Tag: Animation

Disney Minus: Silly Symphonies and the road to Snow White

Disney’s most experimental series gave us pigs, kittens, tortoises and hares. They not only won numerous awards, but they advanced animation as an art form.

Between 1929 and 1939, Disney released 75 musical short films. Unlike the Mickey Mouse, Donald, and Goofy cartoons of the same era, they were designed to be pure experiments in animation, storytelling and, most importantly, music.

In that decade, seven of the shorts won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. They transitioned from black and white to pioneering colour. They ultimately led to the development of the first full-length animated film.

They were the Silly Symphonies.

The symphonic spine of Disney

When the first Silly Symphony, The Skeleton Dance, appeared in August 1929, audiences had been enjoying Mickey Mouse cartoons for almost a year. Mickey was at the peak of his success, and we were still a few years off Donald entering the picture. Based on a conversation with composer and old friend Carl Stalling, Walt got the idea of doing a series of short musical novelty cartoons.

Leonard Maltin once described this first film as one of his favourite Disney shorts, and it’s easy to see why. From the opening shot of an owl ominously getting caught in the wind, swiftly followed by two cats fighting on gravestones, this is the stuff that Halloween specials were made for.

As the first of the Silly Symphonies, it’s great to see animators Ub Iwerks, Les Clark and Wilfred Jackson getting to cut loose on something other than Alice, Oswald or Mickey. From POV shots to the lithe movement of the skeleton figures, there is a noticeable upgrade to the technique here from the Mickey shorts. The synchronised sound has levelled up as well: animals caw, bark and crow, while the xylophone is perfectly timed as bones are struck. At the time, The Film Daily called it “one of the most novel cartoon subjects ever shown on a screen.” Still, to paraphrase a popular Al Jolson film of the era, they ain’t heard nothin’ yet.

Advancement through technology

If you ever want a quick lesson in how animation techniques advanced over the course of a decade, watch the Silly Symphonies.

The early shorts follow a formula. Hell’s Bells (1929) remixes and reworks Skeleton Dance, but this time in the underworld. A quartet of seasonal offerings – Springtime, Summer, Autumn and Winter (all 1930) – each play with critters creating syncopated sound as they tap and dance their way across nature. In fact, a contemporary review of Autumn in Motion Picture News perfectly described it as “Well done, but constructed along the same lines as most cartoons.”

In 1932, a mere decade after Disney’s first primitive attempts at commercial animation, the company introduced colour into their productions in Flowers and Trees. After watching Mickey Mouse’s star rise while the Silly Symphonies experienced diminishing returns, Walt turned to the new 3-strip Technicolor process. An advance on the more common 2-strip process, Walt traded off the expense for exclusive rights to the technique. Technicolor got a new ambassador in Disney, and the animation studio got a point of difference from their competitors. Every Silly Symphony from this point forward was in colour.

This is where they really start experimenting. In 1934, Goddess of Spring was playing with more realistic humans in anticipation of a feature. A retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth, Hamilton Luske’s animation on Persephone doesn’t quite hit the mark. Her rubbery arms and cartoonish leanings haven’t quite progressed as far as Disney would have liked. The studio animators would later study anatomy, advancing their craft by decades in a matter of three years for their first feature. Yet she is still a striking figure compared with the barnyard animals we’d seen so far.

Topping pigs with pigs

By late 1933, Disney had a legitimate phenomena on their hands with Three Little Pigs. Backed by a catchy song (‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’), the first commercial success for a Disney record, it went on to win the Academy Award for Short Subjects, Animated Films in 1932/1933, beating out Disney’s own Mickey Mouse short, Building a Building.

Yet it’s the expressive animation and storytelling that sets this short apart, a result of the development of a dedicated story department at Disney. This meant that this short was less about gags and more about a complete story experience. All the little details are terrific as well, not least of which is the framed photo of the Pigs’ father — as sausage links.

The massive success of the short brought Disney to a crossroads. When contemplating the folly of trying to repeat the achievement, Walt would famously quip that “You can’t top pigs with pigs.” The key to success, he often said, was in perpetually looking forward.

Which the animators did for the most part, but Walt’s penchant for spending money (and his brother Roy’s attempts to rein him in) meant the occasional sequel. Three Orphan Kittens (1935) was followed by More Kittens (1936). The Tortoise and the Hare (1935) saw a rematch in Toby Tortoise Returns (1936). The pigs came back no less than four times, and continued to cameo during the war.

The road to features

By the late 1930s, the days of Silly Symphonies were becoming very costly to produce, especially as the techniques grew more complex. In December 1929, Walt told the New York Daily News that “It costs about $7,000 to make a Silly Symphony.” Less than ten years later, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938), featuring caricatures of Hollywood celebrities in a storybook setting, was reported to cost $69,307.87.

Yet every single short was about advancing the technique. We watched directors like the technically minded David Hand, the always reliable Ben Sharpsteen, and the multitalented Wilfred Jackson hone their storytelling. Composers Frank Churchill and Leigh Harline became go-to musicians for relating a tale through melody. Even though Ub Iwerks and Carl Stalling had left the studio, a new generation of animators got to show their stuff, including Les Clark, Marc Davis, Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas and Ward Kimball. Each film was one step closer to the tools needed to make the feature that would become Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.

To illustrate this shift, look at three key shorts from the late 1930s, two of them before and one after Snow White – The Old Mill (1937), Wynken, Blynken and Nod (1938), and The Ugly Duckling (1939). The Old Mill marks the first use of the multiplane camera, one that allowed the calculated moving and layering of panels in a parallax process that created the illusion of depth. You can see this immediately as the camera pushes past a spiderweb in the foreground.

