Tag: spirit

Holy Days

Director – Nat Boltt – 2026 – New Zealand, Canada – Cert. 12a – 101m

***1/2

Three ageing nuns must save their ramshackle convent from property developers and help a local Maori boy come to terms with his mum’s death and his dad’s new partner – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, Aug 14th

In a wondrously tacky stop-frame parody, giant-sized Brian rides his giant-sized bicycle through the village (cut to live action Brian played by Elijah Tomati) to explain to Sister Agnes (Judy Davis) at the door of his destination building that he’s committed blasphemery. It turns out his exact words were, “Jesus Jumping Christ”. Taking it good humouredly in her stride, she tells him to come in. And, as a penance, assigns him to clean all the upstairs floors.

As a title informs us, it’s New Zealand. 1974.

Upstairs, Sister Mary Clare (Jacki Weaver) explains that the reason for all the baby photos is that the nuns used to take them in. And shows him, thorough the window, Sister Luke’s garden. Which has seen better days. Brian says his mum loved it here. The feeling was reciprocal, apparently. Nun and boy turn floor polishing chores into improvised sports exercise gliding along the floor.… Read the rest

Tags 1974, 30 mph, afterlife, animation, apology, baby photos, beach, Bible, bicycle, bike, bishop, blasphemery. penance, blasphemy, bribe, bribery, broth, Canada, care home, ceiling plaster, chores, Chris Reddington, Christian, church, cigarette, clean the floor, convent, dancing, dashboard, dementia, dentures, developer, do a runner, done up, driving, Elijah Tomati, false teeth, ferry, flashback, fruit cake, garden, grand opening, grave, Heaven, Holy Days, Jesus, John Bach, Jonny Brugh, Joy Cowley, landscape, luggage, Maori, mean driver, memory, Miriam Margolyes, mothers and sons, mountain, Nat Boltt, New Zealand, partner, peace, Plum Duff Pudding, property, reconciliation, revelation, role model, security of tenure, smoking, snow, snow globe, South Island, spirit, stepmother, stepmothers and sons, stop-frame, stop-frame animation, stop-motion, stop-motion animation, surrogate mother, Tanea Heke, title deeds, traffic cop, Ty Jepsen, udy Davis, village, Winter

Animation Movies Shorts

Little Shrew
(Snowflake)

Director – Kate Bush – 2024 – UK – Cert. PG – 4m

*****

As modern warfare decimates a landscape, a shrew crosses countryside and town as a small, spirit-like light falls towards it – short accompanies the UK cinema release of From Hilde, With Love on Friday, June 27th

Musician / songwriter Kate Bush originally recorded the song Snowflake, which appeared on her album 50 Words for Snow (2011), in part to record her young son Albert’s voice before it broke. The creative process is such that people don’t always know exactly why they do what they do, and that is clearly the case with this song, since Kate has returned to it after the event to direct an animated film around it. Animation being a painstakingly slow production process, the soundtrack for the short is an edit of the song, pulling it down from almost 10 minutes to 4 minutes. The 4-minute edit is surprisingly coherent and seems to distil the essence of the piece.

Most of the lyrics are sung by Albert, yet Kate sings the haunting refrain:

The world is so loud

Keep falling

I’ll find you

It’s impossible to listen to this without thinking she is the mother somehow waiting for her falling son, whatever that means.… Read the rest

Tags 2024, 50 Words for Snow, aircraft, Alan Henry, Albert McIntosh, animation, animation compositor, animator, atmospheric sfx, awareness, background artist, battlefield, beams of light, black and white, black pollutant, blast, block of flats, bomb blast, broken, cathedral, cloud formation, comet, creative process, dead soldier, decimate, decimated by a bomb, detritus, drone videographer, Earth’s atmosphere, edit, egg, emotion, environment, exploration, fall, falling, feelings, flying, Gayle Martin, guided missile, gun, hope and drone animation, illustrator, Inkubus, James Clifford, Jim Kay, Jon Carin, Kate Bush, killed by Russians, landscape, life force, light, Little Shrew, Lorenzo Cenci Di Bello, loud, loudness, Maksim Levin, miniature, missiles, modern warfare, mothers and sons, moving illustration, musician, nebula, need, Nicolas Loudot, Nicolette Van Gendt, nowhere to go, outer space, pair of spectacles, panning, panning shot, photographic naturalism, pocket, pollution, producer, production process, refrain, rendering, Reuters, running, safe haven, scamper, shark, short, short film, shrew, smoke, snarling mouth, Snowflake, son’s voice, song, songwriter, soundtrack, spasms, sperm, spirit, target, telegraph pole, terror, Tomato Twist, tree trunk, twisted metal, Ukraine, voice breaking, war, war-torn, weaponry, womb, wonder, world-building

Animation Features Movies

The Inventor

Directors – Jim Capobianco, Pierre-Luc Granjon – 2023 – US, France, Ireland – Cert. PG – 100m

****

Towards the end of his life, inventor Leonardo da Vinci goes to live in France under the patronage of the King – stop frame / drawn animation composite is out in the UK’s Vue cinemas on Friday, March 8th

Rome, Italy, 1516. Leonardo da Vinci (voice: Stephen Fry) happily shows off a giant optical system of magnifying glasses for observing the heavens to his assistant Francesco Melzi (voice: Angelino Sandri). Francesco retorts that Leonardo ought to be worried about the Pope who has spies everywhere (and sure enough, there are eyes watching from nearby peepholes). Leonardo’s other assistant, the hulking, mute Zoroastro sources corpses for him, on which the curious Leonardo performs dissections and studies what he finds through making drawings in his quest for find the animated spirit of man, a search which, in dreams and visions, often leads him into confrontation with a mysterious, gargantuan, dark-hooded figure.

