 87m

French with English subtitles.

*****

An indigenous pre-teenage girl stands up to loggers destroyingthe local rainforest – stop-frame animated feature from the director of My Life as a Courgette is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 1st

From its opening moments in darkness following unsettling creature noises suggesting a jungle forest, followed by jungle forest establishing shots – a frog jumping across a river via a series of stones, a snake slithering around a tree, a baby orangutan (non-verbal voice: soundtrack composer and co-sound editor Charles de Ville) swinging on a branch – it’s clear that this has high ambitions indeed. All the above would be one thing to execute in live action – a few location natural history shots… possibly library footage. In model – or stop-motion – animation, you need to physically build everything in terms of miniature model sets, so to achieve such images is a major undertaking.

Having already set the production bar high, this then pushes it up further with the rasping sound of a chainsaw, as the tree heights on which the baby orangutan and its mother (voice: de Ville again), who has just rescued the infant from the attentions of the deadly snake, are resting suddenly topples into a camp of workers who are going about their allotted task of destroying the creature’s natural habitat.… Read the rest

Tags 11-year-old, 3D animation, ancestors, animation, animator, Babette De Coster, baby, backing of the authorities, Benoît Poelvoorde, Borneo, bulldozer, capitalism, chainsaw, Charles de Ville, child-eating monster, children struggling to cope, Claude Barras, compromise, contemporary life, cousin, darkness, digitally immersive environment, economics of deforestation, embarrassment, environment, environmental theme, fathers and children, film activities, financial gain, followed by jungle, forest, frog, grandfather, grandfathers and children, habitat destruction, hands-on physicality, harvest fruit, heritage, incoming call, indigenous, infant, jungle forest, learned survival skills, loggers, loss of a parent, loss of the mother, Martin Verset, maternal instincts, miniature, model, model animation, model sets, modern technology, monster in the forest, mother’s death, mothers and children, myth making, native, natural habitat, natural outdoors world, nuclear family, orangutan, orphan, ostracise, Oxbridge graduate, palm oil extraction, peer group, Penan, perceived societal norm, Pierre-Isaïe Duc, police, pre-teenage, puppets blink, rainforest, rampage, rasping, resistance, ringtone, rucksack, Sauvages, savage, Savages, school, single-parent families, smartphone battery died, smartphone obsession, smelly boy, snake, spoken language, stop-frame, stop-motion, struggling to cope, swinging on a branch, Switzerland, trauma, tree, tropic, true to his roots, venomous snake, viral video

Movies Animation Shorts

Phil Mulloy
Extreme Animation

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date July 15 2025
No Comments on Phil Mulloy
Extreme Animation

Phil Mulloy Extreme Animation

Director – Phil Mulloy – 2001 – UK – Cert. 18 – shorts of various lengths, total running time 2 hr 33 mins – Original Aspect Ratios (various) – Dolby Digital 5.1

*****

To mark the recent passing of Phil Mulloy (29 August 1948 – 10 July 2025), my review from 2001 of the BFI DVD of his work.

About as far from Disney animation as it’s possible to get, British animator Phil Mulloy’s short films, produced on a shoestring, employ crude paint brushstrokes on paper with violent, sexual and explicit subject matter. But far from being sensationalist, Mulloy is a brilliant satirist, deluging us with graphic imagery to hit his targets with a vengeance, underscored by voice-over, occasional words of dialogue, and background music by one or two musicians (among them pianist Keith Tippett, Angels & Insects composer Alex Bălănescu and Taiko drummer Joji Hirota).

He first came to prominence with six Cowboys shorts (1991) featuring gunfights, lynchings, bestiality (with horses) and much more. In Outrage, a man and woman are pilloried for having sex outdoors. For ten long years, The Conformist captures and tames a stallion, only to be ridiculed on his return as the only man whose horse has freestanding legs not a wheeled trolley base.… Read the rest

Movies Animation Shorts

Little Shrew
(Snowflake)

Little Shrew (Snowflake)

Director – Kate Bush – 2024 – UK – Cert. PG – 4m

*****

As modern warfare decimates a landscape, a shrew crosses countryside and town as a small, spirit-like light falls towards it – short accompanies the UK cinema release of From Hilde, With Love on Friday, June 27th

Musician / songwriter Kate Bush originally recorded the song Snowflake, which appeared on her album 50 Words for Snow (2011), in part to record her young son Albert’s voice before it broke. The creative process is such that people don’t always know exactly why they do what they do, and that is clearly the case with this song, since Kate has returned to it after the event to direct an animated film around it. Animation being a painstakingly slow production process, the soundtrack for the short is an edit of the song, pulling it down from almost 10 minutes to 4 minutes. The 4-minute edit is surprisingly coherent and seems to distil the essence of the piece.

