Peanuts has always been more than just a comic strip. Not that being a comic strip per se is a bad thing; rather that the creation of Charles M. Schulz has always transcended the ephemeral, transitory nature of the medium and the small black and white panels that define it to Continue Reading
Movies
On 3rd day of Christmas … I admired The Art of Krampus
Let’s face it – if you had a choice between happy, jolly Santa Claus coming to pay you a visit, laden with toys, a hearty laugh and a longing for milk and cookies, and a cloven-hoofed demonic bringer of retribution and doom as payment for bad deeds done, you’d no doubt Continue Reading
Sisters: The Farce Awakens: Why Amy Poehler and Tina Fey’s film is just like Star Wars
It appears, and you may be surprised by this, that Sisters, the new hilarious comedy from Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a small barely-on-the-radar movie opening soon, have a great deal in common. Yes, really. OK, not at all, but that’s not stopping Continue Reading
On 1st day of Christmas … I watched the film Get Santa
Christmas films, especially those with good old Santa’s name in the title, generally tend to follow the same well-worn path. Someone, oh let’s say Santa himself, gets into trouble, caught in a situation that a man of hundreds of years experience and worldly-wiseness has never encountered in all his Continue Reading
The vibrantly musical world of Alê Abreu’s Boy and the World (O Menino e o Mundo)
SNAPSHOT “Cuca’s cozy rural life is shattered when his father leaves for the city, prompting him to embark on a quest to reunite his family. The young boy’s journey unfolds like a tapestry, the animation taking on greater complexity as his small world expands. Entering civilization, industrial landscapes are Continue Reading
“The best stories infuse wonder”: 20 Years of Pixar
One of the most transformative experiences of my life took place in 1995 when I went to see a movie called Toy Story. It was the first feature film from a new animation company called Pixar, and as a lover of well told animated stories from way back, I Continue Reading
Slavery or death: What would you choose At the End?
Humanity really doesn’t do all that well when it comes to aliens appearing unheralded in our skies. We’re either slaughtered, herded, bombed, or in the case of short film, At the End, offered sanctuary by a fleet of alien ships from a supernova that will engulf and destroy Earth. Continue Reading
Movie review: In the Heart of the Sea
Grand epics are often fashioned out of humanity battle to come to grips with something wild and untameable. It might be the expansive natural world that constantly reminds us that we are not quite the all-conquering masters of our domain that we might like to think we are, or perhaps our Continue Reading
Ho! Ho! WOOF! MEOW! Merry Christmas from The Secret Life of Pets
SNAPSHOT Comedy superstars Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet and Kevin Hart make their animated feature-film debuts in The Secret Life of Pets, which co-stars Ellie Kemper, Lake Bell, Jenny Slate, Bobby Moynihan, Hannibal Buress and Albert Brooks. Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri and his longtime collaborator Janet Healy produce Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: Tokyo Cosmo’s flying pigs and monsters
SNAPSHOT Directed by Takahiro Miyauchi and Takuya Okada, Tokyo Cosmo takes us inside the home of a woman with a fantastic imagination. Her imagination is so powerful that a simple household nuisance soon becomes an epic struggle. Things get so crazy we even get to see a courageous flying Continue Reading