“The show prides itself on being the podcasting world’s number one authority on all things sculptured, painted, drawn and designed within the world of popular entertainment. This podcast delivers on its promise in spades. Not only is it well produced, the sheer level of expertise on offer is unrivalled. ”
As featured on Feedspot’s Top 10 “Best Animation History Podcasts”!
Chris and Alex return from their extended summer break with this discussion of the much-maligned musical Cats (Tom Hooper, 2019), a film whose reputation as a big-budget misjudgment has perhaps overwhelmed the intricacies of its uncanny constitution, and in particular how the narrative’s negotiation of its A-list performers speaks to the vexed question of actorly labour and agency in an age of heightened visual effects production.
Read MoreThe Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998) meets They Live (John Carpenter, 1988) in Shawn Levy’s science-fiction comedy Free Guy (2021), which marks the director’s first collaboration with charming Canadian Ryan Reynolds and is a film that confronts head-on contemporary anxieties around technology, choice, security, and artificial intelligence. Joining Chris and Alex to separate out their NPCs from their AI engines is Mark Bould, Professor of Film and Literature at the University of West England, and author of a number of books on the aesthetics, politics and philosophy of science-fiction storytelling.
Read MoreThe emergence of Disney’s so-called ‘live-action’ remakes provides the focus of Episode 123, with the recent adaptation of Dumbo (Tim Burton, 2019) offering Chris and Alex plenty to get their teeth into thanks to the film’s particular brand of digital realism as well as director Tim Burton’s reflections on the very nature of spectacle itself. Special guest for this discussion is Chris McKenna, current Head of Creative Operations at the VFX studio Moving Picture Company, and Lead Technical Animator on Dumbo who has also worked on a host of Hollywood blockbusters and franchise films, including Terminator: Genisys (Alan Taylor, 2015), Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015), Transformers: The Last Knight (Michael Bay, 2017), Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019), Cats (Tom Hooper, 2019), and Disenchanted (Adam Shankman, 2022).
Read MoreNo sooner have Chris and Alex finished their examination of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Chris Columbus, 2002) than they make a swift return to Hogwarts for the third (and best?) in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfonso Cuarón, 2004). Joining them in this instalment to separate their Leaky Cauldrons from their Time-Turners is very special guest Rhianna Dhillon, Film/TV critic and Presenter who has featured on BBC Radio One, Front Row, Sky News, and Channel 5, and is currently the film critic for BBC6Music and Radio 5 Live as well as regularly appearing on Kermode and Mayo's Take.
Read MoreAlex fulfils something of a lifelong dream in Episode 109 in that he finally gets a chance to talk about the mythology and magic of Willow (Ron Howard, 1988) for the Fantasy/Animation podcast, albeit with Chris alongside him as relative novice to its world of prophecies, sorcery, and high fantasy storytelling.
Read MoreBased on Elizabeth Goudge’s 1992 children’s story Little White Horse, the 2008 fantasy The Secret of Moonacre (Gábor Csupó, 2008) is the subject of Episode 96 of the podcast, with Chris and Alex joined in their discussion of morality, class, and the power of the ego by the film’s screenwriter and Associate Producer Lucy Shuttleworth, who is also Senior Lecturer in the School of Film, Media and Communication at the University of Portsmouth.
Read MoreEpisode 73 reaches deep into the science, spaces and squids of Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016), the recent science-fiction feature starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, and based on Ted Chiang’s 1998 short story “Story of Your Life.” Joining Chris and Alex to discuss this atmospheric subversion of the sci-fi genre is Dr William Brown, Independent Scholar and Honorary Fellow at the University of Roehampton whose research expertise focuses on contemporary digital and new media, posthumanism, critical race theory, and film-philosophy.
Read MoreTwisting and travelling back and forth (and then back again) is Episode 71 of the podcast, which has Chris and Alex visit the fictional German town of Winden for Dark (Baran bo Odar & Jantje Friese, 2017-2020), Netflix’s hugely successful science-fiction series that tells the story of supernatural activity and conspiracy set against the backdrop of interconnected family trees and time-space conundrums. Joining them is the programme’s VFX Production Supervisor Nicolas Leu, whose film and television work beyond Dark as part of the RISE Visual Effects Studio also includes Game of Thrones (David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, 2011-2019), Marvel features Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Anthony Russo & Joe Russo, 2014) and Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson, 2016), Creed (Ryan Coogler, 2015), The Fate of the Furious (F. Gary Gray, 2017), American Renegades (Steven Quale, 2017), and Dumbo (Tom Burton, 2019).
Read MoreFollowing our take on Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015), the next instalment in the new Star Wars trilogy gets the Fantasy/Animation treatment for Episode 69, as Chris and Alex (and the Force) battle through Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017) to talk about its gender politics, questions of fandom and the film’s narrative of resistance, rebellion and struggle for power. Joining them for this celebration of contemporary Hollywood science-fiction is film critic and journalist Helen O’Hara, editor-at-large of Empire film magazine, and author of the book The Ultimate Superhero Movie Guide (2020) and the recent Women vs. Hollywood: The Fall And Rise Of Women In Film (2021).
