When you hear the name Leonardo, you probably think about the hunky Leonardo DiCaprio, or if you’re a comic book fan, maybe Leo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle … but did you know the Ninja Turtle and Jack — sorry, Leo — were named after the same person? Mr. Leonardo da Vinci, the famous inventor and artist.
Now fans can learn more about da Vinci’s life in the animated movie “The Inventor,” starring Stephen Fry as the voice of Leo.
Stephen Fry (as Leonard da Vinci, voice): “A long, long time ago, when long beards were all the rage, a rather insightful inventor put some big ideas center stage.”
Leonardo da Vinci is at the center of the new animated film “The Inventor.”
Stephen Fry (as Leonard da Vinci, voice): “And this is the story of how I became the legendary Leonardo da Vinci.”
The movie mixes both hand-drawn and stop-motion animation, which was fitting to tell the story of the famed painter and sculptor.
Jim Capobianco: “I always wanted to make it with the two styles of stop-motion and the hand-drawn, because I felt those handmade crafted forms of animation would be much more attuned to a Leonardo da Vinci, a film about Leonardo da Vinci.”
Matt Berry (as Pope Leo X, voice): “Why can’t you be satisfied with painting pretty things?”
Stephen Fry (As Leonardo da Vinci, voice): “Oh, not this again.”
This wasn’t writer and co-director Jim Capobianco’s first time blending two artistic styles for a film.
Jim Capobianco: “A lot of the films I worked on — ‘Mary Poppins Returns,’ I made a short at Pixar called ‘Your Friend The Rat,’ — they’re really a mixture of styles as well, so I’ve kind of always tended to enjoy that.”
Stephen Fry (As Leonardo da Vinci, voice): “Oh, how I love a blank canvas, far from the shadow of Rome.”
Stephen Fry voices da Vinci, the man of many talents.
Jim Capobianco: “Stephen, of course, was my first pick. He is a polymath of today, kind of a Leonardo da Vinci himself. I really wanted to bring a natural sort of – just a soft voice for Leonardo that also had a lot of intelligence.”
Stephen Fry (As Leonardo da Vinci, voice): “This room is for engineering, the physics of weight and measure. Hydraulics, mathematics, applied kinematics. We’ll have no time for leisure!”
“The Inventor” is now playing in theaters.
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