Animation

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…

WALL-E - Angus MacLane interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

Could you fall in love with a robot? Animation studio Pixar is betting that you will. The little metal critter with designs on your heart is called WALL-E, and this summer, he’ll be giving Indiana Jones and Carrie Bradshaw a run for their money at the…

Fears of the Dark

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Various, France) 85min This episodic animation is destined for cult status. Five respected graphic novelists have each penned a story detailing what made them scared at night. Dogs, mad girls and silence all feature strongly. Each story has then been…

Persepolis - An interview with Marjane Satrapi

24 Apr 2008

Sitting across from me in a tartan-walled basement of a London hotel room, Marjane Satrapi cuts an imposing figure. Arms folded, with an all-black outfit reflecting her mood, the Iranian-born 38-year-old is in town to discuss Persepolis, her…

Persepolis

24 Apr 2008

ANIMATION (12A) 96min Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical coming-of-age graphic novel Persepolis has been expertly adapted to screen by the author and graphic artist Vincent Paronnaud. The dubbed English language version features the voices of…

Horton Hears A Who!

13 Mar 2008

ANIMATION (U) 86min The magical rhyming whimsy of Dr Seuss was never more resistible than when rendered in live-action by comedians Jim Carrey (The Grinch) or Mike Myers (The Cat in the Hat). But technology has finally caught up with Seuss’s…

Azur and Amar: The Princes' Quest

31 Jan 2008

In Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest writer and director Michel Ocelot (Kirikou and the Sorceress, Princes and Princesses) opts to use digital technology over the hand drawn animation technique that livened up his ‘Kirikou’ trilogy. The technology might…

Azur and Asmar: The Prince’s Quest - interview with Michel Ocelot

31 Jan 2008

Name Michel Ocelot Born Villefranche-sur-Mer, France in 1943 Background While Ocelot spent much of his childhood in Guinea, West Africa and his teenager years in Anjou, he now lives in Paris. He made his name by writing and directing the Kirikou…

The Ugly Ducking and Me

(U) 88min

31 Jan 2008

Developed from a popular Danish TV series, The Ugly Duckling and Me is the familiar Hans Christian Andersen story with a suburban twist. Ratso is an average Disney-style, self-centred rat who dreams of going into showbiz. I know you’ll be saying…

Bee Movie

Animation/comedy

13 Dec 2007

The buzz about Bee Movie is that it’s a cute animated fable for children that also showcases popular comic Jerry Seinfeld, who developed the project with the writers from his titular sitcom. The sting in the tale is that, while vaguely palatable to both…

Beowulf

15 Nov 2007

(12A) 114min Beowulf is being released on four formats: 35mm, digital, digital 3D and IMAX. This review is based on the IMAX version, Beowulf being the first mainstream film to successfully employ this technology. Much of the initial wow factor is…

Creature Discomforts to highlight discrimination

12 Nov 2007

The creators behind popular animated figures Wallace and Gromit and the Creature Comforts series have unveiled a spin-off campaign to help raise awareness about disability. Aardman Animations - working with the Leonard Cheshire Disability charity…

Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox destined for big screen

12 Nov 2007

Director Wes Anderson is finally getting to grips with a project he claims has been eight years in the making - bringing his favourite Roald Dahl story to the big screen. An animated version of Fantastic Mr Fox, in which George Clooney will voice the…

Princess

1 Nov 2007

ANIMATION (18) 90min This feature-length cartoon, made by the multi-talented Danish daily newspaper strip cartoonist, children’s book illustrator and kid’s television director Anders Morgenthaler, is a genuine shocker. Essentially, it’s a tirade…

Ratatouille

4 Oct 2007

(U) 110min COMEDY/ANIMATION Writer/director Brad Bird’s animated version of The Iron Giant made him the obvious candidate to follow on from John Lasseter’s innovative groundwork at Pixar, where he scored an immediate hit with The Incredibles. So even…

Ratatouille animation sparks French rat craze

4 Oct 2007

The recent feature from Pixar Studios about a Parisian rat working as a chef has sparked a boom in sales of the rodent. The film Ratatouille has prompted the number of rats being kept as domestic pets to soar by 40 per cent. The animated adventure…

Wallace and Gromit in return to the small screen

3 Oct 2007

Wallace and Gromit will return to our television screens for their first half hour adventure in 12 years, Aardman Animations has revealed. The animated duo’s next outing will be Trouble at’ Mill, which will be shown on the BBC next year. It will…

Ratatouille

16 Aug 2007

The adventures of an aspiring rodent chef whose gastronomic endeavours make him the toast of Paris is hardly a conventional dish to serve up to audiences. But Pixar’s attention to character and detail has already created such unlikely characters as…

Surf's Up

9 Aug 2007

A reasonable improvement on the heavy-handed environmentalism of last year’s hit Happy Feet, Ash Brannon and Chris Buck’s animation is a colourful parody of surfer movies and Stacy Peralta’s 2004 documentary Riding Giants in particular.

Happily N'Ever After

1 Aug 2007

Although its makers claim they conceived Happily N’Ever After long before that big green ogre Shrek took over the box office swamp, animation filmmakers Paul J Bolger and Yvette Kaplan’s procrastinations mean that this contemporary take on olde fairy…

Tales from Earthsea

1 Aug 2007

The familiar Studio Ghibli look is there, but Tales From Earthsea, based on the books by writer of speculative fiction Ursula K Le Guin, is directed not by the great Hayao Miyazaki, but by his son Goro.

Pixar

MOVING PICTURES

27 Feb 2007

In Toy Story, which reached our screens an astonishing 12 years ago, the only things on the screen which look animated are the humans. Woody the toy cowboy, despite his name, is human, endearing, attractive. Buzz has the chin and charm of a Hollywood…

Arthur and the Invisibles

(U) 93min

29 Jan 2007

ANIMATION/ADVENTURE If Luc Besson (The Big Blue, Leon) is to be believed, this, his tenth film, will also be his last as director. In adapting his own children’s book, Besson mixes live-action and CGI animation with decidedly patchy results. It’s…

Aardman's Darkside - DVD

Aardman's Darkside

2 Oct 2006

ANIMATION As a company renowned for the sweetly naïve, homely fun of Wallace and Gromit, Morph and Creature Comforts, it’s something of a jolt to the system to discover Aardman’s adult entertainment wing. Like the Sooty pregnancy episode or…

Hoodwinked

(U) 81min

18 Sep 2006

ANIMATION/COMEDY Like a bedtime story told by an amiable drunk, Hoodwinked is a hackneyed narrative redeemed by great creative embellishment of the telling. Writer/directors Corey and Todd Edwards have come up with a noir setting that’s equal…