All Slights Deserved

If you wonder where Christopher Nolan found his inspiration for Inception then look no further. The wunderkind writer/director has readily acknowledged that Satoshi Kon's 2006 anime was an influence and not only do they share the same premise - that of being able to share other people's dreams - but certain images were directly copied. That's not a slight towards Nolan and Kon's own influences, such as the work of author Philip K. Dick, are readily apparent here in this story of a technological innovation that allows therapists to enter the dreams of their subjects. Inevitably it falls into the wrong hands and is put to malicious ends, resulting in a dream that spreads like a virus, blurring fantasy and reality. Like his earlier film Millenium Actress ( AFED #36 ) Kon allows his imagination to go to town with some astonishing sequences and truly hallucinogenic dream imagery. Unfortunately it also shares the flaw of sacrificing something in the way of coherence ...

I'd originally intended for this to be a review solely of The Iron Giant but decided taking in The Incredibles as well would make for both an interesting comparison between traditional and computer animation, and also how director Brad Bird made a successful jump across to the newer format. I'm highlighting Bird, because as the writer/director it's reasonable to consider him the guiding creative influence behind the two films, but it's notable that when he made the move from Warners to Pixar he took the Iron Giant 's animation team with him. Inevitably a prolonged period of adapting to the new medium ensued, but the final result ( The Incredibles ) represented a visceral and stylistic leap forward in Pixar's house style after the more sedate Toy Story franchise, et al. Given that it's been sitting amongst my dvd collection unwatched for a few years now, I'd not appreciated The Iron Giant was released as far back as 1999 and that Ted Hughes, whos...

Some seventy years before Fantastic Mr. Fox , pioneering animator Ladislas Starevich delivered another anthropomorphic animal story that comfortably rivals it for quality. Le Roman de Renard may not boast George Clooney's laconic tones but its influence on the style and ambiance of Wes Anderson's film is plainly obvious, right down to the depiction of the animals' domestic lives. Adapted from Goethe's version of the Reynard legend (a staple of European folklore), Starevich's film was one of the earliest feature length animations and a decade in the making. It shows both in the wealth of detail bestowed on every scene; from the vast menagerie of different animal characters to the meticulous set design and visual gags. The story charts the fortunes of Reynard, a cunning and inventive fox who runs afoul of the rest of the animal kingdom with his constant tricks and ruses. The king of the beasts, the Lion, finally loses patience and sends an army to lay siege to R...

Um... the plan tonight was to fit in Rossellini's Germany Year Zero , but then I changed my mind. So instead here's one that, at ninety seconds, will surely be the shortest film of the year.  The title says everything. No, really; check it out on Youtube and other online sources. What else can one add? Very little, although it launched Marv Newland on quite a distinguished animation career and became regarded as a classic of sorts in cartoon circles. The irony is that, despite its brevity and crudeness of style, with today's technology nowadays you could put something together in a fraction of the time that looks infinitely more accomplished. There are basically two gags; the opening and closing credits account for about eighty percent of the running time and it's all over very abruptly. I suppose in an era before micro films it must have seemed quite innovative. Is it a clever critique of the spectacle-driven 'Cinema of Attractions'? No, it was a ...

Jean Cocteau once said of the Czech animator Jiří Trnka that "the very name conjures up childhood & poetry". Sadly to most people the Trnka's name is only likely to draw a blank expression, but in animation circles his standards of excellence once drew comparisons with Disney. The son of a plumber, Trnka first achiewed renown as a painter and childrens' illustrator and didn't begin animating until the age of 33. His earliest shorts were cell-based, but it was with stop motion, or puppet animation, that he emerged as an original voice, adapting the distinctive style of his illustrated work to the three dimensional medium. With Czechoslovakia now under Communist rule in those post-war years, animation enjoyed state patronage and a degree of creative freedom not allowed to feature films with their wider audiences. Unlike the industrialised production methods of Disney et al, Trnka worked in a small studio, personally supervising the entire process. His work i...

A few days ago I reviewed Ozu's Late Spring , starring the legendary actress Setsuko Hara. Widely regarded in Japan as one of, if not the finest talent of her generation Hara shocked the nation when she decided to retire from the profession in her mid-forties shortly after Ozu's death, bluntly stating that she had made enough money to support herself and simply didn't care to continue. Since that time Hara has lived as a recluse and gradually a mystique has built up around her, perhaps due to the fact we romanticise the arts and can't fathom how anybody could regard acting as merely a job. But I was intrigued to discover that her life had served as partial inspiration for a feature length anime, Millenium Actress , and naturally had to seek it out. Made by anime director and cartoonist Satoshi Kon, who died last year, it explores precisely that theme of how we project biographical legend upon an artist's body of work, blurring fantasy and reality. Tachibana,...