Tag: Phil Tippett

Star Wars
The Mandalorian
and Grogu

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 22 May 2026
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The Mandalorian
and Grogu
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Director – Jon Favreau – 2026 – US – Cert. 12A – 132m

****

The mercenary Mandalorian and his infant charge, the Yoda-like Grogu, must rescue the young Rotta the Hutt who has been kidnapped by gangsters – out in UK IMAX cinemas on Friday, May 22nd

The character of the MandalorIan resembles a bounty hunter from the early Star Wars films but is, in fact, a Mandalorian warrior sworn not to remove his mask. And he has an apprentice Grogu, who is to all intents and purposes a baby version of Yoda, the character who first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, although Grogu isn’t actually Yoda, but a different character of a later generation. For those completely new to Star Wars, Yoda was both a Jedi Master skilled in harnessing the Force and a diminutive, otherworldly creature performed by a puppeteer. Audiences immediately warmed to him. Unlike Yoda, Grogu is too young to talk (although he does make suspiciously verbal sounding utterances from time to time) and you might think he would be unbearably cute and make the film difficult to watch. But he isn’t, not at all.

When franchise creator George Lucas still owned Lucasfilm, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, George Lucas, 1999 introduced the irritating, kiddie-oriented character of Jar Jar Binks, widely regarded as an error of judgement. … Read the rest

Tags action, adventurer, apprentice Grogu, arena fights, baby Yoda, battle, billboard, bomb, bounty hunter, Brendan Wayne, cell, cockpit, collapsed tree trunk, control panel, crime syndicate, do not touch, empire, enemy, explosion, fight, fight sequences, fighting, final match, food vendor, four-armed monkey, galaxy, helmet, Hutt, IMAX, independent contractor, intel, interplanetary travel, Janu. Jonny Coyne, Jedi Master, Jon Favreau, jungle, kidnapped, Lateef Crowder, man in a costume, Martin Scorsese, meditative, mercenary, Metropolis, mountainside, new found fame, New Republic, New York, nurse back to health, Pedro Pascal, Phil Tippett, planet, possibly dead, puppeteer, rescue, Rotta the Hutt, safety catch, seat belt, Sigourney Weaver, small child, snowbound, spacecraft, spaceship, spaceships, special effects, Star Wars, Star Wars:The MandalorIan and Grogu, stop-frame animation, stunt, swagger, the Force, The MandalorIan and Grogu, unconscious, US, warfare, Yoda

Animation Features Movies

Junk Head

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 21 April 2023
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Director – Takahide Hori – 2021 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 101m

****1/2

A cyborg is dropped from the planet’s surface into its depths by his immortal but impotent masters to investigate the beings who have evolved in the levels below – feature length, stop-frame epic is out in UK cinemas on Monday, April 24th

More, I suspect, by accident than design, Junk Head looks and feels like the wandering little sister of Mad God (Phil Tippett, 2021). The latter was made by a top Hollywood stop-frame effects animator as a 34-year, independent, labour of love, the former by a Japanese visionary as a seven-year, independent, labour of love. Hori had worked on puppetry at Tokyo Disneyland and became obsessed with stop-motion, inspired by Motoko Shinkai’s one-man debut 2D animated production Voices of A Distant Star (2002). He made a half hour version Junk Head 1 in 2013, and used it as a building block to this version, which he completed in 2017.

The production mode of stop-frame can be a solitary one involving one person alone in a room with a camera and armatured puppets, the approach typified by Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, the bolexbrothers, Jiri Trnka, Kihachiro Kawamoto, the early David Lynch and many others – a single person or very small number of people producing the work, either complete films or stop-frame effects sequences within live action films.… Read the rest

Animation Features Movies

Mad God

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 16 June 2022
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Director – Phil Tippett – 1987-2021 – US – 83m

*****

A man in a gas mask descends into a dark, dangerous world on a mysterious mission, encountering strange creatures, humanoids and societal constructs along the way – stop-frame epic 34 years in the making – as of Tuesday, June 28th, has become the most watched premier of 2022 on Shudder, where it plays in both the UK and the US from Thursday, June 16th; also plays London’s Prince Charles Cinema Tuesday. July 5th to Friday, July 8th and from Monday, December 5th is on Blu-ray, DVD and digital

My immediate reaction after watching this was two-fold. On the one hand, wow!!! On the other, how on earth do I put the experience of watching this into words? Mad God definitely has a structure, yet what’s amazing about it is the visuals, the animation, the effects. Even though I’m familiar with the work of its director Phil Tippett (as one of the heirs apparent to stop-motion maestro Ray Harryhausen in the world of visual effects – career highlights include RoboCop, 1987; Jurassic Park, 1993, Starship Troopers, 1997) this film is something altogether different (even if its roots can be seen in his VFX work).… Read the rest

Tags 3D, 3D animation, animation, baby, beasts, blood, brutality, creatures, cruelty, deities, delivery, depth, depths, descent, foetus, fog, gas mask, God, gore, infant, journey, maggot, maw, mewling, model animation, models, monsters, mouth, operating table, orifice, paradise, perils, Phil Tippett, pollution, predators, puppet, puppetry, quest, Ray Harryhausen, sights, statues, stop-frame, stop-frame animation, stop-motion, stop-motion animation, supernatural power, surgery, Tower Of Babel, volume, weight

Features Live Action Movies

Tremors 2
Aftershocks

Director – S.S. Wilson – 1996 – US – Cert. 12 – 92m

Video rental release

Tremors’ Fred Ward and Michael Gross (the survivalist Burt Gummer) joined by self‑styled “new guy” Christopher Gartin are again beset by underground beasties who, as before, outsmart the humans – here mutating into CGI bipeds created by top Jurassic Park effects man Phil Tippett. Highly inventive sequel – recommended.

Capsule review from Manga Mania, 1996, republished here on the death of actor Fred Ward, May 2022.

Trailer:

Tags 3D animation, bipeds, CG, CG animation, Christopher Gartin, Fred Ward, Jurassic Park, Michael Gross, mutation, Phil Tippett, puppet animation, S.S. Wilson, sequel, survivalist, Tremors, US