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Stop-motion animation is responsible for some of the most heartwarming moments in the history of film, but even the most ardent fan of Claymation has to admit that there’s something inherently uncanny about puppetry where you can’t see the strings. The very act of bringing an inanimate humanoid figure to life recalls spooky tales of monsters and dark sorcery, so it’s not surprising that stop-motion has also been used as a tool to scare.

And with modern media like The Shivering Truth and Robert Morgan’s Stopmotion reminding us that animation can convey terror just as easily as cartoony laughs, we’ve decided to come up with a list celebrating six of the scariest stop-motion effects in horror.

For the purposes of this list, we’ll be considering any film that utilizes stop-motion to bring a character to life, be it as a brief photo-realistic special effect or traditional animation.

Travis Knight, president and CEO of animation studio Laika, has been appointed to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Board of Trustees. Additionally, the museum announced the appointment of motion picture producer and former chair of the Academy Museum Inclusion Advisory Committee, Effie T. Brown, as an honorary trustee (a lifetime position), effective July 1, 2023.

According to an official statement from the museum: “As the governing body of the Academy Museum, the Board leads the museum toward a sustainable future by adopting sound, ethical, and legal governance and financial management policies, in addition to securing adequate resources to advance the museum’s mission. Knight and Brown will help continue the success of the museum and its social impact for audiences worldwide.”

Additionally, the Academy Museum’s Board of Trustees has also re-elected Patricia Bellinger Balzer, Arnaud Boetsch, Olivier de Givenchy, Ray Halbritter, Ryan Murphy, Regina Scully, whose current terms end June 30, 2023, for another three-year term.

Much has been made of titles being quietly removed from HBO Max over the last few week, but while the number of films departing the service in September is substantial, at least subscribers have a heads up.

As is the case every month, various movies are due to leave HBO Max in September, and below we’ve got the full list of which films are leaving and when so you can prioritizing some viewing options. Noteworthy removals include the 2021 Warner Bros. thriller “The Little Things” starring Denzel Washington (leaving Sept. 16), the 2020 “Freaky Friday” horror riff “Freaky,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” films, the “Lethal Weapon” franchise, “Super 8,” “Tootsie” and the Nancy Meyers classic “The Holiday.”

Check out the full list of what’s leaving HBO Max in September below.

September 4

Meet the Patels, 2014

September 5

Turner Classic Movies: Follow the Thread, 2022

September 8

Teen Titans Go! To The Movies, 2018

September 9

Horrible Bosses 2,...

Click here to read the full article.

In proudly weird Portland, Oregon, far from the Hollywood moviemaking machinery, an animation empire arose in the mid-’70s. It was fueled by a hippie-collective exuberance and one man’s “burning ambition,” as a colleague describes the enterprising energy of Will Vinton, the company’s driving force, in the engaging and insightful Claydream.

With incisive use of clips from the Vinton catalog and discerning interviews with Vinton and those who knew him, Marq Evans has made a film that pays tribute to its subject but is no starry-eyed celebration. Not unlike the characters Vinton and his collaborators brought to the screen through Claymation (a Vinton coinage and registered trademark), the doc combines exhilarating whimsy with dark and complex emotions. And any film that incorporates deposition footage is not likely to be headed toward a simple happily-ever-after.

Those legal proceedings pitted Vinton against Phil Knight,...

There’s intent in a brief snippet from an archival interview with Travis Knight. He’s asked about getting the animation bug at Laika, of which he’s co-owner with his father Phil Knight while also serving as President and CEO; his answer is, “No. I started at another studio.” It’s not a lie. He began his career at Will Vinton Studios after Phil became a minority shareholder. It’s also not the whole truth—Laika is Will Vinton Studios, or at least what Will Vinton Studios became after the elder Knight initiated a hostile takeover. There’s been a very conscious effort to separate the two despite that lineage, because of how messy the origins ultimately prove. I personally had no clue of the connection until almost seven years later.

While that shouldn’t necessarily be surprising (companies are bought and sold every day), reading around the time...

The Book of Genesis contains two competing creation stories: There’s the one where an all-powerful deity conjures everything in six days, and the version where a more anthropomorphic god rolls up his heavenly sleeves and makes man from clay.

Guess which one the visionary stop-motion artist Will Vinton would have preferred.

Co-inventor of the “Claymation” technique, Vinton wanted to be the second Walt Disney. Colorful eyegasm “ClayDream” celebrates all that Will Vinton Studios achieved — its most beloved characters include the California Raisins, rabbit-eared Domino’s Pizza menace “the Noid” and Eddie Murphy series “The PJs” — while musing about what might have been, had control of the company not been wrested away from him by Nike honcho Phil Knight, who rechristened it Laika and put his son Travis in charge.