Adapted from Eugene Field’s verse, and with Leigh Harline writing the accompanying music, Wynken, Blynken and Nod is a whole little musical told completely in 8 minutes. The animation feels a decade ahead of its time. In 1984, Leonard Maltin wrote that it is “as extravagant as any Disney feature; it set a standard that was probably too extravagant to maintain.”

Disney animators working on a multiplane camera © 2022 The Walt Disney Family Museum

The decade, and indeed the Silly Symphonies itself, began to close out with The Ugly Duckling, a short which brought the series full circle. Although this is a remake of 1931 black and white Silly Symphony of the same name, from the moment we see a ‘father’ duck pacing expectantly, we can see that Disney are now in the business of making animated characters rather than simply the illusion of movement.

Also separating this short thematically from its predecessor is how the two otherwise similar stories resolve themselves. In the 1931 version, the titular character must prove itself useful to the others. Here, the duckling/gosling just has to find their people and be accepted by them. It’s almost the antithesis of the standalone short Ferdinand the Bull (1938), a coded queer narrative where the lead always had parental acceptance.

A silly legacy

At the time of writing, only 18 of the original 75 Silly Symphony shorts are on the Disney+ flagship streaming service. Indeed, only this month Skeleton Dance was added to the platform. While some remain Vaulted due to their insensitivities towards gender and race, others are genuine tentpoles in the history of animation.

By the end of the 1950s, Disney was concentrating solely on features, live action, theme parks, and television. Walt’s quest for perfection through experimentation found a new outlet in Disneyland rides and audio animatronics. Yet the very building blocks of modern animation are here, and it’s no fluke that competitors rushed to label their films Merrie Melodies, Looney Tunes and Happy Harmonies.

Yet while the series of films stopped, the pushing of boundaries didn’t. In 1940, Disney released the groundbreaking Fantasia, a concert feature marrying sound and vision in the wildest ways. Package features like Make Mine Music (1946) and Melody Time (1948) followed suit. In 1999, the animated series Mickey Mouse Works revived the Silly Symphony moniker for a short-lived series.

The legacy of the Silly Symphonies is the existence of animation as a modern commerical art form. There are nods to them in the Cuphead video game series and, of course, The Simpsons. Their DNA is in the many moving parts of Pixar’s Elemental and the watercolour/CG styles of the upcoming Disney film, Wish. It’s in the online SparkShorts program and the Short Circuit series. So, here’s hoping that one day Disney presents all of the Silly Symphonies on Disney+ for historians and animation fans alike.

MORE FROM DISNEY MINUS: Newman Laugh-O-Grams | Walt’s first fairy tales | Alice Comedies | Oswald the (Un)lucky Rabbit | Silly Symphonies | The Spirit of 1943 | So Dear to My Heart | One Hour in Wonderland | The early lost films | Johnny Tremain | Westerns of the 1950s | Moon Pilot

All images in this article are owned by Disney unless stated otherwise.

July 7, 2023
Review: Nimona

When the graphic novel Nimona burst onto the scene in 2015, it solidified the already stellar reputation of cartoonist and writer ND Stephenson. The creator had already been receiving praise for the progressive fantasy Lumberjanes, which ultimately enjoyed a six year run. While utilising and deconstructing some of the tropes inherent to comics, both of these works also seemed ready-made for the screen.

So, after various bits of development hell, a property originally eyeballed by Blue Sky (under Fox then Disney), it’s NIMONA who has fought her way to the fore via Netflix. From the opening narration, it’s clear that this is a film about rewriting traditional narratives. “Some of us don’t get that happily ever after because it ain’t that kind of kingdom – and this ain’t that kind of story.”

Indeed, that’s the context in which we are introduced to Ballister Boldheart (voiced by Riz Ahmed), the first commoner to be knighted alongside his lover, Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang). Where Ambrosius is beloved by all, there’s a fierce public debate in the futuristic kingdom about whether Ballister is ‘worthy.’

On the cusp of knighthood, Ballister appears to assassinate the Queen. On the run and trying to clear his name, he is aided by Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), a shapeshifter who is fairly insistent on being Ballister’s sidekick. Like Ballister, Nimona is not what she appears to be – and their actions together may change wider preconceptions.

Directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, best known recently for Spies in Disguise, are no strangers to animated fare. Yet with screenwriters Robert L. Baird and Lloyd Taylor, they have created something truly unique on the landscape. Here is a mainstream animated film that not only shifts the LGBTQIA+ narrative to the centre of the screen, but never rests on its laurels.

Filled with an energy Nimona frequently calls ‘metal’, but backed by music ranging from the Sahara Hotnights to Metric, it’s fair to say NIMONA is a little more anarchically punk in her outlook. Nimona being a shapeshifter means that she’s never statically one thing or persona for long. She defaults to presenting as a young girl, but she could be an ape, rhino, or even a giant dragon. Yes, it’s an obvious analogy, but it works so well for a broad range of audiences.

There’s a wonderful scene where Nimona ribs Ballister for his “small-minded questions,” or rebels against his misguided notions that it would be “easier” for Nimona if she appeared “normal” in public. “Easier for who?” she genuinely asks, adding that if she didn’t shapeshift “I wouldn’t die, but I sure wouldn’t be living.” These moments are never didactic, but simply lessons in openness for people of all ages. In fact, the whole kingdom is surrounded by a wall – a literal and metaphorical one – designed to keep the ‘monsters’ out. It takes this open dialogue for someone to finally ask the question that might break them down: “What if we’ve always been wrong.”

