When I spoke with James Bird, Adriana Mather, and Anya Remizova on May 25, 2016, the first thing I wanted to know about was the clichés that they wanted to avoid in this story of young lovers facing their own mortality. It was only natural that we would discuss the spiritual influences that inspired Bird,… Read More »
BLING
BLING is a perfectly sweet, perfectly gentle, and perfectly harmless bit of fluffy animated comedy that will delight kids whose ages fall in the single digits. True love is the theme, and the difficulties of overcoming both self-doubt and Oscar (Jason Kravitz), an evil supervillain, provide the obstacles as mechanical whiz-kid Sam (Taylor Kitsch) spends… Read More »
Chris Butler & Sam Fell Bring PARANORMAN to Life
When I spoke with Chris Butler and Sam Fell on July 27, 2012, the conversation was a wonderful mix of whimsy and erudition as they explained the finer points of bringing a stop-motion film to life. The two shared the directing duties on PARANORMAN, working from a script by Butler. What I was most interested in,… Read More »
Ravi and Geeta Patel Want You to MEET THE PATELS
I have rarely laughed as much as I did when I spoke to Ravi and Geeta Patel on August 13, 2015, it was by Skype, with me in San Francisco, Geeta in North Carolina, and Ravi in Hollywood, but the rapport made it seem like we were all in the same room. The subject was… Read More »
Mark Burton and Richard Starzak — Puns, Cryptomnesia, and Dreams with SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE
Aardman Animation. For hordes of animation fans, you don’t need to say anything else about a film in order to get them to pack a theater. I, however, will add that the latest from that storied studio, the SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE, is everything that not just a great Aardman film should be, but also… Read More »
SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE
Four decades ago there was a Monty Python sketch in which Graham Chapman and Terry Jones discussed why a flock of off-screen sheep were hopping about on their back legs, attempting (badly) to fly, and doing something in trees that appeared to be nesting. It appeared that they had been led to believe that they… Read More »
A MINIONS of Diminishing Returns
It must have seemed like such a good idea. Take the loveable little yellow minions from DESPICABLE ME and star them in their own movie. Certainly the eponymous MINIONS features much of what made them so irresistible. There’s that burbling mélange of human and Minion-esque language. The ebullient nature, the eagerness to please, and that… Read More »
HOME is Where the Heart is
Based on the novel “The True Meaning of Smekday” by Adam Rex, HOME is a sweet animated film that is equal parts cheery and poignant. Aimed more at kids than at adults, it takes the time-honored themes of friendship, family, and keeping promises and wraps them in an imaginative new package as shiny and inviting… Read More »
Tiffany Ward & Rob Minkoff Bring MR PEABODY & SHERMAN to Glorious Life
You better be careful when you take on a classic. For more than one generation, Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman were must-see television, as were the other denizens of the Jay Ward animation world, which includes Rocky, Bullwinkle, and Dudley Do-Right. Other adaptations for the big screen of Ward’s work have not been successful,… Read More »
WALL-E
If you remember what the folks at PIXAR did with a pair of Luxo lamps and a bouncing ball 20 or so years ago, then you know that these animation wizards have an uncanny ability to imbue to the most unlikely of inanimate objects with a complex emotional life. Two decades on, a state-of-the art… Read More »