I Love Both INCREDIBLES 2 and SPIDER-VERSE

Awards season is over. For the first time in years, an animation giant other than The Walt Disney Company took home a majority of the awards, including the coveted Oscar. Yes, Sony Pictures Animation's Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse was the grand champion of 2018's animated feature crop, in a year with some pretty fierce competition. Big …

Onward, Pixar!

Perhaps I'm breaking my post-graduation tradition here. Back in July of last year, I had ceased writing for my old animation news blog Kyle's Animated World, but I did say that I would still be talking about the happenings in the animation industry in some way or another. A lot of animation news and newly-announced …

Hey, Say Something Nice About DreamWorks!

A friend of mine who is a big fan of DreamWorks and their How To Train Your Dragon film franchise posted one day about how frustrated she is at how people talk about DreamWorks. The idea that they are a bad studio, that they are inferior to the "masters" at Disney and Pixar, that they're …

Looking at Lee Unkrich’s Films

Today, January 18th, the animation community got a shock when veteran Pixar director Lee Unkrich announced that he left the acclaimed, Emeryville-based studio after a 25-year tenure there... Unkrich, who is 51 years old, was an integral part of the features since the beginning, having served as an editor on the original Toy Story, and quickly …

Next Level

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse... I saw it last night. I'm arguably unable to review it, but I tried. I've written about this game-changing film time and time again on here and my old, defunct blog. It exceeded all of my wild expectations... I firmly believe Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is a modern animated masterpiece and a …

Ralph Mirrors My Past

You know, I'll be brutally honest here... There are days where I question my love for Disney. Now don't be alarmed, I'll always love Walt Disney's work - from the majority of his animated features to his television show to his best live-action movies to Disneyland itself - and it'll always be a pivotal part …

Follow-Up: ‘The Lion King’ and The Future of Animation

Back in September 2016, I wrote about how Walt Disney Pictures' redo of The Jungle Book raised a lot of questions for animation's future. Then I updated said article after Disney officially announced that they were going to remake The Lion King, but now that its teaser is here and there's a plethora of other information out there... …

Keeping Track of ‘Cloverfield’

A few days ago, I caught Paramount and Bad Robot's newest theatrical feature, Overlord. A sort of World War II horror thriller-cum-action drama, the Julius Avery-directed venture is bombing at the box office. Costing $38 million to make, the film coughed up $10 million on its opening weekend and fell over 60% in its sophomore frame, …

Modern Mouse: Contemporary Ideas and Disney Animation…

It appears that the latest Walt Disney Animation Studios film is starting a lot of conversations... Opening next week, Ralph Breaks The Internet, the sequel to the studio's video game-centric hit, happens to be a somewhat rare contemporary Disney animated feature. Since the trailers and marketing materials have highlighted lots of pop cultural references, memes, and …

‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ – An Animation Thesis

Quite timely... My fifth pick for my "Animation Thesis" review series is a film that's unique in that it can be both a Halloween movie and a Christmas movie... The motion picture is none other than The Nightmare Before Christmas. Released in the autumn of 1993 from Walt Disney Pictures through their "adult" Touchstone Pictures label, The …