A wonderful tale of coming of age, Japanese folklore and ancient traditions, Kubo brings the imagination alive with the simple art of origami \u2013 folding paper.<\/p>\n
Originally released in Australia for an International film festival August 13, Oregon-based Laika Entertainment explodes on to the silver screen with a technologically advanced anime known as 3D stop-motion fantasy.\u00a0 While stop-motion capture is as old as 3D-clay-animation creations such as Davey and Goliath (1960 \u2013 1975) and British-based Wallace and Gromit (1990 \u2013 present) with tremendous improvements such as the Matrix \u2013 Bullet time (1999), no one has mixed it with anime before.\u00a0 It is a welcomed, elegant change and vast improvement.<\/p>\n
Directed by Travis Knight, an incredible cast dazzles and enthralls the audience with truly stunning performances \u2013 proving that storytelling is as strong as the actors themselves and their chemistry.<\/p>\n
Even the opening narrative during an ocean maelstrom captures you and compels you to join the story\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you must blink do it now. Pay careful attention to everything you see – no matter how unusual it may seem. If you look away, even for an instant, then our hero will surly parish.\u00a0 It is time I follow my own path.\u00a0 My name is Kubo and this is my story\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The young ocean castaway and his widowed mother, Sariatu, land near a seaside village.\u00a0 His mother, mentally lost with a forgetting illness, passes each day just a shell of her former self.<\/p>\n
As it tries to leave their sheltering cave, Kubo wakes each morning only to chase the family\u2019s surviving prized possessions – origami paper.\u00a0 Using a growing magic, Kubo captures the papers by playing his 3-stringed shamisen instrument.\u00a0 Then he feeds his mother and walks to the local village.<\/p>\n
At the village, Kubo earns a living by asking each villager to provide a single word, then creating masterful madlib-tales about the famous samurai Hanzo battling the Moon King.\u00a0 As people begin to throw their coins and he strums his shamisen, the paper rises and folds itself into marvelous phantasmagoria, then plays out each storyline with zest and samurai sword slashing.<\/p>\n
As happy as he is, Kubo misses his father and his eye \u2013 the one thing his grandfather and aunts stole from him and the reason for the original oceanic escape.\u00a0 One day he learns about the Obon ceremony that allows family to commune with the dead.\u00a0 He initiates the tradition only to plunge himself, his mother and his father into a wild adventure seeking Hanzo and the family sanctuary.<\/p>\n
Join Kubo as he gains a monkey guide, breaks one of his strings and compassionately saves the family honor!<\/p>\n
Using Imdb.com\u2019s rating system \u2013 this movie is also 10 stars!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A wonderful tale of coming of age, Japanese folklore and ancient traditions, Kubo brings the imagination alive with the simple art of origami \u2013 folding paper. Originally released in Australia for an International film festival August 13, Oregon-based Laika Entertainment explodes on to the silver screen with a technologically advanced anime known as 3D stop-motion…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":502,"featured_media":11212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,374,379],"tags":[],"staff_name":[669],"class_list":["post-11190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-reviews","category-showcase","staff_name-daryl-von-dunker"],"yoast_head":"\n