The awarding of the Golden Lion to Todd Philips’ Joker (2019) at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 illustrates the overwhelming significance of comic book material and its characters for the contemporary Hollywood film industry. Telling the origin story of Joker, Batman’s nemesis, through the development of a violent, nihilistic character, Joker subverts the heroic expectations we might expect from a perceived comic book film.
Read MoreDespite working at the Walt Disney studios during the Golden Age of American animation, Ward Kimball is in some ways an odd choice of subject for a biography. The animator worked mostly behind the scenes, never directed a feature film, most of his work on famous films was cut, and he was never a household name in his own lifetime. On the other hand, he is as fascinating a subject as a biographer could hope for: a talented, creative craftsman, an eccentric who built a stretch of railroad and drove a steam train around his suburban backyard, and a skilled musician who played trombone in a long-running Dixieland jazz band.
Read MoreIf any readers are expecting a definition to be provided in this review as to what exactly the term aurelia refers to in Carol Mavor’s recent book, they are likely to be disappointed. Having now read Aurelia: Art and Literature Through the Mouth of the Fairy Tale (London: Reaktion Books, 2017), I am still unsure what it means. In fact, I get the sense that this might indeed be partially the point. Aurelia is not a book which aims to clarify and explain so much as it seeks to provoke and inspire. It is nominally a book about fairy tales.
Read MoreThe title of Lilian Munk Rösing’s recent publication Pixar with Lacan: The Hysteric’s Guide to Animation (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016) contains many of my favourite words. With. The. Hysteric. But seriously, the blending of Jacques Lacan’s structuralist re-visioning of psychoanalytic theory with the stable of Pixar animation is both a provocative and insightful one. Lacanian theory – known by many as either as source of theoretical intrigue or frustration – offers a dense, abstract, often impenetrable but always insightful and innovative way of making sense of the world or, rather, a way of envisioning how we as subjects make sense of the world.
Read MoreThe history, theory and reception of visual and special effects occupies a significant place in recent film and media scholarship (Pierson 2002; Turnock 2015). This interest in CGI animation is not surprising given the reliance within the production practices over the past forty years of Hollywood filmmaking. Picking up where previous debates have left off, Bob Rehak’s More Than Meets the Eye: Special Effects and the Fantastic Transmedia Franchise (New York: New York University Press, 2018) seeks to make an important contribution to our understanding of the impact digital CGI effects have had on both the way films are made, and the way they are received by audiences.
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