Two Films About the Middle East – Body of Lies/Persepolis
There are three basic types of spy stories: 1) the one about the ultra-skilled professional spy who is almost always successful, e.g., James Bond; 2) the one about the civilian[…]
Category: Animation
The Simpsons Movie: from D’oh to Dough! Helping white men get richer for 18 years!
Yes, Matt Groening and James L. Brooks are rich, rich white men, and thanks to The Simpsons Movie, they’re going to be even richer. Much as I would like to[…]
The Ant Bully: 3-D to the IMAX
I have seen the future, and it works, pretty well. The Ant Bully is pitched younger than just about any cartoon I’ve seen. There are no “over the kids’ heads”[…]
Animation · LGBT & Queer · Reviews · TV & Streaming
Bikini Bottom Babylon: The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
He’s fun-damental, not fundamentalist! He’s a Candide for the 21st century, facing the everyday predicaments of the human condition with a sunny optimism and unreasonable zest that seem borderline manic,[…]
Activist & Political · Animation
Only in America: On Team America: World Police
Trey Parker and Matt Stone fight Hollywood ignorance with some ignorance of their own
Animation · Animators · Interviews
“It’s Amazing I’ve Survived”: An Interview with Bill Plympton
“The football game where the chicken mascot runs around crazy with an erection was inspired by a story that someone told me…”
What’s The Point? The Legendary 1971 Animated Feature on DVD
In a freethinking, whimsical world, relativism reigns and there is no point … or is there?
Down with Underrated Masterpieces! Looney Tunes: Back in Action and Down with Love
The sound of no hands clapping
Animation · Historical & Epic · War
Private Snafu’s Hidden War: Historical Survey and Analytical Perspective
The famed doofus of WWII propaganda cartoons served purposes patriotic and perfidious
“I Don’t Know Dick”: Heavy Metal 2000 on DVD
“The ‘key’ to the ‘chamber’ of immortality looks like a glowing white penis” Contrary to the title of this review, anyone who knows the prolific output – 92 B-movies since[…]
Animation · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Treasures of Puppet Cinema: Pinocchio, Attack of the Puppet People, Black Devil Doll from Hell
Wooden bottom boyz, teensy teens, and a Satanic blackface Charlie McCarthy – these are just a few of the offerings from le cinema puppet! Pinocchio Walt Disney made horror movies[…]
The Wizard of Awe: Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away
The creator of Princess Mononoke brings his sleek Boschian vision to America, courtesy of Disney “Being enclosed, protected, and kept away from dangers, children cannot help but enlarge their fragile[…]
On and Off, On and Off: Riding Through Roger Rabbit’s World
There’s more trouble in Toontown than even the Toons imagined Cartoons and animated features have never been strictly made for children. But not until the 1960s did the cartoon gain[…]
“Hand Me That 14-Inch Willy!” The Puppet Artistry of Barry Purves
This brilliant Brit’s sleight-of-hand breathes life into wood and wire At a symposium on puppet animation in Seattle a few years ago, Barry Purves, an alumnus of the Aardman Studios[…]
Goosing Mother Goose: The Fairy Tales of Tex Avery
“Fairy tales, unlike any other form of literature, direct the child to discover his identity and calling, and they also suggest what experiences are needed to develop his character further.” –[…]
A Quickie Look at the Life & Career of Tex Avery
As if radically rethinking the Hollywood cartoon weren’t enough, our boy Tex can also be thanked for inventing or perfecting Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and perhaps the greatest character in[…]
Animation · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Queer Cartoons at the 1998 San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
“Ooh, Batman, it hurts!” Cartoons have always been a rich repository of queer subtext. How else to explain all those too-close buddies and their serious lack of female companionship? (The[…]
Animation · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
A Crazy Cake: Jan Svankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure (1997)
Noodles up the nose, murdered dolls, toe-sucking fish – these are the hallmarks of Prague’s zaniest surrealist! Forget magic realism; this is magic surrealism, of the highest order. Czech filmmaker[…]
Betty Boop
With a head like a giant peanut, vast mascara’d eyes, too-kissable lips, baby-doll voice (courtesy of singer Mae Questel), flattened marcelled hair, and mere threads of a dress exposing miles[…]
The Incredible Shrinking … and Expanding Ethnic Minority Or, The Racist in the Cultural Cupboard
Unwilling body alterations give these “instant kiddie classics” disturbing undertones. There are two kinds of propaganda: the personal and self-aggrandizing, and the more insidious corporate/social. Personal propaganda is easily recognized[…]
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