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PODCAST

Fantasy/Animation

Fantasy/Animation

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.

tv & film

All Episodes

01:03:33

In Conversation with Nancy Beiman

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/10/03

Chris and Alex return after their belated summer hiatus with Episode 105 of the podcast, and a very special instalment that features them in conversation with renowned animation director, character designer, animator, and teacher Nancy Beiman, who has worked at a number of studios (from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin studio to the Walt Disney Company and Warner Brothers) as well as on feature films including A Goofy Movie (Kevin Lima, 1995), Hercules (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1997) and Treasure Planet

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13:05

Footnote #14 - Thinning

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/08/29

Alex is once again in the spotlight for Footnote #14 as he explains to Chris the notion of ‘thinning,’ a term recommended on social media as a potential subject for a bite-sized Fantasy/Animation podcast. Topics in this brief instalment include the representation within fantasy storytelling of so-called ‘thinned’ worlds that articulate spaces via loss and deprivation; the role played by magic in supporting a desire for restoration and the return to the world as it once was; thinning as both a

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01:02:04

Speed Racer (2008) (with Tim Robey)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/08/22

Strap in for Episode 104 of the podcast as the thrill ride that is Lilly and Lana Wachowski’s Speed Racer (2008) provides the focus for this latest instalment in all its unwieldy and unruly CG glory. Chris and Alex’s special guest for this episode is Tim Robey, renowned film critic and author who has written widely on all kinds of cinema for The Daily Telegraph for over the last 20 years. He is also the co-editor of the book The DVD Stack: The Best DVDs of the Best Movies from Around the World

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12:29

Footnote #13 - Folklore and Folkloric

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/08/15

Alex takes the reins for this double tale of folklore and the folkloric, two terms that are fully implicated in the history of fantasy storytelling and cultural expression, as he navigates through and defines each for this latest Footnote episode. Listen as he explains to Chris the relationship that folklore has to ‘official,’ codified or canonised discourse and documentation; the role of shared anecdotal evidence in binding a culture together in a folkloric fashion; the collective stories, rituals,

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01:00:32

Flee (2021) (with Cristina Formenti)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/08/08

The acclaimed animated documentary Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, 2021), which tells the story of Amin Nawabi and his journey from from Afghanistan to Denmark as a refugee, is the subject of Episode 103 of the podcast that reflects on the shared ability of animation, fantasy and the documentary format to ‘reveal.’ Joining Chris and Alex for this instalment is Dr. Cristina Formenti, Assistant Professor in Film Studies at the University of Udine in Italy, and author of a number of books on animation and

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13:00

Footnote #12 - The Lightning Sketch (with Malcolm Cook)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/08/01

Joining Chris and Alex for this lightning quick journey through the origins and aesthetics of the lightning sketch tradition in Footnote #12 of the podcast is Dr Malcolm Cook, Associate Professor in Film Studies (University of Southampton), author of Early British Animation: From Page and Stage to Cinema Screens (2018) and co-editor (with Professor Kirsten Moana Thompson) of the collection Animation and Advertising (2019). Malcolm was also a special guest on the earlier Christmas advertisements

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01:03:49

Mothra (1961) (with Alex Davidson)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/07/25

Chris and Alex take their first visit to the Japanese kaiju genre for Episode 102 of the podcast thanks to Toho studio’s 1961 feature Mothra (Ishirō Honda, 1961), a film that kickstarted the longstanding Mothra monster movie franchise. Joining them to discuss the history and legacy of Japanese cinema’s famous winged creature is Alex Davidson, cinema curator at the Barbican Theatre who also writes on film for the BFI and beyond, with a specialism is queer cinema and television. To tie in with the

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13:29

Footnote #11 - Society for Animation Studies (with...

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/07/18

Footnote #11 comes live from the 33rd annual Society for Animation Studies conference, which took place in late-June and early-July 2022 at Teesside University. Joining Chris and Alex for this rundown of the society as an “international organisation dedicated to the study of animation history and theory” is the current SAS President, Dr Chris Pallant (Canterbury Christ Church University), previously a special guest on our Bagpuss (Peter Firmin & Oliver Postgate, 1974) episode of the podcast. Listen

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01:07:54

Osmosis Jones (2001) (with Tom Sito)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/07/11

Episode 101 confronts the animated representation of disease and illness via Warner Brothers’ 2001 cel-animated/live-action hybrid Osmosis Jones (Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly, 2001), which tells the story of a white blood cell policeman who joins together with a cold pill to stop a deadly virus from destroying their human host. Joining Chris and Alex to talk about the film’s imaginative depictions of a body’s internal workings is Osmosis Jones’ animation director Tom Sito, a veteran of the

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14:33

Footnote #10 - Hybridity

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/07/04

The mixed media potential of animation is the subject of Footnote #10, which takes on hybridity via the combination of multiple animated styles, as well as the spectatorial effects that such blended images might conjure. From the earliest hybridised cartoons of the 1910s and the insertion of cel-animation into the Classical Hollywood musical to contemporary live-action/CG composites and the human/machine collision involved in motion-capture technology, hybridity defines animation’s unique visual

