The Move Madly Christmas Animation Quiz
For when the family game of Monopoly loses steam.
Christmas is approaching, mulled wine is simmering and the sun’s zenith is low (at least up here in my hemisphere). Whether due to the melancholic light or the fuzz of the booze, I find myself at this time of year in a reflective mood. What was the year that was?
Let’s pass in silence over events in the wider world; they aren’t for this post. If you want to read my thoughts on how 2024 played out in the animation industry, I’d urge you to buy the latest issue of Sight & Sound, whose editors kindly asked me to write about this very subject.
But it’s here on Move Madly that I’ve done the lion’s share of my writing over the past 12 months. The newsletter has been one of the through lines of my 2024. I launched it in early January, looking to wrench myself out of the holiday hangover with a new project—and to discover who might share my interest in talking about the art of (mostly short-form) animation. Far more of you have subscribed than I’d expected, and your responses to my posts have encouraged me to keep writing and think more deeply as I go. I want to thank you all, especially those who have supported me with a paid subscription.
Over the months, I’ve managed to offload many of my thoughts about animation onto these pages. With that done, I found that my mind was still littered with miscellaneous facts that I’d picked up throughout the year and which individually served no purpose. Together, though, they added up to a medium-length end-of-year quiz.
So, here we are: the Move Madly Christmas Animation Quiz—a tour of the announcements, milestones and trivia of the year in animation (with some classic stuff thrown in for good measure). Feel free to crack it out on the day, once you’ve finished watching Charlie Brown/Wallace & Gromit/Tokyo Godfathers (delete as appropriate) and the family game of Monopoly is running out of steam. Who said animation arcana can’t be a festive vibe?
Which Hollywood star said this while promoting an animated film in which they voice a character: “It is the animators that are the performers here, right? We are lending ourselves to their work.”?
Which famous singer directed a short film starring a shrew? (For 25 bonus points, name the studio that produced the animation.)
Which director of an indie CG feature that came out this year once recited the alphabet backward on Jeopardy?
A documentary about which animation pioneers won the $200,000 Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film?
Which Hollywood feature became the highest-grossing animated film of all time?
A Colombian woman caused outrage with statements she made related to Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron. What did she say?
Which stop-motion film reportedly featured the dismembered fingertip of one of its animators?
8.–12. Name these films, all of which came out this year.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
The Minions made a cameo in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, in a skit that showed them to have stolen something. What?
The Glassworker is the first traditionally animated feature to be made in which country?
Complete the title of the film in which Johnny Depp voices a puffin who speaks a nonsense language: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ : Secret Mission. (Clue: it’s more literal than you might think.)
Evil penguin Feathers McGraw returns in the new Wallace & Gromit film Vengeance Most Fowl. But can you name the villain from the two Chicken Run movies?
Which series was heavily criticised for the quality of its animation, prompting one of its executive producers to say: “I can’t talk about what went down but we were screwed over…”?
This year, we learnt that two major Hollywood franchises will see their fifth film released in summer 2026. One point if you can name them both.
At Annecy Festival, the music video for Chien Méchant’s “Étoile filante” was booed by the audience. Why?
20.–24. Name these older films.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
What do the five films above have in common?
Which major European studio celebrated its 25th anniversary this year?
It was announced that a theme park is being built in Saudi Arabia around which hit Japanese franchise?
The upcoming animation debut from Bong Joon-ho, the Korean director of Parasite, is already set to break a record, according to reports. What’s the record?
Which musician was the subject of a biographical documentary rendered in a CG Lego style?
The Simpsons won another Emmy this year. How many does it now have in total?
Jennifer Lopez is a producer on the upcoming Bob the Builder movie. Where will the film be set?
The New Norm, an anti-woke series that’s also the first animated sitcom exclusive to X, bills itself (a little optimistically) as “the _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ of X.” What classic series is it comparing itself to?
ANSWERS BELOW
1. Lupita Nyong’o (talking about The Wild Robot). It’s rare for the voice cast to acknowledge the animators’ work so emphatically. 2. Kate Bush (the studio is Inkubus). 3. Julian Glander (director of Boys Go to Jupiter). 4. The Fleischer Brothers (the documentary is called Cartooning America). 5. Inside Out 2 6. She said she’d drawn around 25,000 frames for the film. She became a local media sensation, but her story went global—and sour—when it turned out that she hadn’t worked on the production at all. 7. Memoir of a Snail 8. Orion and the Dark 9. Olivia and the Clouds 10. Percebes 11. Flow 12. Moana 2 13. The Mona Lisa. 14. Pakistan 15. Johnny Puff 16. Melisha (Mrs.) Tweedy 17. Uzumaki 18. Toy Story and Shrek 19. Because it was made using generative AI software. 20. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train (an unwieldy title if ever I saw one). 21. The Lion King 22. Ultraman: The Adventure Begins 23. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit 24. The Lord of the Rings (the Ralph Bakshi one). 25. New films in all these franchises came out this year. 26. Cartoon Saloon 27. Dragon Ball 28. The film is set to be the most expensive South Korean film of all time, with an estimated budget of around $52 million. 29. Pharrell Williams 30. 37 31. Puerto Rico 32. South Park