Legend of Korra, Reanimated
Once upon a time, The Legend Of Korra’s feminist, elemental superhero was one of the most powerful on television. Male, or female, or other, and/or another.
Film That Matters
Miyazaki’s Rewarding, Rebellious Ronja
Miyazaki is a name, and a legend, not to be taken lightly. This historical truth alone is worth a viewing of Goro Miyazaki’s Ronja, The Robber’s Daughter, a rewarding animated adaptation of Astrid Lindgren’s fantastic coming-of-age cli-fi.
Rest In Peace, Richard Williams
While so many of us may remember the pathbreaking Who Framed Roger Rabbit, how many of us remember the relentless Richard Williams himself, the iconoclastic animator who influenced so many, while somehow remaining a secret?
Happy Birthday, The Iron Giant!
Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, director Brad Bird’s masterpiece of war and peace has only grown in legend and influence
Cli-Fi: Honeyland’s Beekeeping Dystopia
As colonies collapse and the climate crisis accelerates, bees come into deeper focus in the acclaimed chronicle of a remote space and tradition
Watching The Watchmen (Again)
Elite powers cashing in on actual historical crises whose failures literally led us to where we are today.
Cli-Fi: Miyazaki’s Mission Critical
Princess Mononoke meets The Never-Ending Man, as Hayao Miyazaki’s blessed return inches closer to the cli-fi future he chronicled, as it happened.
Free Energy, Courtesy of Tesla
Matthew Rankin’s surreal, synesthesic short film The Tesla World Light is finally free for all to see. Let us hope Nikola Tesla’s utopian hope for free energy isn’t far behind.
Happy Birthday, Batman
…the dark cipher who rises with our aspirations and sinks with our capitulations
Masaaki Yuasa’s Elastic, Fantastic Anime
The animation of Masaaki Yuasa is singular in the sense that we have seen nothing truly like it, yet it would not exist without its anxiety of influences.
Isao Takahata: 1935-2018
A towering influence.
And yet he still left so much to be discovered.
I watch his art each night before dreaming.
Rest in peace, dear influential.
Birdboy’s Interconnected Pollution
Writing about animation provides me the opportunity to probe the minds of brave filmmakers working against stereotype and industry. That struggle found an apotheosis in the surreal fever dream of Birdboy.
Fox And The Whale’s Metafictional Immersion
Earth is inspiring, even in the midst of failure. This is an important lesson I learned after interviewing director Robin Joseph about his stunning animated short, Fox and the Whale, a homemade, hand-drawn cli-fi fable debuting, to Oscar acclaim, in a world on fire.
The Breadwinner’s Ultimate Expression Of Hope: Interview With Nora Twomey and Saara Chaudry
I’ve been looking forward to interviewing Nora Twomey, especially now that her empowering adaptation of The Breadwinner has arrived, with the aid of Angelina Jolie, to shine a light back on Afghanistan, still in the crosshairs of the longest war in American history.
Say It Loud and Proud: Animation Is Film
As the political and entertainment establishment continues to reject toxic masculinity and industry, the mounting movement to place our attention and investment on productions and issues truly worth the global public’s time and money is reaching critical mass
Animation Is Film, Said The Festival
It may not seem like we need to have a three-day festival in Hollywood celebrating animation as cinema with a capital C. But if that was the case, I would not have spent the weekend with my girls in Hollywood at the Animation Is Film festival.
Cli-Fi: 75 Years Later, Bambi Terrorizes
Written by an immigrant Jew hounded by Hitler, and envisioned by a Chinese immigrant dreaming of America, Walt Disney’s Bambi remains an unheeded warning of terror and terraformation, sadly forgotten by a burning world careening into an exponential apocalypse.
Nuclear Cinema: In This Corner of the World
This expressive war epic from the assistant director of Kiki’s Delivery Service handles the toughest of topics with art, skill and grace. I spoke with director Sunao Katabuchi for Cartoon Brew.
Nuclear Cinema: Hiroshima’s War-Torn Corner of the World
An assistant director on Hayao Miyazaki’s sublime, stunning Kiki’s Delivery Service, Sunao Katabuchi has since made his name well-known in anime film and television. But his impressive new film, the award-winning Hiroshima epic, In This Corner of the World, might make him a household name worldwide.
Bong Joon Ho’s Okja Animates Cli-Fi
Revolutionary filmmakers are shaping the future of cinema by analyzing our destabilized planet. Snowpiercer director Bong Joon Ho’s new vision Okja, out today from Netflix, was inspired by biodiversity at the mercy of capitalization and extinction.
Cli-Fi: Coral Vs. Ice, We Lose
We are slaves to fossil fuels, Chasing Ice director Jeff Orlowski once told me. His new film, Chasing Coral, may find that we have also broken our (food) chains.
It’s Hard To Be An Utopian!
When I first learned that Matthew Rankin was crafting a surreal short about Nikola Tesla, I knew I soon would be picking his fertile brain about free energy, bird love, and why dystopians are marching to the sixth mass extinction.
Cli-Fi: The Breadwinner Patiently Arrives
The debut trailer of Cartoon Saloon’s newest animated exploration has come at last.
An international collaboration directed by the gifted Nora Twomey, who I’ll interview later this year, and co-produced by Angelina Jolie, whom you may have heard of, The Breadwinner examines the terror and terraformation of Afghanistan through a gender-fluid prism quite rare for animation.
Cli-Fi: Tesla, Reanimated
The National Film Board of Canada is responsible for some of the finest animation the world has ever seen. It has also created world-changing documentaries exploring and analyzing how and why our world changes as it does, for better and worse.
Underwater Welder Goes Transmedia With Ryan Gosling
Jeff Lemire has been creating some of the most unique comics of the last decade. Just ask Ryan Gosling, whose interest in Lemire’s recent stunner, Underwater Welder, may bear cinematic fruit.