One Drop After Another! New Releases, Animation Week, Star Trek and Director Deep Dives

FILM COLLECTION

Animation Week!

From hand-drawn treasures, to modern-day CGI gems, stop-motion favorites and even rotoscoped masterpieces, this November, we dove deep into the beautiful world of animated films. 

Animation’s origins can be traced all the way back to the traditions of ancient storytelling, but the foundations of modern animation were laid in the 19th century with the invention of the phenakistiscope – animated discs with 8 to 16 images drawn onto them, designed to be spun on endless loops that create the illusion of movement. By the start of the 20th century, animated films began being shown in cinemas, with filmmakers and inventors such as Thomas Edison, Charles-Émile Reynaud, J. Stuart Blackton, Alexander Shiryaev, Segundo de Chomon, Emile Cohl and Georges Méliès developing some of the techniques and technologies that remain central to the principles of animation to this day. Today, animation is one of the most stylistically varied, technically complex and fastest-evolving forms of cinema we have, and innovations made in this medium often lead the way for the rest of the filmmaking world. 

Check out this month’s celebration of animated cinema – including hand-drawn masterworks The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) and It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012); late-20th-century blends of hand-drawn animation and CGI such as Anastasia (1997) and Hercules (1997); rotoscoped films such as Loving Vincent (2017); stop-motion animated films like Memoir of a Snail (2024); and CGI classics Ice Age (2002) and Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole (2010). Enjoy!

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

Ralph Bakshi

As part of our deep-dive into animated cinema, this month we dropped four titles from independent animation veteran, Ralph Bakshi. Born in 1938, Bakshi was raised in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he developed a fascination with comic books. When he was 18, Bakshi was hired as a cel polisher at the cartoon studio Terrytoons. Bakshi continued to work for hire while developing his own projects, until he founded his own studio, Bakshi Productions, in the Garment District of Manhattan in New York City. 

As his career progressed, Bakshi developed a controversial reputation due to his provocative sensibility, and the crude way his satirical work often dealt with subjects like sex, race, and violence. At the same time, Bakshi was one of independent animation’s most innovative figures, blending live-action with animation, using watercolor painting to rotoscope photographs and bring them into the animated world, and giving animation an adult edge that was uncommon at the time. Today, Bakshi is one of the most distinctive voices in the past century of independent animation, and remains a touchstone for adult and X-rated animators. 

This month’s drop of Bakshi’s work includes Fritz the Cat (1972), Heavy Traffic (1973), Fire and Ice (1983) and Cool World (1992). Add these shots to your decks today!

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

Martha Coolidge

This month, we released six films directed by pioneering American filmmaker Martha Coolidge. Born in Connecticut in 1946, Coolidge studied illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design before earning an MFA in Filmmaking from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, after which she started directing documentaries before working at the Zoetrope Studio created by Francis Ford Coppola. Her fiction feature directorial debut, Not a Pretty Picture (1976) premiered in New York City before playing at the Toronto and Sundance Film Festivals. Seven years later, Coolidge broke out with her follow-up, Valley Girl (1983), which among other things, was the acting debut of Nicolas Cage. Coolidge continued to work in independent film while also making her mark in Hollywood, becoming the first female president of the Directors Guild of America from 2002-2003.

Dive into our curation of Martha Coolidge’s work, which includes Valley Girl as well as sci-fi comedy Real Genius (1985), Independent Spirit Award-winning romantic drama Rambling Rose (1991), comedy-drama Angie (1994), Emmy Award-winning television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), and romantic comedy The Prince & Me (2004). Enjoy!

FILM COLLECTION

Classic Star Trek

Attention sci-fi fans! This month, we dropped thousands of shots from the original series of Star Trek films. First created as a television series by Gene Roddenberry in the mid-1960s, the idea for a film series was a long gestating one, with first pitches for a film franchise beginning in 1969, when the original television series was cancelled. After the success of Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977, interest in making a Star Trek film was revived by Paramount Pictures. What followed over the next 15 years was one of the most prolific and successful sci-fi film series of all time, spawning multiple other television and film series.

Add shots from every original Star Trek film to your decks today – Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), Star Trek: Generations (1994), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002). Live long and prosper!

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

Zhang Yimou

In November, we dropped six movies from the filmography of Zhang Yimou. One of the most influential figures in the history of contemporary Chinese cinema, Zhang studied at the Beijing Film Academy and graduated with filmmakers such as Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang and Zhang Junzhao, going on to form the core the Fifth Generation – an artistic reemergence in China led predominantly in cinema.

After working as an actor and cinematographer post-graduation, Zhang’s first film as a director was Red Sorghum (1988), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and marked the acting debut of Gong Li, who would go on to be one of Zhang’s most important collaborators. Since then, Zhang has gone on to direct over 25 feature films, as well as stage plays and the Beijing Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies. He has directed films in both China and the United States, winning international acclaim along the way for masterpieces such as Raise the Red Lantern and House of Flying Daggers.  

This month’s curation of Zhang Yimou films includes Red Sorghum, as well as romantic drama Ju Dou (1990), Venice Golden Lion-winning comedy-drama The Story of Qiu Ju (1992), wuxia fantasy epic Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), historical drama Coming Home (2014), and monster war epic starring the likes of Matt Damon, Jing Tian, Willem Dafoe and Pedro Pascal, The Great Wall (2016). Add these shots to your decks today!