Belonging is one of the most fundamental needs we have as a species. If you’ve been any attention at all to Pixar’s superlatively-good Toy Story series, you will have come to appreciate that it’s pretty fundamental to toys too. Time and again in Toy Story, Toy Story 2 and Toy Continue Reading
Movies
As heartfelt as it gets: Director of UP, Pete Doctor explains the creation of its poignant opening sequence
The opening sequence of 2009’s UP, which is, if you do the maths, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, is one of the most moving and beautiful pieces of cinema out there, absolutely and utterly, in any genre, hands down. That may be seem like an extravagantly hyperbolic claim but Continue Reading
Retro movie review: Toy Story 3
If there is one thing that the Toy Story franchise has done beautifully, and deeply movingly it should be added, it is depicting the way all of us have invested vibrant, authentic humanity into our beloved play things. When we’re kids and playing with our teddy bears, action figures and Continue Reading
Lessons From the Screenplay: Minority Report and Dismantling Precrime
Minority Report, from a story by the impressively-imaginative mind of legendary writer Phillip K. Dick, is a tremendously good film by any measure. And one ripe for a video essay from Lessons From a Screenplay which compares Dick’s 1957 short story, Jon Cohen’s 1997 report and the final script by Continue Reading
Retro movie review: Toy Story 2
If you’ve lived long enough to be told you should put your childhood toys away and act like a grown up – seriously, why would you even do that? Don’t, just don’t, your toys need you still – you will likely have developed a feisty aversion to movie sequels. They Continue Reading
Retro movie review: Toy Story
No one likes to feel there’s easily replaceable, either in usefulness or lovability. Yet that’s precisely what happens to Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) in Pixar’s classic Toy Story, released in 1995 and almost immediately hailed as an animation classic, not simply because it contains groundbreaking 3D animation but because Continue Reading
Movie review: The Dead Don’t Die
What would happen if you invited a slew of A-list actors to the zombie apocalypse and everyone just kind of lost interest? Why, then, you’d have Jim Jarmusch’s gloriously-uneven The Dead Don’t Die which over the course of ever-more-inert one hour and forty-three minutes rather ironically loses its will to Continue Reading
Frozen 2: Giants, equine water spirits and grave threats to the kingdom
SNAPSHOTWhy was Elsa born with magical powers? The answer is calling her and threatening her kingdom. Together with Anna, Kristoff, Olaf and Sven, she’ll set out on a dangerous but remarkable journey. In Frozen, Elsa feared her powers were too much for the world. In Frozen 2, she must hope Continue Reading
Movie review: Bellbird
There’s an idea prevalent in society that grief unexpressed isn’t grief at all. In other words, if you’re not wailing and crying and gnashing your teeth like an Old Testament prophet clad in sackcloth and ashes, then are you really grieving? It’s an idea that is gently and thoughtfully challenged Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: The endless parental love of Freaks of Nurture
SNAPSHOTFreaks of Nurture is an animated short about a neurotic mother-daughter relationship inspired by the filmmaker’s own unorthodox upbringing with her single-parent mom, who is also a foster parent and dog breeder. Self-deprecating and bursting with energy, the film reveals that no matter how grown-up we think we are, we Continue Reading