Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, 2021) is an animated documentary that explores the nature of memory and trauma by taking the viewer on an emotional journey. It uses animation to present the memories of Amin Nawabi, an Afghan refugee credited under a pseudonym. Encouraged by his anonymity, he tells director Jonas Poher Rasmussen his story (Grobar 2021).
Read MoreMany videogame players awaited the release of Netflix Animation’s The Cuphead Show! (Dave Wasson, 2022). The show is based on the videogame Cuphead (Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, 2017), which was noted for its unique aesthetics within the gaming world. The game’s innovation lay in its inspiration in early 20th century American animation.
Read MoreThe world that children occupy is full of secrets, and is a world not shared with adults. It is one concerned primarily with fantasy and imagination. Every child has a right to occupy that secret world; it’s part of childhood development and is an important locator of child identity as a ‘non-adult’. As Chris Jenks tells us, “the child is familiar to us and yet strange, he or she inhabits our world and yet seems to answer to another” (2020, 3). The child exists in its own distinct world and separation and agency are at the core of that world.
Read MoreNineteen Eighty-Four (1949) as a novel has taken on a life divorced from its creator. In political parlance, the book—or terms from it—have been used to herald apocalyptic prophecies, no matter the political affiliation. For example, recently in the United States, Senator Josh Hawley, R-MO, used the term “Orwellian” to describe a publishing house’s cancellation of a book contract.
Read MoreUnder the sea, monsters lurk. Despite The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1989)’s Sebastian singing about under the sea being better, audiences have long held a fear of the ocean and what lies beneath. It is an understandable fear, linked to the fear of the unknown; after all, it is estimated that 80% of our oceans remain unexplored.
Read MoreThe climactic sequence of The Thief and the Cobbler/The Princess and the Cobbler/Arabian Knight (unfinished, 1993, 1995, Richard Williams) or the ‘War Machine sequence’ - as it is commonly found on YouTube - is a long and intricate piece of experimental animation.
Read MoreDon Corrigan’s light-hearted Nuts About Squirrels: The Rodents that Conquered Popular Culture (McFarland, 2019) makes the case for a squirrel as the dominant rodent of American popular culture.
Read MoreMy name is Michael Tanzillo, and I’ve worked for years in the animation industry at top studios like Blue Sky Studios, and on computer-animated feature films such as Ice Age (Chris Wedge, 2002), Rio (Carlos Saldanha, 2011), and Ferdinand (Carlos Saldanha, 2017).
Read MoreIn the first part of this blog post, I looked at how Petite Maman evokes the fantastic in its movement between what Tzvetan Todorov calls the uncanny and the marvellous, through the tale of a young girl (Nelly) meeting her own mother (Marion) at the same age. In this second part, I will look in further detail at the magical uncertainty, ambiguity and a wavering between different cinematic modes that Sciamma’s film presents.
Read MoreThe Wheel of Time (Rafe Judkins, 2021) is a highly anticipated Amazon Prime TV series based on Robert Jordan’s book series under the same title. The first season comprises eight episodes and recounts the events from The Eye of the World (1990), the first volume of Jordan’s epic saga, introducing its main characters in a familiar Tolkienian fashion.
Read MoreBeing Colombian is an act of faith. This is how Jorge Luis Borges aptly puts it in his short story ‘Ulrikke,’ published in a 1975 collection. And although I have felt that my identity as a Colombian has always been somewhat unstable or in doubt for a variety of reasons (like growing up in an increasingly globalized world), it was never as affirmed as it was when I went to the cinema to see Disney’s recent computer-animated feature Encanto (Byron Howard & Jared Bush, 2021) in the UK.
Read MoreTo describe Céline Sciamma’s new film, Petite Maman (2021) (Fig. 1) as “Alain Resnais does Bridge to Terabithia” would surely be to do a disservice to all involved, and the director’s own references are – more appropriately – Alice Guy-Blaché, Germaine Dulac and Miyazaki Hayao (especially My Neighbor Totoro [1988] and Spirited Away [2002]).
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreThis blog post follows on from an earlier sequence analysis of Disney’s Moana (Ron Clements & John Musker 2016) in which I explored the redemption of Te Kā by the opening of an anthropomorphised ocean. In this second post, I will analyse the moments immediately following the opening of the ocean, which sees Moana and Te Kā to come face to face.
Read MoreImagination 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.
Read MoreSince its first full-length episode, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” (1989) (Fig. 1), The Simpsons (1989-) has been nominated for a plethora of awards. It is the first animated series to win an esteemed Peabody Award (1997), which was created to honour powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in media, and it has won 34 Emmy Awards across all areas of its production, which is an impressive result for an animated TV series.
Read MoreStarting 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).
Read MoreChildish 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.
Read MorePixar’s much-delayed computer-animated fantasy film, Soul (Pete Docter, 2020), was originally scheduled for theatrical release in the U.S. on June 19, 2020, yet was finally released on the Disney+ platform almost a year ago in December 2020. The story follows the life of a middle school music teacher named Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) who falls down a manhole on the streets of New York City into another world, a world in which his soul is separated from his body.
Read MoreSince its DVD release, Moana (Ron Clements & John Musker 2016) has carved a home in my heart. When I’m not re-watching it captivated and in love with its artistry, I’ll watch it thinking about the voyage Disney takes into Polynesian histories and the representation of culture which, although efforts were made through the formation of the Oceanic Story Trust to depict authentic Polynesian cultures, often falls short – as one indigenous rights advocate puts: “having brown advisers doesn’t make it a brown story” (Ngata, 2016).
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