Animate This! My Favorite Stop-Motion Films

  The saga of Harold & Kumar continues. And for this third chapter in what now has become a trilogy, the two former stoner friends find themselves yet on another road "trip", but this time, it's a journey to "save Christmas".
And when it comes to motion pictures, nothing says Christmas better than stop-motion animation.
Which this live action comedy incorporates for just a few minutes in a drugged induced homage that demonstrates just how quirkily bizarre the world of second-by-second puppetry can come off when done "correctly".
And while under the influence.

Of course, as a kid, the holidays would not have been the holidays had it not been for the Rankin-Bass holidays specials that aired every year.
And while the technology and technique of animation have grown by leaps & bounds that can be measured by miles, some of the charm of these old, cheap 70's efforts have worn off.
But there are a few that still resonate with the Christmas spirit that I try to carry now, as an adult. Rudolph, The Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town are the two main ones that still occupy substantial screen time on my television set during the end of the year (and with many other people's sets also, considering that they're still shown multiple times during the season).

  These days, when it comes to the subject of stop-motion animation, most people have a tendency to think of "clay" animation, or the kind that is most often associated with the old Rankin& Bass holiday specials or even more so with the Tim Burton or Aardman type of filmmaking. And all those studios do acquire a certain amount of space on this list that would be regarded as quite plentiful. But here is an entry that stands alone from those kinds of films, not just in terms of its use of the stop-motion technique, but also in the fact that it comes from a country that very few would expect to see a successful stop-motion motion picture from.... the Czech-Republic. 
 Alice is an adaptation the classic story of Alice in Wonderland. But in this paradigmatic portrayal of Lewis Caroll's most famous novel refrains from "smoothing out the edges" in the manner that most other adaptations that other   "kiddyfied" versions have followed since Disney first released their distilled rendition in movie theaters back in the offset of the 1950's. Because of this, many people have forgotten or are completely unaware that author's original version of the story had a bit more of an edge to it. 
 Now, this particular Wonderlusting Alice doesn't completely fall down the rabbit hole of psychodelia and darkness that the book had, it does make use excellent use of it's stop-motion effects to give this story a much more Brothers Grimm style of fairy tale type of presentation. Despite the lack of actual puppetry in it's figures, the characters of the fable movie around much more smoother than was usually seen in these types of motion stopping cinema techniques, especially when the effort is made to combine the stop-motion with live action. 
  The end result is a much more honest take of Carroll's intentions may have been, (even if part of those aims might have had a narcotic influence to them) and an Alice in Wonderland that is able to distinguish itself from all the other mouse-eared trends that have taken over the spirit the underworld of bong smoking rodents and regents.

Just like Alice, here's another entry about a kid who travels through a portal to another world filled with weird looking creatures. It's also just the first of a bunch of Tim Burton productions that you can expect to see on this list.



James is a "normal" kid who lives next to a giant peach. But when he enters it, he becomes a stop-motion cartoon character and befriends a group of talking insects.
And even though that might sound weird, the truth is, it's a pretty common occurance whenever a live-action person enters a peach the size of a house.
And if you don't believe, next time you see a giant piece of fruit, try it. See what happens.
In the meantime, I'll be here, logged on this site, waiting to tell you "See? I told you so".

  Well-known character actor Seth Green has a sketch comedy series on Adult Swim called Robot Chicken. And basically, what it is, it's a bunch of short sketches that are all animated with a clunkier version of stop-motion technique (not as many frames per second), using mostly cheap generic toys and action figures as the primary cast for the skits. Each skit is filled with hit-n-run style humor that is pretty much geared towards the type of teen/young adults who grew up watching 70's, 80's 0r 90's morning cartoon shows and who developed a slacker type of raunchy humor that barely falls within the boundaries of what TV censors allow to air. Now, because their laughs are based on such crass and raucous punchlines, I'm not really a big fan of the show.
 With the similarities that this French S-M feature shares with Robot Chicken, it was then a bit of a surprise for me that I ended up liking A Town Called Panic. I think the primary reason may be what acts as the foundation of the humor. Whereas RC is aimed as stoners who like stuffing their faces with Twinkies as they watch, the laughs in Panic are targeted more towards kids and tweeners who enjoy stuffing their faces with Twinkies as they watch. Add to that that there are still some funnies for any parents who are watching this along with their children, and how the language of France probably adds more charm to the over-the-top deliveries, not to mention that as the writers wrote the premise, they recognized that moms and dads like to stuff Twinkies in their faces just much as their kids do, and what you end with is a pretty funny slapstick romp with its own sense of silly je ne sais quoi.

