My latest investigation for Civil Eats is not so much alarming as predictable. The current presidential administration, already an international laughingstock, has targeted farmers markets for elimination. The punishment? Death by pointless cuts.
Some of the most influential animation in history have come from the hearts and minds of Phil LaMarr and Carl Jones, including The Boondocks, Samurai Jack, and more. That was all I needed to pick up the phone.
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.
In a globally warming, warring world where Americans throw away half the food they grow, nourishing activism with a heart and mind in service of renewable peace is paramount. Enter author Julia Turshen, who I profiled for Civil Eats.
One of the most underrated bands of the ’90s, Swervedriver restored its good, loud name in the ’00s and beyond. This weekend on the west coast, it performs full versions of its twin masterworks: Raise and Mezcal Head.
For decades, cooler-headed Canada has helped lead the way in animation innovation and mindful programming. Its rising studio Guru is carrying those goals forward in the fantastic new Netflix series, True and the Rainbow Kingdom.
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.
Stephen King’s horror novel never saw this real-time nightmare coming. A state-sized dead zone at the bottom of the South, which is so deprived of oxygen it might as well be deep space — which is, recalling Alien, where no one can hear you scream.
The fact that Amazon chose to invest a healthy budget in Titmouse and Niko, in search of staying power and cultural relevance, should be a warning shot to the animation business as usual. After all, as Titmouse told me, we’re in a cartoon gold rush.
I’ve spoken a few times with animation auteur, Ralph Bakshi, who pioneered the pathways of underground and overground cartoons for decades. This time, we analyze the live-action/animation merge of Cool World, which like its foundational forebear, Lord of the Rings, created the CGI universe we take for granted today.
It is my honor to be writing for the Center for Biological Diversity’s shiny new publication, The Revelator. My first piece is an interview with the fearless Jeff Orlowski, director of Chasing Ice, and now, Chasing Coral.
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.
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.
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.
My latest piece for Civil Eats chronicles the victory of sanity over nonsense, Earth over concrete, regeneration over regression. It was an honor to write, and even more brilliant to witness in person.
An international collaboration directed by Cartoon Saloon’s Nora Twomey, and co-produced by Angelina Jolie, whom you may have heard of
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.
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.
It’s always a surreal blast when the past arrives in the present, especially if it’s my interview with the defiantly principled punk pioneer, Jello Biafra.
A wordless wonder in the tradition of Chaplin, with an eye to rural labor and love, Aardman’s stop-motion masterpiece is for everyone, everywhere.
Last year, I once again interviewed Samurai Jack creator and animation auteur, Genndy Tartakovsky, who told me the samurai’s arrival was imminent. Now here he is, in all of his glory and wonder, when we need him most.
There aren’t enough ways for me to thank Sleater-Kinney for returning from hiatus, even if it was to a sleepy hyperreality still needing to be shaken awake with punk power and poetics.
Let’s turn back to the greatest jam band on the bones, and a master of literary horror, reanimated.
One of those rare films, especially in animation, that analyzes the dizzying complexity of life on Earth using what John Muir called the “glacial eye.”
I’ve spoken a few times with the unorthodox guitar hero Brett Netson, so I’m pretty stoked
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