Jul 28, 2019
Hi everyone!
This week, One Movie Punch takes a giant step forward in podcasting. Not all podcasting, just for us within podcasting. On Monday, we’ll have our first, but by no means our last, Tarantino review for “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”, which is already in the running for best picture. Tuesday we’ll have a new Takeover Tuesday participant with a review of a hit-or-miss horror movie. After those films will be our very first interview and review episodes, for 2018’s “Bullitt County” on Wednesday with writer/director/actor David McCracken, and for 2016’s “The Chair” on Thursday with actor/producer Kyle Hester. We’ll round out the week with another Fantastic Fest feature from our good friend Andrew Campbell and another uplifting review from One Movie Spouse.
Sundays around here sometimes turn into Sponsor Sundays, most recently with “Raw” (Episode #517), at the persistent insistence of Andrew Campbell. For more details, head over to patreon.com/onemoviepunch and consider giving monthly. While this week we’ll include segments from our interviews, the full interviews will be available as Patreon exclusives, along with special reviews, and other ideas in development. All funds go to help us grow with our audience. And for a new logo. Got any ideas about that as well? Hit us up over social media.
Today’s throwback review is an animated film like no other. “Loving Vincent” is a moving historical drama investigating the death of Vincent Van Gogh in an attempt to deliver a letter. However, the entire film is animated by a gigantic team of impressionist artists painting and repainting each frame. Earlier this year, “Loving Vincent: The Impossible Dream” documented the amazing process for this film, which earned “Loving Vincent” a Best Animated Film nomination at the 2018 Oscars and Golden Globes. You’ll see why when you check it out. It sits at an 85% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 62 at Metacritic. If nothing else, you’ll be impressed by the technical execution.
And before we get started with the review, we’ll be running the latest promo from our good friends Garrett and Carson at the Two Views Movies podcast, who have been incredibly productive lately. While Garrett does spoiler-free reviews here, you can find longer written versions at their website, as well as their incredible spoiler-filled podcast. Definitely check out their latest episode, debuting later this week, and catch their recent crossover episode on “Crawl” (Episode #102) with the Who The Hell Is This For? Podcast. It’s a lot of laughs.
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Here we go!
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TWO VIEWS PROMO
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Today’s movie is “Loving Vincent” (2017), the ambitious animated feature directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, and written for the screen in collaboration with Jacek Dehnel. The film follows Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth), whose father Postman Joseph Roulin (Chris O’Dowd) gives him a letter from Vincent Van Gogh (Robert Gulaczyk) to be delivered posthumously to his brother. Over 100 artists brought each frame to life using oil paints or charcoal and Van Gogh’s own paintings as a base. The results are nothing short of stunning.
Spoilers ahead.
As animation becomes more and more computerized, it’s important to remember that the first animated features were individual cells, hand-drawn with stationary backgrounds, and a little later, stop-motion animation. It takes a lot of labor, but also produces some of the most incredible animations. One ends up being more expensive, but that doesn’t always mean it ends up better. Don Hertzfeldt and Travis Knight have produced animations I would place next to Pixar and Dreamworks any day.
“Loving Vincent” takes animation to a whole other level, really pushing the notion of a concept film. Van Gogh’s life can best be called a tragedy, someone whose incredible talent went mostly unappreciated in his lifetime. The film begins as a quest to deliver a letter, but also to give an overview of Van Gogh’s family and life. However, it switches to a detective story, investigating his life after entering treatment with Doctor Gachet (Jerome Flynn) and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his apparent suicide. And each segment is expertly animated based upon Van Gogh’s immense library of work.
I can’t even imagine how this film must have been pitched, especially given the number of skilled painters needed. I highly recommend checking out their website at lovingvincent.com for more information on the production and animation process. So many amazing people poured a great deal of time and talent into this film. I wonder what neat tricks and techniques they learned along the way, which could hopefully be recycled into another effort for another artist. Imagine a surrealistic Dali film or a pointillist Seurat short or even a guided effort by Mark Ryden. So many possibilities with this format.
“Loving Vincent” (2017) is literally a work of art, comprised of over 65,000 frames hand painted by artists, woven together with a story about Van Gogh’s tragic life and death. Sure, the story can be slow in one or two places, and maybe every question isn’t answered, but these concerns are petty when set against the sheer effort. Fans of animation or fans of visual art should definitely check out this film, then dig around a little bit about how they did it, and be amazed all over again.