by Ryan McCarthy
April 07, 2021, 5:59am PDT
The large-format art book portrays early sketches, storyboards and exclusive interviews that help define the film s unique artistic style.
Producing lines that jump and shake with elusive humanity, traditional hand-drawn animation subtly reminds audiences of the artists behind the apparatus and the tedious nature of their creation.
“Hand-drawn animation is an art form that is unique in its ability to draw on the thousands of years of visual language handed down to us from the illustrators, painters and cartoonists of the past. We don’t only have to mimic live-action, but convey the emotions and inner worlds of our characters, not just with how they move, speak and act, but also with how they and their world are drawn and painted,” says Tomm Moore, co-founder of Cartoon Saloon.
Let me try to distill the significance of each of those events.
A kingdom of priests
A few days ago, Israel’s High Court of Justice issued a breakthrough decision: converts to Judaism, it said (even those ‘fast-tracked’ through non-Orthodox conversion processes Reform and Conservative/Masorti) are Jews. It would seem that Jews are, therefore, a religion. After all, that’s what ‘conversion’ means changing one’s faith. But here’s the catch: why has the High Court waded in what appears to be a religious issue, a matter for rabbis to debate? Because in Israel there are legal consequences: Jews not Israeli citizens, but Jews wherever they come from are covered by the provisions of the Law of Return: they are entitled almost automatically to reside in Israel and (if they so desire) to become Israeli citizens.
Missing a silenced voice
I remember first listening to Rush Limbaugh in my mom’s Suburban when I was a young teenager. Rush voiced for my mom and millions of other conservatives what they thought. Rush was the one place for over 30 years that conservatives could go to hear the values and opinions they felt, and have those ideas validated and orated by a bombastic, charismatic, baritone every day.
There was just something about the way he talked. It was almost like sitting around with my dad having a cup of coffee. It felt like he was talking to only me. If I didn’t get to listen I missed him. Even if I didn’t always agree with what he was saying his voice was so engaging and comforting.
After the USSR, the USA Collapses
Everything has an end, so do empires, both the United States and the Soviet Union. Washington has outrageously favoured a small camarilla of ultra-billionaires. Now it has to face its old demons, prepare for secession and civil war.
Each of the two camps that are fighting in the United States, the Jacksonians and the Neopuritans, wants to end the other. The former speak of insurrection, while the latter want repression, but all are preparing for confrontation. So much so that two thirds of the citizens are preparing for Civil War.
The Jacksonian point of view