The ongoing seventh edition of Qatar International Food Festival (QIFF) is not just about food for the tummy and thrill for the taste buds, but it’s also about nourishing a wholesome family experience. Two popular and very entertaining animation films – Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and Ponyo – will be screened throughout the length of the festival at the Qanat Quartier Beach pop-up at The Pearl.
While the American production Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs will be screened tomorrow (March 26) and on March 28 at 7:30pm, the Japanese Ponyo will be screened today (March 25) and on March 27 at 7:30pm – and we recommend you don’t miss either of them. The screenings are free but since the capacity is limited, the seats are first come first served. QIFF 2016’s official festivity partners include Ooredoo, Baraem TV, and Doha Film Institute, who will be screening the two movies.
In the 2009 computer-animated science fiction comedy film loosely based on the children’s book of the same name by Judi and Ron Barrett, local scientist Flint Lockwood invents a machine that can turn water into food. But when his latest contraption accidentally destroys the town square and rockets up into the clouds, he thinks his inventing career is over. Then something amazing happens as delicious cheeseburgers start raining from the sky – his machine seems to work well.
As people’s greed drives them to ask for more food, the machine starts to run amok, unleashing spaghetti tornadoes and giant meatballs that threaten the whole world. Now it’s up to Flint, with the help of weather girl Sam Sparks and Steve, his talking monkey assistant, to find some way to shut down the machine before the world is covered in super-sized meatballs.
The film’s directors, Philip A. “Phil” Lord and Christopher Robert Miller are American film and television writers, producers, directors, actors and animators. Lord and Miller met at Dartmouth College. They are known for directing and writing the animated films Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and The Lego Movie (2014), as well as directing the comedy 21 Jump Street (2012) and its sequel 22 Jump Street (2014). Cloudy… received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 87 per cent of critics gave positive reviews based on 138 reviews with an average rating of 7.3/10.
The 2008-fantasy treat Ponyo introduces us to S?suke, a good-natured son of a sailor who loves playing by the sea. One day, he finds a beautiful fish trapped in a bottle. The five-year-old boy frees the creature, names her Ponyo and takes her everywhere in his green bucket, promising to look after her forever. Touched by S?suke’s kindness and fascinated by his life on land, Ponyo decides she wants to become human. Unbeknownst to S?suke, however, Ponyo is in fact a goldfish princess – and Fujimoto, her magician father, is distraught at her disappearance and summons all his power to return her to her undersea home. But Ponyo’s love for S?suke is so great and her desire to live on land so strong that the world is thrown out of balance, and it takes a lot of love, magic and understanding to make things right again.
Celebrated anime director Hayao Miyazaki is in magnificent form with Ponyo (2008), which makes excellent use of the master’s customary stunning, magical animation to tell a charming tale. A gorgeous underwater universe, thrilling soundtrack, hilarious antics and imaginative whimsy make Ponyo a holiday treat for the whole family.
Some of the interesting trivia about the film that carries the tagline of ‘Welcome to a world where anything is possible’ is that the opening 12 seconds, involving vast schools of fish and undersea creatures, required 1613 pages of conceptual sketches to develop. The level of detail in the animation resulted in 170,000 separate images — the most that have ever appeared in a Miyazaki film. Also, this is the first animated feature film since Princess Mononoke (1997) to be created and painted on traditional animation cels.
Ponyo won five awards at the Tokyo Anime Awards in 2009, including Anime of the Year, Best Domestic Film, Best Director and Best Art Direction, and was named Animation of the Year by the Japan Academy Prize Association the same year.