MorphToons: September 2015
My continuing bow to The Iron Giant, Brad Bird’s timeless masterpiece of war and peace.
Film That Matters
Interview: Ken Duncan On Creating New Scenes for The Iron Giant
I spoke with Duncan by phone about how his studio’s work on The Iron Giant: Signature Edition came to pass, and why hand-drawn animation, after years of laboring beneath CG’s towering shadow, is on the comeback trail.
Genndy Tartakovsky On Sony, Popeye, Can You Imagine and Samurai Jack
It doesn’t take long (at all) for the stubborn and refreshingly frank Tartakovsky to hold forth on his frustrations with the way Hotel Transylvania 2 and Popeye were handled.
Brad Bird Confirms The Iron Giant’s Signature
http://The studio’s reticence on the matter is understandable, given Bird’s well-documented love of cinema’s theatrical experience. “See it in the movie theater the way it’s meant to be seen,” Bird counsels
The Iron Giant’s Amazing Upgrade
With nearly two decades of growing cultural power beneath its indestructible belt, The Iron Giant is shaping up to be as potent and memorable as Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.
Happy Birthday, Bugs Bunny!
Whether he’s the destabilizing force of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes’ glory days, or more centered in contemporary reboots that can’t measure up, Bugs Bunny remains a towering cartoon influence.
Will Aardman’s Smart Shaun the Sheep Translate Stateside?
Aardman Animation’s wordless, stop-motion wonder Shaun the Sheep Movie, a spin-off of its brilliant Wallace and Gromit franchise, is one of the most clever shows on television. So how many Americans even know it has a feature film coming out in less than a month?
The Iron Giant Will (Finally) Return to Theaters
At long last, Brad Bird’s animated masterpiece of war and peace is back.
MorphToons: June 2015
I kicked off my first month as Cartoon Brew’s associate editor with an exclusive on the late, great John Lennon.
Geek The Beatles: John Lennon Sketchbook Makes Official Online Debut
“It was created from original drawings by John Lennon and a soundtrack that I also edited together, consisting of snatches of conversation between John and Yoko and song excerpts.”
Cli-Fi: Director Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea
Like his Oscar-nominated feature debut The Secret of Kells, his new stunner Song of the Sea is steeped in regional folklore but still a universal wonder. But it is a more personal epic, about the extinction of mythological seal people called Selkies, as explored through a lighthouse family riven by loss and misunderstanding but healed by history and magic.
Cli-Fi: Peace On Earth’s Intertextual Extinction
Adults and children rarely see the Real World as it is, much less as it should be. If what they see is what makes them who they are, then they should watch Peace On Earth before every new year.
Cli-Fi Is Real
Cli-fi is the cultural prism through which we monitor and experience ourselves as we bleed our planet dry while trying to become machines.
(Still) Memorializing Hyperreality
Which seams were splitting? Those separating reality and hyperreality.
Terror and Terraformation: Alan Moore
“There’s something quaint about these attempts to control us today, in a period where we are boiling with information and complexity, both of which have reached levels that could be called fractal, if that wasn’t a polite way of saying chaotic.“
Four Things You Should Know About Your Third Eye
Located in nearly the direct center of the brain, the tiny pinecone-shaped pineal gland, which habitually secretes the wondrous neurohormone melatonin while we sleep at night, was once thought to […]
Goro Miyazaki’s Anxiety of Animation Influence
My father’s generation lived through and after the war, and basically had nothing. They forged their paths with their own hands, and created their whole world themselves.
Ten Lessons Of The Environmental Movement, According To A Fierce Green Fire
I spoke with A Fierce Green Fire‘s director Mark Kitchell.
What The Force? Disney Can Protect Star Wars, Says Fandom, George Lucas
Can an independent visionary who created a vast sci-fi entertainment multiverse really think that a pop-culture multinational can better protect his brainchild? You bet your asteroids, kid. And he’s not alone.
Exclusive: Boots Riley Brings a Guillotine to Oz
The Coup‘s frontman is looking for our nation’s heart and power, as the 2012 general election nears.
We Are Bilbo, Heading Off To Perpetual War
It is no irony that Jackson’s cinematic adaptations of Tolkien’s work have arrived in a world at war
Geek The Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour Reboots For Millennials
One man’s crap made-for-TV movie becomes another fan’s Pythonesque art trip, and the popular tastes of the ensuing decades makes up the difference. Who’s your Walrus now?
Prince of Cats Is Straight Outta Shakespeare
Like many culture vultures, Wimberly is something of a reboot specialist.
Exclusive: Frankenweenie Reanimates Vincent Price
Price’s influential spirit inhabits some small or large part in almost everything Tim Burton has ever made.
Nine Earth Day Films That Will Make You Think
From rapidly acidifying oceans and shortsighted deforestation to perpetually pollutive wars and the propping up of obsolete markets, Earth is taking killer blows that we’re going to seriously regret delivering.