Posts tagged PERFORMANCE
The Dark Reflections of Villainy: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

Puss in Boots the Last Wish (2022), directed by Joel Crawford, boasts a sizable cast of characters all racing for the Wishing Star’s one wish to grant. The eponymous protagonist, Puss in Boots, is met with resistance from three antagonistic forces: Goldilocks & The Three Bears, Jack Horner, and Death, each of which in turn plays the role of a villain, albeit in ways entirely unique to one another.

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Revisiting A Monster in Paris (Bibo Bergeron, 2011)

A Monster in Paris, a French CG animated feature film directed by Bibo Bergeron in 2011, pays tribute to both the popular tale of “Beauty and the Beast” and the musical “The Phantom of the Opera,” but perhaps not in the way that you would expect. One night, cabaret singer Lucille finds herself face-to-face with the "Monster of Paris," a giant singing flea brought into creation through the mishap of the movie's comedic relief, Raoul, who creates the enlarged insect by accident thanks to mixing magical potions at the Botanical Gardens. Lucille takes the monstrous creature into her care after finding herself no longer frightened but touched, having overheard a song he sings about his heartache in this strange world.

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Silicon Docks (Graham Jones, 2022)

Like so many people, I was extremely taken aback by the recent pandemic. Not just surprised by the spread of the virus itself, but also how poorly the world had prepared. However, my husband Graham was less surprised, almost languid - and seemed to have a special plan for how to deal with being stuck indoors. “I want to make a film called Silicon Docks,” he announced. “And I want you to animate it for me!”

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Re-examining “Friend Like Me”

There is considerable scrutiny of the politics of representation in Disney’s animated screen musicals. With appalling depictions of faceless African American workers in “Song of the Roustabouts” in Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen, 1941), controversy about the representation of indigenous Americans in Pocahontas (Mike Gabriel & Eric Goldberg, 1995), and lightening the skin of Princess Tiana in Ralph Breaks the Internet (Rich Moore & Phil Johnston, 2018), there have been ongoing questions about limited, fetishized, and often racist characterisations of people of colour in the studio’s films.

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A Fantasy/Animation Star? - Robin Williams

In the introduction to Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres, Christopher Holliday and Alex Sergeant argue that “the fantasy and animation relationship should be conceptualized not as an “and” or an “or”, but as a dialect of “fantasy/animation”” (2018: 13). The slash that appears in the book’s (and this blog’s) title is not a ‘fixed divide’, but a “fluid channel through which fantasy and animation are permitted to intersect, collide and intermingle” (ibid.)

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