Tag: toddler

Little Amélie
or
The Character of Rain
(Amélie
et
la Métaphysique des Tubes)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 5 February 2026
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or
The Character of Rain
(Amélie
et
la Métaphysique des Tubes)
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Directors – Maïlys Vallade & Liane-Cho Han – 2025 – France – Cert. PG – 77m

*****

A Belgian diplomat’s baby daughter growing up in Japan comes to realise, by her third birthday, that she is not God – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 13th; previews Saturday, 7th and Sunday, 8th February

In the beginning was God. At least, that’s how the new-born Amélie (French language version voice: Loïse Charpentier) sees herself. She is, essentially, a tube which swallows, digests and ejects (as per the film’s French language title). She has a perfect command of verbal language, so sees no need to say anything. That said, she makes great use of voice-over throughout the piece. She remains motionless, practising “the gift of serenity”. “Your child is a vegetable”, proclaims a doctor to the child’s parents. She remains in this state until her second birthday, when life is interrupted by an earthquake – nothing significant in the wider scheme of things, but a momentous event in the interior life of a small child. She attempts to speak, but to her horror the words in her head don’t emerge, only baby noises.

Amelie is the third child of Patrick (French voice: Marc Arnaud) and Danièle (French voice: Laetitia Coryn), and has two older siblings, Juliette (French voice: Haylee Issembourg) and André (French voice: Isaac Schoumsky).… Read the rest

Tags animosity, baby, baby noises, beach, Belgian, Belgian chocolate, bereavement, between two cultures, birthday, bombing raid, books, Brussels, carp, catch up, Cathy Cerda, childhood, chocolate, comics, commemorating the dead, danger, daughter, departed spirit, diplomat, drowning, early years, earthquake, East and West, family trip, fellow god, Festival for the Month of Boys, first word, France, God, grandma, grandmothers and grandchildren, growing up, grown up situations, grumpy, Haylee Issembourg, housekeeper, housekeeper and employer, Isaac Schoumsky, Japan, Japan and Belgium, Japanese character, Laetitia Coryn, landlady, lantern festival, Liane-Cho Han, Little Amelie, Loïse Charpentier, Maïlys Vallade, Marc Arnaud, missing, monster, mothers and sons, names, naming, neighbour, ornamental gardens, parents and children, peering out, picture books, pond, post-war, rain, rescue, running, serenity, siblings, small child, survive, taste, The Character of Rain, three years old, toddler, transcendent, tube, two-and-a-half years old, vacuum cleaner, Victoria Grosbois, walking, war, wonder, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, write your name, WW2, Yokusai, Yumi Fujimori

Animation Features Movies

Moana 2

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 29 November 2024
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Directors – David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller – 2024 – US – Cert. PG – 100m

*** 1/2

The desire to connect with the people who must surely live beyond the known horizons of her world drives Moana on a new seafaring adventure – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 29th

Set three years after Moana (John Musker, Ron Clements, 2016), this features the eponymous Polynesian heroine (voiced once again by Auli’i Cravalho) not as a 16-year-old but as a 19-year-old. She has now become a wayfinder and the leader of her island people. Weirdly, perhaps, for a leader, she likes nothing better than going off into the middle of the island, accompanied by her two Disney-obligatory small animal friends Pua the pig and HeiHei the dim-witted cockerel (voice, or at least cockerel noises: Alan Tudyk), climbing to its highest point and blowing a shell in the hope that someone out in the world beyond the one she knows might respond. She wants to reach out and connect with other islander populations. Alas, she gets little more than Heihei blowing a shell a few yards away.

Following a vision in which she is visited by Tautai Vasa (voice: Gerald Faitala Ramsey), a wayfinder from a distant generation who sent out to sea and never came back, Moana and her small crew set sail for the lost island of Motufetu.… Read the rest

Tags 19-year-old, 2D animation, 2D drawn animation, 3D animation, Alan Tudyk, animation, Auli’i Cravalho, Awhimai Fraser, boffin, CG, CG animation, chicken, chopping down, climbing, cockerel, connect, Dana Ledoux Miller, David Fane, David G. Derrick Jr., demi-god, designer, dim-witted, Disney, Dwayne Johnson, Eric Goldberg, Gerald Faitala Ramsey, heroine, highest point, hook, horizon seafaring. Adventure, Hualalai Chung, island, islander populations, Jason Hand, leader, little sister, lost island, main mast, Moana, Moana 2, never came back, people, pig, Polynesian, quest, reach out, Rose Matafao, sea, shape-shifter, shell, siblings, sisters, storm, story-keeper, street-smart, tattoo, teen, toddler, villain, vision, voyage, warrior, water tentacle, wayfinder, weight and movement

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Fantastic Machine
(original title:
And the King Said,
What a Fantastic Machine)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 18 April 2024
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(original title:
And the King Said,
What a Fantastic Machine)
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Directors – Axel Danielson, Maximilien Van Aertryck – 2023 – Norway, Sweden, Denmark – Cert. 15 – 88m

****

An idiosyncratic history of moving image technology and its increasingly pervasive role in human society, from camera obscura to smartphones and social media – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 19th

To understand what this movie is about, which I’m not sure I did going in, you have to understand its title. The fantastic machine in question is, in part, the camera. That might lead you to anticipate a history of photography, but that’s not quite what this is about. You’d be forgiven for believing that, though, for the first few minutes when we see a contemporary, on the street, walk-in exhibit of the camera obscura or pinhole camera, a natural optical phenomenon whereby light passes through a simple pinhole onto a surface or screen beyond to recreate an inverted image of where the light came from. As a visitor marvels of the resultant, real time moving image of people outside the exhibit walking around, “it’s upside down”. As a human guide to the exhibition explains, that’s how the human eye works. Our brains correct the upside down image so that appears the right way up.… Read the rest

Tags 1828, 1930s, 2D animation, Allied cameramen, animation, Axel Danielson, bodies in motion, British, business model, camera, camera obscura, ceremony, chrono-photographer, cinematography, copyright, Death Camps, Denmark, Edweard Muybridge, emotional trigger, entertainment, escape, Étienne-Jules Marey, everyday life, evil, fake news, fantasy, first contact, France, funding films, Georges Méliès, Germany, history, horse gallop, human, human and animal, human eye, idiosyncratic, image, immorality, inverted image, Leni Riefenstahl, light, locomotion, Lumière brothers, magical, Maximilien Van Aertryck, mid-nineteenth century, MOI, moving, moving image, Nazi, Norway, optical, optics, parades, Paris, persistence of vision, pervasive, photographer, photography, pinhole, pinhole camera, pioneer, producer, rolling news channels, self-broadcasting, self-filming, show, showmanship, Sidney Bernstein, smartphone. social media, society, studio, Sweden, technology, Ted Turner, television, The Coronation of Edward VII, the home, toddler, trigger, TV series, US, viral video, Voyager spacecraft, YouTube