Posts tagged STOP-MOTION
Review: LAIKA: Frame x Frame (BFI Southbank)
Review: LAIKA: Frame x Frame (BFI Southbank)

The joy of stop-motion films lies in noticing the little details, those intricate features crafted in miniature and tucked into the background of a scene, adding a richness of texture to the (usually) fantasy world onscreen. It is these little details that are celebrated by the British Film Institute’s new exhibition LAIKA: Frame x Frame, opening on August 12th and running until October 1st at the BFI Southbank, as part of their Stop-Motion season. With over 700 artefacts on display, walking through the exhibit evokes the very best stop-motion viewing experience, each glance revealing another miniscule, yet exquisitely modelled feature.

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EVENT REVIEWMarkus BeekenSTOP-MOTION, CRAFT, LABOUR, HOLLYWOODComment
Review: Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot, 2024) - Fantasies in the Trash Heap
Review: Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot, 2024) - Fantasies in the Trash Heap

Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot, 2024), the stop-motion story of Grace (or Gracie) a young mollusc-obsessed girl growing up in 1970s Australia, is not a fantasy film. Unless, of course, it is entirely a fantasy. As Grace thinks back over her life, and how she found herself in the ‘present day,’ she offers her pet snail Sylvia (and by extension the audience) a tale as bizarre, incongruous, and carefully curated as the vast array of snail-related memorabilia she has collected over the years.

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FILM REVIEWMarkus BeekenSHORTS, CRAFT, CHILDHOOD, STOP-MOTION, FAMILY Comment
Review: Stella Hockenhull and Frances Pheasant-Kelly (eds.), Tim Burton’s Bodies: Gothic, Animated, Corporeal and Creaturely (2021)
Review: Stella Hockenhull and Frances Pheasant-Kelly (eds.), Tim Burton’s Bodies: Gothic, Animated, Corporeal and Creaturely (2021)

Tim Burton’s Bodies provides a distinctive body-centric approach to the analysis of Burton’s back-catalogue of animated and live-action films (see Fig. 1 for book cover). Tim Burton is an internationally celebrated filmmaker, animator and artist who has worked in the industry since the 1980s. His work is commercially and critically acclaimed and is mostly associated with the fantasy horror sub-genre, the macabre and spectral, animated corpses and grotesque outsider protagonists.

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BOOK REVIEWAnna BlagroveTIM BURTON, STOP-MOTION, GENDER, FEMINISM, ANIMATIONComment
Rider On The Storm: a stop-motion animated film
Rider On The Storm: a stop-motion animated film

In the ever-evolving world of animation, one independent studio dares to push the envelope. Located on a mountain top, surrounded by fields and forests Grateful Motion Studios’ unique setting provides the freedom and space to create exceptional works of art. The latest project from Harrison Killian, founder of Grateful Motion Studios, is an animated short film Rider On The Storm.

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EDITORIALHarrison KillianSTOP-MOTION, ANIMATIONComment
Review: Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro, 2022)
Review: Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro, 2022)

“Try your best, because that’s the best anyone can do,” says Sebastian J. Cricket, one of Pinocchio’s mentors in the film. This quote aptly encapsulates the moral of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) (Fig. 1).  An adaptation of the 1883 tale, Pinocchio transports the story to 1930s fascist Italy, firmly under the thumb of dictator Benito Mussolini.

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FILM REVIEWJackson WrightADAPTATION, STOP-MOTION, FANTASYComment
Political oppression and resistance in Jiří Trnka’s Ruka/The Hand (1965)
Political oppression and resistance in Jiří Trnka’s Ruka/The Hand (1965)

In 1965, the Czech draughtsman, book illustrator, puppet and toy designer, painter, animated film-maker and sculptor Jiří Trnka released his last short animation film Ruka/The Hand (1965). The silent 18 minute animation delivers a powerful and chilling dynamic; allegorically and metaphorically representing the influence of the communist political regime on the freedom of people through the framing of Trnka as the main character (a harlequin) and the accompanying image of the hand, which overpowers harlequin’s agency.

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SEQUENCE ANALYSISRenée-Marie PizzardiCZECH, POLITICAL, ALLEGORY, STOP-MOTION, SYMBOLISM, METAPHORComment
Review: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Dean Fleischer-Camp, 2021)
Review: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Dean Fleischer-Camp, 2021)

The extraordinary life of Marcel, a one-inch tall talking shell, first began with three Youtube shorts in the early 2010s. He took the Internet by a storm: Jenny Slate’s crackling timbre, coupled with Dean Fleischer-Camp’s comically awkward script, drew over 31 million views. Now, after more than a decade of slumber, the shorts finally resurfaced, though this time in feature form.

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FILM REVIEWGrace HanFANTASY, STOP-MOTION, GENDERComment
Review: Ray Harryhausen - Titan of Cinema
Review: Ray Harryhausen - Titan of Cinema

When it comes to the subject of the relationship between fantasy and animation, few bodies of work are as pertinent to the conversation as the special effects of Ray Harryhausen. The Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema exhibit was set to open in Edinburgh in the summer of 2020 at the National Galleries of Scotland.

