Tag: children’s book

The Iron Giant

Director – Brad Bird – 1999 – US – Cert. U – 88m

*****

1957. A giant robot falls out of the sky and is befriended by a young boy in Maine. However, the US government proves less sympathetic – animated feature is out in UK cinemas from Friday, December 17th, 1999

This has all the hallmarks of classic fifties sci-fi outings – giant monster, small American town, paranoid government agent, mobilised militia. For those demanding still more, it has a single working mum and a sympathetic beat sculptor, neither of whom would be out of place in a period Roger Corman cheapie.

But you shouldn’t pigeonhole The Iron Giant by genre because a further two factors mark it out as very different. Freely adapted from Ted Hughes’ marvellous children’s book The Iron Man but given a decidedly American spin by director Brad Bird (cartoon TV series The Simpsons, 2 eps, 1990-91; creator of Family Dog, 1993), this is without doubt the animated film of the year and arguably the film of the year period. We’ve grown so used to the Disney blockbuster model – cute characters (and merchandise), hit songs – that anything else (this employs neither device) comes as a shock.… Read the rest

Tags 1950s, 1957, 2D animation, adaptation, animation, atmosphere, beat sculptor, befriended, Brad Bird, children's film, children's literature, children’s book, Christopher McDonald, Cloris Leachman, coast, Earth, eat, Eli Marienthal, falls from the sky, family film, fifties, fighting machine, giant, giant monster, giant robot, Harry Connick, hideout, James Gammon, Jennifer Aniston, John Mahoney, Jr., local town, M. Emmet Walsh, Maine, mobilised militia, paranoid government agent, repair, robot, Rockwell, Roger Corman, sci-fi, science fiction, scrap metal dealer, self-awareness, SF, single mum, single working mum, small, small American town, Sputnik, Ted Hughes, The Iron Giant, The Iron Man b, train tracks, US, US government, Vin Diesel, Warner Bros., woods, working mum

Animation Features Movies

Watership Down
(new 4K restoration)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 October 2024
No Comments on Watership Down
(new 4K restoration)
Sticky post

Director – Martin Rosen – 1978 – UK – Cert. PG – 92m

*****

When a young rabbit visionary foresees doom for those who remain, some of the rabbits leave their warren in search of a safer home, encountering many life-threatening perils along the way – new 4K restoration of animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 25th, following its World Premiere in the London Film Festival on Saturday, October 12th

LFF: Sat 12 Oct 12:20 World Premiere, Tues 15 Oct 12:15,
both BFI Southbank NFT1.

This opens with a mythological segment involving a powerful God, represented as the sun, and rabbitkind, specifically the archetypal rabbit El-ahrairah. It’s drawn and painted in an arresting, non-naturalistic style involving coloured lines animated against a white background to create the impression of moving, primitive drawings, due in large part to uncredited director John Hubley, whose vision for the film was at odds with that of producer Martin Rosen. The latter ended up firing the former as he wanted something grittier and less lightweight.

It’s arguable this has worked to the film’s advantage: the fable sequence works as otherworldly rabbit mythology, suggesting a race of intelligent creatures capable of constructing creation myths about their species much as human beings do.… Read the rest

Tags 2D animation, adaptation, animal tales, animated storytelling, animation, anthropomorphism, background, Black Rabbit of Death, British, cage, cat, children's film, children’s book, climate crisis, codified Disney style, coloured lines, countryside, creation myths, D.H. Lawrence, darkness, death, decadence, Denholm Elliot, despot, destination, dog, doom, drawing, drawn animation, English countryside, family film, fantasy, fresh food, God, Harry Andrews, hawk, illustration, in search of home, injury, intelligent creatures, John Bennett, John Hubley, John Hurt, journey, kingdom, leader, leave, leave home, lethal, LFF, LFF 2024, life and death, life crisis, life-threatening, London, London Film Festival, London Film Festival 2024, Martin Rosen, Michael Graham Cox, militarism, myth, mythology, natural history illustration, naturalism, nature, nature red in tooth and claw, non-naturalism, novel, painting, perils, power, predator, primitive drawings, rabbit, rabbitkind, Ralph Richardson, resistance, Richard Adams, Richard Briers, safe haven, seagull, sentimentality, snare, societal collapse, storytelling, sun, totalitarian regime, trauma, UK, violence, visionary, warren, watercolour, Watership Down, woods, Zero Mostel

Animation Movies Shorts

The Fox
And The Pigeon

Director – Michelle Chua – 2019 – Canada – 6m

*****

From the Annecy 2020 Online Animation Festival

This starts off opening a children’s book cover for a tale about, you’ve guessed it, a fox and a pigeon. In the time honoured tradition of such books, there are illustrations and words (in rhyming couplets) on the page. And like so many animated films, the characters move and come to life while the author acts as a narrator and reads the words.

What’s different about The Fox And The Pigeon is that while the characters want to live their own story – screenwriters often say that as they write they feel their characters talking to them and dictating the direction things should go – the narrator has other ideas and tries to impose his own narrative upon them. The fox finds a coin and buys an ice cream cone. Sitting on a park bench, he’s aware of the pigeon, who clearly wants to share the ice cream. But, intones the author reading his words, “why would a fox want to share with a pigeon?”

As the tale plays out, the author becomes increasingly vindictive, wanting the two characters to conflict with one another, to the point of one killing the other.… Read the rest

Tags animals, Annecy, Annecy 2020, author, book, Canada, children, children’s book, family, illustration, narrative, narrator, postmodernism, struggle, text, words