animation
A Town Called PanicWednesday, 06 October 2010![]() A Town Called Panic is a charming, giddily funny dose of anarchy from a pair of benign Belgian punks, Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar. The first stop-motion animation to be selected at Cannes, it stars Horse, Cowboy and Indian, dysfunctional... Read more... |
From the Ballets Russes, BFIFriday, 01 October 2010![]() This is the second part of a series that has passed a little too quietly for comfort. The V&A’s grand Diaghilev show has received all the noise in the press – “fabulous”, “sumptuous”, “exotic” – in fact, all the words that were used at the time... Read more... |
The Body in Women’s Art Now: Flux, Rollo Contemporary ArtTuesday, 21 September 2010![]() Flux, the second in a trio of exhibitions devoted to images of women by women, immediately grabs your attention with an in-your-face animation by Swedish artist Natalie Djurberg. Clay figures enact grotesque stories that have a nasty, fairytale edge... Read more... |
Toy Story 3Sunday, 18 July 2010![]() The 15 years since Disney released the original Toy Story have seen a seismic boom in the computer animation field that has prompted every major movie studio to get in on the act. Relatively cheap to make, accessible to both adults and children and... Read more... |
Shrek Forever AfterThursday, 01 July 2010![]() The fourth and last instalment of the ogre animation is a belter. It’s in 3D for one thing and, while the pop culture and film references have been toned down in Josh Klausner and Darren Lemke’s screenplay (directed by Mike Mitchell), in order to... Read more... |
The Illusionist, EIFF Opening Gala, EdinburghThursday, 17 June 2010![]() Last night’s gala opening of the 64th Edinburgh International Film Festival may have been touched by living history – in particular the presence of Sean Connery (pictured below, arriving at last night's screening), who strode up the red carpet... Read more... |
EIFF LaunchTuesday, 01 June 2010![]() I’m just back – goodie bag gripped greedily in paw – from this morning’s launch of the 64th Edinburgh International Film Festival, which runs in the Scottish capital from 16-27 June. Since breaking away from the over-crowded August festival calendar... Read more... |
Family Guy Weekend, BBC ThreeMonday, 10 May 2010![]() Something decidedly odd happened at one of last year’s Proms. In a night celebrating the golden age of the MGM musicals, one of the performers was Seth MacFarlane. The average Prommer wouldn’t have known MacFarlane from a poached egg. And even his... Read more... |
Clash of the TitansThursday, 01 April 2010![]() Just don’t say you weren’t warned. "The Legend Begins in 3D," it says outside the Odeon Leicester Square in rather boisterous capitals. This is very much episode one of what the moneybags on Mount Olympus, working out of their Hollywood 91601... Read more... |
How to Train Your DragonMonday, 29 March 2010![]() We are in the far north of somewhere, where it's freezing and rains for most of the year. As if the weather isn’t bad enough, the sturdy Viking community of the island of Berk have a pest problem - not mice or foxes, but feral dragons who, with... Read more... |
PonyoSaturday, 06 February 2010![]() Tucked away down a sleepy residential back alley in suburban Tokyo, Studio Ghibli, the headquarters of Hayao Miyazaki, is designed - by the visionary animator himself - in the shape of a boat. When I visited it five years ago, just before the... Read more... |
AvatarSunday, 20 December 2009![]() There is a sequence in which a monstrous tree of otherworldly dimensions, its boughs as sturdy as oaks, its twigs as vigorous as saplings, crashes spectacularly to earth in roaring, creaking, shattering, time-expanding slo-mo. In a film that’s full... Read more... |
