I’m going to say straight off: I thoroughly enjoyed Cruella (Craig Gillespie, 2021) and I think you will, too. A prequel to One-Hundred-and-One Dalmatians (Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske & Wolfgang Reitherman, 1961) and a re-framing (sort of; more on that shortly) of the beloved Disney villain Cruella deVil, Cruella purportedly tells the story of how the great enemy of dalmatians everywhere became a crazed villain.
Read MoreIn Sylvain Chomet’s first animated feature film, The Triplets of Belleville (2003) there is a key scene in which the main event simply concerns the barking of a dog out of the window at a passing train. This scene, which is going to be explored here in this sequence analysis, connects the childhood of Champion, the film’s main character, to the present time (of the film’s narrative, which takes place around 1950s), when we meet him as a young cycling athlete training for Tour du France, accompanied by his ever present, loving and supportive grandmother Madame Souza.
Read More2019 was a bad year for cats: deaths of notable cats and cat owners, political defeat, and finally, worst of all, Cats (Tom Hooper, 2019) (Fig. 1). When the first Cats trailer was released last summer, it was soon subject to hyperbolic displays of disgust across social media. Reviews of the eventual film were no better. And all the criticisms are true.
Read MoreAnimated fantasy film Watership Down (Martin Rosen,1978) represents something of a critical cultural conundrum that underwrites its complex status as a children’s feature. On the one hand, this hand-drawn fable - that follows a cross-countryside journey made by a colony of rabbits - represents the best of British animation, with an impressive voice cast (featuring John Hurt, Richard Briers, Simon Cadell and Nigel Hawthorne) giving life to a beautifully evocative cel-animated style that fully demonstrates the pre-digital artistry of paint-and-ink animation production. On the other hand lies its well-established identity as an emotionally traumatic experience, one that trades in themes of political uprising, Fascism and grief, all the while being scored to graphic images of blood, gore, and death.
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