When production started on NIMONA at Blue Sky, they used a 2D stylization similar to The Peanuts Movie (2015). Said to be influenced by Eyvind Earle (Disney’s Sleeping Beauty) and the Modernist art of Charley Harper, the world created is a stunning combination of futuristic sci-fi, fantasy settings, and something more grounded.

When production was revived at Annapurna, using the London-based DNEG, the baseline was used for a seamless final product filled with stunning backgrounds and engaging leads. The film retains the comic book origins in the character animation, while dropping them into environments that maximise the width of the film’s canvas as well.

In a year that has already been filled with some powerful animated films, from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse to Elemental, here’s one that stands out simply by being as heartfelt as it is thrilling. NIMONA isn’t just a great piece of animated fare, it’s an important film. It’s about being seen for anyone who has ever felt misrepresented, and the power of connections.

2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Nick Bruno, Troy Quane | WRITERS: Robert L. Baird, Lloyd Taylor (based on the graphic novel by ND Stephenson) | CAST: Chloë Grace Moretz, Riz Ahmed, Frances Conroy, Eugene Lee Yang | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix | RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 30 June 2023 (Netflix)

July 4, 2023
Review: Scarygirl

SCARYGIRL is a film, according to its producers, that has been fifteen years in the making. Based on the line of toys and original graphic novel by Nathan Jurevicius, it has been adapted into a side-scrolling video game and now a feature film. It joins a continuum of Australian animation from Dot and the Kangaroo to Happy Feet, bringing these characters to life and having a joyful time doing it.

Directed by Ricard Cussó and Tania Vincent, the first woman to helm an animated feature in Australia, we’re introduced to a sci-fi world where capturing an octopus is the ultimate reward. This is thanks to the bounty evil scientist, Dr Maybee (voiced by Sam Neill) has put on such creatures. Bunniguru (Remy Hii) and his companion Egg hope to capture one to pay off their substantial debts.

Meanwhile, Arkie (Jillian Nguyen), a small girl with a tentacle for an arm, lives with her octopus father, Blister (Rob Collins) on an idyllic world. When Blister is captured by Maybee’s henchmen, Arkie must team up with Bunniguru to save him from having his lifeforce drained.

SCARYGIRL is a breezy affair that wears its influences on its sleeve. It’s the kind of high concept adventure story we’ve seen many times before, with several key beats very clearly influenced by Star Wars and other similar films from a certain era. Yet there’s an unabashed earnestness to these characters and a kinetic energy that propels this feature, touching on climate change,

Directors Cussó and Vincent have previously delivered very Australian tales of possums, quokkas, and wombats in their feature animation. Here they up the scale of the production. The sort of 3D/CG/hand-made hybrid look-and-feel comes with a detailed use of light and shadow not always seen in local productions. At times, it’s startling beautiful to behold, especially on the big screen.

The look and feel of the characters are partly determined by the source material, but it’s the backgrounds that make all the difference for this feature. Arkie’s home life has all the colour and pop of a Nintendo backdrop, perhaps a nod to the video game origins. There’s a wonderful sequence in a forest filled with organic movement, glowing plants and eyes in the trees. It culminates in a ‘tempest of leaves’ forming a giant monster in a wonderful piece of imaginative modelling. Maybee’s City of Light contrasts with Arkie’s world, filled with electronic lights, domes, and mecha – or “overlord chic” as one character puts it.

Nguyen, perhaps best known for TV work on Barons and Hungry Ghosts, leads the voice cast. At the Sydney Film Festival screening, she described Arkie as a “bad bitch,” although she imbues the character with believability and youthful enthusiasm. Of course it’s Sam Neill as a misguided villain who has let personal tragedy dictate his life. That’s Tim Minchin as Chihoohoo, a hybrid Chihuahua. Deborah Mailman rounds out the star-studded cast with a fun cameo as the witchy Treedweller, a character who we hope makes appearances in future outings.

In fact, SCARYGIRL has all the potential in the world to be an ongoing enterprise, something uniquely Australian and universal at the same time. The characters have already proven they have the legs (and tentacles) to go the distance through merchandising and extended media, and it would be wonderful to spend some more time with these characters.

2023 | Australia | DIRECTOR: Ricard Cussó, Tania Vincent | WRITER: Polly Watkins, Matt Everitt, Les Turner, Craig Behenna (based on the story by Nathan Jurevicius) | CAST: Jillian Nguyen, Sam Neill, Deborah Mailman, Tim Minchin, Rob Collins, Remy Hii | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2023 | RUNNING TIME: 134 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7-18 June 2023 (SFF 2023)

June 20, 2023
Review: Elemental

There’s a lot of Disney/Pixar’s history in ELEMENTAL. Director Peter Sohn, who last helmed The Good Dinosaur (2015), has been with Pixar since Finding Nemo in 2003. There’s clear aesthetic influences from previous hits like Zootopia (2016) and Inside Out (2015). Yet it’s also a film that reminds us exactly why they are the kings of heartfelt animation.

In Sohn’s film, the fire-based Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder Lumen (Shila Ommi) immigrate to Elemental City, where they are initially shunned by the other elements. After opening a store in a small corner, the fire people slowly build a community around the shop.

Bernie intends for daughter Ember (Leah Lewis) to take over the business, something she thinks she wants as well. Yet she can’t control her literally fiery temper when interacting with customers, something that causes a minor catastrophe with the building’s pipes. Enter city inspector Wade (Mamoudou Athie), a water element who wears his heart on his transparent sleeve — and in great puddles of tears wherever he goes. While investigating the source of a malady that threatens Fire Town, the two find that they aren’t so different.