Most of the lyrics are sung by Albert, yet Kate sings the haunting refrain:

The world is so loud

Keep falling

I’ll find you

It’s impossible to listen to this without thinking she is the mother somehow waiting for her falling son, whatever that means.… Read the rest

Tags 2024, 50 Words for Snow, aircraft, Alan Henry, Albert McIntosh, animation, animation compositor, animator, atmospheric sfx, awareness, background artist, battlefield, beams of light, black and white, black pollutant, blast, block of flats, bomb blast, broken, cathedral, cloud formation, comet, creative process, dead soldier, decimate, decimated by a bomb, detritus, drone videographer, Earth’s atmosphere, edit, egg, emotion, environment, exploration, fall, falling, feelings, flying, Gayle Martin, guided missile, gun, hope and drone animation, illustrator, Inkubus, James Clifford, Jim Kay, Jon Carin, Kate Bush, killed by Russians, landscape, life force, light, Little Shrew, Lorenzo Cenci Di Bello, loud, loudness, Maksim Levin, miniature, missiles, modern warfare, mothers and sons, moving illustration, musician, nebula, need, Nicolas Loudot, Nicolette Van Gendt, nowhere to go, outer space, pair of spectacles, panning, panning shot, photographic naturalism, pocket, pollution, producer, production process, refrain, rendering, Reuters, running, safe haven, scamper, shark, short, short film, shrew, smoke, snarling mouth, Snowflake, son’s voice, song, songwriter, soundtrack, spasms, sperm, spirit, target, telegraph pole, terror, Tomato Twist, tree trunk, twisted metal, Ukraine, voice breaking, war, war-torn, weaponry, womb, wonder, world-building

Movies Animation Features

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

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date August 5 2024
No Comments on The King and the Mockingbird
(Le Roi et L’Oiseau)

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

****

This triple review was originally published in Third Way, April 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

Movies Animation Features

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

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

****

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

Movies Animation Features

The Wind Rises
(Kaze Tachinu,
風立ちぬ)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date August 2 2024
No Comments on The Wind Rises
(Kaze Tachinu,
風立ちぬ)

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

****

Tags 2D animation, aeronautical displays, ageing population, aircraft, aircraft designer, animation, animator, care home, castle, comic, designer, despot, égalité, elderly, fictionalise, flying machines, France, fraternité, Hayao Miyazaki, Ignacio Ferreras, Jacques Prévert, Japan, Joji Horikoshi, king, liberté, liberté égalité fraternité, manga, marriage, Mitsubushi, Mitsubushi Zero, novel, Paco Roca, patients, Paul Grimault, poetic, printed comic, private life, reach for the skies romance, relatives, residents, sanatorium, Second World War, Spain, Studio Ghibli, taboo, talking bird, Tatsuo Hori, TB, terminally ill, test flights, Three Colours, tower, trap doors, war, wartime, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Art Exhibitions Movies Animation Documentary Features Live Action

Exhibition on Screen
My National Gallery

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date June 4 2024
No Comments on Exhibition on Screen
My National Gallery

Exhibition on Screen: My National Gallery

Director – Phil Grabsky, Ali Ray – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 98m

*****

Employees, punters and celebrities choose their favourite painting in London’s National Gallery – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, June 4th

There have been documentary films about the UK’s National Gallery before, notably the wonderful, three-hour-long National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, 2014), so, in a way, it’s a brave subject for the Exhibition on Screen people to take on. And yet, as a British production company making movies about art in art galleries, it was inevitable that they would tackle the subject sooner or later. Their version commences with a likeable enough establishing montage of what one might call ‘behind the scenes’ and ‘footfall’ – shots of various National Gallery employees at work opening the door, looking after various aspects of the art housed in the gallery and even putting out tasty-looking croissants in the cafeteria.