After watching this stop-motion animated tale about a group of not-so spring chickens who are lookin' to get sprung, it made me realize that when it comes to writing about these kinds of movies, I don't always have feel obligated to use any obvious puns no matter how much they might be staring me in the face. F'rinstance, right now, I am sorely tempted to insert the phrase "flying the coup" somewhere into this description box.
But I'm not going to. That would be too easy.
So instead, what I'm gonna do is reward myself for showing such self-control by satiating the hungerous urge that I usually feel after watching this "fowl" film.
I'm going on a "chicken run".
Anybody else want anything from KFC?

As a kid who grew up incredibly poor, there was more than one year whereupon Santa didn't leave me or my siblings any presents.
That fact combined with Santa's bad attitude towards Rudolph in the first half of this special really helps to shed light on what an @$$hole Santa can truly be.
This movie always helps to remind me to keep the holidays real.

To paraphrase PeeWee Herman,
"If you love ghosts so much, why don't you marry one?"
Which, as you can probably tell by the title, is what this movie is about; exchanging vows with the spirit of a deceased one. Which, of course, sounds like a morbid idea for an animated flick geared towards the younger of living, but in the hands of Tim Burton, it's just another good reason to get behind the director's chair. A whimsical tale of lost love and the desire to mend a broken heart (even if that heart has been dead and buried for many years), Corpse Bride is a good example of why, for my money, Burton's preference for spookish cinematic subject matter is a perfect marriage with stop-motion animation and tends to come much more alive than when he tries to film it in live action.

Since the dawn of cinema, there have been some films here and there that were set during the dawn of man. Going back as far as One Millions Years BC (okay, okay, even farther back than that, but those earlier movies don't provide the kind of fun pun that BC does). In 2018, Early Man is a stop motion contributor that puts the type of spin on the early days of humankind that speeds up the evolutionary process to include a titanic clash of the ages (in this case, it's the Prehistoric Age Vs the Bronze age).



This is probably the weakest entry into Aardamn's articulate filmography, but if this is how low than they can go, then it's a pretty safe bet that I, along with most fans of this meticulous film-making technique, will be looking forward to any other future projects coming from this company.

While the first name(s) that comes up at the mention of Aardman Animation is Wallace & Gromit, followed by Shaun the Sheep, the truth is that it is Creature Comforts that is the first name that was actually responsible for helping to put the stop-motion animation company on the map. Starting out as a mockumentary style series of animated shorts and ads, it eventually accumulated into a collection that was enough to fill up an award-winning short feature film. Combining the simplified charm of its straightforward Claymation designs with the realistic and subtle mannerisms of "real" life from across the pond, this is where Aardman was able catch the attention of lovers of British humor and leave its own distinctive mark in the world of hand articulated animation cinema.

As I mentioned in my entry for Creature Comforts, Wallice & Gromit is probably what Aardman Animations is most known for, but if there was another name that would come in second, it definitely would that of Shaun the Sheep.
Following in the silent steps of other nontalking funny Englishmen as Benny Hill in his most signature skits or the bumbling antics of Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean, Shaun is a wordless wooly anthropomorph who moves through his agricultural surroundings in a manner in which laughter from the audience is the primary source of sound. Originally, Shaun started his claymated career through a children's televison series, but in 2015, he graduated into feature films, bringing the same endearing charm of innocense and subtle "unuddered" humor that "made noise" in this particular field of frame stacked filming.

  One of the first things people who get to know me pick up on is that I am a life long, card carrying comic-book nerd. And as such, I first became aware of the story of Coraline as a graphic novel written by comic-book writer Neil Gaiman (although, it's original format of release is as a novella). And while I liked it very much, I thought that its adaptation onto film was one of those rare examples of a movie being better than the printed version.
  As a character on film, Coraline is the kind of typical precocious little kid that fuels the standard Hollywood formula when depicting human adolescence. However, luckily for those movie lovers such as myself who like creativity, smarts, and dynamic visuals in their movies, Coraline is a stop-motion feature that utilizes all these elements in a very entertaining and modern update of the whole Alice in Wonderland theme. 

