I woke up this morning to the alarm on my bedroom TV. I could hear familiar voices... Ralph Fiennes?... Richard E Grant?... William Hurt?... When I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I realised that the program on BBC2 was an animated version on 'Jesus of Nazareth'.
Not being a particularly religious disposition, this was not the reason that prevented me from getting up out of my nice warm bed. Alas, it was the unbelievable animation that bedazzled me. I come from a design/multimedia background, and so I found this example of animation very interesting, and the more I watched it, the more I was amazed.
The flow of the animations; the realism of the characters' features; the expressions on their faces; the interlaced, drawn animation 'dream-sequences'; all these aspects aggregated to form a top class exhibition of animationary excellence.
And to top it all off, the dialogue and storyline were superbly written in a way that would appeal to young AND old. I a twenty-nine year old man, but I have to admit that watching this brought a tear to my eye, and a lump in my throat.
Whether this was an empathetic reaction to the plight of Jesus, or an inherent appreciation of the animation quality... one can only guess.
10 out of 10 (and I only caught the last half hour!!) I shall be ordering a copy of this on DVD as a Christmas present. Thats the easy part... the hard part is deciding which one of my four favourite neices to give it to!
Not being a particularly religious disposition, this was not the reason that prevented me from getting up out of my nice warm bed. Alas, it was the unbelievable animation that bedazzled me. I come from a design/multimedia background, and so I found this example of animation very interesting, and the more I watched it, the more I was amazed.
The flow of the animations; the realism of the characters' features; the expressions on their faces; the interlaced, drawn animation 'dream-sequences'; all these aspects aggregated to form a top class exhibition of animationary excellence.
And to top it all off, the dialogue and storyline were superbly written in a way that would appeal to young AND old. I a twenty-nine year old man, but I have to admit that watching this brought a tear to my eye, and a lump in my throat.
Whether this was an empathetic reaction to the plight of Jesus, or an inherent appreciation of the animation quality... one can only guess.
10 out of 10 (and I only caught the last half hour!!) I shall be ordering a copy of this on DVD as a Christmas present. Thats the easy part... the hard part is deciding which one of my four favourite neices to give it to!