When we first get a glimpse of Element City, it’s hard not to think of the sprawling metropolis of Zootopia. The overlapping details from the four main elements is idyllic and futuristic, a stark contrast with the earthier Fire Town. This setup makes it obvious almost immediately that for Sohn, the son of first-generation Korean immigrants, this is a story about identity and a celebration of the immigrant story.

Which is why Sohn and the creative team concentrate on character. Yes, it’s a star-crossed lovers story in a fantastic world, and on this level it is heartwarmingly successful. Yet we see an exploration of prejudice, both through Bernie’s trauma and the behaviour of others. We get commentary on class divides through Wade’s parents, who are wonderfully accepting but still make casual comments about Ember’s ‘good English.’

The humour is surprisingly adult at times too, from the dry moments with Wade’s family to the Earth plants caught ‘pruning’ each other. (“Nothing weird going on here!” they protest). Later in the picture, Ember’s parents talk about having more time for ‘hanky panky.’ One even wonders if this was made for kids at all, which isn’t a complaint. After all, even old Walt was known to spout the aphorism that if you try and make a movie for everybody, you wind up making it for nobody. ELEMENTAL is definitely a film for somebody.

From an animation point of view, there’s scarcely enough space to gush about how fabulously detailed this is. A project seven years in the making, the leads don’t necessarily have a basis in other more human character designs. Wade, for example, has to be transparent as well as solid at all times.

Water, heat, fur, and texture are like nothing we’ve seen before. The fire of Ember, for example, looks both flat and solid and is always in motion – a notoriously difficult move for an animation team. It all comes together in a centrepiece scene where Wade manages to take Ember underwater, and the use of light and texture – not to mention dramatic tension – make it one of Pixar’s best scenes, well, ever.

After the misguided Lightyear, Sohn’s ELEMENTAL continues the good form of Turning Red and Soul. This reviewer laughed, cried, and had the cockles of my heart warmed. This isn’t just a great reminder of the power of stellar animation, or why Pixar are still masters of it, but why positive messages, personal stories, and representation are essential in cinema.

2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Peter Sohn | WRITERS: John Hoberg, Kat Likkel, Brenda Hsueh | CAST: Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O’Hara, Mason Wertheimer, Joe Pera, Matt Yang King | DISTRIBUTOR: Disney | RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 15 June 2023 (AUS), 16 June 2023 (US)

June 18, 2023
Review: Art College 1994

Liu Jian’s animated film opens with a quote from James Joyce’s The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.” Like one of his leads Xiaojun (voiced here by Dong Zijian), Jian studied Chinese painting in the ‘90s. So, from the start ART COLLEGE 1994 is arguably his attempt at an autobiographical look back at art college days in China during the 1990s.

China was undergoing some major social change during this time, with western influences intersecting with traditional culture. We see this in the painful and hilarious lectures the students have to attend with titles like ‘Western Philosophy and Chinese Culture.’ Still, there’s a universality to much of the film.

Along with art school colleague Rabbit, and music students and potential love interests Lili and Hong, Xiaojun attempts to navigate their day-to-day existence while asking all the big questions. Much of this is done through long takes of the various characters pondering the meaning of art. Can anything be art? Does that make anyone an artist? If so, why are they all in art school? Is that person interested in me? What the hell will they do when we leave college?

It’s a simple affair. At times, it’s disarmingly wry and insightfully funny. At others, it feels almost documentary in nature. There are minor fights, sure, but most conflicts and dramas come about through moments of indecision or life’s turning points. Hong dates a lot, deciding between a cash job and a singing career, while Lili finds herself drifting towards the stability of an unexciting marriage.

Liu Jian’s film has a firm sense of place. The highly detailed backgrounds are clearly taken from reference photos during this wistful look back at days spent in the Chinese Southern Academy of Arts during the 1990s. The textures on the wall, and the structures of buildings and bridges, are all meticulously detailed.

Yet it’s the little details that make all the difference to every scene. Nirvana tape covers, movie posters, and t-shirts add to the period setting. Given that Jian spends so long on each scene, and the line art of the main characters is fairly straightforward, we get time to appreciate how much texture is put into the walls, trees, or even piles of bowls left lying around the dorm room.

ART COLLEGE 1994 is ultimately too long for its subject matter. At close to two hours, it pushes past a natural stopping point on more than one occasion in the last act. Yet life in college or university is a bit like that. It’s a lot of the same thing over and over again, it feels like it will never end, and then it’s over.

2023 | China | DIRECTOR: Liu Jian | WRITER: Lin Shan, Liu Jian | CAST: Dong Zijian, Zhou Dongyu, Jia Zhangke | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2023 | RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7-18 June 2023 (SFF 2023)

June 17, 2023
Review: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Haruki Murakami’s short stories have proven to be fertile ground for cinema, with adaptations ranging from Burning to the award-winning Drive My Car. French animator Pierre Földes BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN (Saules aveugles, femme endormie) takes inspiration from Murakami’s 2006 anthology of the same name, along with pieces from The Elephant Vanishes, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and After The Quake.

Indeed, the latter serves as the jumping off point for the film, which begins days after the devastating events of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Kyoko (voiced by Shoshana Wilder in the English language version) is near catatonic, watching nothing but news coverage. When she leaves her apathetic husband Komura (Ryan Bommarito), who is in the process of losing his job, he goes on a journey to Hokkaido to deliver a mysterious package.

Meanwhile, banker Katagiri (Marcelo Arroyo) – who happens to work for the same company as Komura – is overtasked and underappreciated. One night he is visited by a humanoid frog (voiced by Pierre Földes), who asks him to help slay a giant worm living under Tokyo, one who’s rage threatens to destroy the city.

