Tag: wizard

Rebellious

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 24 October 2024
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Director – Alex Tsitsilin – 2023 – UK, Cyprus – Cert. PG – 94m

***

Her true love must rescue the princess before three rival princes after a dragon abducts her on behalf of an evil wizard – fairy tale animation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 25th

A dad reads his small daughter a bedtime story, a fairytale about a kingdom where an evil dragon carries off innocent princesses, sometimes as they are about to be married. I’d never stand for that, intones young Mina (voice: Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld), who is herself a princess, and her father a king (voice: David Wills).

Jump forward to her as a young woman hanging out with architecture graduate boyfriend Ronan (voice: Dan Edwards), despite the fact that her more traditional father thinks she ought to marry a foreign prince for political reasons. As Ronan points out, he can handle all the design stuff like strategy, construction and weaponry while she is better at hands on combat, so they make a good pair to rule the kingdom.

There are three princely candidates in the offing: strong but brutish Eastern European Rogdai (voice: Matt Giroveanu), vain Indian ladies’ man Kezabor (voice: Pete Zarustica), and overeating, obese, Oriental Fa Chan (voice: Brian Kim) who is in thrall to his Mommy Dearest (voice: Jennifer Sun Bell).… Read the rest

Tags Abe Goldfarb, Alex Tsitsilin, Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld, animation, Anthony Sardinha, architecture graduate, bedtime story, bewitched, boyfriend, Brian Kim, brutish, carried off, constrictor, Cyprus, Dan Edwards, David Wills, dragon abduction, Eastern Europe, enchantment, fairy tale, fairy tale archetypes, fathers and daughters, forest, gardens, giant, happiness, Indian, Jennifer Sun Bell, Jon St. John, king, kingdom, ladies’ man, magic, Marc Thompson, Matt Giroveanu, mother’s boy, obese, Oriental, overeating, palace, Pete Zarustica, prince, princess, proposal of marriage, quest, rescue, serpent, shapeshifter, snake, sorceress, spell, statues, strong, suitors, talking bear, traditional, true love, turned into gold, UK, Vanessa Johansson, wizard

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Diplodocus
(Smok Diplodok)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 23 June 2024
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(Smok Diplodok)
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Director – Wojtek Wawszczyk – 20234 – Poland – 84m

****

A young diplodocus must save the comic book in which he lives from being erased by the artist who created – from the 2024 Annecy International Animation Festival in the Annecy Presents section

Animation. A bookworm (English voice: Wayne Greyson; Polish voice: Tadeusz Baranowski) appears, a “respected devourer of picture stories”. His function is not exactly that of a Greek chorus, more like a comic interlude who occasionally wanders into the narrative as light relief, to leaven the whole. Not that this likeable romp, is any need of leavening, but it’s a nice touch which nicely sets the tone for the whole piece. It’s about characters in a comic book whose very existence is threatened by the originating artist’s run-in with his commercially driven but artistically clueless lady publisher.

Beyond a vast, bubbling, primeval swamp in a crater, an inventive and adventurous, male diplodocus child (English voice: Julian Wanderer; Polish voice: Mikołaj Wachowski), Diplodocus as the credits calls him, nicks snails off a frog to use as climbing suckers. A butterfly flies past. Diplodocus gets sent to his room by his essentially conservative parents (English voices: Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld, Marc Thompson; Polish voices: Monica Pikuła, Grzegorz Pawlak) for wanting a life of adventure.… Read the rest

Tags adventure, Agnieska Matysiak, Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld, animation, Annecy, Annecy 2024, Arcadiusz Jakubik, artist, artwork, audition, beatbox, Bill Timoney, bookworm, Borys Szyc, comedy, comic book, crater, creativity, cute, cute character, deadline, desert wasteland, desk, diplodocus, donkey, drawing, drawing board, erase, eraser, existence, gags, Grzegorz Pawlak, Julian Wanderer, magic, Małgorzata Kożuchowskahumour, Marc Thompson, Mariusz Szczygiel, marketable, Mike Pollock, Mikołaj Wachowski, Monica Pikuła, mouse, multiverse, onions, parents and children, philosopher, Piotr Polak, plagiarise, Poland, prehistory, primeval, publisher, Rachel Butera, science, spaceship, spells, sphinx, sun, swamp, Tadeusz Baranowsk, Tadeusz Baranowski, travel, Wayne Greyson, whiteness, wizard, Wojtek Wawszczyk, X; Strasburger Zona

Features Live Action Movies

Shazam!
Fury Of The Gods

Director – David F. Sandberg – 2023 – US – Cert. – 130m

***1/2

Three Daughters of Atlas enter present day Philadelphia to repossess a staff which contains power that has been stolen from them; immature teenager recast as adult superhero Shazam! and his six superhero companions must stop them – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 17th

Something of an oddity in the DC Comics canon, Shazam! concerns Philadelphia teenager Billy Batson (Asher Angel) who inadvertently absorbs superpower energy which enables him to transform into the adult superhero Shazam! (Zachary Levi) by merely uttering the word “Shazam!” However, despite the adult physique, he still thinks like a teenager. Outside of superhero life, he is one of seven orphans who, since the end of the original Shazam! (David F. Sandberg, 2019), have had the same thing happen to them. So, seven children, seven superheroes. And their two put-upon foster parents, Rosa and Victor Vásquez (Marta Milans and Cooper Andrews).

To be honest, I could take or leave the title character (as played by teenager Angel and adult Levi) but the other kids are likeable enough – at least to the extent that their characters are fleshed out here… and some are fleshed out far more than others in the narrative.… Read the rest