Tag: sky

Guillermo del Toro’s
Pinocchio

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 December 2022
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Pinocchio
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Directors – Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson – 2022 – US – Cert. PG – 114m

*****

Created as a puppet by a bereaved, religious woodcarver father, a little wooden boy must make his way in a world of ruthless show business, Fascism and war – stop-frame puppet movie is out on Netflix on Friday, December 9th

Co-helmed by Will Vinton alumnus Gustafson, del Toro’s Carlo Collodi adaptation sees him return to the theme of the Catholic Church collaborating with Fascism that he previously explored in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). The story roughly follows the familiar template of Disney’s Pinocchio (1940), even down to punctuating the action with songs, but with the loosely defined place and time of a fairytale shifted to a very specific Italy before (briefly) and during World War II, with Pleasure Island replaced by a boys’ military training camp. The emphasis has shifted, too, from the notion of the narrator cricket character as conscience to coming to terms with mortality, although the idea that just because things appear to be fun they may not necessarily be good is knocking around in there too.

A narrator who will later identify himself as Sebastian J. Cricket (voice: Ewan McGregor) introduces us to churchgoing woodcarver Gepetto (voice: David Bradley), who is working on a statue of Jesus Christ crucified for the local church, raising dutiful son Carlo (voice: Gregory Mann), an equally religious child with a true sense of wonder at the world around him, including planes in the sky.… Read the rest

Tags accent, action, adaptation, afterlife, anteroom, assistant, bad contract, bereavement, blue fairy, blue wood sprite, bring to life, Burn Gorman, Burn!, burning, Carlo Collodi, Cate Blanchett, Catholic, Catholic Church, Catholicism, child, Christoph Waltz, church, churchgoer, conscience, contract, cricket, crucified, David Bradley, death, drunk, drunk parent, earnings, Ewan McGregor, fairytale, fascism, fathers and sons, feet, Finn Wolfhard, fish, Frank Passingham, fun, goodness, Gregory Mann, Guillermo del Toro, home, island camp, Italy, James Bond, Jesus Christ, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, local church, maltreat, Mark Gustafson, miniature, miniature sets, model, model animation, monkey, monster, mortality, musical, narrator, nose, one night releasing the last of their bomb, parent, planes, politician, politics, priest, puppet, puppet animation, puppetry, religion, right and wrong, Ron Perlman, school, sea, showman, sky, snake tail, soldier, songs, statue, stop-frame, stop-frame animation, stop-motion, stop-motion animation, Tilda Swinton, torso, training, travelling, tree, US, war, Will Vinton, wonder, wood, wood sprite, woodcarver, World War Two

Features Live Action Movies

Nope

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 August 2022
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Director – Jordan Peele – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 130m

Overall **

The alien in the sky finale when the film finally dumps the other stuff *****

A black Muybridge model’s ranch-owning descendants and the survivor of a TV sitcom which turned into a bloodbath encounter a dangerous alien presence that attacks from the sky – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 12th

There appear to be three separate films here.

In the first, a descendant of the black rider photographed in Eadweard Muybridge’s studies of a horse in motion, here historically repurposed as the first piece of moving film (which is debatable), is an old man OJ Haywood Sr. (Keith David) who dies in a bizarre accident on his ranch, where he runs a horse rental service for the motion picture business, leaving behind his children OJ (Dan Kaluuya from Judas And The Black Messiah, Shaka King, 2021; Black Panther, Ryan Coogler, 2018; Get Out, Jordan Peele, 2017) and Emerald (Keke Palmer from Lightyear, Angus MacLane, 2021; Hustlers, Lorene Scafaria, 2019). The bizarre accident may be related to the third plot. Or may not be.

In the second, a wholesome, family TV sitcom is shut down after its star chimpanzee goes on a rampage during the shooting of an episode, killing all members of the cast except the young boy Ricky Park (Jacob Kim) hiding under the table, who witnesses the animal being shot.… Read the rest

Tags Alfred Hitchcock, alien, animal shooting, attack, black people, bloodbath, Brandon Perea, child star, chimpanzee, cinematographer, cloud, creature feature, Dan Kaluuya, DIY hardware store, Eadweard Muybridge, ethnicity, flying saucer, hidden room, hiding under the table, history of cinematography, history of photography, Hitchcock, horse in motion black, horse rental business, immobility, Jacob Kim, Jordan Peele, Keith David, Keke Palmer, killer chimpanzee, memorabilia, Michael Wincott, motion and stillness, movie business, Muybridge, mystery, ranch, sitcom, sky, spend the night, Steven Yeun, surveillance, surveillance cameras, surveillance equipment, survival, The Birds, thrill seekers, TV sitcom, UFO, UFO sightings, US, wholesome

Features Live Action Movies

The Vast of Night

Director – Andrew Patterson – 2019 – US – Cert. 12 – 91m

*****

A radio DJ and a young switchboard operator discover strange noises in the ether which may possibly be of great significance to the small US town where they live in the fifties – on Amazon Prime since Friday, May 29th 2020

Bookended with a curious and somewhat redundant framing device which sets up an episode of black & white, fifties TV show Paradox Theater called The Vast of Night, to which the otherwise colour film periodically and pointless returns from time to time, this is an enigmatic little tale set in the small rural US town of Cayuga where the local high school is set to host a basketball team for a match.

Older teenager Everett (Jake Horowitz) is trying to sort out technical problems before the game gets under way: Sam reminds him that last time this happened, it was a squirrel that had chewed through a wire and the wire was still in its mouth. This story seems to crop up every few minutes as yet another character relates their own abridged telling of it. And 16-year-old Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick) wants him to show her how the tape recorder she’s just bought works.… Read the rest