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01:12:29

100th Episodes

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/06/27

The Fantasy/Animation podcast reaches its centenary, so join Chris and Alex as they celebrate 100 episodes with a look back at some memorable televisual hundredths from the world of cartoon sitcoms. Listen as they discuss “Daddy's Little Beauty” (S4E12) from The Flintstones (William Hanna & Joseph Barbera, 1960-1966), in which Fred enters Pebbles in a beauty contest for babies; The Simpsons (Matt Groening, 1989-) episode “Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song” (S5E19) where Principal Skinner is

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14:22

Footnote #9 - Sword and Sorcery

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/06/20

The history and application of sword and sorcery - a term initially used to describe a wave of pre-Tolkien fantasy writing - is the latest subject for Chris and Alex in Footnote #9, which plots the relationship between this kind of ‘rough’ historical fiction and questions of world-building, magic, and myth. Topics include sword and sorcery’s origin story in the 1930s and links to the paperback revolution of short stories and cheap pulp fiction; its cinematic adaptations during the 1970s and 1980s

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01:11:51

Your Name (2016) (Live at the British Film Institute)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/06/13

Episode 99 is a special instalment of the podcast recorded Live at the British Film Institute in London back in May 2022, with Chris and Alex joined by an audience of anime fans to discuss Your Name (Makoto Shinkai, 2016) as part of the BFI’s Anime season. Featuring an introduction to the artistry and creativity of anime, an examination of Your Name’s temporal loops and overlapping rhythms, and a lively Q&A with those gathered at the BFI’s Reuben Library, this episode features a conversation about

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12:08

Footnote #8 - Plasmaticness

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/06/06

Footnote #8 offers a brief detour to the abridged and incomplete animated writings of Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein from the 1940s, and in particular his notorious concept of “plasmaticness” that he argued was a way of understanding the appeal and attraction of Walt Disney’s cartoon images. Listen as Chris and Alex discuss the historical, political, technological, and aesthetic dimensions of “plasmaticness” and the term’s relationship to the Hollywood “rubberhosing” style; the “irresistible

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01:03:04

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/05/30

Chris and Alex venture (back?) into the multiverse in this entirely unplanned episode on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Sam Raimi, 2022), prompted by both a last-minute cinema trip and a desire to check-in once more with what’s happening in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A partner to the earlier discussion of complexity and serial narratives in Wandavision (2021), episode 98 involves a new and improved journey through the MCU’s iterative storytelling to delight in its quantum realms

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13:39

Footnote #7 - The Fantastic

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/05/23

The fantasy of the fantastic is the subject of Footnote #7, as Alex takes listeners (including Chris) on a journey through the origins of the fantastique and a term that often describes certain stories with impossible elements. Other topics includes the fantastic as initially a literary impulse and fantasy as a genre that codifies dimensions of that impulse into narrative expectations and archetypes; Tzvetan Todorov’s work on “the fantastic” as an historical genre of writing that involves characters

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55:58

Rogue One (2016) (with Jonathan Wroot)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/05/16

Episode 97 of the podcast takes on the intergalactic conflicts and rebel alliances of Rogue One (Gareth Edwards, 2016), an anthology feature film and prequel to Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) that tells the origin story of the ‘Rogue One’ starfighter squadron and the creation of the Death Star. Special guest for this episode is Dr Jonathan Wroot, who is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for Film Studies at the University of Greenwich. Jonathan has published research on home media formats and

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12:09

Footnote #6 - Anthropomorphism

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/05/09

The business of talking animals is the focus of Footnote #6, as Chris (with a bit of Alex) takes listeners through the shared histories of anthropomorphism and animation, and the acquisition of humanlike qualities (sentience, subjectivity, and selfhood) by non-human animated characters. Topics include the visual curiosity of the anthropomorph as a hybrid figuration caught between humanity (ánthrōpos) and the non-human (morphē); the role of persuasive personality and affinity within identifiable

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01:02:49

The Secret of Moonacre (2008) (with Lucy Shuttleworth)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/05/02

Based on Elizabeth Goudge’s 1992 children’s story Little White Horse, the 2008 fantasy The Secret of Moonacre (Gábor Csupó, 2008) is the subject of Episode 96 of the podcast, with Chris and Alex joined in their discussion of morality, class, and the power of the ego by the film’s screenwriter and Associate Producer Lucy Shuttleworth, who is also Senior Lecturer in the School of Film, Media and Communication at the University of Portsmouth. Listen as they examine the influence and inspiration on

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12:41

Footnote #5 - High Fantasy and Low Fantasy

Fantasy/Animation ·

2022/04/25

Footnote #5 seeks to embrace the sub-division of fantasy literature through distinctions of “high” and “low,” whereby the era of post-Tolkien fantasy was culturally and critically understood through the identification of the genre’s specific storytelling modes. Listen as Chris and Alex (well, mostly Alex) give a rundown of the role of alternative worlds and mythic tropes used in such divisions; sword-and-sorcery genre elements, folkloric imagery, and character archetypes; how such categories relate

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243 results

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