That was an unhappy end for Vinton (who died in 2018), to be sure, but like the Old Testament origin story, this saga has multiple versions.

This June on HBO and HBO Max will play host to a new season of “Westworld,” a new adaptation of “Father of the Bride” and much more.

The big new Warner Bros. release on HBO and HBO Max this month is “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” which actually debuted on the HBO Max streaming service on May 30. The third film in the Wizarding World prequel franchise first hit theaters in April, and is now available to stream in 4K.

There’s also the updated version of “Father of the Bride” premiering on June 16, while a pair of noteworthy documentaries are coming on the early side this month: “The Janes” premieres June 8 and follows unlikely outlaws in pre-Roe v. Wade America who defied state legislation that banned abortion, while “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” debuts on June 9.

As for original series, the fourth season of “Westworld” premieres on June...

With its list of new releases for June 2022, HBO Max is joining in what should be a TV summer to remember.

Not content to let Netflix’s Stranger Things or Prime Video’s The Boys to dominate the summer TV landscape, HBO is coming through with a new season of one of its big hits. Westworld season 4 is set to premiere June 26 on both HBO and HBO Max. What will this season of the increasingly confusing sci-fi drama be about? Per HBO’s synopsis it will be “A dark odyssey about the fate of sentient life on earth.” So you know, only that.

Irma Vep is the only other Max Original of note this month. Based on a 1996 cult classic of the same name, this limited series stars Alicia Vikander as a disillusioned movie star looking to remake the early 20th century French silent film serial Les Vampires.

It’s...

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "The Adventures of Mark Twain"

Where You Can Stream It: Prime Video, The Roku Channel, Vudu, Tubi, Pluto TV. 

The Pitch: Many young American children know the folksy and witty nostalgia literature by Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens (1835 - 1910) merely by osmosis. Constant references made to his books, stories, and sayings in elementary school classrooms have left an indelible mark on generation after generation, and there's likely not a child over the age...

The post The Daily Stream: The Adventures of Mark Twain Offers Kids Nightmares and Literature appeared first on /Film.

Taiwan-based tech giant Htc Vive approaches this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) event as an important milestone. The global leader in virtual reality will be presenting two of its recent original creations that will lay the groundwork for the future gameplay of VR products in the highly anticipated Web 3.0 era.

The two featured productions, “The Sick Rose” and “Beatday — The Beginning — Mini VR Concert,” pictured above, are representative of Htc Vive Originals’ future direction, said its president Liu Szu-ming.

“Riding on the state-of-art VR technology, Vive Originals will continue to create entertainment experiences that have high cultural values for the metaverse. These content outputs include film, music, animation, interactive art and performing arts,” Liu told Variety.

“With the development of VR technology at the core of our development, our future creative output will incorporate elements such as interactivity, 3-D aesthetics, blockchain, encrypted information channels and AI technologies.”

Pandemic-themed “The...

Julian Fowles, a longtime film and television producer for broadcasting station Kcet and Esparza/Katz Productions, died in Miami, Florida on Saturday while recovering from a stroke. He was 76 years old.

Before his career in entertainment, Fowles was educated at Harvard Law School and began his career as an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He afterwards served as a contract attorney for Universal, Columbia and 20th Century Fox.

Fowles changed track after a short stint in law, becoming an executive producer of local programming of public broadcasting station Kcet, where he produced Eleanor: In Her Own Words. The show eventually won a Los Angeles Area Emmy and was picked up by PBS for their American Playhouse Series.

He later won a Primetime Emmy for outstanding children’s program for producing Mark Twain And Me at Kcet. Fowles also co-wrote and co-produced The Light Stuff with Martin Kent. Twain...

Kenya Barris, the creator of “Black-ish” and its spinoffs “Grown-ish” and “Mixed-ish,” is directing a feature film about famed comedian Richard Pryor. MGM nabbed worldwide rights to the movie following a highly competitive sale.

Barris will write, produce and direct the yet-to-be-titled project, marking his feature film directorial debut. The movie is centering on the life and times of Pryor, one of the most influential comedians of all time. Over the course of his career, Pryor appeared in over 50 movies, headlined the series “The Richard Pryor Show” and “Pryor’s Place,” and wrote for TV shows including “Sanford and Sons.” Among his numerous accolades, Pryor was the first-ever recipient of the annual Mark Twain Humor Prize.

