Chris Sanders

The Wild Robot

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Rozz with gosling Brightbill in her hand

A shipwrecked robot adopts an orphaned gosling and learns to be a mother in The Wild Robot, a perky and poignant animation produced by DreamWorks and directed by Chris Sanders of How to Train Your Dragon fame. The bumf says Miyazaki and old Disney informed the look of the finished product, but the DreamWorks hit Ice Age is the dominant vibe – smart, anthropomorphised animals say the darnedest things, which seems to have been enough for most critics to give it the hearty thumbs up. I liked it a lot less, I have to say, though it does get itself together towards the end, when the quips are given a rest and Sanders and … Read more

How to Train Your Dragon

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Hiccup rides Toothless in How to Train Your Dragon

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 8 March Raymonde de Laroche is first woman with a pilot’s licence, 1910 On this day in 1910, Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman in the world to receive a pilot’s licence. The Wright brothers had only invented the heavier than air machine seven years earlier, and Louis Blériot had flown the 21 miles across the English Channel, thus proving that long-distance flight was possible, only the year before. De Laroche had learnt to fly after visiting the factory of the Voisin brothers, who manufactured planes in their factory in Chalons, France, in October 1909, where by force of character … Read more