Sanders, Chris (Film Director)

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    ‘The Wild Robot’ Review: Wonder and Whimsy That Does Compute

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    Chris Sanders’s movie about a robotic assistant and the gosling she raises is defined by dazzling visuals and frank ideas about the circle of life.Have you ever thought about the many ways animals show emotion? Consider an inquisitive snout wriggling in the air, tails coiled protectively around cubs and ears perky or drooping depending on mood. For creatures who didn’t evolve to walk upright, wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve is a considerably more anatomical business.Among the achievements of “The Wild Robot” is a painstaking regard for details like these. Written and directed by Chris Sanders (“How to Train Your Dragon”) and adapted from Peter Brown’s novel, the movie is a dazzling triumph of animation in which you feel the filmmakers’ attention on every frame. In a revivifying turn away from the gag-a-minute, computer-generated extravaganzas clogging up the animated zoological canon, this is a work that cares most about two things: big feelings and great beauty.That’s not to say that its machine is built entirely of new parts. In some ways, this kid-friendly affair about an interspecies found family even leans into its derivative elements. Roz, the bionic hero of “The Wild Robot,” seems designed to evoke the title character in “The Iron Giant,” sharing that monster’s studying eyes and lanky stature. But rather than outer space, she hails from today’s sinister science-fiction analog: the conglomerate Universal Dynamics, which specializes in robotic digital assistants. Think Alexa in hulking metal form.The movie opens as Roz (short for Rozzum Unit 7134) accidentally washes off a cargo ship and ashore a wildlife island, where she swiftly begins scouting for a task that satisfies her serve-at-all-costs programming. After wreaking havoc on some fauna, the robotic assistant (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) stumbles upon a purpose: raising an orphaned, newborn gosling whose kin she accidentally squashed.Brightbill, as she names him, is on the runty side, and although Roz grows more sociable — at first, she can speak only in a Robotese, which is so stilted it might as well be Middle English — her ward (voiced by Kit Connor, of the Netflix series “Heartstopper”) struggles to master the basics of his pond and sky habitats. Tagging along for the child-rearing is a rascally fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), who alternates between parenting advice and snide remarks. The impending winter imposes a ticking clock on Brightbill’s training: Should he fail to become airborne before migration time, he will perish in the cold, assuming he’s not eaten first.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Making ‘The Wild Robot’ Even Wilder

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      Roz, the beloved protagonist of Peter Brown’s popular children’s book, gets a glow-up for the big-screen adaptation.On the cover of Peter Brown’s best-selling children’s book “The Wild Robot” are massive evergreens and a matching dark green seascape. Atop a pile of enormous boulders is a tiny but unmistakable image of a robot: Roz, the book’s protagonist, with her bucket-shaped head, squared-off shoulders and two headlights for eyes.“With a book, the cover is often all you’ve got to pull the reader in,” Brown said in an interview. “I very deliberately designed Roz to look simple, so that when people saw the book cover they would immediately know that it’s a robot.”Movies, however, have a bit more freedom when it comes to automatons. “There’s motion, there’s sound effects, there’s all this other stuff that can tell viewers pretty quickly that they’re looking at a robot,” he added.So when the artists and designers at DreamWorks Animation set about adapting Brown’s book and its mechanical star for the big screen, they let their minds run free. In place of the static, unblinking silhouette of Brown’s book cover, DreamWorks created a leaping, whirling, battling protagonist who can scuttle up steep cliffs like a crab and swing from place to place via long telescoping arms.As the movie unfolds, Roz’s tools are revealed: claws that can climb sheer cliffs; fingers that shoot flames; arms that function as vacuums and leaf blowers; a homing beacon that emerges from the top of her head; DreamWorks AnimationFor a studio like DreamWorks, makers of the “Kung Fu Panda” and “How to Train Your Dragon” franchises, coming up with the dramatic action sequences and cool character design was relatively easy. The challenge for the film, which opens on Sept. 27: keeping the soul of a character that millions of readers had fallen in love with over the course of Brown’s trilogy, a character that was, yes, a robot who could stand alongside Hollywood’s and anime’s most exciting droids and bots, but was also, at heart, an adoptive mother trying her best to care for an orphaned gosling.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      When the Oscars Were Held Amid Another Divisive War

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      Three days before the 2003 ceremony, the United States invaded Iraq. Despite pleas to delay the awards, the academy went ahead with what became a politics-suffused evening.On March 23, 2003, as the rest of the world watched televised images of captives and corpses identified as American soldiers, limos carrying high-fashion-clad celebrities rolled up outside what was then known as the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles.The United States had invaded Iraq just three days before, and, until that morning, there was still the possibility that the Oscars wouldn’t go on.As A-listers like Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry and Steve Martin — the host — were herded through metal detectors amid a large law enforcement presence, a few blocks away, police officers holding clubs faced off with demonstrators trying to get closer to the theater (none did).This year, another war is in the headlines as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences mounts another Oscars. So far, almost no one has spoken out at precursor awards shows, but it was very different in 2003.“It felt weird to dress up and go to this thing while our fellow Americans were all overseas about to get involved in something that was very dangerous,” the director Chris Sanders recalled in a recent interview. Sanders was nominated that year for best animated feature film for directing “Lilo & Stitch.”Newly minted winners like Adrien Brody and Nicole Kidman, front left, joined past winners onstage in 2003. Kevork Djansezian/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More