By Kate “One Take Kate” Taylor
This week the L.A. red carpet and premiere for Kubo and the Two Strings was held on Sunday August 14th at Universal City and it certainly brought out the glitzy and the glamorous, including Matthew McConaughey (Interstellar) and Art Parkinson (GoT); to celebrate the release of this unique stop-motion animation film created by LAIKA, the studio behind surprise hit, ParaNorman (2012).
Being an animated film, it’s cool that a little bit of fun was had with the ‘green carpet’ premiere; especially having the costumed characters joining their vocal acting counterparts. Seen above are Monkey voiced by Mad Max: Fury Road‘s Charlize Theron (who did not attend the L.A. premiere), Beetle voiced by Matthew McConaughey and Kubo voiced by Art Parkinson, probably known best as Rickon Stark on Game of Thrones.
Me, I’m a fan of stop-motion animation. From the origins created by legend Ray Harryhausen in films like Clash of the Titans (1981) or Jason and the Argonauts (1963) to the cute ‘n’ funny Wallace and Gromit adventures of Nick Park‘s Aardman Films or Tim Burton‘s morbid magic in The Corpse Bride; I’m hooked on the quirky visuals and mesmerizing movement just as much as I am on the production effort it takes to create the style of these films.
Looking dapper: Matthew McConaughey joins Art Parkinson on the ‘green carpet’ at the Kubo… premiere.
Alright, Alright, Alright: Let’s give Matthew some time to work the camera shall we?
Kubo and the Two Strings is the first animated film that Matthew McConaughey has lent his voice too, so with any luck it won’t be his last!
Matthew told Kelly Stilwell.com that “With three kids, a lot of my friends were like asking them, so what’s your favorite movie your dad did? And they’re like, well, we’ve never seen any of ‘em.” I haven’t made any films in about 10 years that they could see. Yeah, sit down, guys, let’s watch True Detective. I mean, I didn’t try too hard to prepare for anything, it was there in the script. And I just started creating and then we’d talk with Travis and say, how do you like this, how do you like that, and we were off.”
(Photo by Blair Raughley/Invision for Focus Features/AP Images)
Once all the meeting and greeting on the green carpet had been taken care of, Art and Matthew moved inside the theatre, where they could see the maquette puppets that were used to create their stop-motion characters in Kubo and the Two Strings.
(Photo by Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Focus Features/AP Images).
Beetle-mania: Matthew checks out the maquettes.
(Photo by Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Focus Features/AP Images)
We’ve not got too long to wait to check out Matthew in his first animated feature length film, when Kubo and the Two Strings releases here in NZ cinemas this week on August 18th.
What’s your favourite Matthew McConaughey film?
