Film
From the Muppets and Fraggles, to The Dark Crystal, and The Storyteller collections, I loved the magic these two created together. There was always a deep inner heart to the characters born from the Creature Workshop, married to themes of the universal conscious, mythology, and the macabre, in that place where nothing was what it seemed to be. Oz has continued to direct the fantastical, telling dark humourous tales by torchlight.
A master storyteller, no detail escapes detection, consideration, and ultimately illustration. His tales in picture-form explore and expose the naked imperfections of our lives, relationships, and interactions with the natural world. He balances space and silence in animation with action and motion, like a yin-yang symbol. Although Disney’s early films inspired his desire to create, his work surpasses his predecessor’s in spirit, magic, and art.
A director like no other, a man who understands the bonds between men and tells his stories with raw intensity. He is by far my favourite director of action-oriented movies because he refuses to sacrifice the plot for eye candy, and develops his characters with cleverness, logic, and believability. His sped-up/slowed-down style of filming is brilliant and original, gutting the essence of moments and stringing them together with rhythm, grit and purpose.
From Cannibal the Musical, a college film project, to The Book of Mormon, which earned 9 Tonys in 2011, they’ve walked a long, absurd, offensive path, and I’ve loved their work from the start. South Park has been my favourite animated show for 15 years, and I can sing all the songs from Team America. They’ve grown as storytellers, directors, and social commentators, managing to stay true to their convictions, without forgetting how to laugh.
The director who brought to the screen Anne of Green Gables, and later Road to Avonlea, based on L.M. Montgomery’s books about life in the Maritimes around the turn of the last century. It was as much the actors who captured my young imagination as the stories themselves, a virtual community I loved. I’ll forever be grateful to him (and Megan Follows) for introducing me to Miss Anne-with-an-e, the red-haired heroine of my heart.
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