The inventor is summoned to Pope Leo X (voice: Matt Berry) who wants to know, why can’t Leonardo just make pretty things? The arrival of a messenger whose helmet is half crushed by a cannonball leads Leo to suggest Leonardo fashion him machines of war.… Read the rest

Tags 2D animation, 3D animation, Angelino Sandri, animation, body, cannonball, capture, castle, character design Cardinal De Beatis, Charles V, city, corpse, Daisy Ridley, Daniel Swan, dissection, drawing, drawn animation, dreams, enemy, flying rigs, forces, France, Francis I, French, Gauthier Battoue, Giuliano de Medici, gravedigger, Henry VIII, hooded, human body, ideal city, Inventor, Ireland, Italy, Jane Osborn, Jim Capobianco, John Gilkey, king, Leonardo da Vinci, lion, Louise de Savoy, magnifying glasses, Marion Cotillard, Matt Berry, Max Baumgarten, Meaning Of Life, mechanical, mechanical lion, Natalie Palamides, observation, obsession, optics, painting, pastel shade, peace, peepholes, Pierre-Luc Granjon, pontiff, Pope, Pope Leo X, power, Princess Marguerite de Navarre, puppet, Queen Mother, Renaissance, Rome, royal court, spirit, spirit of man, statue, Stephen Fry, stop-frame, stop-frame animation, stop-motion, stop-motion animation, study, suns, The Garden Of Earthly Delights, US, visions, war, war machines, wire work

Animation Features Movies

The Boy And The Heron
(Kimitachi Wa
Do Ikiru Ka,
君たちはど
う生きるか,
lit.
How Do You Live?)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date December 24 2023
No Comments on The Boy And The Heron
(Kimitachi Wa
Do Ikiru Ka,
君たちはど
う生きるか,
lit.
How Do You Live?)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

During WorldWar Two, a boy bereaved of his mother moves to the countryside with his businessman father where a heron lures him into another dimension to rescue his vanished stepmother – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 26th

Directors, eh? They make their last film, then, some time later, they go and make another one. The Wind Rises (2013) was supposed to be Hayao Miyazaki’s last film, but three years later, he was working on his next one. And seven years further on, The Boy And The Heron hits cinemas. The Japanese title How Do You Live? comes from a popular children’s novel, a copy of which appears in the film, rather than the film being an adaptation of the novel.

Three years into World War Two, young boy Mahito (Japanese dub: Soma Santoki; English dub: Luca Padovan) loses his mother in a Tokyo hospital fire. Four years into the war, his father (Japanese dub: Takuya Kimura; English dub: Christian Bale) – a businessman who manufactures aircraft cockpits for the war effort – decides to move both his factory and his son out of Tokyo to the countryside where he plans to marry his late wife’s younger sister Natsuko (Japanese dub: Yoshino Kimura; English dub: Gemma Chan).… Read the rest

Tags 2D animation, a world in balance, absent father, Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2023-24, Academy Awards 2024, Aimyon, aircraft manufacture, animal, animation, anime, Anjli Mohindra, architect, arms manufacture, arms trade, Art Malik, bereavement, bird, bombing, boy, child’s building blocks, Christian Bale, countryside, Dave Bautista, demons, disappear, escape, factory, fantasy, fathers and sons, fire, floating, Florence Pugh, Gemma Chan, granduncle, grannies, granny, Grey Heron, Hayao Miyazaki, heron, hierarchy, hospital, hospital fire, How Do You Live?, Japan, Japanese home front, Jun Kunimura, Kaoru Kobayashi, Karen Fukuhara, Ko Shibashi, Luca Padovan, maids, Mark Hamill, Masaki Suda, militarism, monster, mothers and sons, old crone, Oscar, Oscar nominations, Oscars, Oscars 2023-24, Oscars 2024, other dimension, other world, parakeet, quest, reappear, Robert Pattinson, rural, rural and urban, Sacha Dhawan, Second World War, servants, Sham Ali, Shohei Hino, Soma Santoki, spirit, spirit beings, Studio Ghibli, Takuya Kimura, Tony Jayawardena, tower, toy building blocks, urban, vanish, warplane, warplane manufacture, Willem Dafoe, workers, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2, Yoshino Kimura

Animation Movies Shorts

Snow Kid
(Xue Hai Zi,
雪孩子)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date May 11 2021
No Comments on Snow Kid
(Xue Hai Zi,
雪孩子)

a.k.a. The Snow Child

Director – Lin Wenxiao – 1980 – China – Cert. N/C – 20m

***

A mother and her daughter build a snow child which comes to life and later saves the girl’s life – 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

Made a couple of years ahead of the perennial British Christmas TV animated favourite The Snowman (Jimmy T. Murakami, Dianne Jackson, 1982), this similarly has a story of a child making a snowman which then comes to life. A mother rabbit and her daughter live in a small house near the woods. The mother prepares food while her daughter plays with a rocking toy then suggests she and the child make a snowman, so they go outside and do exactly that.

After the mother has coaxed the child into using for the snowman’s eyes two precious longan seeds the child plans to plant next Spring, the girl tries to add a nose, but when her back is turned, the snow child pulls the carrot off and throws it on the ground.… Read the rest