Posts in EDITORIAL
Representations of Femininity: International Perspectives - Liyana (Aaron and Amanda Kopp, 2017)
Representations of Femininity: International Perspectives - Liyana (Aaron and Amanda Kopp, 2017)

This blog post examines the 2017 film Liyana, directed by Aaron and Amanda Kopp, which describes itself as a “genre-defying documentary” that weaves together both animation and live-action scenes to tell the story of five orphaned children in the Kingdom of Eswatini. Yet its reflexive framing narrative focuses on the children’s creation of their own fictional tale featuring the fearless Liyana, who as part of the film’s story-within-a-story structure embarks on a treacherous quest to save her younger brothers.

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EDITORIALRosie ThomsonGENDER, IDENTITY, RACEComment
The Case for Progress: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Neuralink
The Case for Progress: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Neuralink

What if you could Google search in your mind? What if you could have a much better memory? Be effortlessly good at arithmetic, or able to suddenly display a talent for drawing or composing music ? What if you could communicate your thoughts and feelings in rich detail directly to another specific human being without speaking? What if you could become much smarter? What would you do?

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EDITORIALVictoria BaltagARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, ROBOTS, MACHINE, POSTHUMANISMComment
Divine Love in Animation: Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Divine Love in Animation: Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (2023)

Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (2023) is a beautiful bewilderment. It is the auteur’s innermost introspection on what it means to live, or exactly, how we live. Miyazaki is no stranger to isekai (異世界) world-building with his idiosyncratic imagination. His films combine a sense of the real-world situation with irreal events. The Boy and the Heron is no exception. However, as many reviews have already noted, this film is not an easy ride.

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EDITORIALBin Yee AngSTUDIO GHIBLI, FANTASY, JAPAN, ANIME, NATUREComment
Candyfloss Clouds and Vampires: Notes on Peter Pan (2003)
Candyfloss Clouds and Vampires: Notes on Peter Pan (2003)

Screen adaptations of the story about the boy who never grew up are plentiful, and there’s certainly a pleasure in plotting the variations and distinctions of each version. Contrary to the idea that a sequel, another retelling, or another iteration, suggests creative bankruptcy might it instead suggest new things of interest to find in each successive contribution to a particular franchise or filmography.

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EDITORIALJames ClarkePETER PAN, FANTASY, ADAPTATION, HOLLYWOODComment
Rethinking the Disney Renaissance
Rethinking the Disney Renaissance

The Disney Renaissance is one of those curious constructs that circulates among the Walt Disney Company and its fan communities, entering academic studies of Disney animation largely unchallenged. What, exactly, was the Disney Renaissance? One of the many pleasures and privileges of being an animation scholar is not only to think about Disney, but to think about how we think about Disney. And unsurprisingly, a lot of the critical discourse on Disney is shaped by Disney itself.

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EDITORIALPeter C. KunzeDISNEY, HISTORY, ANIMATION, CEL ANIMATION, HOLLYWOODComment
Radical Hybridity in Early Silent Film
Radical Hybridity in Early Silent Film

In seeking to describe the sensation of something irreducibly different about films made prior to the institutionalisation of cinema in 1915, film historian Andre Gaudreault refers to the “alien quality” of early cinema (2011, 36). In this blog post, I explore a technique found in the first decades of filmmaking which is certainly alien to commercial cinema today – the representation of an object, character or place in multiple styles within the same film e.g. live action, illustration, puppetry, stop motion.

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EDITORIALJudy HarrisSILENT CINEMA, EARLY FILM, FILM HISTORY, SPECIAL EFFECTS, HYBRIDITY Comment
Pride without Prejudice: Queer Animation of the 2020s
Pride without Prejudice: Queer Animation of the 2020s

Just a little over three and a half years into the 2020s, the seeds of the tropes and trends that future generations shall refer to as “2020's cinema” began to sprout. Be it the new string of self-aware whodunits following the success of Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019), such as Bodies, Bodies, Bodies and See How They Run (both released in 2022), or the slow resurgence of slashers with Scream sequels, X and Freaky (starting a new chapter for the genre after its self-referential era post-Scream and ‘neo-slasher’ period in the 2000’s), an exciting foundation for this new decade’s cinema has been set.

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EDITORIALAnant NambiarQUEER IDENTITY, GENDER, SEXUALITY, NETFLIX
The Dark Reflections of Villainy: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)
The Dark Reflections of Villainy: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

Puss in Boots the Last Wish (2022), directed by Joel Crawford, boasts a sizable cast of characters all racing for the Wishing Star’s one wish to grant. The eponymous protagonist, Puss in Boots, is met with resistance from three antagonistic forces: Goldilocks & The Three Bears, Jack Horner, and Death, each of which in turn plays the role of a villain, albeit in ways entirely unique to one another.