If it wasn’t at all obvious from this very brief description of the stories, Földes’ film plays in the realms of Murakami’s magical realism. You could take Katagiri’s Frog-based adventure as the signs of a schizophrenic episode, or just accept it on face value and roll with it. That’s kind of the whole basis of Komura’s journey, who plays out a series of episodes while reacting to things around him.

While searching for his cat, named Noboru Watanabe as a deep dish reference for Murukami fans, he meets a young girl sitting in the backyard. Directly influenced by ‘The Thieving Magpie’ section of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, it constantly plays with perception, dancing in and out of dreams.

Yet more than anything, Földes’ film is anchored by the human relationships that Murakami dissects so well. Through flashbacks and asides, we get to know more about Kyoko’s motivations, for example. There’s an entire side-story about Komura and a boy possibly suffering from unexplained hearing loss. Later, an incident known as ‘The Bear Story’ is both a fascinating character study and erotically charged at the same time.

The laser focus on these people is reflected in the animation style as well. While the main characters are fully animated in a simple but effective style, and the backgrounds have a firm and detailed sense of place, other characters are literally just lines and transparencies. It’s almost like everyone else, including some of the buildings, are merely ghosts.

Földes’ style is a floating world, sometimes juxtaposing his fantastic scenarios against realistic movement. The animation team used live action reference for every shot, 3D model the character’s heads, with the animators then adding in the facial expressions later. The result is sometimes uncanny, especially for the character of Frog. His humanoid arm and leg movements are unnerving when contrasted with the head of an amphibian.

The original English language track is a bit of a mixed bag. We start with the assumption that the actors are responding to the arm’s length distance these characters have from the world. Yet there are some line readings that are seemingly so terrible that our audience inadvertently burst into laughter, although some of this might also have something to do with the particular way that Murakami writes some of the female characters in particular.

There’s a repeated line in the film that seems to connect many of these threads together. “No matter where you go, you can’t get away from yourself.” Which is the thought that’s lingered with me long since leaving the cinema. BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN is, by its very nature, a puzzle that has no answer. Like the feline Noboru Watanabe, it exists both inside the box and outside. A narrative Schrödinger if ever there was one.

2022 | Canada, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands | DIRECTOR: Pierre Földes | WRITER: Pierre Földes (based on stories by Haruki Murakami) | CAST: Ryan Bommarito, Shoshana Wilder, Marcelo Arroyo | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2023 | RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7-18 June 2023 (SFF 2023)

June 15, 2023
Review: Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom [Nippon Connection 2023]

Director Kotono Watanabe is known largely for his television work on titles like Chihayafuru, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and many more. For his feature directorial debut, he turns to Nao Iawamoto’s Kin no Kuni Mizu no Kuni manga, which ran in Flowers magazine between 2014 and 2016.

The basic premise of the film is rooted in familiar narrative tropes of star-crossed lovers and warring kingdoms. Here screenwriter Fumi Tsubota (My Beautiful Man) does a tidy job of introducing us to the ancient rift between the neighbouring lands of Alhamit and Baikari, which ultimately resulted in war due to untidied dog poop.

Resolution seems near when an old agreement sees Alhamit bequeath its most beautiful woman to Baikari as a bride to the latter’s wisest man. Alhamit’s princess Sara (voiced by Minami Hamabe) is confused when a puppy arrives on the fated day, while unemployed Baikari engineer Naranbayar (Kento Kaku) receives a kitten. By chance, the pair meet and slowly work out that something bigger is going on in their respective kingdoms.

For a fairly classic take Romeo and Juliet, with a little bit of geopolitics thrown in for good measure, GOLD KINGDOM AND WATER KINGDOM (金の国水の国) is quite entertaining. Characters Sara and Naranbayar are well written, and while we don’t get too deep into their characters in the necessarily compressed storytelling of cinema, we get enough to hook onto them for a while. It’s not so much laugh-out-loud funny, but there are some solid anime moments of cutaways and sight gags that amuse as well.

Visually, the film is lively, defined by the simple dichotomy of the desert-like Alhamit and the lush greens of Baikari. There are shots where the latter’s green seems to go on forever. The finale is largely set in a CG boosted series of stairs and bridges that are inspired by the architecture of Alhamit. The blend of animation styles doesn’t always sit easily, but it looks a treat at times.

Evan Call (Violet Evergarden) provides an engaging score, with several songs provided by Kotone including the theme ‘Brand New World.’

While the ending pushes the comic misunderstanding premise a little past believability, it also ups its own scale in terms of visuals and SFX, landing us on a positive note. It’s possible a series would have been a better fit for the material, but it’s ultimately a satisfying case of one and done.

2022 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Kotono Watanabe | WRITERS: Fumi Tsubota (Based on a manga by Nao Iwamoto) | CAST: Kento Kaku, Minami Hamabe, Hiroshi Kamiya, Miyuki Sawashiro, Subaru Kimura | DISTRIBUTOR: Nippon Connection 2023 | RUNNING TIME: 117 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6-11 June 2023 (Nippon Connection)

June 9, 2023
Review: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Ok, so let’s do this one more time.

His name is Spider-Man and he’s been in pop culture since the 1960s. He’s been a comic book character, animated, on live action television, in blockbusters, rebooted, crossed over, and traveler of the Multiverse on more than one occasion. Five years ago, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse landed and gave us one of the most startlingly original takes on both animation and hero stories in years. His name is Miles Morales, but he is far from being the only Spider-Man.

The thing is, the landscape has changed in the last couple of years. Multiverses are all the rage now. They are not just a central part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but of the DC Extended Universe as well. The live-action Spider-Men have teamed up. Then Everything Everywhere All At Once showed them all up with its Oscar-winning perfection.

