Animation

Ponyo (Gake No Ue No Ponyo)

28 Jan 2010

(U) 101min An animated feature about a five-year-old boy who falls for a goldfish princess may not sound like a hot ticket, but the delightful content of Ponyo will be no surprise to anyone already in thrall to the Studio Ghibli brand. After Hayao…

Astro Boy

28 Jan 2010

(PG) 93min A popular manga in Japan since 1952, and a cult TV show in the US since the early 1980s, Astro Boy makes a bid for worldwide domination in this flashy but flatly realised animation from director David Flushed Away Bowers. Freddie…

Oliver Postgate - Seeing Things: A Memoir

4 Dec 2009

(Canongate) When Charlie Brooker delivered a heartfelt five-minute tribute to Oliver Postgate in his Screenwipe show last year, his trademark acid-tongued sarcasm went right out the window. Instead, Mr Cynical looked like he might tear up as he…

Behind the scenes of The Fantastic Mr Fox

20 Oct 2009

Andy Gent, chief animator on Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr Fox, reveals the cinematic inspiration behind the project and the difficulties inherent in making a stop-animation film. ‘As well as being a huge fan of Roald Dahl, Wes loves old films like…

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Two-dimensional dystopian animation

16 Oct 2009

With visionary heavyweights Tim Burton and Nightwatch / Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov amongst the producers, Shane Acker’s feature-length animation, based on his own Oscar-nominated short, promises revolutionary animation, but never delivers the…

Up

More Pixar genius

1 Oct 2009

You almost tire of saying it but Pixar have created another masterpiece with Up. As uplifting as it is heartbreaking, Pete Docter and Bob Peterson’s film is a magical adventure that takes an odd couple relationship and turns it into one of the most…

Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter

30 Apr 2009

ANIMATION/ADVENTURE Tales of the Black Freighter, or ‘the pirate story’ as it’s also known, is the comic-within-the-comic that threads through the narrative of the Watchmen graphic novel. Excised from the film adaptation, it appears here as a…

Coraline

30 Apr 2009

(PG) 100min ANIMATION/FANTASY Although The Nightmare Before Christmas reflected the gothic imagination of Tim Burton, much of the charm was down to the directorial skills of Henry Selick, whose latest film Coraline places him alongside Nick Park as a…

Monsters VS Aliens

2 Apr 2009

ANIMATION/SCI-FI As with the cheerfully vacuous Bolt, Monsters vs Aliens exemplifies the virtues of today’s 3D cinema – eye-popping to watch, leavened with self-referential humour that makes it easy to digest, but also playing things so painstakingly…

Radiohead video remix and ECA triumph at BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards 2009

16 Mar 2009

Glasgow artist James Houston was awarded for his take on Radiohead’s Nude at the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards tonight. Houston created an innovative remix of the Radiohead track using an old scanner, a dot matrix printer and other assorted vintage…

Sebastian Buerkner: Glove

5 Mar 2009

Having originally trained as a painter, Sebastian Buerkner became interested in animation while studying for his MA at Chelsea College and never looked back. This, his first exhibition in Scotland, provides a showcase for the artist’s bizarre visual…

Film Noir

19 Feb 2009

(18) 96min (Optimum DVD retail) ANIMATION/THRILLER Mixing the conventions of its genre namesake with explicit sex scenes, this adult animated feature is a cross between 40s noir The Big Sleep and 70s underground cartoon Fritz The Cat. It…

Bolt

5 Feb 2009

ANIMATION/ADVENTURE Classic pet road movies The Incredible Journey (1963) and Homeward Bound (1993) meet The Truman Show in heart-tugging Disney animation. Child actress Penny (voiced by Miley Cyrus) and dog Bolt (John Travolta) star in a hit TV…

Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa

27 Nov 2008

COMEDY/ANIMATION When Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) escaped from their Manhattan zoo in 2005 hit Madagascar, they were leaders of…

Edinburgh College of Art wins at Scottish BAFTAs

19 Nov 2008

Edinburgh College of Art is celebrating success after winning two top awards at the Scottish BAFTAs. Anders Jedenfors and Jaime Stone, two recent graduates from the city's college of art, scooped a Bafta for their work on animation. Sunday night's…

Waltz With Bashir

13 Nov 2008

(18) 90min An animated feature about war, memory displacement and the hideous genocide committed by Christian militiamen on Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila during the 1982 Lebanese War may not sound particularly inviting but, like last…

Brave Story

30 Oct 2008

Based on a novel by prolific Japanese authoress Miyuki Miyabe, Brave Story is a tale of love, friendship, and the sacrifices people must make in order to do what is right. Eleven-year-old protagonist Wataru meets Mitsuru, a lone figure who tells our…

Charles Burns - Fear(s) of the Dark

16 Oct 2008

The wildly imaginative and scary animated French portmanteau horror movie Fear(s) of the Dark was made by six European and American cartoonists working with professional animators. The most notable of those cartoonists is Charles Burns, who is a legend…

Fear(s) of the Dark

16 Oct 2008

ANIMATION/MYSTERY The Gallic term ‘outre’, meaning beyond or excessive, perfectly describes this imaginatively conceived and immaculately executed French language portmanteau horror. Much of its impact is derived from its unique nature: the…

Igor

16 Oct 2008

ANIMATION/COMEDY It’s a tough life for hunchbacked assistants of mad scientists. Igor (voiced by John Cusack) ekes out his precarious existence as humble servant to the sinister Dr Glickenstein (John Cleese), an evil genius set on winning the annual…

Fly Me To The Moon

2 Oct 2008

ANIMATION A 3D film describing man’s first trip to the moon is a lively sounding prospect, and moments in Ben Stassen’s animation offer a genuine wow-factor, depicting a space-rocket blasting into the atmosphere, or the view from above the…

Space Chimps

31 Jul 2008

ANIMATION/COMEDY (U) 80min Crowded out in the summer schedules by WALL-E and Kung Fu Panda, Space Chimps is the latest effort from Vanguard Animations destined to suffer the also-ran status of Valiant and Happily N’Ever After. On the whim of a…

Batman: Gotham Knight

DVD Review

17 Jul 2008

Intended to fill the gaps between Batman Begins and Dark Knight, Gotham Knights offers us six animated shorts, much in the same way as The Animatrix did for The Matrix. Each story is self-contained and created by a different writer (including Greg…

WALL-E

17 Jul 2008

ANIMATION (U) 103min Can Pixar do no wrong? On the evidence of the CG animation studio’s ninth feature film, the answer is a resounding no. Once again Pixar pushes the envelope in the field it’s been trailblazing since the early 1980s, delivering…

Kung Fu Panda

3 Jul 2008

COMEDY/ANIMATION (PG) 91min In the words of Carl Douglas’ 1974 disco hit: ‘Everybody is kung fu fighting.’ Everybody, that is, apart from overweight panda Po (voiced by Jack Black). He dreams about joining his heroes, the Fierce Five, in butt-kicking…