Loving Vincent Paints An Intriguing Portrait of An Iconic Painter

 

Hand-drawn animations woefully low presence on the American film scene has seen a mild form of a reprieve this year thanks to The Red Turtle, Your Name. and now the Vincent Van Gogh tribute Loving Vincent, which is brought to life entirely by watercolor paintings that have been created by around 115 painters. Yep, the entire film is rendered through the distinctive art style that Van Gogh was famous for. Interestingly, Vincent Van Gogh is already dead when Loving Vincent gets its story started which takes place shortly after the iconic painters demise and has Van Gogh's mailman, Postman Roulin (Chris O'Dowd) entrusting his son Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth) to return the letter to Vincent's brother.

The Saga Of Marjane Satrapi Is The Centerpiece Of The Riveting Animated Tale Persepolis

American cinema has basically resigned itself to solely dabbling in animated feature films in the case of making family-based features. There's nothing inherently wrong with that at all as the best Disney, PIXAR and LAIKA productions demonstrate but it is a pity that adult-oriented American animation at the cinematic level only crops up once in a blue moon with something like Sausage Party whose whole purpose to exist is to derive comedy from juxtaposing foul-mouthed gags with a medium of storytelling traditionally associated with children's fare. Luckily, many foreign countries have picked up the slack and delivered high-quality animated cinema that doesn't fit into the mold of traditional family movies.

Bojack Horseman Review: Will Arnett Is A Formerly Famous (And Spardoically Humorous) Horse

A Horse Is A Horse, Yes Of Course

Television is a constantly evolving medium, with color bringing new possibilities to storytelling and marketing in the 50's. The more recent, yet somehow slightly quaint, innovation of a Tivo gave one more ease in recording programs. Netflix has been another evolution for television, and a seismic one in terms of impact. Prior to 2013, the idea of Netflix entering original programming through the streaming service that had helped give birth to their 2011 "Qwikster" debacle seemed like a joke.

Franchise Frenzy: The Lion King

I Ain't Lion...That First Movies Still Amazing (The Sequels? Weeellllll.....)

Gives ya chills, don't it?

Disney is pretty much the reason why I love not only the art of animation, but cinema in general. Their movies were ones I rewatched endlessly, to the point where even today even the mention of key words like "necessities" and "world" are likely to cause me to burst into a Disney song. One of my favorites of the bunch was easily The Lion King, a movie released only a year and a half before I was born, and (something I didn't realize until I actually started writing this article) one that came out twenty years ago this week. Who can believe it's been twenty years since moviegoers were enthralled by the Circle of Life? Even today, the movie has a tremendous presence in pop culture, to the point where a new sequel TV series entitled The Lion Guard was announced last week.

From The Interwebs: Rocky & Bullwinkle Return...To Promote GEICO Insurnace

From The Interwebs is a feature where I highlight videos, articles and pictures from the Internet I find interesting and worthy of sharing on this blog. 

The characters that Jay Ward made in the 60's got a big boost in popularity this year when Mr. Peabody & Sherman was released to OK domestic box office and surprisingly high critical praise. I myself found what I have seen of the movie to be dull (my family and I left our theatrical screening about 40 minutes in, so I can't give an official consensus), but at least it gave the characters Jay created some publicity.