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On the morning of Wednesday 23 November 2011 - the day after my PhD viva voce (big scary conversation with examiners who decide whether you're awarded the degree), and two days after my 27th birthday - I introduced a screening of Tim Burton's short animation Vincent (1982) and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (dir. Henry Selick, 1993) at the Queen's Film Theatre in Belfast put on especially for school groups. Although the timing was ridiculous, I jumped at the chance to perform this introduction. The Nightmare Before Christmas has always been special to me. It came out shortly after my dad died, and, for all its problems, it was a comfort and a mainstay for me in those early years. I have seen it more times that I can tell you. I know the whole film almost word-for-word, beat-for-beat. Sally the rag doll has been a profound influence. At a major time in my life with such a big absence, it was meaningful to draw my personal and professional lives together, eve...

I've been catching up with Spider-Man lately as the films come up on Netflix. Spider-Man was one of my favourite characters growing up. I wasn't hugely into comic culture, and ones featuring the web-slinger were some of the few I dipped into. A life-long animation fan, I devoured the cartoons in the 1990s , including retro re-runs of the 1960s show. As many others felt and feel, Peter Parker's encounters with school bullies, his social awkwardness, his outsider identity even when his alter-ego becomes a hero, his underprivileged socio-economic status, and his moral quandaries were all relatable. I remember in my later teens being so excited when I heard Sam Raimi was directing Spider-Man (2002). There had been attempts before in television movies in the 1970s, but special and visual effects technologies had to progress substantially before the web-slinging would be convincing. Even between the first and third Raimi films the development is palpable.  In my later teens and ...

I've recently spent some time in the company of the good and not-so-good folk of Dreamland and surrounding fairytale/medieval territories. As a huge fan of Futurama I was dubious about getting into another Groening creation for fear it would not live up to the geeky heights of its predecesor. But Netflix had my number as a substantial amount of my watch list is animation, and I bit when Disenchantment was pushed at the release of part 3 in January 2021.  The show's serial structure is notable: it is presented in parts with chapters, not seasons and episodes, reflecting its continuous story-arc rather than episodic self-contained narratives presented across a series. Even the designated lands, countries and settlements in between throughout the diegesis align with litereary genres and sub-genres all with their roots in fairytale, fantasy and science-fiction. Each place and the microcosmic communities or groupings within have despots, with unease and social change brewing amongst...

Devoid of television but feeling the need to wind down of an evening with short doses of effortless comedy, we’ve been going through the vaults of All4 , Channel 4’s catch-up service. Having loved Derry Girls (2017-), himself was curious about writer Lisa McKee’s earlier comedy which ran for only one series, London Irish (2013).  Guessing accurately that it would focus on a bunch of stereotypically drunken hallions in Big Smokie, and therefore wouldn’t have the charm of Derry Girls , I am neither surprised nor sorry about its demise. While there were some well-delivered corkers of lines and an episode-stealing performance from Siobhan McSweeney who plays Sister Michael so deliciously in Derry Girls , the highly-strung yet underdeveloped characters, the 0-60 ridiculousness of the scenarios, and the clunky writing shoehorning in Norn Irish sayin’s (notably, the culturally Catholic bunch only refer to Ireland, never the North, even though they all apparently hail from Belfas...