So, this sequel comes with some big expectations. The film opens on a downbeat note, as Gwen (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) is shunned by her father after coming out as Spider-Woman. She is soon whisked into the Multiverse by Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), a Spider-Man from a future world who leads a secret task force of Spider-People in fixing anomalies caused by the first film.

Back on his Earth, Miles (Shameik Moore) faces the familiar Spider-Man problem of balancing his personal and costumed lives. As his father (Brian Tyree Henry) is about to be promoted to police Captain, Miles is confronted with new villain The Spot (Jason Schwartzman), who has the ability to travel to different dimensions. Miles is inevitably reunited with his old friends, but the experience is not what he’s expecting.

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE has a big story to tell. Going in and knowing that this is just the first part gives screenwriters Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and David Callaham time to explore the edges of their Spider-Verse. While I don’t necessarily like the trend of deliberately halved films – the kind we’ve seen from The Hunger Games through Fast X – I also appreciate that they aren’t trying to cram all of this information into a single outing.

This is because the core of this series is still about Miles and Gwen. There are long stretches of the film that focus purely on relationships: the two leads, Miles and his parents, Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) and his new baby Mayday. At times, it feels like a much smaller and more intimate movie, certainly more character-driven than its predecessor. Indeed, new faces Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman (Issa Rae), Pavitr Prabhakar/Spider-Man India (Karan Soni) and Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya) are so well rounded that they could easily carry their own solo movies.

Of course, none of this stops directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson from staging some expansive action sequences. There’s a centrepiece moment where Miles is being chased by hundreds of Spider-People, and it’s exactly the kind of insanity that was missing from Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. You’ll need multiple viewings, or a pause button on home release, to catch all of the Easter eggs from the comics, animation, and even live action outings. (A favourite of mine was several winking references to the much-maligned Clone Saga of the 1990s comics).

The animation stylistically matches the original, but it has been upped in just about every way. Opening with abstract shapes set to Gwen’s drum beats, it feels like an indirect descendant of Disney’s Fantasia. Gwen’s world is literally painted in broader brushstrokes, while Spider-Punk frequently looks like a series of postmodernist paste-ups ripped out of a black and white newspaper. The way cloth moves on people is so naturalistic that some of the brief live action sequences look artificially constructed in comparison.

It’s almost unfair to judge SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE on its own merits. It throws a lot at us in a relatively small space, and leaves audiences on a deliberately constructed cliffhanger. You might even argue that it’s only half a film. Still, it’s hard to feel anything less than thrilled walking out of this one. Like the best comic books, we can’t wait for the next issue to come out.

2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson | WRITERS: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and David Callaham | CAST: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Vélez, Jake Johnson, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, Karan Soni, Daniel Kaluuya, Oscar Isaac | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 140 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 June 2023 (AUS), 2 June 2023 (USA)

June 1, 2023
Nippon Connection 2023: 11 films to watch

Nippon Connection is back for its 23rd edition, showcasing some of the best contemporary Japanese films alongside some classics. This year it runs from the 6 to 11 June in Frankfurt, Germany.

With everything from Keisuke Kinoshita’s classic ARMY (1944) — by way of recent classics like DRIVE MY CAR (2021) and all the through to the sharply contemporary BABY ASSASSINS 2 BABIES (2023) — there’s plenty to choose from.

Nippon Connection is known for bringing some of the biggest and brightest stars to the fore, and shining an international spotlight on indie gold, via the Nippon Cinema Award, Nippon Docs Award and Nippon Visions Awards. Prior winners include his, Oh Lucy!, Melancholic and Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, so you know this is the good stuff.

With over 100 films on the program this year, here’s a handful that excites this film fan.

Baby Assassins 2 Babies

Unsurprisingly, this is a sequel to Baby Assassins (2021). Director Yugo Sakamoto’s film has action sequences that have been compared to the John Wick series, and people seem to like those, right? Plus, it’s competing for the Nippon Cinema Award! If the film doesn’t appeal, then at least acknowledge the brilliance of the title.

Plan 75

The debut feature of Chie Hayakawa, one that premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and served as Japan’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars. So, no wonder it is turning up on lots of festivals this year. Set in a “future” where there’s a housing and jobs crisis, it sees the government introduce a program encouraging everybody over the age of 75 to choose suicide. Too soon?

Lonely Castle in the Mirror

There’s some great and popular animation from the last few years playing at Nippon Connection in 2023, including encore sessions of Tekkonkinkreet, The Deer King and Poupelle of Chimney Town. I’ve included Keiichi Hara’s film as an example one of the newer animated films on display. Plus, we love a portal in a mirror and a girl with a wolf’s head in the promotional image, don’t we?

December

We’ve been following Anshul Chauhan for a few years now, especially the excellent Kontora (2019) from a few years ago, along with his more recent short film Leo’s Return (2021), which was another superb character study. So, a new feature film from the director is something to get excited about. This one follows the psychological trauma of a person fighting for a reduction of her prison sentence seven years after murdering a classmate.

Mountain Woman

Takeshi Fukunaga’s Ainu Mosir was a great step in Japan’s slow recognition of the Ainu peoples, and got to the heart of the tension between wider recognition of Ainu and broader cultural attitudes to some of the practices. His newest feature follows Toko Miura (Drive My Car, Our Huff and Puff Journey) into the mysteries of Mount Hayachine after she takes the blames for her father’s desperate crime. There she meets a mysterious man. Doesn’t it make you go ‘oooh?’

