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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

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A boy must rescue his goddess mother from Heavenly wrath invoked when she fell for his father, a mortal – available to rent online in the UK & Ireland as part of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio Retro in the Chinese Cinema Season 2021 from Friday, February 12th to Wednesday, May 12th

Immortal Goddess Sanshengmu (voice: Xu Fan) falls in love with mortal man Liu Yanchang and leaves Heaven to pursue love with him on Earth. This goes down badly with her brother Yang Jian (Jiang Wen) since it’s against the Law of Heaven, so he sends an army of hounds down to earth in pursuit. She is however able to evade capture by keeping a lotus lantern close to her to make sure it’s not accidentally lit as this would give away her location.

Seven years later, while boating on a river with her young son Chenxian (Yu Pengfei), the lantern’s accidental lighting reveals her whereabouts to her brother, who promptly whisks the boy to heaven.  When she arrives to demand her son’s return, her brother instead imprisons her in a mountain. … Read the rest