Okay, while Disney or Pixar don't ever have to worry about Aardman Studios ever taking any food out of their mouths at the box office, the truth is, I prefer their stuff better.
It's takes the lighthearted animation that currently crowds the movie theater industry today and adds British slant to both the dialogue and humor. Which tends to provide a nice little break from all that high-tech formula of the big boys, and a down-to-earthiness quality that's not found from Tim Burtons more macabre and zany-esque caricatures.
Even watching Curse Of The WereRabbit, their take on the werewolf lore, feels much more like a relaxing tea and crumpets afternoon at the cinema than a mega-merchandising spectacle that the DisPix people would have likely hyped it up into.

After making a move from the TV screen to the movie screen with the first Shaun the Sheep movie, this sequel goes a step further as now Aardman's talkless titular character fodders his way through a science fiction adventure. There's not much I can really say about Farmageddon that I haven't already praised in my entry for the first StS Movie, other than, the same things that made the first chapter such a successful and satisfying watch, are utilized here, maybe even amped up more to make this sequel one of those rare ones that surpasses it predecessor. Basically, this franchise is a farm-filled formula that shears it way to the top of the stop-motion haystack.

In the History of the world, there has been three significant British invasions. The first one was in the form of redcoats, the second one in the form of Beatles, and the third in the form of plasticine figures. And in this case particularly, pirates(!). And while the Brits continual takeover of stop-motion animation has been going since the 90's, the wit and energy of their features seem to show no sign of slowing down. As is evident in this sea-faring adventure in which a band of misfits are on a quest to pillage the most royal of all treasures, the bountiful blue-blood booty of the Queen herself.

The final installment of Wallace and Gromit's trilogy of animated shorts (after this, the dynamic stop-motion duo move up into the big times with the full length movie "thriller" Curse Of The WereRabbit, which is also somewhere on this list), the man and his "best friend" clumsily come across an illegal sheep rustling scheme and find out that it's quite the dog-eat-dog business.

Look, I'm not really any kind of an "anti-establishment" guy or anything, but when an animated movie like Kubo and the Two Strings comes along and wins the hearts of almost all hearts of the film critics, yet get very little notice from audiences at the box office, ya can't help but think that the over-dominating presence of Disnified Pixar formulas in the genre is preventing from quality alternatives like this from even having a chance.

For me, Kubo is not only a great film and one of the best of 2016, but on top of that, with it's story of a young warrior-wannabe's journey to find a magical suit of armor and thus, his identity, it's provides something different from the typical Disney so-and-so. Not to mention that the deeply detailed and visual movements of the stop-motion technique also give the eyes a rest from the overabundance of computere generation that has pretty much filled the theater screens of today.

Okay, everybody and their mother knows who Rudolph The Reindeer is. His story of guiding Santa's sleigh through a foggy night thus saving Christmas has gone down in history.
However, not all that much is known about what happened after that. Oh sure, we have a few accounts of how he helped save Baby New Year and that one time he celebrated Christmas in July, but other than that, whatever became of the four-hooved Yuletide celebrity is unknown.
What we do know is that Rudy had a son, an out of shape, British-accented slacker named Robbie. Who, despite his underachieving ways, has begun his own career in holiday themed specials.



The first chapter of these televised tales of new generation nose-powered reindeer is called Hooves Of Five, and is, in my opinion the best of the lot, so far. Filled with the kind of good-natured, mostly kid-friendly dried wit that is usually found from over the pond, it acts as an introduction to the new wave cast of characters that is currently responsible for keeping the North Pole the hub of the Christmas world.

