Iron Giant

The UK's arthouse cinema chain has been running matinees of The Iron Giant this week, as it's a school holiday and someone out there has high standards. Even though it's crunch time, and every hour of my day ought to be spoken for, I had to make the exception – the last time I had the chance to see it on the big screen was in 2000, and who knows when I'll ever get another one. Iron Giant has mythic status in animation: an awesome film with adult depth and integrity, which got scuppered by the studio on its release, robbing it of its just acclaim (and box office) and rendering it The Greatest Film Nobody Saw. Watching it with animation people is almost a religious experience; being a studio of one here, attending a screening felt like connecting with that community in a funny sort of way, and that was even before the credits rolled and I saw how many of those people I've now met, worked with, and moved on from. It made me think ...

( Self-indulgent navel-gazing within )

Anyway, in the sixteen years since I last saw The Iron Giant on the big screen, I have learned a few things:

1. A deep and heartfelt appreciation for a kickass cleanup team (and the crew on this film were superhuman)
2. How to make espresso in a percolator, and hence that a) Dean is not making instant, and b) he's doing it wrong. You don't pour it in the top, Dean!
3. How underappreciated, and in some cases underutilised, some of the talent in those credits is
4. That the compositing software used on this film – and in the 2D films from Dreamworks and James Baxter's studio – was developed here in Cambridge!!
5. That there is always, always more to learn ... when this crunch time ends, I'll be going back to Iron Giant and soaking up a lot of art direction and cinematography that I had respected but not properly appreciated before.  I'm sure I don't really fully appreciate it even now, but I hope my appreciation will appreciate.  Here's to the future ...