“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”!
In this latest episode, Chris and Alex sit down with the Disney+ series WandaVision (Jac Schaeffer, 2021), a spectacular fantasy of U.S. television history that continues the citational practices and narrative complexities of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, yet does so by working through the industrial, cultural and stylistic lexicon of the sitcom.
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 MoreChris and Alex continue their discussions of Studio Ghibli for Episode 72 with a look at animated war feature Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988), a film that was initially released as a double bill with partner My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988). Telling the story of teenage boy Seita and his younger sister Setsuko who, after fleeing the city of Kobe, must navigate the public horrors and personal traumas of World War II, Grave of the Fireflies offers a graphic and emotional portrait of conflict and society through the isolation and struggle experienced by the siblings. Joining the podcast this week to discuss the film’s potent political message is Alex Dudok de Wit, Associate Editor at Cartoon Brew, freelance journalist (including work for the BFI/Sight and Sound) and author of the upcoming BFI Film Classic on Grave of the Fireflies (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).
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 MoreChris and Alex take to the basketball court for a sports-themed instalment of the podcast by looking at Space Jam (Joe Pytka, 1996), the part-animated, part-Michael Jordan sports comedy that has lots to say about the spectacle of stylistic hybridity, animation’s longstanding relationship to sport, and nostalgia via its many callbacks to Golden Age Hollywood cartooning all through the lens of NBA basketball. Joining them for Episode 70 is Professor Paul Wells, who is Director of the Animation Academy at Loughborough University, as well as being an internationally established scholar, screenwriter and director, working across and within both academia and industry contexts.
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 MoreEpisode 68 marks Chris and Alex’s first look at popular animation studio DreamWorks, turning to the California-based company’s early cycle of cel-animated cartoons to examine The Prince of Egypt (Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner & Simon Wells, 1998). Joining them to separate the historical realism from the packaged Westernised fantasy is biblical scholar and broadcaster Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter, whose research encompasses ancient Israelite and Judahite religions, and portrayals of the religious past in the Hebrew Bible.
Read MoreChris and Alex return to the feature films of the Bristol-based Aardman Animations studio for Episode 67, travelling from the world of Kensington propriety ‘up top’ to the underground chaos of Ratropolis ‘down below’ for Flushed Away (David Bowers & Sam Fell, 2006), which tells the story of the trials and tribulations of high society rat Roddy St. James who is inadvertently flushed down into the sewers of London. Mirroring this narrative collision of worlds, Flushed Away also bears the industrial weight of such duality, being part of a 12-year, four-film $250million agreement between Aardman and Hollywood studio DreamWorks Animation to produce a series of animated features.
Read MoreEpisode 66 is a real toe-tapper, as Chris and Alex dance to the beat of George Miller’s 2006 computer-animated musical feature Happy Feet (George Miller, 2006), produced by U.S. studio Village Roadshow Pictures in collaboration with Australian animation and VFX studio Animal Logic. Joining them to discuss this digital tale of all-singing all-dancing penguins is Dr Hannah Hamad, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture, having previously been Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London, and Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of East Anglia.
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 MoreThe Christmas spirit is finally in the air, with Chris and Alex using Episode 63 of the podcast as their annual opportunity to discuss all things seasonal - this time examining the fantasy of Christmas advertising, and the repeated role played by animation in the construction of festive commercials, television ads and brand promotions. They are joined in their Yuletide deliberations by Dr Malcolm Cook, Associate Professor in Film Studies (University of Southampton), whose numerous publications include the monograph Early British Animation: From Page and Stage to Cinema Screens (2018) and the co-edited collection (with Professor Kirsten Moana Thompson) Animation and Advertising (2019).