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EVENT REVIEWToby JungiusCHARACTER, STOP-MOTION, ANIMATION, FANTASY, LABOUR, CREATIVE PRACTICE, MONSTERS, PUPPETRYComment
“Simply Meant to be?” Locating Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas at the Disney Theme Parks
“Simply Meant to be?” Locating Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas at the Disney Theme Parks

When Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993) first hit cinemas in 1993, its status as a Disney film was not immediately clear. The film was released via Disney’s Touchstone label and the Company was initially concerned about the “dark tone and potential negative reception of the film’ (Burger 2017, 110).

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EDITORIALRebecca WilliamsHALLOWEEN, DISNEY, TIM BURTON, STOP-MOTIONComment
Review: Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity from American Popular Culture (Nicole Brending, 2018)
Review: Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity from American Popular Culture (Nicole Brending, 2018)

Although Nicole Brending’s feature animated film originally toured festivals as early as January 2019, Dollhouse’s general release coming in the wake of the #FreeBritney campaign feels somewhat auspicious. The film rides a satirical wave over US celebrity-centric media, focusing on the abuse and exploitation of a child singer, told through the medium of plastic dolls and puppets.

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FILM REVIEWJed EdwardsSTOP-MOTION, PUPPETRY, SATIRE, CELEBRITY, CULTURE Comments
Fantasies of Hand-Made Television
Fantasies of Hand-Made Television

My first encounter with animated fantasy was, ironically, static in two dimensions. While I wasn’t born when Smallfilms’ The Pogles was originally broadcast by the BBC in 1965, I grew up watching repeats of Pogles’ Wood (Oliver Postgate,1965-1967) in the Watch with Mother slot in the early 1970s. Some kind person bought me the hard-cover annual from the original series (that was never repeated by the BBC because it was considered too frightening), and I can clearly remember the delighted horror with which I would timorously turn the page to see the villainous Witch of the story – the reason for the one-time-only broadcast.

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EDITORIALRachel MoseleySTOP-MOTION, HANDMADE, TELEVISION, BRITISH ANIMATIONComment
LAIKA and the Two Worlds: Deconstructing the Illusion of Stop-motion Animation
LAIKA and the Two Worlds: Deconstructing the Illusion of Stop-motion Animation

André Bazin’s “Ontology of the Photographic Image”  states that “the photograph as such and the object in itself share a common being, after the fashion of the fingerprint” (2005: 15). For Bazin, the fingerprint is symbolic of an imprint of the material object; the finger. Yet I cannot help but think of this symbol of filmmaking when I watch stop-motion animation – a process by which an animated world is created; often out of clay but also other materials, and brought to life by a series of photographs documenting miniscule movements to imitate life.

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EDITORIALIssy MacleodSTOP-MOTION, LABOUR, LAIKA, ANIMATION, FANTASY, AUTOMATIONComment
Fantastic German Fox: The National Identity of Reineke Fuchs (1937)
Fantastic German Fox: The National Identity of Reineke Fuchs (1937)

In the chapter “Fantastic French Fox: The National Identity of Le Roman de Renard as an Animated Film” for the edited collection Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (2018), I alluded to the three different versions of Le Roman de Renard – France’s first feature-length animated film – that existed over the course of its production history. These were the unfinished silent cut from 1930, the German edit in 1937, and finally the official French release of 1941. Out of these, the 1941 cut has become the one true version of the film.

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EDITORIALFrancis M. AgnoliSTOP-MOTION, HISTORY, NATIONAL CINEMA, FAIRYTALEComment
Stitching Sound - How to Create Your Own Monster Soundtrack
Stitching Sound - How to Create Your Own Monster Soundtrack

For the most part the evening air, schools and events will be peppered with the sounds of those going about their Halloween business. You might engage with one of the many cinematic offerings, or a spooky audio drama where the images evoke terror but more importantly the sound of classic horror.  In the year where we celebrate 200 years of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), written when she was 19 years old, you may even revisit or be introduced to classic horror via the sounds of the monster’s re-animation. The classics we refer to are usually remembered as a visual feast evoking terror but the sound of the film adaptations of Frankenstein also deserve their place in the homage to horror classics.

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CREATIVE REFLECTIONJo TylerSOUND, STOP-MOTION, SOUND DESIGN, FANTASY, ANIMATIONComment
The Subversive Horror of Fantasy and Animation
The Subversive Horror of Fantasy and Animation

Fantasy and animation, especially when combined, are often associated within popular discourse with children’s media. Referring predominantly to stop-motion animation, this post offers some thoughts on what the intrinsic association between children, fantasy and animation might mean in the context of another genre that has a more problematic relationship with child audiences: horror. Although horror is rarely considered a children’s genre, horror films addressed to children do exist, and across various forms of animation and live-action: the stop-motion animated Frankenweenie (Tim Burton, 2012), CG-animated Monster House (Gil Kenan, 2006), or the live-action Hocus Pocus (Kenny Ortega, 1993).

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EDITORIALCatherine LesterFANTASY, STOP-MOTION, HORROR, CHILDRENComment