Tag: sets

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 Music

The Czech Year
(Špalíček)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date August 14 2026
No Comments on The Czech Year
(Špalíček)

The Czech Year (Špalíček)

Director – Jiří Trnka – 1947 – Czechoslovakia – Cert. PG – 80m

*****

A celebration of Czech peasant life, with a striking Christian element – on the Blu-ray Jiří Trnka: Puppet Master, released in the UK on Monday, August 10th

Originally made as a series of short films which were subsequently edited into a feature, a similar strategy later adopted by fellow countryman Jan Švankmajer making Alice (1988), this opens (after a static title sequence) with a song about musicians wondering how they can afford a dulcimer. There’s a feeling of community among a villagers’ marching band comprising double bass, clarinet, serpent and horn, who are joined for processions and dances by assorted villagers. As the song ends, they are scattered but not dispersed by a death-like scarecrow figure on a cart.

A bear who has joined in their revelry is revealed as an actor whose bear mask has come off and been lost when he has fallen in a freezing stream (it has ice on top), and the season of winter is introduced by a pan along a model backdrop which appears to be painted on layers of glass. There are precedents for this technique, whether you look at Disney’s 2D animation experiments with the many glass levels of the multiplane camera used to achieve the illusion of depth on, for example, Fantasia (1940) or those of special effects animator Willis O’Brien who for such works as The Lost World (Harry O.… Read the rest

Tags acrobats, Adam, angels, battlefield, Bethlehem, bird singing, black serpent, blocking, bow and arrow, bride and groom, brushstrokes, carving, cave, choirboys, Christian, Christian church procession, clarinet, clown, cobra, community, community meal, craftspeople, Czech, Czech animation, Czech culture, Czech folk tales, Czech peasant life, Czechoslovakia, dance, death figure, deer, double bass, duck, ducklings, dulcimer, ethereal woman, facial design, flute, foliage, fortune tellers, Garden Of Eden, glass painting, Heavens, horn, huntsman, illustration, Jesus in the wilderness, Jiří Trnka, Jiří Trnka: Puppet Master, landscape, lighting, liturgical language, marching band, marionette show, message of Salvation, monkey, monument on a hill, musician, Old Czech Legends, painted faces, painter, procession, prophecy, puppet animation, puppets, ritualised church worship, rock formations, rural, serpent, sets, skeletons, skittles, snake, song, staging, stop-frame, stop-frame animation, stop-frame puppet, stop-motion, stop-motion animation, stop-motion puppet, storm, temptation, tempted by the Devil, The Czech Year, The Hand, till the soil, torrential rain, travelling show, villagers, war, war dead, Winter, wood

Movies Features Live Action

Ballerina
(2025)

Ballerina (2025)

Director – Len Wiseman – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 125m

*****

A young, female assassin seeks out the man behind the organisation that killed her father – John Wick franchise spin-off is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 6th

While the Bond movie No Time To Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021) divided viewers, there seemed to be a widespread consensus that Ana de Armas’ scene as a kickboxing 007 sidekick was something special, crying out for her to be given her own action film. In the interim, the actress’ high profile career has burgeoned – her portrait of Marilyn Monroe in Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2002) proved that she can act just as well as she can do stunt action.

Meanwhile, writer Shay Hatten’s spec screenplay about a ballerina bent on revenge found its way to John Wick franchise originator and director Chad Stahelski, who thought it might fit into John Wick’s world. As they worked out exactly where that might be, Hatten was put to work on the scripts for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023). It was eventually decided that the events in Ballerina would take place at the same time as those in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and an early scene has John Wick (Keanu Reeves) passing on a staircase in the Ruska Roma Ballet School in New York.… Read the rest

Tags action, action film, action movie, Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, armaments shop, art direction, assassin, assassin school, Austria, ballerina, ballet dancer, ballet school, best use of one bullet, Bond, box of grenades, castle by the sea, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Chad Stahelski, choreography, clandestine organisation, corridors, costumes, cult, Czech Republic, David Castañeda, enemy, fake library bookshelf doors, father, fight, fight choreography, flamethrower battle, franchise, Gabriel Byrne, gone rogue, Hallstatt, hidden passage, homeless child, hotel, Ian McShane, James Bond, John Wick, Keanu Reeves, kickboxing, kill or be killed, Len Wiseman, lobby, location, mayhem, mountainside, narrow streets, New York, Norman Reedus, powerf, Prague, recruited from the streets, restaurant, revenge, rooms, Ruska Roma, safe houses, sets, Shay Hatten, snow, spec screenplay, stunt, stunt choreography, The Chancellor, The Continental, The Director, training, TV remote, US, vengeance, Victoria Comte, village, weaponisation of dinner plates