“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”!
Chris and Alex venture (back?) into the multiverse in this entirely unplanned episode on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Sam Raimi, 2022), prompted by both a last-minute cinema trip and a desire to check-in once more with what’s happening in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Read MoreEpisode 97 of the podcast takes on the intergalactic conflicts and rebel alliances of Rogue One (Gareth Edwards, 2016), an anthology feature film and prequel to Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) that tells the origin story of the ‘Rogue One’ starfighter squadron and the creation of the Death Star. Special guest for this episode is Dr Jonathan Wroot, who is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for Film Studies at the University of Greenwich.
Read MoreBased on Elizabeth Goudge’s 1992 children’s story Little White Horse, the 2008 fantasy The Secret of Moonacre (Gábor Csupó, 2008) is the subject of Episode 96 of the podcast, with Chris and Alex joined in their discussion of morality, class, and the power of the ego by the film’s screenwriter and Associate Producer Lucy Shuttleworth, who is also Senior Lecturer in the School of Film, Media and Communication at the University of Portsmouth.
Read MoreEpisode 95 is a special Fantasy/Animation double header, with two recent computer-animated films up for discussion as Chris and Alex look into the stories and symbols of contemporary Ukrainian animation - the country’s first 3D CG film The Dragon Spell (Manuk Depoyan, 2016) based on the stories of Ukrainian writer Anton Siyanika, and The Stolen Princess (Oleg Malamuzh, 2018), a fantasy that adapts the fairytale Ruslan and Ludmila by Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin. This week’s instalment features as its guest an expert in the politics and aesthetics of modern Russia and the Soviet Union, Dr Joshua First, who is Croft Associate Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Mississippi.
Read MoreChris and Alex finally talk about Bruno (among other things) in this latest episode of the podcast, turning to the fantasy and family of Encanto (Byron Howard & Jared Bush, 2021), Disney Feature Animation’s computer-animated musical that tells the story of the magical Madrigal family via protagonist Mirabel, ably supported by lush visuals, colourful abstractions, and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s score inspired by the vallenato, cumbia, bambuco and rock en español genres. Joining them for Episode 94 is Dolores Tierney, Professor of Film at the University of Sussex and an expert in the aesthetics and politics of transnational imaging practices between Latin America, the U.S. and Spain.
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 MoreIn this latest episode, Chris and Alex examine one of the most important animation companies of the last 20 years in Hollywood – Blue Sky Studios – who made significant contributions to the shape and direction of U.S. animation, and particularly the computer-animated film. Formed in February 1987 by animator Chris Wedge, the studio recently hit the headlines as they are now sadly in the past tense – The Walt Disney Company acquired Blue Sky as part of their 2019 purchase of 21st Century Fox and then, in February 2021, announced that Blue Sky would be shut down as an animation division. This episode looks back at Blue Sky’s 2011 computer-animated musical Rio (Carlos Saldanha, 2011) with special guest Michael Tanzillo, who worked as a Senior Lighting Technical Director at Blue Sky on a number of computer-animated films.
Read More2022 kicks off with the provocative politics and violent tragedies of See You Yesterday (2019), the Netflix science-fiction feature about the time-travel adventures of two young scientific prodigies in Brooklyn. The special guest for this discussion on the stakes of temporality, the futility of breaking out of a cycle, and the immediacy of racialised trauma is Dr Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Associate Professor in the Division of Literacy, Culture, and International Education (University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education).
Read MoreFor the 2021 Christmas special episode of the podcast, Chris and Alex turn to the short Mickey’s Christmas Carol (Burny Mattinson, 1983), the Walt Disney Studio’s cel-animated retelling of the Charles Dickens masterpiece directed and produced by longtime Disney storyboard artist Burny Mattinson. Joining them to discuss Disney’s cultural relationship to Christmas and its longstanding history of festive-themed productions starring its most beloved characters is Dr Amy M. Davis, Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Hull.
Read MoreMogwai and monsters after midnight are the focus of Episode 88, as Chris and Alex take a closer look at the part-horror, part-Christmas feature Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984) with special guest Dr Catherine Lester, Lecturer in Film and Television in the Department of Film and Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. Catherine’s work focuses largely on the intersections between children’s culture and the horror genre, and she is the author of Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2021), and several articles on popular animation and children’s horror cinema.
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 MoreThe result of our latest social media poll charting listeners’ favourite Don Bluth animated film yields the focus of Episode 86, where Chris and Alex uncover The Secret of NIMH (Don Bluth, 1982), the filmmaker’s very first animated feature and one that would set the template for his tone and style to follow.