There are satisfying little touches throughout. A shot of The Feast Day of Saint Roch, Canaletto, with out of focus people passing in front of it, makes it feel like you’re really there in the scene depicted.

Alan Allison, security officer and gallery assistant (pictured on the front of the trailer, below) wears black clothing with a striking, patterned blue tie.… Read the rest

Tags “the Python foot”, 2D animation, air raid, Ali Ray, animation, animator, architect, aristocracy, art, art galleries, art history, ballet school, behind the scenes, bereavement, British Sign Language, British society, broken string, BSL, Canada House, Canaletto, celeb, children, classical piano concerts, closing announcement, collector, colonial bubble, Crown Estates, Dame Myra Hess, deaf, diplomacy, diversity, Edgar Degas, Exhibition On Screen, fathers and daughters, feminism, film festival, Florence, footfall, Giovanni Bellini, grandad, grandfather, grandma, grandmother, hang, Hetty Feather, horror film, horror movie, Houses of Parliament, Humphrey Jennings, Impressionists, Italy, Jacqueline Wilson, John Nash, Jonathan Conlin, Kenneth Clark, lack of representation, lute, Madonna, Michael Palin, monsters, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, mothers and sons, Narcotics Anonymous, National Gallery, Nelson’s Column, nineteenth century, occult, one-painting show, painter, parents and children, Phil Grabsky, Pierre-August Renoir, Public Record Office, punctuation, pyramid, Royal Academy, safe storage place, science fiction, seventeenth century, Sir George Beaumont, skull, slave trade, Stewart McAllister, Syphilis, Terry Gilliam, the City of London, The Strand, Trafalgar Square, Turner, twentieth century, university, venereal, Venus, Westminster, witchcraft, witches

Movies Animation Features Live Action

Stopmotion

Stopmotion

Director – Robert Morgan – 2023 – UK – Cert. 18 – 93m

***1/2

The bereaved daughter of a stop-frame animator attempts to complete her late mother’s last film – out on Shudder UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand from Friday, May 31st

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: this is not what it says on the tin. Anyone expecting another Mad God (Phil Tippett, 1987-2021, and a long-standing Shudder favourite) or Junk Head (Takahide Hori, 2021) is going to be disappointed. This is not a stop-motion film; it’s a stop-motion / live action combination film, with the physical stop-motion component of the production forming maybe a tenth of the whole.

Unless, of course, you’re looking only at story or script. In which case, this film is all about stop-motion animation and obsession. But executed in live action. Because, after all, who would want to spend all their time moving a puppet a bit, then shooting a frame, then moving it a bit more, and taking another frame, and so on when you can shoot live action and capture a shot of whatever length on film? (The answer is, anyone who loves animation generally and stop-motion animation in particular.)… Read the rest

Movies Animation Features Live Action

The Peasants
(Chłopi)

The Peasants (Chłopi)

Directors – DK Welchman, Hugo Welchman – 2023 – Poland, Serbia, Lithuania – Cert. 15 – 114m

****1/2

A rural drama of romance, adultery and inheritance is expressed through the remarkable, foot-in-two-camps medium of live action filmmaking turned into animated painting – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th

A small rural village in the early 20th Century. Young woman Jagna Paczesiówna (Kamila Urzędowska) is in love with Antek Boryna (Robert Gulaczyk). Unfortunately, not only is Antek already married to Hanka (Sonia Mietielica), who is fed up with his philandering, but also the latter’s father Maciej (Mirosław Baka), who is the richest person in the village, is widowed and wants Jagda to marry him – against her will but in line with that of her parents, who know a good thing when they see it. Alas, after the marriage, she carries on with Antek and things slowly go from bad to worse.

It’s gripping if harrowing stuff and would probably work well enough in live action, although it might not look that dissimilar to many other period costume dramas. It can occasionally be hard to keep track of who’s who, which I suspect is down to the script, an adaptation of a 1906 novel originally written as four volumes covering one year through the seasons Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer, a trajectory also followed by the screenplay.… Read the rest