Thorns of Beauty

Another one that came highly recommended to me when the program was announced was Hideo Jojo’s latest. If you haven’t kept up with Jojo, you’re not alone. Since his debut film in 2003, he’s written and directed over 100 films. Winner of the Japanese Pink Award for erotic films four times in a row (2016-2019), this one concerns a plan to stop an ex from publishing old nude photos — and revenge!

Sayonara Girls

Following the award-winning short Kalanchoe that has been doing the rounds since 2016, this debut feature had its premiere at the 2022 Tokyo International Film Festival. Because it’s not a film festival unless there’s a movie about four high school girls contemplating their future with trepidation in the days before graduation! It’s the law.

Tokyo University Of The Arts: Animation Shorts

More of a collection of picks than a single entity, if you want to know where the next generation of great Japanese animation is coming from, then this is one place to start. At over 130 years old, Tokyo University of the Arts is the oldest national art university in Japan. Following the opening of their Department of Animation in 2008, Assistant Professor Sayaka Omodaka presents the best pieces selected from the last year.

Single8

Many of us were inspired by certain key films from our collective pasts, whether it was to make, write about, or just watch a lot of movies. Director Kazuya Konaka was notably inspired by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) to make his debut Claws in the year he turned 13. Known for directing episodes and cinematic pieces for the Ultraman series, here he returns to his roots and follows a group of kids in 1978 who see Star Wars and want to make movies of their own.

Egoist

There’s only a handful of LGBTQIA+ films tagged in this year’s program and director Daishi Matsunaga’s film is having its German premiere. Based on the autobiographical novel by Makoto Takayama, it follows two young men who start a passionate affair following a workout session — although that relationship is soon put to the test.

Army (1944)

For the retrospective category, it’s hard to go past Keisuke Kinoshita’s ARMY. In fact, the BFI recently picked it in their list of The best Japanese film of every year – from 1925 to now. In that list, critic Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández notes that it was made under the strict eyes of a wartime government, but remains “a milestone of emotion, ambiguity and resistance against the dehumanising representation of jingoism in propaganda films. Of course, Kinoshita paid for his audacity and did not direct another film until after the war.”

The full program, and tickets, are now available on Nippon Connection’s official site.

May 26, 2023
Disney Minus: Oswald the (Un)Lucky Rabbit

“I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing — that it was all started by a ~~small girl~~ rabbit ~~mouse~~.”

Back in 1927, Disney was at a crossroads. Cost and technical considerations brought the live action/animation hybrid Alice Comedies to an end.

Disney had just inked a one-year deal with Universal Pictures via Charles Mintz for a new Disney cartoon every two weeks. In exchange, they’d get national distribution, a step up from the states’ rights basis of Alice. Yet Universal wanted someone other than Julius, Disney’s Felix the Cat clone, to lead the shorts.

So, at the urging of Mintz, who didn’t want to compete with another cat character, Walt Disney was asked to create something new. With Ub Iwerks and Winkler Productions, Walt created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and produced the short film Poor Papa. Universal wasn’t happy with it, so Walt and Ub released the Trolley Troubles short first instead.

Oswald looks like a real contender…Funny how cartoon artists never hit on a rabbit before.
Film Daily, 1927

The gambit paid off, and Oswald suddenly rivalled Felix the Cat as one of the most popular animated characters in the world. There was even a five-cent candy bar, the ‘Oswald Milk Chocolate Frappe Bar’ from the Vogan Candy Company of Oregon, that become some of the first licensed merchandise from a Disney cartoon.

It’s easy to see why Trolley Troubles appealed. The primitive character designs are energetic, Oswald’s body is like a Swiss Army Knife and there’s some really innovative use of perspective in the tram sequences. In his wonderful biography of Walt Disney, Neal Gabler has catalogued commentary from animation historians, comparing Oswald’s body variously to Buster Keaton, inhabiting an animated form that was more conscious of the pleasures and pains of the body.

Oswald who?

For the uninitiated, Oswald is a hyperkinetic rabbity thing who succeeded Alice’s Julius the Cat and He appeared in almost 200 shorts throughout the 1920s and 1930s, although only the first 27 of these were made by Disney (for reasons we’ll get into later). Inspired by the silent film comedians of the era, he’s the immediate predecessor to Mickey Mouse, and so much of the Disney mascot’s DNA is in this ultimately unlucky lagomorph.

There’s a certain element of repetition to the early shorts, reworking concepts we’d already seen in the Alice Comedies. Oh Teacher (1927), for example, is a more sinister version of Alice Helps the Romance (1926) in which Oswald’s toxic masculinity is used to win the affections of his girlfriend by contemplating a bloody injury on a rival cat. The Mechanical Cow (1927) follows an early Disney tradition of cartoon animals riding a marionette ‘horse.’

Yet in each of the original Oswald shorts produced under the Disney name, we see the staff experimenting with the form. The animation staff — who at this stage included the likes of Walt, Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rollin Hamilton, Ben Clopton, Les Clark, and Friz Freleng — played with familiar themes but new techniques for the era. “The animators became increasingly skilled at more fluid movement, and the gags flew aplenty,” writes Tieman in The Disney Treasures.

In Great Guns (1927), there’s a wonderful opening where the camera irises in on the industrial cityscape as the film transitions from a declaration of war. All Wet (1927) sees Oswald and a customer grapple with an anthropomorphic hot dog, and has themes and techniques later reused in Mickey Mouse shorts The Karnival Kid and Wild Waves (both 1929).

As Oswald moves into 1928, there’s some especially clever stuff happening, some of which anticipates iconic later films. In Oh What a Knight (1928), our rabbit hero detaches from his own shadow (Peter Pan style) in order to sneak in a quick smooch with Ortensia before returning to the fight.

