COLOUR — current posts — Fantasy/Animation

An Analysis of George Dunning’s Yellow Submarine

Based on the music of the British pop band The Beatles, Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968) is a film that perhaps best resembles the tradition of the jukebox musical. It tells the story of Pepperland, a music-loving utopia falling under siege by the music-hating Blue Meanies. By command of the Mayor, Captain Fred boards the titular yellow submarine to seek help. He discovers The Beatles and urges their help given their musical talents and their resemblance to Pepperland’s favourite musical group: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles join Old Fred (Fig. 1) on a journey back to Pepperland, and rally Pepperland’s citizens to rebel against the Blue Meanies. Harnessing the groovy power of psychedelic pop, they sing their way to freedom.

EDITORIALKirstin Stevens SchmidtJuly 19, 2024MUSICAL, SURREALISM, BRITISH ANIMATION, STYLE, AESTHETICS, COLOURComment

Colour and Motion: Some Notes on Spielberg’s Fantasy and Science Fiction Films and the Visual Style of Vincente Minnelli

As a student, a long time ago, at the University of Warwick, I took a seat in the library one day, the photocopiers nearby chugging and churning away, and opened the new issue (May-June 1992) of Film Comment. As a lifelong devotee (I was only 19) of Steven Spielberg’s movies you can perhaps imagine my astonishment when I turned a page to find an essay entitled “The Panning of Steven Spielberg (Part One),” written by Henry Sheehan. To this day, Sheehan’s piece remains a touchstone in writing about Spielberg’s filmmaking. Limited to the space of a magazine page, Sheehan’s eventual two-part essay made such sense, and it was the first time that I’d really read something about Spielberg’s films that looked so consistently at the film style being deployed across his body of work.

EDITORIALJames ClarkeMarch 15, 2024MUSICAL, STYLE, COLOUR, HOLLYWOODComment