Exclusive: Boy and the World Director Announces Next Film, Voyagers of the Enchanted Forest
In the midst of an Oscar nomination campaign for his recent animated feature Boy and the World (O Menino e o Mundo), award-winning Brazilian director Alê Abreu has announced his next explorative project: the feature film, Voyagers of the Enchanted Forest. He revealed the news and first image from the project exclusively to Cartoon Brew.
“I believe that, deep down, all of an artist’s works are connected, and there’s a lot between The Boy and the World and Voyagers of the Enchanted Forest,” Abreu told me, via email from Brazil. “Both feature characters in transit, beholding worlds revealing themselves. Voyages and displacement are frequent in my movies.”
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Nine Years in the Making, Raul Garcia’s Poe Anthology Extraordinary Tales Arrives
Starring voices of the late, great Christopher Lee, the iconic Bela Lugosi (from beyond the grave), filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, B-movie influential Roger Corman, and veteran horror and fantasy actor Julian Sands, Extraordinary Tales brings Poe’s harrowing stories to the screen for newer generations raised on boundless technologies and influences.
The 73-minute, unrated animated anthology ambitiously pulls art, literature, comics, film, and collaboration into its dark embrace and doesn’t let go. I spoke at length with Garcia via email about reanimating Poe from the page to the screen, and collaborating across countries and technologies to bring his nightmarish vision to compelling life.
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Rethink What We Think is Normal: An Interview With ‘Dissonance’ Director Till Nowak
Evocative of Christopher Nolan’s surreal Inception, as well as Michel Gondry’s sci-fi standout, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dissonance’s moving story of a homeless pianist trying to reconnect to his family ends up destroying the boundary between live-action and CGI through a series of physical and psychological breakdowns. It’s a brilliantly speculative but also quite personal exercise.
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When Will We Strive Again For the Heights of Avatar and Legend of Korra?
Here’s the good news. Fans of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko’s action-packed yet philosophical animated shows, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, have new DVDs and books to look forward to.
Here’s the bad news. At last report, neither of those significant talents have decided to return to cartoons. Also their studio, Nickelodeon, has basically thrown in the towel on making anything comparatively rewarding or challenging to take the place of their animated masterpieces.
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Hiromasa Yonebayashi On When Marnie Was There, Being Scolded By Miyazaki, and Studio Ghibli’s Future
According to the empathetic, poetic films of director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, the sunset years of Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki’s famed Studio Ghibli are breathtaking and bittersweet.
I spoke with Yonebayashi via email about his films, Miyazaki’s lessons, and the brilliant past and uncertain future of their legendary studio.
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Ken Duncan On Creating New Scenes for The Iron Giant: Signature Edition
The Iron Giant: Signature Edition, director Brad Bird’s remastered masterpiece of war, peace, and paranoia, returns to theaters this Wednesday and Sunday, with new scenes courtesy of Duncan Studio.
“I come from character animation, where there is nothing better than doing a feature film focusing on character animation,” Duncan told me. “And working with a director who understands character, and is supervising from the standpoint of how a character should work, isn’t always pleasant. Sometimes it doesn’t even result in a good film. But working with Brad was pretty amazing.”