animation

Death and fascism may not seem ideal subjects for a life-affirming fantasy animation for grownup children of all ages. Yet Mexican maestro Guillermo del Toro, whose 2017 masterpiece The Shape of Water won the Oscar for best picture, brings his monstrous cinematic skills to bear on Carlo Collodi’s timeless fable with miraculous results, turning it into a Mussolini-era parable about a “lethal form of control and paternity”. Using the tactility of stop-motion animation to lend splintery weight (both physical and emotional)…

Film: Strange WorldCast: Dennis Quaid, Lucy Liu, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle UnionDirectors: Don Hall, Qui NguyenRating: 2.5/5Runtime: 101 mins The world of animation has moved on but Disney has not. While it’s great that Disney has held on to its old-fashioned values template, it’s not quite marketable in this day and age of materialism trumping all else. This house of Walt Disney animation creation is inclusive (keeping in mind the contemporary) but lacks a sense of fun so even the…

It’s actually a little hard to believe it’s been just over three years since the second installment of the MCU Spider-Man franchise was released, Spider-Man: Far From Home. In fact, it’s almost been a whole year since the third film came out! The second film saw the arrival of Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio, or rather the nefarious Quentin Beck. As he steps into his newest film, the Disney animation Strange World, Gyllenhaal, feels like Spider-Man: Far From Home is already a memory. Whilst talking with the D23 Inside…

NASA has released a cinematic animation showing some of the key moments from the upcoming Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. Mars Sample Return: Bringing Mars Rock Samples Back to Earth The complex uncrewed mission involves multiple spacecraft and is set to launch in 2033. The MSR mission is linked to the current Perseverance rover mission, which is now exploring the martian surface and gathering samples for the MSR mission to pick up and transport to Earth. Perseverance made a spectacular landing on Mars in February…

In October 1943, shortly before her deportation, the young German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon gave Life? or Theatre? – her monumental series of semi-autobiographical artworks – to a friend for safekeeping. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, aged 26, newly married and pregnant, Salomon was murdered, and it would be many years before Life? or Theatre? would be exhibited.Subtitled Ein Singspiel, a play with music, the work comprises over 700 multilayered gouaches, many with transparent textual overlays. It is considered by some…

There’s an appealingly fecund quality to the hand-drawn animations produced by the Irish studio Cartoon Saloon (Wolfwalkers, Song of the Sea) – stories that unfold in verdant worlds that always seem about to burst into bud or leaf. The company’s latest production, My Father’s Dragon (directed by Nora Twomey, whose previous film was the Oscar-nominated The Breadwinner), is no exception. While it lacks the lilting top note of Celtic folklore of other Cartoon Saloon pictures, it shares an absolute faith in the untamed magic…

There’s a simple, earnest charm to Irish director Nora Twomey’s transporting adaptation of 1948 kids book My Father’s Dragon, a welcome diversion from the poppy smugness that wears down so many animated films today. For all of Netflix’s many faults, the streamer’s versatility within the cartoon sphere has helped to elevate and distinguish them from studio rivals, where too often each new offering feels one and the same, tonally and visually. It’s allowed for smaller, less brash, films to peek through, each with its own…

Knuckles takes a wrong left turn somewhere The next Sonic game isn’t too far off, and today Sega released a video setting the stage for the hedgehog’s new adventure. A new Sonic Frontiers Prologue video puts the spotlight on what Knuckles has been up to. This prologue, called Divergence, follows Knuckles as he tends to the Master Emerald on his island. We get a little lore refresher on his backstory, before seeing him make a new discovery on his island. Some old tech whirs to life after he tinkers with it, and he winds…

Image: Netflix Guillermo del Toro’s passion project for several decades Pinocchio is finally here, and it has received a perfect start on Rotten Tomatoes proving yet again Del Toro is a master of the medium. The second Pinocchio movie of the year has sprung into action and is taking an absolute dunk on Disney’s own version with its reception. Thanks to the magic of the public domain, Pinocchio is now ready for everyone to have their twist, and thankfully it’s del Toro’s turn at the puppet. The Netflix original…

There’s something about stop-motion animation as a medium – perhaps the choppy, lurching quality of the movement – which seems to lend itself to stories featuring reanimated corpses. From Ray Harryhausen’s skeleton armies to Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie and Corpse Bride, and now director Henry Selick’s Wendell & Wild: all feature the dead, in various stages of decomposition, cavorting around the living world, shedding limbs and claymation eyeballs as they go.In this case, the dead are raised thanks to the meddling of…