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EDITORIALAntonio CarreroDREAMWORKS ANIMATION, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM, CHARACTER, PERFORMANCE, VILLAINYComment
Star Wars: Visions (2021): “The Duel”
Star Wars: Visions (2021): “The Duel”

Star Wars: Visions is an anime anthology series created by Lucasfilm and originally released on September 22, 2021. As an anthology series, the episodes of Star Wars: Visions are all independent from each other, both in plot and production, however even with the narrative and stylistic variety in the series, one episode stands out from the rest visually: the first episode, “The Duel” directed by Takanobu Mizuno and produced by the animation studio Kamikaze Douga.

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EDITORIALCameron WalshSCIENCE-FICTION, STAR WARS, ANIMATION Comment
Revisiting A Monster in Paris (Bibo Bergeron, 2011)
Revisiting A Monster in Paris (Bibo Bergeron, 2011)

A Monster in Paris, a French CG animated feature film directed by Bibo Bergeron in 2011, pays tribute to both the popular tale of “Beauty and the Beast” and the musical “The Phantom of the Opera,” but perhaps not in the way that you would expect. One night, cabaret singer Lucille finds herself face-to-face with the "Monster of Paris," a giant singing flea brought into creation through the mishap of the movie's comedic relief, Raoul, who creates the enlarged insect by accident thanks to mixing magical potions at the Botanical Gardens. Lucille takes the monstrous creature into her care after finding herself no longer frightened but touched, having overheard a song he sings about his heartache in this strange world.

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EDITORIALAndrea RossiCOMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM, FRANCE, MUSICAL, PERFORMANCEComment
Analysis of (OO) (Seoro Oh, 2017)
Analysis of (OO) (Seoro Oh, 2017)

(OO) is an animated short film directed by Seoro Oh in 2017 that illustrates the unpleasant experiences that someone encounters when they catch a cold. The unnamed protagonist’s journey begins with a sneeze but escalates into a cold. He is shown struggling with breathing through his nostrils and, as a result, finds himself constantly blowing his nose into a tissue. Everyone, at some point in their lives, experiences the feeling of not being able to properly breathe through their nostrils, whether it is because of a cold, being sick in general, or allergies.

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EDITORIALJessica ShenMETAPHOR, REPRESENTATION, IDENTITY, STYLEComment
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
Strange Magic: Lucas, Leyendecker, and Parrish
Strange Magic: Lucas, Leyendecker, and Parrish

The focus of these notes is the animated feature film, Strange Magic (Gary Rydstrom, 2015). Based upon a screen story by George Lucas, who also executive produced the film, it was the last of a group of narratively unconnected animated features that he had an involvement with since the 1980s: namely, Twice Upon A Time (John Korty & Charles Swenson, 1983), The Land Before Time (Don Bluth, 1988), and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Dave Filoni, 2008).

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EDITORIALJames ClarkeSTAR WARS, FANTASY, MAGIC Comment
Hollywood’s Big Little Lie: why are digital VFX still cinema’s bad objects?
Hollywood’s Big Little Lie: why are digital VFX still cinema’s bad objects?

Judging from both the pre-release marketing materials and industry narratives that have surrounded both Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Christopher McQuarrie, 2023) and Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023), one would be forgiven for thinking that Hollywood still retains something of an aversion to digital VFX.

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EDITORIALChristopher HollidaySPECIAL EFFECTS, DIGITAL, COMPUTER ANIMATION, HOLLYWOOD, FRANCHISEComment
Mortality over Legacy: An Analysis of The Last Unicorn
Mortality over Legacy: An Analysis of The Last Unicorn

The Last Unicorn is a fantasy feature-length animation that studies the essence of mortality. Adapted from Peter S. Beagle’s 1968 novel of the same name, it was produced by Rankin and Bass Production in 1982 and animated by Topcraft, the Japanese studio that would later splinter to become Studio Ghibli. The film follows an immortal unicorn’s journey to find the rest of her species, and it is in representing her interactions and personal struggle with the other characters she encounters, The Last Unicorn weaves an allegorical tale about the nature of humanity and the framework of mortality. Throughout her journey, the unicorn encounters characters wrestling with their own brief lives, and after an eternity of eternal youth confronts what a mortal life truly means. As I will demonstrate in this blog post, The Last Unicorn is a complex piece of memento mori literature due to its profound and intricate explorations of death, immortality, and the essence of a transient life.

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EDITORIALHayden StaplesHOLLYWOOD, MAGIC, DEATH, MEMORY Comments
Exploitation or Empowerment: Sexual Violence in Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
Exploitation or Empowerment: Sexual Violence in Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

Notable for its erotic tone and psychedelic imagery, Eiichi Yamamoto’s adult art film Belladonna of Sadness (1973) interrogates the depiction of sexual violence against its female protagonist. The film, set against the backdrop of feudal France, follows newlywed villager Jeanne after being raped by the town’s baron on her wedding night.

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EDITORIALSerena RamseyAESTHETICS, STYLE, ADULT, SEXUALITYComment