MUSIC — current posts — Fantasy/Animation

The Hunchback of Notre Dame's "Hellfire"

Adapted from Victor Hugo’s gothic novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1996) tells the story of bellringer Quasimodo (Tom Hulce), born with a physical deformity that gives him a hunched back. The Disney animated film first depicts Quasimodo as a baby, when he was stolen from his Romani parents by Judge Claude Frollo (Tony Jay) during one of his nighttime raids on the streets of Paris. The judge reluctantly raises Quasimodo as his own child, but keeps him locked high in a belltower away from all outside contact, until one day, a Romani dancer named Esmeralda (voiced by Demi Moore) enters Quasimodo’s life.

SEQUENCE ANALYSISAlyson HendersonJune 30, 2023VILLAINY, DISNEY, ANIMATION, MUSIC, HOLLYWOOD, ADAPTATION, GOTHICComment

Review: Early Japanese Animation (Barbican Theatre)

It is a rare privilege to witness the origins of a globally popular artform like Japanese anime, and even rarer to experience it with live musical accompaniment and traditional Benshi narration.

EVENT REVIEWDevon DouiebJune 10, 2022JAPAN, ANIME, HISTORY, MUSIC, NATIONAL CINEMAComment

The Story of O.J (Jay-Z & Mark Romanek, 2017)

In this blog post I will explore the ways in which Jay Z’s 2017 music video ‘The story of O.J’ (2017) evokes the problematic politics of representation in animation, and the damaging effects that these representations have historically had on understanding of American black identity and culture.

SEQUENCE ANALYSISMeghna JohalApril 28, 2022RACE, AMERICA, MUSIC, POLITICAL, CARTOON Comment

The Man of Carton

The Man of Carton (2021) is a music video project that uses forms of fantasy and animation to provide a metaphor for, and representation of, a specific type of human behaviour related to psychopathy, exploring the relationships between emotion, empathy, and behaviour. Psychopathy’s most significant and dominant characteristics are traditionally understood as the reification of humans, a perceived lack of emotion, a need to corrupt or cause harm or pain to others, and a complex relationship to modes of innocence.

EDITORIALA. MartiApril 21, 2022CREATIVE PRACTICE, MUSIC, MUSIC VIDEO, PRODUCTIONComment

Review: Two Decades of Shrek - An Academic Symposium

The well-rehearsed statement that animation is nothing more than a medium ‘for children’ that is ‘not taken seriously’ enough is troubling on two counts. Firstly, it is clearly an assumption that is wide of the mark, as anyone working in the fields of film, media, or animation studies will tell you.

EVENT REVIEWChristopher HollidayNovember 26, 2021HOLLYWOOD, ANIMATION, DREAMWORKS ANIMATION, STYLE, PARODY, MUSIC, POPULAR CINEMAComment

What does fantasy sound like? Finding a new sound for the Fantasy-Animation podcast

Imagination is deeply intertwined with sensorial experience. One sensorial perception can prompt us to imagine a whole setting to go with it, and function as a catalyst for both simple and extremely complex cognitive processes (Berger, 2016). Sound can be a powerful tool to invite the audience to experience something that is not actually there, and because of this, it has been extensively used for world-building and character development within a range of animated and fantasy media.

EDITORIALFrancisca NaranjoNovember 12, 2021THEME, MUSIC, SOUND, SOUND DESIGN, CREATIVITY, CREATIVE PRACTICE Comments

Musical Parody and Nostalgia in Pinky and the Brain’s “Mouse of La Mancha”

Starting in the very late 1980s and early 1990s, moviegoers and television watchers in the United States saw a wave of high-quality animation. These included movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988), The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1989), and Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1991), as well as TV shows like The Simpsons (Matt Groening, 1990-), Rugrats (Arlene Klasky, Gábor Csupó, and Paul Germain, original run 1991-1994), The Tick (Ben Edlund, 1994-1997), and Batman: The Animated Series (Bruce Timm, Paul Dini & Mitch Brian, 1992-1995).

EDITORIALLisa ScogginOctober 29, 2021TELEVISION, MUSIC, SOUND, SOUND DESIGN, AMERICA, PARODYComment

Feels Like Summer: A Forecast of Animation’s Political and Documentary Function in Music Videos

Childish Gambino’s animated music video “Feels Like Summer” (Childish Gambino, 2018) places many animated representations of hip-hop artists, actors and well-known celebrities in a fictional Atlanta neighbourhood. We see celebrities engaging in various fun summer activities in this fantasy community, including Migos playing basketball, Will Smith washing his car, and J Cole dowsing the hip-hop duo of Slim Jxmmi and Swae Lee with a water hose for annoying him with water guns.

SEQUENCE ANALYSISHrithvikaOctober 22, 2021RACE, REPRESENTATION, MUSIC, AMERICA, CELEBRITYComment

Modernity and Tradition in Japan via Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name (2016)

Makoto Shinkai’s animated film Kimi No Na Wa, translated as Your Name, was a critical and commercial hit when it was released in 2016. The film depicts the strange and wondrous journey of two high school teenagers, city boy Taki in Tokyo and countryside girl Mitsuha in rural lakeside Itomori, who are inexplicably swapping bodies with each other.

EDITORIALZhui Ning ChangJuly 17, 2020TRADITION, JAPAN, MODERNITY, ANIME, MUSIC, SOUNDComment

Poetic Fantasies of Time and Space: From the Eyes of an Old Dog

In 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.

SEQUENCE ANALYSISFatemeh Hosseini-ShakibMarch 13, 2020STYLE, FRANCE, AESTHETICS, ANIMALS, MUSICAL, MUSICComment

‘Come Along with Me’: Adventure Time’s Invitation for Imaginative Complexity

In September 2018, after ten seasons following a human boy named Finn, his adoptive brother, a shape-shifting, talking dog named Jake (Fig.1), and their zany hijinks, quests, and adventures in the post-nuclear apocalyptic land of Ooo, cult-pop cartoon series Adventure Time (Pendleton Ward, 2010-2018) finally drew to a close. With themes of temporality, cyclicality, the apocalypse, and growing up, the narrative of Adventure Time seems to be in direct conversation with its time-constricted episodic television format, as well as the time-and-physics-bending medium of animation.

EDITORIALHanna GreenblottJune 28, 2019TELEVISION, NARRATIVE, MUSIC, TEMPORALITY, CARTOON NETWORKComment

Review: Dumbo (Tim Burton, 2019)

It was with a degree of trepidation that I went to see the “live-action” (in reality, animation/live-action hybrid) remake of Dumbo (Tim Burton, 2019). After all, the 1941 original, both narratively and in terms of its characters, is such that it cannot be easily translated into the hyper-real form of CG animation that is typically billed (inaccurately) as “live-action,” and simultaneously retain the whimsy and sweetness of the original.

FILM REVIEWAMY M. DAVISApril 12, 2019REMAKE, DISNEY, CGI, MUSICComment

The Fantastical Sonic Ambience: Disney Creating Worlds With Music

Imagine if films had no music, would the cinematic medium survive the way it has today? While music can be used as an aesthetic component that enhances the film experience, is also a storytelling device and a language that serves similar purposes to the verbal language in the film context, although it is rarely perceived as such. Despite this, many directors such as Alfred Hitchcock claimed that, in some instances the music works better than spoken words. Both music and imagery are equal - but different - agents of story, which together unite to create a phenomenal end product or a film being.

VIDEO ESSAYSADEEN ELYASSeptember 28, 2018FANTASY, ANIMATION, FAIRYTALE, MUSIC, SOUND, DISNEYComment