Read MoreEpisode 85 discusses the recent HBO horror television series Lovecraft Country (2020), developed by Misha Green as a continuation of Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel, and places the story of 1950s racial segregation in the United States on a collision course with the science-fiction world of H.P. Lovecraft. Joining Chris and Alex for this latest episode is Dr Bambi Haggins, Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine whose work explores race, class, gender and sexuality in American comedy across media and television history. She is also the author of Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America (2007), while her current book project, Still Laughing, Still Black examines how Black comedy, culture and reception in the new millennium reflect, refract and reveal the necessity and the power of Black comic discourse and survival laughter since 2008.
Read MoreEpisode 84 takes a trip for the first time to the DreamWorks Animation studio, often viewed as Disney and Pixar’s commercial rival but whose features frequently offer a biting satirical revision of the narrative and stylistic formulae of these renowned animation heavyweights. For this latest episode on Shrek 2 (Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury & Conrad Vernon, 2004), Chris and Alex’s special guest is Dr Sam Summers, Associate Lecturer at Middlesex University and author of the recent DreamWorks Animation: Intertextuality and Aesthetics in Shrek and Beyond (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Sam is also the co-editor of a collection Toy Story: How Pixar Reinvented the Animated Feature (London: Bloomsbury, 2018) and - alongside journalist Ben Travis - co-host of the Disniversity podcast that offers a crash course through the history of Disney's animated classics.
Read MoreEpisode 83 sees Chris and Alex trace the magical realist threads and overlapping timelines that build Anocha Suwichakornpong’s often confounding drama By the Time It Gets Dark (2016) (known in Thai as Dao Khanong), replete with its shifting realities, fleeting digital VFX and a pivotal citation of the ‘father of fantasy’ (as well as one of cinema’s first animators) Georges Méliès. Joining them to discuss Suwichakornpong’s mesmerising, kaleidoscopic, and highly original second feature film that dramatises the events of the 1976 Thammasat University massacre is Dr Felicity Gee, Senior Lecturer in Modernism and World Cinema at the University of Exeter, and author of the recent Magic Realism, World Cinema and the Avant-Garde (London: Routledge 2021).
Read MoreThe spectacular animated world of U.S. filmmaker Don Bluth is the focus of Episode 82, with Chris and Alex journeying to the Great Valley for this discussion of The Land Before Time (Don Bluth, 1988). Joining them is Dr Mark Witton, vertebrate palaeontologist and palaeoartist (based at the University of Portsmouth), who is best known for his scientific research and illustrations around the habits and behaviors of pterosaurs, as well as his consultancy work with museums and on the BBC television series Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) and Planet Dinosaur (2011).
Read MoreEpisode 81 of the podcast provides an introductory survey of Sub-Saharan African animation, as Chris and Alex plot a pathway through a cross-section of animated fantasies covering a multitude of forms, styles and modes from a number of African countries and territories. Joining them is Dr Paula Callus, Associate Professor in Computer Animation at Bournemouth University and an expert in Sub-Saharan African animation, who has also worked as a consultant and educator on the UNESCO Africa Animated projects in Kenya and South Africa, and who has been involved in projects looking at marginalization and the use of digital technologies (with a focus upon Arts, Activism and Marginalization in Nairobi).
Read MoreChris and Alex return once more to the pioneering work of stop-motion animator and effects artist Ray Harryhausen, this time looking at his 1973 fantasy film collaboration with director Gordon Hessler, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. For Episode 80, the focus is on the quasi-parasitic relationship between live-action and animation filmmaking, and the spectatorial fantasy engendered and invited by each form of moving image technology.
Read MoreEpisode 79 marks a special edition of the podcast, recorded back in February 2021 as part of the virtual Fantasy/Animation @ Canterbury Anifest event where Chris and Alex curated a series of podcasts, themed blog posts, a roundtable on the topic of diversity and inclusion (returning to the Anti-Racist Syllabus) and a live Q&A, as well as premiering a brand new Fantasy/Animation podcast episode released exclusively for festival attendees. This Anifest special tackles Bagpuss (1974) the 13-episode stop-motion television series from the celebrated Kent-based Smallfilms studio. Joining Chris and Alex to talk through his ongoing research into both Smallfilms and its founders Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate is Festival Director of the Canterbury Anifest Dr. Chris Pallant, who is also a Reader in Film Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University and President of the Society for Animation Studies.
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