The 9th Century tale of a young boy whose destiny is to complete the legendary Book of Kells, the Cartoon Saloon film Brendan and the Secret of Kells looks to be a marvelous display of creativity in animation, both in terms of compelling visuals and articulate storytelling.
Nominated for Oscar.Read More »
Plot / Synopsis
The gloriously larger-than-life Czech fantasy Vynalez Zkaky (Weapons of Destruction) was based on a novel by Jules Verne. Set during the 19th century Industrial Revolution, the film concerns the efforts of the villainous Count Artigas (Miloslav Holub) to conquer the world with the aid of futuristic inventions created by kidnapped scientist Professor Thomas (Arnost Navratil). Having fallen in love with the professor’s virtuous, resourceful daughter Jeanne (Jana Zatloukalova), stalwart hero Simon (Lubor Tokos) does his best to sabotage Artigas’ schemes. Props essential to the action include a fished-shaped submarine, bicycle-style undersea shuttlecraft, and an impossibly huge cannon, secreted on a volcanic island. Curiously, when Vynalez Zkaky was unveiled to the world at the 1958 Brussels Film Festival, reviewers downplayed its most striking visual aspect: throughout the film, the art direction and special effects are brilliantly rendered in the style of 19th century engravings and woodcuts. In 1961, an English-dubbed version of Vynalez Zkaky, with character names changed and a few minutes’ footage excised, was released in the US as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne. ~ Hal Erickson, AllRoviRead More »
Crispin wrote:
Adam tells us a story about playing with an older cousin, who had cerebral palsy and smells of licorice.Read More »
MARY AND MAX is the claymation feature film from Adam Elliot who won an Oscar for his short film Harvey Krumpet.
It was invited to open the Sundance Film Festival this year, an auspicious start for this very individual film which covers 20 years of a pen-pal friendship between Mary Daisy Dinkle – voiced by BETHANY WHITMORE as a child and TONI COLLETTE as an adult and Max, (PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN) a large sized New Yorker who has problems relating to people. This odd couple friendship has loneliness at its core.Read More »
It began as a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between two of the greatest icons of the fantasy genre: Controversial animator Ralph Bakshi (director of FRITZ THE CAT, WIZARDS and the original THE LORD OF THE RINGS) and legendary illustrator Frank Frazetta (creator of the iconic CONAN THE BARBARIAN, VAMPIRELLA and Edgar Rice Burroughs book covers). It became – and remains – one of the most startling animation epics of all time. Now experience a world unlike any ever seen, where savage warriors, horrific monsters and luscious maidens battle for the soul of a civilization in a time of good and evil, pleasure and pain.Read More »
Description: Cohl made “Fantasmagorie” from February to May or June 1908. This is considered the first fully animated film ever made. It was made up of 700 drawings, each of which was double-exposed, leading to a running time of almost two minutes. Despite the short running time, the piece was packed with material devised in a “stream of consciousness” style. It borrowed from Blackton in using a “chalk-line effect” (filming black lines on white paper, then reversing the negative to make it look like white chalk on a black chalkboard), having the main character drawn by the artist’s hand on camera, and the main characters of a clown and a gentleman (this taken from Blackton’s “Humorous Phases of Funny Faces”). The film, in all of its wild transformations, is a direct tribute to the by-then forgotten Incoherent movement. The title is a reference to the “fantasmograph”, a mid-Nineteenth Century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images that floated across the walls.Read More »
Two American secret agents – Frank and Wendy – are sent to the world’s hotbed of danger, known as Estonia. Estonia is a silly place, perhaps even sillier than the agents themselves. Frank and Wendy, for whom saving the world is their daily work, achieve both mental and manual feats with the greatest of ease. It appears that nothing can prevent their ultimate victory, but go figure. The axis of evil does not wither and attacks the super-agents from where they can least expect it…Read More »
Description: Stop-motion animated version of the classic TinTin story. Tintin is informed by the Thompsons of a case involving the ramblings of a drunken man, later killed, found with a scrap of paper from what appears to be a tin of crab-meat with the word Karaboudjan scrawled on it. His subsequent investigation and the kidnapping of a Japanese man interested in talking to him leads Tintin to a ship also called the Karaboudjan, where he is abducted by a syndicate of criminals who have been hiding opium in the crab tins. Escaping from his locked room, Tintin encounters Captain Haddock, an alcoholic who is manipulated by his first mate, Allan, and is unaware of his crew’s criminal activities. Escaping the ship in a lifeboat in an attempt to reach Spain, they are attacked by a seaplane. They hijack the plane and tie up the pilots, but a storm and Haddock’s drunken behaviour causes them to crash-land in the Sahara.Read More »
Quote:
Virtually unknown nowadays, even in its home country of Russia, The Cat Who Walked by Herself is an endearing children’s film directed by Ideya Garanina and produced at the Soyuzmultfilm studio. It is based upon Rudyard Kipling’s short story “The Cat that Walked by Himself,” which was first published in 1902. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the film uses a variety of animation techniques, including puppetry, stop motion and traditional animation, blending it all into an interesting tale of the origin of the civilised human and his millenia-long partnership with several species of domesticated animal. The story is narrated by a seemingly omniscient cat, who reminds a young child of an agreement struck long ago by the Cat and the Woman. The voice of the feline (whom, having absolutely no knowledge of Russian, I have been unable to identify) is a brilliant narrator, her voice at once carrying a sense of quiet arrogance, pride, dignity and everlasting knowledge.Read More »