Chris and Alex return to the feature films of the Bristol-based Aardman Animations studio for Episode 67, travelling from the world of Kensington propriety ‘up top’ to the underground chaos of Ratropolis ‘down below’ for Flushed Away (David Bowers & Sam Fell, 2006), which tells the story of the trials and tribulations of high society rat Roddy St. James who is inadvertently flushed down into the sewers of London. Mirroring this narrative collision of worlds, Flushed Away also bears the industrial weight of such duality, being part of a 12-year, four-film $250million agreement between Aardman and Hollywood studio DreamWorks Animation to produce a series of animated features. Listen as Chris and Alex examine how Aardman’s stop-frame processes (and signature silicon-based Plasticine style) combined with the workflow of computer-animated films in the U.S.; character modelling and the sculpting of digital clay as part of the Flushed Away’s CG/stop-motion hybrid aesthetics; pantomimic expression and film comedy; questions of national identity and the film’s construction of a ‘national fantastic’; the Romantic origins of fantasy storytelling; and the contribution that Flushed Away’s creativity with waste, junk, garbage and cultural detritus makes to its crafting of a highly-detailed animated world.
The Hunger Games (2012) (with Tarja Laine)
Avatar (2009) (with Rupert Read)
Chicken Run (2000) (with Lynn Ferguson)
WandaVision (2021)
Arrival (2016) (with William Brown)
Grave of the Fireflies (1988) (with Alex Dudok de Wit)
Dark (2017-2020) (with Nicolas Leu)
Space Jam (1996) (with Paul Wells)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) (with Helen O'Hara)
The Prince of Egypt (1998) (with Francesca Stavrakopoulou)
Happy Feet (2006) (with Hannah Hamad)
Inception (2010) (with Todd McGowan)
Captain Marvel (2019) (with Trixter VFX Studio)
Animated Christmas Adverts (1951-2018) (with Malcolm Cook)
James Bond Title Sequences (1962-2015) (with Ed Lamberti) (Part 2)
James Bond Title Sequences (1962-2015) (with Ed Lamberti) (Part 1)
Christopher Robin (2018)
Sherlock Jr. (1924) (with Peter Adamson)
Roobarb (and Custard) (1974) (with Birgitta Hosea)
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