  If one were not aware of Wes Anderson and his unique slightly off kilter was of telling a story through film, one would take one look at this movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox have two immediate reactions....
 First, they'd mispronounce the film title as The Fantastic Mr. Fox since that would be the typical way that any other filmmaker would do.
  Then, they'd probably be tempted to dismiss the rest of the movie as soon as they noticed how stiff and wonky the stop-motion first appears to be.
  Which, I believe many people did since this particular Fox wasn't so fantastic in terms of profit and underperformed at the box office.
  But the truth is, once one allows themselves to adjust to lanky movements of the stop-motion figures, it will become quite evident that this style of "cheap-lookin'" movement fits very well with the unique pace and dialogue that is Anderson's own distinctive signature. And the story rolls on, it gets easier and easier to assimilate to the jobbled journey that Mr. Fox undertakes to tell his tailless tale of turbulent times, full of taxing trickery and toil-filled tunneling. Truth be told, it may be a little jarring for the younger fanbase of the book that this animated motion picture is based on (which I think is one of the major contributors to it's inability to make a buck at the the movie theater), but it is a very fun and witted quipper for any the adults who are willing to give it a proper chance. 
  Wes Anderson has never been the kind of filmmaker who was "for everyone', but for those who enjoy his signature style of dry, whimsical ubiquitousness, Fantastic Mr. Fox quickly falls in line with the streak of original work that has so far made up his far-out, freaky and funky filmography.  

A story of friendship via the long distance post.
Despite being on opposite sides of the world, pen pals Mary and Max pass through the years of their lives writing to each other with a series of letters in which they share their interests, modest dreams and respective severe shortcomings. And learn that the distance between personal warts (along with facial birthmarks) is not as far as the distance between two hemispheres.

In the first appearance of Wallace and Gromit, the cracker crazy contraptioneer and his canine companion start their short animated film series in grand fashion as they decide to shoot for the moon. Literally.
A lunar adventure that gives a minor nod to the B-movie rocket ship sci-fi flicks of yesteryear but without being as "cheesy" as those cosmic campy classics and yet, being even "cheesier" at the same time.

I already "went into it" in my entry for Kubo and the Two Strings when it comes to my frustration of the Disnification of modern movie audiences that stand in the way of theater goers being more open to animation projects that are not coming outta the "Big Two" (Disney and Pixar). So I won't get into it here ...much.
Missing Link a great alternative to the typical blockbusting so-and-so that tend to crowd the screens of cimena venues these days, as is evidenced by the awards it accumulated after it's release, including being the first stop-motion title to win the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature.
Therefore, even though  Laika (which produced) and Annapurna Pictures were the animation companies, instead of Aardman, who suffered the loss at the box office, the critical acclaim that now follows Link's reputation will hopefully widen the field for future animated features such as this one. And therefore,  keep the boundaries of how to animate such films more open to a diversity of styles and techniques.

Almost 30 years after making his first film, Tim Burton updateds the 30 minute live action feature into a full length stop-motion animated flick.



Frankenweenie tells the macabre tale of how a pet dog is bought back to life by his child owner. After the bull terrier gets killed by a car (the leading cause of death amongst canines, after old age), the young lad decides to a take a page out of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and ressurect the Spuds Mckenzie look-alike through the use of electricity. I guess mad scientists have figured out that electricity is spark of all life.
But that's not the point. What matters is a boy and his dog.
A bond that not even the Grim Reaper can hope to sever.
Well....he can....
but still, through the use of love and , well...y'know.... more electricity...
and probably some string, I guess...
the boy and his dog will can never be separated. For long.

Though, now that I think about it,
when a kid's dog "bites it",
it seems to me that making a simple trip to the pet shop would really be a heck of alot easier than building a secret lab in the attic.

Outside of Aardman Productions, Laika is rapidly becoming my favorite makers of stop-motion motion pictures. And not just in my eyes, but most likely in the whole of the film community also. And when you look at their short list of movies that they've made so far, it's easy to see why. Coraline, ParaNorman, Kubo and the Two Strings, Missing Link, and my favorite of the bunch (again... so far), The Boxtrolls. Based on the book called Here Be Monsters! which sorta solidified the "whole" mythology of boxtrolls, it follws the strory a "regular" human boy who, through exceptional circumstances, ends being raised by trolls who live underground and garbed in boxes. Despite following a path that would be expected by such a story, this is movie that does a very good job of submerging the premise beneath enough twists and plot tribulations to keep the viewer at edge, despite knowing that as a family film, it will eventually, somehow, work itself out in the end.
Edgy in it's design style and presentation, The Boxtrolls balances the grit of nontraditonalism with the smooth emotional formula that keeps mainstream audiences coming back to see what this style of animation is doing to challenge the standard norm and keep the genre fresh.

  As you can probably figure out for yourself, ParaNorman is not normal. Personality wise, he’s a regular kid. He doesn’t have many friends, he’s a target for the local school bully and he likes to watch horror movies. The one thing that separates him from the rest of kids in the neighborhood and which puts the “Para” in his name is his ability to see dead people. It’s a sixth sense that distances him not just from the townspeople around him, but also from his own family. 

