Christopher Holliday is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education at King’s College London (UK). Alexander Sergeant is a Lecturer in Digital Media Production at the University of Westminster (UK), specialising in the history and theory of fantasy cinema. Each episode, they look in detail at a film or television show, taking listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation.
Episodes
Monday Oct 15, 2018
Monday Oct 15, 2018
For Episode 6, Chris and Alex are joined by Dr Martha Shearer (King’s College London), expert on the Hollywood musical and author of the recent monograph New York City and the Hollywood Musical: Dancing in the Streets (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Together, they discuss The Greatest Showman (Michael Gracey, 2017) in relation to its status as a biopic, as a fantasy of New York, and its marked use of computer graphics that bring this all-singing, all-dancing American musical to life.
Monday Oct 01, 2018
Monday Oct 01, 2018
Episode 5 takes Chris and Alex on a magical mystery tour through psychedelic British animation of the 1960s thanks to Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968). This animated fantasy musical mixes playful caricatures of John, Paul, George, and Ringo with a colourful, abstract and, at times, surreal visual style from art director Heinz Edelmann. Drawing from both classical, folk and pop music, sixties rebellious youth culture, and The Beatles’ own rock and roll repertoire, Yellow Submarine presented the possibilities for animation as a significant and serious art form.
Monday Sep 17, 2018
Monday Sep 17, 2018
In Episode 4, Chris and Alex discuss the work of Studio Ghibli and their feature-film My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988). Released as part of a double-bill with Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988), My Neighbor Totoro is a colourful animated fantasy that takes place in rural Japan inhabited by mysterious dustbunnies and the eponymous Totoro creature (who has since become Ghibli’s own official mascot).
Monday Sep 03, 2018
Monday Sep 03, 2018
The third episode sees Chris and Alex reflecting on Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963), which showcases the pioneering work of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. Based on classical Greek mythology, the film's famed 'skeleton warrior' battle sequence designed by Harryhausen fully encapsulates the possibilities of animated special effects for fantasy cinema.
Monday Aug 20, 2018
Monday Aug 20, 2018
For this second episode, Chris and Alex discuss Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988), a part-live-action/part-animation/part-fantasy film that functioned as an important milestone in marking the return of animation's commercial and critical appeal in Hollywood.
Friday Aug 03, 2018
Friday Aug 03, 2018
In this inaugural Fantasy/Animation podcast, Chris and Alex discuss Walt Disney’s first feature-length animated cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937).