Culture is nothing more than an expanded family history consolidated into historical fact – and there is nothing quite as beautiful as sincere pride in where one comes from. However, life has not always been easy for those who were born into one culture over another, especially when referring to particular moments in the past….

Animation is perhaps the last frontier when it comes to studios asserting enough considerable control over the productions that they become a brand, usually indicating an unimpeachable sense of quality. Whether Pixar, Disney or Studio Ghibli, the idea that these massively successful companies would produce anything below-par is almost unimaginable. Yet, the one studio that…

Perhaps it is presumptuous, but it’s entirely possible that anyone reading this grew up at least aware of Disney. We have gotten to a point where the studio is now older than the vast majority of the global population, which is both a thrilling fact, and an opportunity to reflect on what this company has…

It would seem that every time we discuss the work of Hayao Miyazaki, we usually use the term “magical” to describe the worlds he creates and the atmosphere that sits at the foundation of his work, since they all seem to be shrouded in a kind of upbeat charm that is impossible to describe in…

It is a disappointing experience to discover that a studio once known for its impeccable, flawless run of films has started to produce work that is far beneath their usual standards – however, when it comes to Pixar, this has been something that has been happening for the better part of a decade. Not every…

I have spoken quite regularly about the period in which the Walt Disney Company recovered from a couple of decades of mid-tier work by delivering a string of exceptional films that allowed them to regain a level of respectability (not that it was necessarily lost), and in the process create some of their most inspiring…

For nearly four decades, Studio Ghibli has been regarded as the gold standard for animation, perhaps even more so than Disney and Pixar (which have unsurprisingly collaborated with the Japanese animation studio on a few occasions in recent years), and the reasons are extremely obvious. Few studios have been as committed to capturing quality over…

The journey to the big screen undertaken by Mario and Luigi – the ubiquitous plumbers that were the heroes of the video game series of the same time – has been a long and storied one. The dismal failure of the attempt to bring these characters to the world of cinema produced thirty years ago…

Few styles of filmmaking have undergone quite as interesting a shift over the past few decades as animation – the nostalgia of classical, two-dimensional animation combined with efforts to increase what is possible with technology and other different styles has made it a formidable industry all on its own, with every year yielding magnificent works,…

There are few franchises that saw as radical a decline in quality as the Shrek series – the first two films are appropriately considered not only masterpieces in their own right, but incredibly influential to the entire medium of animation, the industry being pushed in new directions after what was soon to be seen as…