“The show prides itself on being the podcasting world’s number one authority on all things sculptured, painted, drawn and designed within the world of popular entertainment. This podcast delivers on its promise in spades. Not only is it well produced, the sheer level of expertise on offer is unrivalled. ”
As featured on Feedspot’s Top 10 “Best Animation History Podcasts”!
The author of Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance (Rutgers University Press, 2023), Dr. Peter Kunze (Tulane University), is the special guest for Episode 136 of the podcast which looks at the impact of Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1991) and both the industrial and stylistic stakes of the film’s adoption of a Broadway style of musical arrangement.
Read MoreFor the first episode of 2023, Chris and Alex are back into the world of Disney Feature Animation, following up earlier discussions of The Emperor’s New Groove (Mark Dindal, 2000) and Treasure Planet (Ron Clements & John Musker, 2002) with Episode 111, which looks at the studio’s 2001 feature film Atlantis the Lost Empire (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 2001), a science-fiction adventure that draws inspiration from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870).
Read MoreThe Fantasy/Animation podcast reaches its centenary, so join Chris and Alex as they celebrate 100 episodes with a look back at some memorable televisual hundredths from the world of cartoon sitcoms.
Read MoreMyth, magic, and technology take to the skies in Episode 93 of the podcast, with Howl’s Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2004) providing a welcome return to the steampunk spectacle and metamorphic marvels of Japanese anime. Joining Chris and Alex to examine Studio Ghibli’s 2004 feature film fantasy of flight is Professor Brian Attebery, writer and professor of English at Idaho State University, who took over as editor of the Journal of the Fantastic in Arts in 2006, and is also a prolific author whose seminal work encompasses all things fantasy literary, history, and storytelling.
Read MoreTuck in for some Valentine’s Day spaghetti and meatballs as Chris and Alex chew on Walt Disney’s celebrated cel-animated love story Lady and the Tramp (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske, 1955), a musical romance released in the mid-1950s and based on the 1945 Cosmopolitan magazine story “Happy Dan, The Cynical Dog” by Ward Greene. The studio’s first CinemaScope release and a film that coincided with the opening of Disneyland in California, Lady and Tramp is rife with context and offers a number of threads that speak to the landscape of Disney animation in the 1950s.
Read MoreFor Episode 87, Chris and Alex are joined by special guest Dr. Yuanyuan Chen, who teaches animation history and theory at Ulster University, for this brief introduction to Chinese animation and the work of the pioneering Shanghai Animation Film Studio. From propagandist impulses and opera traditions to Chinese state politics and painterly aesthetic styles, the complex history of Chinese animation and its more recent iterations are reflected in this cross-section of contemporary examples, which all serve to highlight the creativity of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio and its influential filmmakers.
Read MoreChris and Alex continue their discussions of Studio Ghibli for Episode 72 with a look at animated war feature Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988), a film that was initially released as a double bill with partner My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988). Telling the story of teenage boy Seita and his younger sister Setsuko who, after fleeing the city of Kobe, must navigate the public horrors and personal traumas of World War II, Grave of the Fireflies offers a graphic and emotional portrait of conflict and society through the isolation and struggle experienced by the siblings. Joining the podcast this week to discuss the film’s potent political message is Alex Dudok de Wit, Associate Editor at Cartoon Brew, freelance journalist (including work for the BFI/Sight and Sound) and author of the upcoming BFI Film Classic on Grave of the Fireflies (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).
Read MoreThe Christmas spirit is finally in the air, with Chris and Alex using Episode 63 of the podcast as their annual opportunity to discuss all things seasonal - this time examining the fantasy of Christmas advertising, and the repeated role played by animation in the construction of festive commercials, television ads and brand promotions. They are joined in their Yuletide deliberations by Dr Malcolm Cook, Associate Professor in Film Studies (University of Southampton), whose numerous publications include the monograph Early British Animation: From Page and Stage to Cinema Screens (2018) and the co-edited collection (with Professor Kirsten Moana Thompson) Animation and Advertising (2019).
Read MoreBless my soul, we are definitely on a roll with Episode 45 of the Fantasy/Animation podcast, which continues the Disney Renaissance theme in its take on Hercules (Ron Clements and John Musker, 1997). To make sense of the visual culture of antiquity manifest in Disney’s cel-animated musical fantasy and its adaptation of Greek myth, Chris and Alex are joined by Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at King’s College London and a specialist in ancient Greek literature and cultural history.
Read MoreVoted for by the Fantasy/Animation community on social media as the inaugural #feelgoodfananim, Episode 44 of the podcast looks at the Walt Disney studio’s cel-animated feature The Emperor's New Groove (Mark Dindal, 2000). Chris and Alex are also joined by their very first returning guest, award-winning animator Astrid Goldsmith (a.k.a. Mock Duck Studios), to discuss the troubled production history, buddy narrative and anarchic comic structures of a film that marked a seismic formal shift in the familiar Disney style. Or did it?
Read MoreTake a trip on a magic theme park ride with a Ranger, Barbarian, Magician, Thief, Cavalier and Acrobat as Chris and Alex turn once again to the small screen, this time to discuss Dungeons & Dragons (Kevin Paul Coates, Dennis Marks & Takashi, 1983-1985). Premiering on American television with CBS and animated by Japanese company Toei Animation, Dungeons & Dragons is a high fantasy cel-animated series that follows the tribulations of six young children as they strive to escape from a mythical realm.
Read MoreChris and Alex return to the work of the Fleischer studios for episode 29, following up their discussion of Gulliver’s Travels with Mr. Bug Goes to Town (Dave Fleischer, 1941), similar in concept and design to its predecessor and loosely inspired by Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck's book The Life of the Bee (1901). The second (and final) cel-animated feature film produced by the Fleischers, Mr. Bug Goes to Town negotiates the conflict between an insect community and the threatening human world, all framed by an environmental narrative of modernisation, redevelopment and urban sprawl.
Read MoreIn episode 21, Chris and Alex are joined by Steve Henderson - Editor of the Skwigly Online Animation Magazine and Director of the Manchester Animation Festival, and Senior Lecturer in Animation at the Manchester School of Art - to discuss the Disney animated musical Aladdin (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1992). With the live-action/CG remake soon to hit cinema screens, this episode provides the perfect opportunity to revisit what has made this popular cel-animated fantasy so enduring among audiences.
Read MoreThe ninth episode takes Chris and Alex up to the rooftops of London as they tackle Walt Disney’s fantasy musical Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson, 1964). This song-and-dance celebration follows the adventures of Mary, Bert and the Banks children, including their famous journey into the wonderful world of animation. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Read MoreIn episode seven, Chris and Alex encounter ferocious bicycle wheels, music hall stars fishing for frogs using dynamite, and the French mafia in their discussion of the frankly bizarre animated fantasy The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003). With minimal dialogue and an expressionist, borderline surreal visual style, Chomet’s film - released in the UK as Belleville Rendezvous - is erratic, eccentric and downright charming.
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