Directors Talk Film Faves
4.) Fantasia: Specifically, the "Night on Bald Mountain" and "Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequences. I saw these first when I was really young, on a Disney Halloween special on television, then subsequently at the movie theater in a re-release in the late '60s or early '70s. Walt Disney always had a dark side to him and these two sequences show two flavors of that. In "Night on Bald Mountain," the demon Chernabog (I always assumed he was Satan himself), animated by Bill Tytla in a world designed by Kay Nielsen, may be the greatest piece of truly terrifying animation ever created and the visuals are a perfect marriage to the music by Mussorgsky. "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence, animated to Paul Dukas' music, showed the more playful side of Disney's darkness, with Mickey Mouse getting into trouble with his master's wand while left alone to clean up. This was inspiring to me on many levels, perhaps the most basic being I identified with Mickey -- who doesn't dream of controlling the stars and planets and the crashing ocean with a little magical help?
5.) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: I saw this amazing film in San Francisco when it was first released in 1988. Terry Gilliam is one of the greatest, most inventive visual storytellers of all time, with many of his films -- Time Bandits, The Fisher King, Brazil and 12 Monkeys -- among my all-time favorites. His work is a varying blend of his Monty Python roots with his own gifts for spectacular invention with his brand of truth, weight, dark and light. Munchausen is such an influence on my own work that I created an homage to his "Birth of Venus" scene with Oliver Reed and a very young Uma Thurman in my own recent film, Coraline.
Also, you must include these additional foreign film favorites -- I'm breaking the rules here, but no way can I not list several of my favorites from abroad: Kurosawa's version of King Lear, Ran; Fanny and Alexander by Bergman; Juliet of the Spirits and 8 1/2 by Fellini; Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away -- all profoundly great movies and very influential in my own work.
And a few more American films that have stayed with me always: Polanski's Chinatown; Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven; Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Lolita; Brad Bird's The Iron Giant; and John Lasseter's Toy Story.
1.) Rosemary's Baby for its shots and blocking and perfect script.
2.) Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which is also my father's favorite movie.
3.) Le Roman de Renard, which inspired our animation for Fantastic Mr. Fox.
4.) Watership Down, which was my favorite film as a child.
5.) Rear Window, which made me want to be a director.
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I haven't seen either of the three but the picture sure looks exciting. Like some sort of 3D or something, isn't it?
-Jen @shakenutrition(dot)com
Creating good animation films take a large amount of hard work and effort. Nice effects
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Jungle Book will always remind me of my childhood. I have not seen half of the movies mentioned here and am looking at imdb for more reviews ;-) Toy Story is probably the only one that I have seen but was not 'VERY' impressed. I like movies to have a great story, 'best animations' don't make them good.
When I was a kid, the experience of watching "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" started my admiration for the music of Bernard Herrmann, and confirmed my love for fantasy cinema (and stop-motion animation), in an unconscious way. Before this, I had seen "It Came from Beneath the Sea" (1955), a B&W movie in which an octopus created by Ray Harryhausen climbed the Golden Gate Bridge... But this time Harryhausen's creatures were in full color, the exotic story was inspired by tales from the "Arabian Nights", and the magic was enhanced by Herrmann's score. The film had princess Parisa reduced to less than four inches, cyclops running crazy, a dragon, a bird with two heads, an evil magician called Sokura, a boy genie, and the celebrated skeleton duel, but I was mainly impressed by Sokura's act of magic during the Sultan's ball, crossing a snake with Parisa's aide (actress Nana de Herrera, who looked weird even before the transformation.) The Harryhausen-Herrmann collaboration originated two more Sinbad movies, and other favorites, as "Mysterious Island", "Jason and the Argonauts" and "The 3 Worlds of Gulliver", but "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" is number one in my list of the collaborators' films.
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once upon a time cool effect...
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