Read MoreThe names Bond…James Bond in Episodes 61 and 62, as Chris and Alex tackle the official Eon James Bond 007 film series by casting their eyes over a longstanding staple of the franchise - the celebrated credits sequences. Beginning with Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962) and culminating in Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015), listen as they place in rank order their ‘Top 24’ title sequences, judging their audiovisual spectacle, structural elements and broader connections to traditions in animated fantasy (Part 1 focuses on Bond films #24 to #13, while Part 2 counts down from #12 to their #1 ranked 007 title sequence). Joining them for this extended double-header is Dr Ed Lamberti, an independent researcher in Film Studies who has been a teaching assistant at King's College London, a screenwriting mentor at the London Film School, and who is currently Policy Manager at the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).
Read MoreHeffalumps and Woozles take centre stage for Episode 60 of the podcast, as Chris and Alex take a trip deep into Hundred Acre Wood to confront Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018) (not to be confused with the earlier A.A. Milne biography Goodbye Christopher Robin [Simon Curtis, 2017]…), and its pleasures of nostalgia.
Read MoreEpisode 59 heralds Chris and Alex’s first foray into silent film comedy via the work of performer Buster Keaton, looking at his feature Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924) that celebrates the dreams and psychology of a movie theatre projectionist. Joining them as the lights go down is Peter Adamson, Professor of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Münich and King's College London, and host of the successful History of Philosophy without any gaps podcast that examines the “ideas, lives and historical context” of both major philosophers and more lesser-known figures.
Read MoreThe anarchy and artistry of British television animation provides the springboard for Episode 58 of the Fantasy/Animation podcast, which welcomes London-based media artist, animator and curator Professor Birgitta Hosea (who is also the Director of the Animation Research Centre at the University for the Creative Arts) to talk about Roobarb (Grange Calveley, 1974) directed by English animator Bob Godfrey.
Read MorePerformer, composer, silent film accompanist and television presenter Neil Brand is the special guest joining Chris and Alex for Episode 57 of the podcast, which celebrates the musical beats and Mariachi owls of Rango (Gore Verbinski, 2011). Listen as they discuss how this curious 2011 computer-animated film revels in the power of telling tales alongside its broader relationship to folk ballads; Rango’s cinephilic evocation of canonical Hollywood Westerns and U.S. cinema history; themes of ambition, isolation, and aimlessness, and how this ties into a film whose existentialist narrative is predicated on the question of inevitability.
Read MoreThe latest Listeners’ Choice episode sees Chris and Alex turn to Netflix and the much-maligned yet curiously provocative feature film Bright (David Ayer, 2017), whose narrative of racism, police corruption and latent magical forces is set against the backdrop of an alternate fantasy vision of contemporary Los Angeles. With a budget of $90 million, Ayer’s social discourse via fantasy (the script was written by Max Landis) was critically-derided despite being Netflix’s most downloaded feature within its first week of release.
Read MoreChris and Alex dust off their knowledge of early film history for Episode 55 as they examine Martin Scorsese’s adventure Hugo (2011), a playful mystery set in 1930s Paris that takes audiences through the special effects and spectacular stagecraft of pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès. Joining Chris and Alex amid the architecture of the Gare Montparnasse is Eric Smoodin, Professor of American Studies and Cinema and Technocultural Studies at the University of California, who has published monographs and edited collections on Walt Disney, Frank Capra and Hollywood film history, as well as a new book Paris in the Dark: Going to the Movies in the City of Light, 1930–1950 (Duke University Press, 2020) that sketches a picture of French film culture of the 1930s and 1940s.
Read MoreIn an alternate 1985, Chris and Alex sit down to watch the recent comic book feature film Watchmen (Zach Snyder, 2009), a neo-noir/superhero blockbuster that adapts the popular DC Comics series for the big screen. They are joined in this Cold War-era tale of Soviet Union-United States relations by Dr Drew Morton, Associate Professor of Mass Communication at Texas A&M University, Texarkana, and author of Panel to the Screen: Style, American Film, and Comic Books During the Blockbuster Era (University Press of Mississippi, 2016), as well as a number of articles and chapters on motion comics, media convergence and comic book adaptation.
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