“The way Pryor did what he did — with truth and specificity that was somehow self-aware and self-deprecating, and said with an unmatched level of vulnerability — that was the power and impact of his work,...

Carl Reiner had a particular genius for comedy. While some of his seminal works, The Dick Van Dyke Show and his directorial debut Enter Laughing, were autobiographical, Reiner was amazingly versatile. Two of his most contrasting pieces, Where’s Poppa? (1970) and Oh, God! (1977) will be included on the bill as Turner Classic Movies celebrates the life and career of the writer, director, actor, and author with TCM Remembers Carl Reiner. The Carl Reiner programming tribute will happen on Tuesday, July 28.

Where’s Poppa? is one of the darkest of comedies with the most devious sensitivity. It is intentionally in bad taste. George Segal wants to drive his own mother to suicide. And he’s a lawyer and knows how to get away with it. It is brilliant. Oh, God! is its polar opposite. George Burns is God, and it might not have been too much of a stretch for him. The ex-vaudevillian...

Ryan Lambie Mar 22, 2017

Fearsome monsters, grasping hands, and a suggestive tree. Here are 10 fantasy movie moments that scarred us as kids...

Sooner or later, you're going to see a scary movie. Whether you sneak down and watch a horror film on late night television, watch a Nightmare On Elm Street sequel round a friend's house or watch clips of slasher movies on YouTube, horror movies are always out there, waiting in the wings for the young and curious.

See related The Last Kingdom series 2 episode 1 review The Last Kingdom series 2: politics, battles and arselings What can we expect from new BBC drama, The Last Kingdom?

But long before most of us graduate to the stage of our lives where we start seeking out 18-rated movies of gore and terror, we reliably encounter scary moments in what might initially seem to be harmless family adventure films.

The 1980s was an...

In the spirit of October, this list will look at scary scenes, but not from the horror classics directed by Craven or Carpenter or even Hitchcock (I’m excluding him, though I argue most of his work isn’t exactly horror). These are from the films that aren’t really meant to scare you. At least, not at the visceral level that horror films do. These are the fifty definitive moments from non-horror films that still made an impact on the “frightening front.” From shocking to creepy to unsettlingly hair raising, these are moments that will stick in your mind long after watching the films, even if they are part of a very different narrative.

50. Toy Story 3 (2010)

Scene: Monkey Security

Video: http://youtu.be/x6QkcJjx-Vo

The third installment of the one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time is also one of the darkest children’s films ever made.

Do you remember being a child trying to make Transformers out of play-dough? It was fun and messy but insanely hard to do, now imagine making entire sets, characters and films out of it, doesn’t seem as fun anymore does it? However there are wonderful people who persevere and create gorgeous films, music videos and TV shows by moving clay or objects a tiny bit in each shot and we get to enjoy all the pleasures of their painstaking work. Despite being inanimate objects it’s amazing that stop-motion can be scary, make us laugh out loud or cry and even make us dance.

Even brilliant Us comedy series Community recently got in on the act, featuring an entire episode of stop-motion in their second season (out on DVD Monday). So join me in finding out the best examples of this fascinating process and get your play-dough ready as...

Another week, another pretty solid group of DVD titles released for your viewing pleasure. Our wallets and bank accounts will be a lot happier this week too as compared to last Tuesday when the number of DVDs worth buying numbered eight. Eight! That’s more than most DVD columns feature in their entirety! But like I said, this week is filled with rentals (and one title worth buying) including Crazy Stupid Love, Cars 2, Bunraku, Trespass and more. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Adventures of Mark Twain (UK) “Naked people have little to no influence in this society.” So says the always wise and wonderful Mark Twain as captured in clay in this funny and whimsical claymation adventure. The film mixes bits and pieces of several of Twain’s works, short and long, into an adventure that sees Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn...

The first entirely Claymation feature film, The Adventures of Mark Twain is a a rather stunning technical achievement from Will Vinton Productions and one that is unfortunately rather under-seen. Even if this wasn’t such a wonderfully entertaining and rather charming film this situation would be lamentable due to the film’s historical significance as a remarkable achievement in animation.

When Vinton remarks on the commentary on this disc that this was the first 100% Claymation feature film he is not exaggerating either, everything here is made from plasticine, from the characters and objects to the painted backdrops and even the water that seems to flow and ripple in certain scenes. The effect that this achieves is one that feels very much like an elaborate magic trick. With everything in the world modelled in plasticine., what at first seems like a distancing aesthetic begins to seem more and more natural as the film goes on.