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Belladonna of Sadness
(Neo, Uncooked Media) 1973 and Mushi Production, the studio that propelled postwar anime with Astro Boy, is bankrupt, collapsing and dying. Its founder Osamu Tezuka has jumped ship. Just before the end, the studio releases a movie… Bella… -
The Wings of Honneamise
(Neo Magazine, Uncooked Media – I also wrote an article about the production of the film for the AllTheAnime blog and another article that’s reproduced below the review.) Picture a world different from ours in intricate, tiny details, ye… -
Animated Oscars 2019
Like many animation fans, I was delighted by the victory of Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse in the Best Animated Feature category in 2019 – but also by the nomination of Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai, the first Oscar-nominated feature that was…
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
(Sight & Sound, BFI) The new Indiana Jones film starts in a veritable museum to modern myth. It’s a military warehouse in Area 51, hallowed ground for UF… -
2012
(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) In Roland Emmerich’s new disaster epic, 2012 is the year when our time’s up. The world’s leaders know it, and even HRH Quee… -
Antichrist
(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) Look, just ignore our star rating for the moment, okay? Antichrist is the kind of film that many viewers will give zero sta…
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Song of the Sea
(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) Song of the Sea was among the contenders for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars this February. It didn’t win, but now we c… -
A Christmas Carol (2009)
(Sight & Sound, BFI) It’s common wisdom among animators that humans are the hardest species to simulate realistically, because we know the true articles … -
Ferdinand
(Sight & Sound, BFI) The Story of Ferdinand was a picture book published in America in 1936, with a story by Munro Leaf and illustrations by Robert Lawso…
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My Neighbor Andrew Turned Out to Be the Real Totoro—A Trek Through the Sayama Woods
You have been doing a lot of research recently about Hayao Miyazaki’s film ‘My Neighbor Totoro.’ That’s right. Are you interested in where Director Miyazaki … -
I Boarded the Galaxy Express with a British Friend and Ended Up Debating the Soul of Leiji Matsumoto world.
We’ve been to the Leiji Matsumoto 50th anniversary exhibition in Roppongi, which Andrew wrote up as a report for Animation World Network, illustrated by Carl… -
From Heidi to Kaguya: Our Visit to the Takahata Exhibit
We recently went to the Isao Takahata Exhibition in Tokyo to report on it for Animation World Network (our report is here). As fans of Takahata’s work, we ha…