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Exotic 'Kubo' gives us a Knight to remember

Travis Knight makes his feature film directorial debut this weekend with the Japanese-inspired animated "Kubo and the Two Strings."

He's the president and CEO of the Oregon-based animation company Laika. He produced and worked as lead animator on "The Boxtrolls" (2014) and "ParaNorman" (2012) and was the lead animator on the studio's first movie, "Coraline" (2009).

During his recent visit to the Windy City, I hit him with five animated questions:

Q. How did becoming a dad to three children influence your direction of "Kubo," clearly a movie about families for families?

A. My point of view before kids and after kids was very different. I wanted to make the kinds of movies that were thought-provoking, that meant something, that had resonance, something that offered a hopeful, unsimple view of the world.

So few things that children are exposed to have that point of view. My kids were the inspiration for us to even begin Laika to begin with.

Q. Your dad took you to Japan on one of his business trips when you were 8 years old. It really had an effect on you, didn't it?

A. It had a profound impact on me. I grew up in Portland, Oregon. A very nice part of the world, but it's nothing like Japan. When I set foot in Japan, it was like I had been transported to another world. I could never have even imagined a place like it. It had a history and a culture I had never experienced before. It was the beginning of a lifelong love of this culture.

Q. Your movie takes for granted fantastic images and exotic characters without much explanation or background. In America, we like everything explained and grounded in reality. Yet, your movie doesn't play by those rules.

A. You're right. Most of those kinds of family films are kind of simplified and mass-marketed and they kind of pander on some level to audiences, especially young audiences. The stories and movies I loved as a child were ones that never played down to an audience.

They respected the audience. They respected the sophistication and intelligence of kids. That's what we try to do in our films as well. We do want our fairy tale to have one foot in the real world. But it is a period fantasy. As long as we clearly establish what the rules are, I think we want to take the audience on this really exciting ride.

Q. Specially, how did the works of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa inform your direction of "Kubo"?

A. I do believe that the birthplace of the modern cinematic epic is Japan, completely because of Kurosawa. He's one of the great masters. I don't think any living director hasn't been directly or indirectly influenced by Akira Kurosawa.

Kurosawa was certainly an aesthetic muse for me, everything from how he did his staging to composition and cutting, lighting and camera movement. You can stop on any frame in a Kurosawa film and it looks like a painting. It's just gorgeous.

And he was always exploring existentialism and humanism and the heroic ideal, and how doing the right thing, standing up for tradition and family are the things that define us.

Q. After two decades of working many jobs in the production end of filmmaking, what was your biggest revelation sitting in the director's chair for the first time?

A. How hard it was. This is by far the most ambitious thing we've ever taken on at Laika. The idea of making a stop-motion David Lean film is absurd on its face. The way we shoot these films? We put a bunch of tables in a crummy warehouse that we gussy up to make it look like a real place outside of Portland.

We want to make it look like this massive, majestic vista. It's silly that these little miniatures are going to look like majestic landscapes. It was a lot to take on as a first-time director. But I've been doing this for a long time.

I understand animation and production backward and frontward. But I don't think I was prepared for hard it was, how exhausting it was. As the director, you really are the nexus for every single creative and technical decision on the show.

At the end of the day, your brain is carved up and you're exhausted. But at the same time, it was completely exhilarating and by far the most satisfying experience of my entire career.

<h3 class="briefHead">After Hours gives viewers 'Fits'</h3>

Anna Rose Holmer's "The Fits" will be shown by the After Hours Film Society at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 22, at the Tivoli Theatre, 5021 Highland Ave., Downers Grove. Admission costs $10 with a membership discount available.

The relatively short feature (at 72 minutes) tells the story of an 11-year-old girl who joins a rec center dance drill team just before teammates and friends begin to suffer from fainting spells. Go to afterhoursfilmsociety.com.

<h3 class="briefHead">Teen film fest marks 10th year</h3>

It's mean. It's keen. It's teen.

Join me for the 10th annual Teen Film Fest from 6 to 10 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19, at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library, 500 N. Dunton Ave., Arlington Heights.

Seventeen shorts submitted by teenage filmmakers will compete for $300 in prizes in different categories: comedy, animation, documentary, horror, drama, experimental, music video and best overall film.

Two other judges will join me: Mary Luckritz, head of the English/fine arts division at Rolling Meadows High School, and Joe Keefe, executive director of the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre in Arlington Heights. (He's also an alum of Chicago's Second City, and a former village trustee for Glencoe.)

Festival admission is free. Go to ahml.info for details. If you'd like to watch last year's fabulous winners, go to http://bit.ly/2aVCjYb. You will be impressed.

<h3 class="briefHead">The ABCs of a 1976 missing persons case</h3>

As a young crime reporter for the Herald, I covered the 1976 disappearance of Mount Prospect teen Barbara Glueckert and the four-decades-long search for her body, presumedly buried somewhere in rural Kane County.

I'll discuss the case during the Daily Herald segment on ABC 7 around 8:45 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 21, exactly 40 years to the day that Barbara, 14, attended a Huntley rock concert with a friend, and never returned.

My full report publishes Sunday in the Daily Herald. Go to dailyherald.com and ABC7Chicago.com.

Dann Gire's column runs Friday in Time out!

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