By the time we get to the final Oswald short, Sky Scrappers (1928), the team is far more confident with animation techniques. Oswald’s attempts to eat a lively hot dog (later reused in a Mickey toon) are priceless, as is the fight with an early version of ‘Pegleg’ Pete on a beam. Indeed, there’s a terrific use of perspective as the latter’s fist comes right at the audience. My favourite gag may have been Oswald pressing his belly button to restore his squished cartoon head.

Down the rabbit hole

As was the case with many of the Alice Comedies, and the later Mickey Mouse shorts and Silly Symphonies, there are depictions of race and gender that were wrong then and remain so today.

Bright Lights (1928), for example, not only features Mlle. Zuzu the Shimmy Queen but a brief depiction of blackface. Like Mickey, Oswald is very much rooted in the vaudeville traditions that used these insensitive gags as their stock in trade.

In Rival Romeos (1928), we see a goat chewing on what is meant to look like a pornographic magazine. Great Guns (1927), Poor Papa (1928) and Hungry Hoboes (1928) contain some gunplay and/or animal cruelty, not to mention the latter’s less than stellar title.

On the flip side, there are some that are missing or partially lost. The Banker’s Daughter, Rickety Gin, Harem Scarem, Sagebrush Sadie, Ride ’em Plowboy, while others only appear in part or in the depths of national archives. The search for them is chronicled in several texts.

Walt’s ‘betrayal’

Unfortunately for Walt and Ub, just as they were starting to gain some success in Hollywood, his first star was taken away from him.

Walt travelled to New York in 1928 on what he thought would be a simple renewal of their contract for a second series. Mintz, who had been the go-between for Disney and Universal, wanted to take over the studio with brother-in-law George Winkler. Without Walt’s knowledge, he offered the animators with job offers on the legal technicality that Universal owned Oswald. Walt had a simple choice: accept new terms with a reduction in income, or lose the rights to Oswald. Walt, never known for playing nice with others when backed into a corner, rejected the offer.

Oswald went on to his own success without Disney, with Universal producing more than 160 cartoons and multiple pieces of merchandise with the character until the late 1930s. Many of these are still available in the public domain today.

The Oswald short Empty Socks (1927) was remade as Mickey’s Orphans (1931)

Walt and Iwerks? Well, legend tells of an infuriated Walt coming up with another character on the train ride home. Whether that story is apocryphal or not, by November 1928 they had debuted a new hero. He’s the guy they called little Mickey Mouse.

More than a trace of Oswald would still be found in Mickey Mouse. Apart from the similarity of design, Disney and Iwerks would continue to refine their ideas well into the 1930s. Mickey Mouse shorts Mickey’s Orphans (1931), Mickey’s Nightmare (1932), Ye Olden Days (1933) and Building a Building (1933) are just some of the Oswald shorts remade with Mickey Mouse. (See the image above for a sample comparison). Other gags would find their way into the later cartoons.

Oswald comes home

While Oswald could have been a mere footnote in Disney’s history, and was in fact largely ignored or only mentioned in brief in many biographies of the company, the unexpected happened some 78 years after Oswald and Walt parted ways.

In early 2006, Disney under Bob Iger initiated a deal to trade several minor assets with NBC Universal, including the rights to Oswald. In exchange, the parent company sent sportscaster Al Michaels from Disney’s ABC and ESPN to NBC Sports.

Since then, Disney has been reintegrating Oswald into cartoons, games, and parks. Oswald is a main character in the Epic Mickey video game franchise. He’s appeared in the short films Get a Horse! (2013), made character appearances in the theme parks around the world, and made appearances on the 2015-2018 Mickey Mouse series. At D23 Disney fan expo in 2017, the company celebrated 90 years of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

As recently as 2022, you may have also seen a few seconds of Oswald in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as they went tumbling through alternate realities. The same year, a brand new Oswald short was released for online audiences. Oswald is very much back in the Disney fold — and once again making money for them.

A display of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit merchandise at the Disney Store, London in 2023.

During a 2023 visit to a Disney Store in London, while I was putting the finishing touches to this article, I was thrilled to see a massive Oswald display at the entrance to the store on Oxford Street. Part of the Disney 100 celebrations, it was filled with spirit jerseys, leisure wear, plush toys, badges, mugs, and more. So, while the modern version of the company might maintain it was all started by a mouse, even they seem willing to admit that it’s the rabbit who has been the most resilient.

References

Bain, D., & Harris, B. S. (1977b). Mickey Mouse: Fifty Happy Years. New English Library.

Finch, C. (1999). The Art of Walt Disney. Harry N. Abrams.

Gabler, N. (2007). Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. Vintage.

Gerstein, D., & Kaufman, J. B. (2022). Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse. The Ultimate History. Taschen.

Iwerks, L. (Director). (1999). The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story. Walt Disney Pictures.

Kothenschulte, D. (2021). The Walt Disney Film Archives: The Animated Movies 1921-1968. Taschen.

Susanin, T. S. (2011). Walt Before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years, 1919-1928. Univ. Press of Mississippi.

Tieman, R. (2003). The Disney Treasures. Disney Editions.

MORE FROM DISNEY MINUS: Newman Laugh-O-Grams | Walt’s first fairy tales | Alice Comedies | Oswald the (Un)lucky Rabbit | Silly Symphonies | The Spirit of 1943 | So Dear to My Heart | One Hour in Wonderland | The early lost films | Johnny Tremain | Westerns of the 1950s | Moon Pilot

All images in this article are owned by Disney unless stated otherwise.

March 30, 2023