Screen Anarchy

Echoes: How Laika Studios Beat Hollywood Giants

Echoes: How Laika Studios Beat Hollywood Giants

Allow me to take you into a bewitching world of animation styled by Laika. Laika is known for visually satisfying aesthetics with soft and comforting hues that haven’t been witnessed in any other animated films produced by several other studios. I am talking about the award-winning Laika Studios that gave us ParaNorman (2012), Coraline (2009), and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016). Its latest, Wildwood, is breaking records with trailer views reaching up to 85M views, even more than Dune 3 and The Odyssey trailer views combined! Wildwood is an adaptation of a children’s fantasy novel written by Colin Meloy of The Decemberists and illustrated by Carson Ellis, first published in 2011. Located in Portland, Oregon, U.S., Laika’s journey started 21 years ago and has…

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Sound And Vision: Gus van Sant

Sound And Vision: Gus van Sant

In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we look at selected music videos by Gus van Sant. Gus van Sant is a weird director, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from watching his feature work. It’s hard to pin-point a main style, as he has evolved through several eras of his work, going from New Queer Cinema-style films like Mala Noche, My Own Private Idaho and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues towards highly commercial melodrama fare like Good Will Hunting, before heading into James Benning-inspired Slow Cinema like Gerry, Elephant and Last Days. Detours like his oddball shot-for-shot Hitchcock-remake Psycho aside, he now is mostly churning out fairly rote (political) dramas which…

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