Read MoreAre we dreaming, or are we awake? How do we choose which realities to believe in? What levels of fictionality count? Find out in Episode 65, which works its way through the dream logic and desires of Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010), a film that probes deep into our unconscious to revel in how dreams allow us to participate in a shared fantasy. Joining Chris and Alex as they kick back through the layers of Inception’s rhizomatic, mazelike structure is Todd McGowan, Professor of Film Studies in the Film and Television Studies Department at the University of Vermont, and author of a number of books on psychoanalytic film theory, film comedy and popular media, including The Real Gaze: Film Theory after Lacan (2007) and The Fictional Christopher Nolan (2012).
Read More2021 kicks off with a supersonic bang as Chris and Alex return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to explore the world of Kree Empires, alien shapeshifters, flerkens, and digital de-aging in American superhero feature Captain Marvel (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019), based on the celebrated Marvel Comics character. Joining them for a discussion of Hollywood special effects production and the labour of fantastical imagery are the film’s VFX Producer Christine Neumann and VFX Supervisor Dominik Zimmerle of German visual effects studio Trixter based in Munich, whose work also includes a number of Hollywood blockbusters and other MCU entries Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017), Thor: Ragnarok (Taika Waititi, 2017), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (James Gunn, 2017), Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018) and the upcoming Black Widow (Cate Shortland, 2021).
Read MoreEpisode 48 is a mid-1990s feast of action, water, and a drenched Kevin Costner, as Chris and Alex attempt to stay afloat for their visit to Waterworld (Kevin Reynolds, 1995), the ill-fated post-apocalyptic action adventure that has earned its place in U.S. film history seemingly for all the wrong reasons. The special guest for this instalment is Simon Brew - founder and editor at Film Stories magazine/podcast.
Read MoreFor Episode 46, Chris and Alex take a magic carpet ride through the pleasures and problems of the recent musical fantasy Aladdin (Guy Ritchie, 2019). Joining them for a discussion of exactly how (and indeed if) it adapts Disney’s highly successful 1992 cel-animated musical is the film’s VFX Editor Myles Robey, whose work also includes the Harry Potter franchise and feature films Skyfall, Muppets Most Wanted, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and the recent 1917.
Read MoreTrip a little light fantastic with Episode 35 of the Fantasy/Animation podcast, which marks Chris and Alex’ very own return to Cherry Tree Lane as they visit musical sequel Mary Poppins Returns (Rob Marshall, 2018). Joining them underneath the lovely London sky are Visual Effects Supervisor Christian Kaestner and Compositing Supervisor Frederikke Glick, who both worked as part of VFX studio Framestore’s contribution to the film.
Read MoreEpisode 27 has Chris and Alex swinging their way into a superhero-filled multiverse to discuss the narrative strategies and visual dynamism of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman, 2018), the highly-successful computer-animated feature film from Sony Pictures Animation. Caught in the fantasy/animation web for this latest instalment is Simran Hans, film critic and culture writer whose work has appeared in The Observer, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, Dazed, The Fader and Sight & Sound.
Read MoreVenturing to Middle-earth, and ably accompanied on this opening stage of their podcasting quest by Shaun Gunner, chairman of the Tolkien Society, Chris and Alex discuss the first of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adaptations, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Journeying from the Shire on the way to Mount Doom, episode 25 debates Tolkien’s ability to craft believable genealogies and histories in his high fantasy realms; cartography, map-making and the geographical consistency of fictional worlds; and the film’s relationship to post-millennial Hollywood franchises via technological developments in digital visual effects.
Read MoreIn episode 15, Chris and Alex log on to Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982), a watershed moment in the history of computer animation and one that taps into the early electronic spectacle of digital visual effects within a Hollywood context. Representing the wonder of - if not the cultural anxieties surrounding - the newness of computers and virtual reality (as well as the growing popularity of videogames), the film reframes cyberspace as a complex three-dimensional fantasy world.
Read MoreEpisode eight sees Chris and Alex discuss the eighteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018). As the first Marvel film to feature a predominantly black cast, Black Panther offers the opportunity to situate fantasy and animation both within the codes of the popular superhero genre, and alongside broader critical questions of black subjectivity in contemporary cinema.
Read MoreFor episode six, Chris and Alex are joined by Dr Martha Shearer (King’s College London), expert on the Hollywood musical and author of the recent monograph New York City and the Hollywood Musical: Dancing in the Streets (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Together, they discuss The Greatest Showman (Michael Gracey, 2017) in relation to its status as a biopic, as a fantasy of New York, and its marked use of computer graphics that bring this all-singing, all-dancing American musical to life.
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