Animated films
2005 has been another big year for animation with features as diverse as Tim
Burton's Corpse Bride, The Curse Of The Were Rabbit (UK studio Aardman's first
Wallace & Gromit feature), Dreamworks' reverse Jungle Book comedy
Madagascar and Japanese anime Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence released
theatrically in Australia. Not to mention the upcoming CG comedy Chicken
Little, sure to be one of this year's big Christmas blockbusters.
That's the big screen but a whole other world of animation exists on DVD, the
sheer scale of which is - just slightly - overwhelming. Anime releases have
been increasingly flooding the DVD market with good reason as their popularity
is skyrocketing, and not just with 'kids', As in Japan, anime's biggest market
in Australia is with adults. Hayao Miyazake's Spirited Away proved to be one of
the most successful releases for 2004, the Special Edition selling thousands of
copies, laying the foundation for Miyazake's latest, more challenging
theatrical release, Howl's Moving Castle. Astro Boy, Japanese master Osamu
Tezuka's classic 1960s children's animated TV series, has also finally been
released here in a superbly packaged Deluxe DVD Collection box set that
features 51 episodes including the very first, shot in B&W and broadcast in
1960.
Two local animations (little films that 'could') were also rapidly released to
DVD to capitalise on their international mainstream recognition: Adam Elliot's
Oscar-winning Harvie Krumpet, a triumph in tragedy (and acutely funny) was
released soon after he won the 2004 Best Short Animation Academy Award for his
little claymation asthmatic anti-hero. While AFTRS graduate Sejong Park's 2005
Oscar-nominated CG short Birthday Boy is included on a disc filled with
features that are longer in duration than the film itself!
And oft-forgotten American animating pioneer Ralph Bakshi's films are also
regularly surfacing on DVD. His most famous (and naughtiest) is Fritz The Cat
from 1972 (aka as The Nine Lives Of Fritz The Cat), was released earlier this
year. A satire on the 1960s counterculture it's recognised as the 'Deep Throat'
of cartoons, one of the first pornographic animated features to reach the
mainstream. It's fascinating – a completely un-PC, but accurate and at times
hilarious snapshot of the 1960s, rude enough to make the guys from South Park
blush - well, a bit...
- Megan
Megan Spencer has spent way too much of her life in the dark, all for a good
cause though - watching movies as a professional film critic. For the last six
and a half years she has been serving the ever-increasing hunger for film and
DVD reviews as radio triple j's resident film critic, and a year ago joined the
new line up of long-running SBS-TV film review program, The Movie Show.
Every now and then she pops up into the light to make her own films,
documentaries (her latest is 'Fantastic Brutality', a documentary about an
obsessed wrestling fan, to be released next year). She has also written about
film for many publications including J-Mag, Limelight, Inside Film Magazine and
the Age Green Guide.
And the impossible question to ask a film critic: what's her favourite film?
"Blue Velvet would be at the top of the list, so would Fight Club... But then
again American In Paris makes me cry every time."
Megan has also been part of the Foxtel's Project Greenlight Australia as an
on-air panelist and judge.
Ten great animations to check out on DVD:
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Cool World (M) 1992
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Holli Would if she could ...and she will. When ex-con cartoonist Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) was behind bars, he found escape by creating "Cool World," a cartoon series featuring a voluptuous vixen named Holli Wood. But the line between reality and fantasy soon blur for Jack in this splashy mi...
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Finding Nemo (G) 2003
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There are 3.7 trillion fish in the ocean... they're looking for one.
From the Academy Award - winning creators of Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. It's Finding Nemo, a hilarious adventure where you'll meet colorful characters that take you into the breathtaking underwater world of Australia's...
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Incredibles, The (PG) 2004
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Follows the adventures of a family of former superheroes rediscovering the true source of their powers - in one another. Once one of the world's top masked crimefighters, Bob Parr (AKA Mr. Incredible) fought evil and saved lives on a daily basis. But fifteen years later, he and his wife Helen (a fam...
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Nightmare Before Christmas, The (G) 1993
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Enter an extraordinary world filled with magic and wonder! This Special Edition of TIM BURTON'S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS celebrates the ground breaking accomplishments of the first full-length stop-motion animated feature, with Bonus Materials never before available. Jack Skellington, the Pump...
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Robots (G) 2005
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It’s very much a nuts and bolts world in Robots – the new animated feature from the makers of Ice Age. Shifting their focus from that prehistoric period to a much more futuristic-looking one, they have come up with a sci-fi comedy adventure brimful of enjoyable characters voiced by a top-notch cast....
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Shrek (PG) 2001
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You've never met a hero quite like Shrek, the endearing ogre who sparked a motion picture phenomenon and captured the world's imagination with.. the Greatest Fairy Tale Never Told! The critics are calling Shrek: "Brilliant, dazzling, hilarious, wondrous, and thoroughly entertaining...... A must for ...
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Shrek 2 (PG) 2004
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Once upon another time... The natural order of fairy tales is interrupted in the sequel to the Academy Award®-winning blockbuster "Shrek." "Shrek 2" sends Shrek, Donkey and Princess Fiona on a whirlwind of new adventures with more fairy-tale favorites to lampoon along the way. After battling a f...
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South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (MA15+) 1999
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When South Park third-graders Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny emerge from an R-rated movie with wide eyes and wider vocabularies, their parents' protests of the film begin a countdown to all-out war with Canada. Suddenly, the boys are at the heart of a crisis and each must search within himself for t...
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Toy Story 2 (G) 1999
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The original all-star voice cast from Toy Story is joined in Toy Story 2 by a new gang of unforgettable characters, including Jessie the Cowgirl, Bullseye the Horse and Stinky Pete the Prospector. While Andy is away, Woody is abducted by a greedy toy collector. Before you can say "to inf...
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Who Framed Roger Rabbit (PG) 1988
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It's 1947 Hollywood and Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), a down-on-his-luck detective, is hired to find proof that Marvin Acme, gag factory mogul and owner of Toontown, is playing hanky-panky with femme fatale Jessica Rabbit, wife of Maroon Cartoon superstar, Roger Rabbit. When Acme is found murdered, a...
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