It is a fantasy adventure in Laika’s distinctively crafted stop-motion animation, written by Chris Butler from the bestseller of the same title by Carson Ellis and Colin Meloy, the latter being a band member of The Decemberists, one of whose tour posters we duly glimpse in this film. The director is Laika’s lead animator Travis Knight. It’s a forthright, exuberant, good-natured and old-fashioned children’s tale which CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien might have recognised, a story about the mysterious glory of going on a quest and the terrible fear and wish-fulfilment euphoria of being called upon to confront secret forces that the grownups know nothing about.
The trailer is brilliant and I plan to see it at the Vue after work on Friday. I can't go to the Everyman because the only showing is 7pm, and that's too late.
The setting is modern-day Portland, Oregon, a groovy city whose hipster-ish stores (there’s a coffee shop actually called Dripster) and Woke 1.0 signage are affectionately mocked.
‘Affectionate’ mocking is ok, then?
The stop-motion animation style has, as with Coraline, a robust and pleasing directness, and results in, for me, a more organic character and physical immediacy than Pixar’s ubiquitous digital look, to which it makes a welcome change.
*sigh* They have to get in a dig, don’t they? ‘No, the films I like are hand-made artisan ones, not gorrible artificial CGI ones, like you peasants’
Not interested. I haven't been to a cinema for many years. Firstly because the vast majority of offerings are low brow, often violent, expletive peppered, CGI riddled, story-lite, right-on "message" packed ephemeral crap with the lastability of yesterday's left over coffee.
ReplyDeleteEvery children's offering features the same ghastly formula of the goofy loud moron father/male, the "empowered" mother/woman, the studious and sensible sister and the shouty, high-pitched boy who undoubtedly had ADHD is "on the spectrum" and of course gets into trouble on the pathway to becoming his stereotyped father. Oh, missed out the dog, there has to be a dog in there somewhere and lots of "messages" alluding to race, gender, climate and any current sacred cow of the month.
The worst part is that you need to take out a mortgage to go to the cinema, plus a bridging loan for any refreshments as brining your own is verboten, but no problems with tossers on their bloody phones or the constant rushing of food wrappings.
Nope... Buy the DVDs from CEX or Music Magpie. Hard copy when you want it and cannot suddenly "disappear" as happens with those subscribe but own nothing, censored, "streaming services"
Rant over... For now.
Apologies for any typos...