Way back in my film school days, I had an interaction with a favorite cousin whom I had not seen in some time. This opportunity to reconnect saw our first interaction since I had been accepted as a film student, and so he asked me what basically everyone asks me right after I tell them I’m studying film, “So, like what’s your favorite movie, then?” When approached with this question, at least by associates who are not necessarily film buffs, my default response is usually something I know has been on Netflix in the last year. (Though if I had to pick an answer ... maybe Silver Linings Playbook .) I think this time I said James Cameron’s Titanic . He then had a sort of illuminated reaction and followed up with, “I see, so you like … old movies.” My response to this was something in the vein of, “Well, yes , but NOOOO …” Steven Spielberg being a 29-year-old on the set of Jaws In academic circles, t he demarcation between “c...
Travis Knight's Wildwood has already generated above-normal discourse about the merits and application of animation as an artform. "Don't you realize that animation isn't just for KIDS, by Jove!?" (Don't you realize ... lots of us have been saying that for a while now?) This connects to a much larger conversation about the stigma the artform has held, a conversation that has generally placed the onus on animation--and animators--to prove they can be as good as "real films" and "real filmmakers." Animation as a form will need sustained support--from more than just the crowd who waited until now to decide that animated movies could be "good, actually." But Wildwood itself offers other contributions that I imagine will carry the field much further. Oregonian preteen Prue McKeel ignores her parents' instruction to not take her brother, Mac, outside. When a flock of crows descend and carry her brother off into the w...