As Halloween rolls around once more, things take a positively spooky turn as Chris and Alex discuss the stop-motion animated horror film ParaNorman (Sam Fell & Chris Butler, 2012) with very special guest Professor Stacey Abbott, who is incoming Professor of Film at Northumbria University and an expert in histories of gothic and horror in film and television.
Read MoreChris and Alex delve into motion-capture, murder mystery, and monster houses for this discussion of Gil Kenan’s 2006 computer-animated film Monster House, a digital feature produced by the ImageMovers company founded by renowned filmmaker Robert Zemeckis and a specialist in animation utilising mo-cap technologies. Joining them for Episode 121 of the podcast is Dr Jane Batkin, an animation film theorist and Associate Professor in the School of Film, Media and Journalism at the University of Lincoln.
Read MoreMogwai and monsters after midnight are the focus of Episode 88, as Chris and Alex take a closer look at the part-horror, part-Christmas feature Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984) with special guest Dr Catherine Lester, Lecturer in Film and Television in the Department of Film and Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. Catherine’s work focuses largely on the intersections between children’s culture and the horror genre, and she is the author of Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2021), and several articles on popular animation and children’s horror cinema.
Read MoreEpisode 85 discusses the recent HBO horror television series Lovecraft Country (2020), developed by Misha Green as a continuation of Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel, and places the story of 1950s racial segregation in the United States on a collision course with the science-fiction world of H.P. Lovecraft. Joining Chris and Alex for this latest episode is Dr Bambi Haggins, Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine whose work explores race, class, gender and sexuality in American comedy across media and television history. She is also the author of Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America (2007), while her current book project, Still Laughing, Still Black examines how Black comedy, culture and reception in the new millennium reflect, refract and reveal the necessity and the power of Black comic discourse and survival laughter since 2008.
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