cryptozoo
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Hits and Misses, Pandemic Edition 2.0: Anthony Kaufman Breaks Down Six Sundance 2020 Films’ Theatrical Releases
According to Box Office Mojo, our contemporary plague ended on June 14, 2021—the last day the label “COVID-19 Pandemic” was included on its daily box office reporting. But don’t tell that to anyone trying to release a film in the second half of 2021, as viral variants spread widely across America, plunging the hopes of many filmmakers and distributors. Welcome to Pandemic: Year 2. The merciless persistence of the coronavirus and its wide-ranging impact on theatrical moviegoing and home viewing habits became more entrenched over the past several months—with indies on the losing end of the stick. Struggling to gain […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Jan 18, 2022 -
“Spreadsheets Are the Best Things in the World”: Dash Shaw and Jane Samborski on Animating Cryptozoo
Cryptozoo, Dash Shaw’s beautifully animated follow-up to 2016’s My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, begins with a stark, colorless prologue in which a couple, Amber and Matthew (voiced by Luisa Krause and Michael Cera), scale a fence that seems to be randomly placed in the middle of the woods and find themselves staring at an honest-to-God unicorn. The ensuing scene is delicately handled, conveying both the beauty and fright of the encounter and, eventually, its tragicness unflinchingly, without sentimentality. It’s a wonderful introduction to the weird world of the film, where not only unicorns but also gorgons, griffins, […]
by Forrest Cardamenis on Aug 20, 2021 -
Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook 2 (Abby Sun): I Was a Simple Man, Strawberry Mansion, Cryptozoo
The Sundance Institute has been running producer and director labs since 1981, even before taking over and renaming the former US/Utah Film Festival in 1985. In that sense, the projects coming out of the Feature Film Program (whose founding director, Michelle Satter, is still in charge), Indigenous Program and Documentary Film Program are just as important a marker of Sundance’s effect on the US film ecosystem as the platform provided by the festival. When I programmed film festivals, I tracked their press releases as closely as official lineup announcements. This year, 16 projects in the festival were officially supported by […]
by Abby Sun on Jan 31, 2021 -
“It Was Supposed to be Confusing and Nonsensical”: Editor Lance Edmands on Cryptozoo
Dash Shaw’s adult animated feature Cryptozoo is a surreal romp into the world of cryptids, mythic creatures whose existence are debated. After stumbling on the titular Cryptozoo, an eclectic team of individuals set out to capture a dream-eating creature called a Baku. Editor Lance Edmands tells us of the unique struggle of balancing dream logic and streamlined editing that went into the development of Cryptozoo. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Edmands: I became friends with Dash Shaw […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2021 -
“It’s Reflecting the Times but Arriving Warped”: Director Dash Shaw | Cryptozoo
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? Animation takes a long time. Cryptozoo was written and storyboarded when Obama was president. The first voice recordings were done in the early months of the Trump presidency. The final pick-up voice recordings were recorded remotely due to the pandemic. Now it premieres under Biden. During all of those years, we worked on this every day. The plan never changed, but of course everything (from painting a background, or recording a voice) happens in […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2021
