Niko and The Sword of Light Illuminates Amazon

July 31, 2017 Morphizm 0

The fact that Amazon chose to invest a healthy budget in Titmouse and Niko, in search of staying power and cultural relevance, should be a warning shot to the animation business as usual. After all, as Titmouse told me, we’re in a cartoon gold rush.

Looking Back at Animation’s Future, With Ralph Bakshi

July 24, 2017 Morphizm 0

I’ve spoken a few times with animation auteur, Ralph Bakshi, who pioneered the pathways of underground and overground cartoons for decades. This time, we analyze the live-action/animation merge of Cool World, which like its foundational forebear, Lord of the Rings, created the CGI universe we take for granted today.

Nuclear Cinema: Hiroshima’s War-Torn World

July 7, 2017 Morphizm 0

An assistant director on Hayao Miyazaki’s sublime, stunning Kiki’s Delivery Service, Sunao Katabuchi has since made his name well-known in anime film and television. But his impressive new film, the award-winning Hiroshima epic, In This Corner of the World, might make him a household name worldwide.

Bong Joon Ho’s Okja Animates Cli-Fi

June 29, 2017 Morphizm 0

Revolutionary filmmakers are shaping the future of cinema by analyzing our destabilized planet. Snowpiercer director Bong Joon Ho’s new vision Okja, out today from Netflix, was inspired by biodiversity at the mercy of capitalization and extinction.

Cli-Fi: Tesla, Reanimated

April 21, 2017 Morphizm 0

The National Film Board of Canada is responsible for some of the finest animation the world has ever seen. It has also created world-changing documentaries exploring and analyzing how and why our world changes as it does, for better and worse.

Capitalizing, Commemorating Wonder Woman

March 28, 2017 Morphizm 0

In our world of perpetual war, creator William Moulton Marston’s subversive, aspirational Amazonian intertext has returned to the battlefront, with mainstream audiences and Wall Street earnings in mind.

Cartoon Saloon Schools St. Patrick’s Day

March 17, 2017 Morphizm 0

From director Tomm Moore’s Oscar-nominated masterpieces The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, to director Nora Twomey’s The Breadwinner and beyond into the great unknown, the indie studio that was once international animation’s best-kept secret is a secret no longer.

At Last, Samurai Jack Returns

February 6, 2017 Morphizm 0

Last year, I once again interviewed Samurai Jack creator and animation auteur, Genndy Tartakovsky, who told me the samurai’s arrival was imminent. Now here he is, in all of his glory and wonder, when we need him most.

Cli-Fi: Paco Roca Goes To The Lighthouse

January 22, 2017 Morphizm 0

Paco Roca’s Wrinkles was one of the most moving graphic novels, and animated films, in recent memory. His promising new comic charts a path through the destabilizing territories of war and healing properties of the natural world.

MorphToons: January 2016

February 1, 2016 Morphizm 0

I finished my run as associate editor with a thinker on Herzog, an interview with stop-mo innovators The Quay Brothers, and more.