  But fear not, it’s a tragedy that gets offset by the fact that ParaNorman lives in a world that is made up stop-motion animation. Now, the stop-motion technique isn’t the highest tech, but this movie more than makes up for it with style. There’s an edgy style to the looks and movements of the animation that helps serve the eerie Halloween feel of Norman’s story and gives the overall end result that helps separate this from all other fear-themed family features that looking to make the rounds during the season of trick’r’treats.

There once was a boy named Tim Burton, who had an obsession with Vincent Price and a dream about a certain style of stop-motion animation. So when he grew up, he made a short film with a certain type of stop-motion animation and he made it about the story of a boy who had with an obsession with Vincent Price.
So distinctive and stylistic was the animation, so eerily cool and quaint was the story, that despite being only six minutes long, this short animated flick still ranked up there with the best of all other 1982 cinema.

      If you love dogs, this is the claymated movie for you. A movie geared specifically towards lovers of all domesticated beasts of canine, even the title of the movie is set up to almost sound like "I love dogs".
At the time of this film's release, the writer/director/producer behind the project was on a red hot streak of making some of the best cinema of his career, with Isle of Dogs proving why he may be one of the very last auteurs remaining in the motion picture industry. After dipping his toe into the stop-motion technique barely a decade earlier with the Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson once agains steps into the hand controlled 3D process, this time with a story about man's best friend fighting for survival against the kind of man whose friendship any pet, dog or otherwise, would roll over for.

Stop-motion with a British flavor, that doesn't try to whack you over the head with it's look, humor or more importantly, with any kind of "universal life-lesson".
While it's distinction from other animated films is much more subtle and evenly consistent, the overall result of The Wrong Trousers left me not so much with a roaring laughter that other animated features try to shoot for, but more with a satisfying smile that was firmly set in place from beginning to end.



Okay, so we might as well accept that any feature featuring Wallace & Gromit is gonna be a candidate for any list that I can fit 'em into. Therefore, when it comes to the subject of my favorite stop-motion flicks, it's a fore gone conclusion that these guys are gonna rank pretty damn high. Particularly when we're talking about the Academy Award winning second entry into the series, The Wrong Trousers. The best of anything they starred in, it is a story that, for my money, utilizes their specialized brand of sight gags, kinetic stunts and subtle film parodies to harmonic perfection.

  Is it a Halloween movie with a Christmas twist, or a Christmas movie with a Halloweenic slant? Or is it both?
For me, I like to describe the feeling that comes from watching The Nightmare   Before Christmas as very similar to the feeling that one might get when discovering that your trick-or-treat bag has been filled with presents instead of candy.
And no rocks. Well...
maybe one lump of coal.



  In my opinion, this is the best piece of cinema, by far, to have Tim Burton's name on it. Such a great cast of creative and endearingly maniacal characters. Innocent enough for kids who can still see the world thru bushy-tailed bright-eyed glasses, yet twistedly dark enough to keep the interests of those of us adults who've had that part of our spirits crushed a long time ago.
An inter-holiday movie for all ages on either side of the perspective spectrum.



 I remember that when Nightmare Before Christmas first came out, I initially liked it, but I didn't love it, not the way that I do now. After several rewatches however, this double-themed holiday special as really taken a firm place in this movie-nerd's heart. I find that TNBC seems to age really well for me as more and more time goes by. And as each All Hallow's Eve goes by, I continually find that it's a good thing to watch to cap off an evening of handing out sweets to all the ghouls and goblins that come, ringing at the doorbell. And it also doubles as prep for the burgeoning winter season and the festive festivities looming overhead.
It's goof film not just because it manages to successfully merge the two holidays that were my favorite as a kid, but also, because it's macabre look and overall atmosphere are the type of traits that I would've died for (pun, not all that much intended) back then.
  Not to mention that whenever I listen to tunes like "What's This?" or "This Is Halloween", I am reminded of hearing "Put One Foot In Front Of The Other", or "We're A Couple Of Misfits", songs that, as corny as they are, now with a grown-up's perspective, my hardcore, hairy pimp-ass' has to humbly admit, will always be a part of my happiest childhood holiday memories.