In Contention

Tag: animation

  • Disney’s double rainbow parody for ‘Tangled’

    There is a giant “Tangled” event on the Disney lot today that I unfortunately couldn’t attend.  A screening of the film as a work-in-progress is going down right now with storyboards here and there.  It would have been nice to get a hold on what they’re cooking up but I’m happy to wait for a finished product.

    Meanwhile, there is a big program of presentations and interviews that I’m sure you’ll see covered at various online outlets in the next few weeks.  The film has a lot to live up to after last year’s glorious return to traditional animation, “The Princess and the Frog.”

    Today I came across a viral marketing stab for the film that parodies the double rainbow YouTube sensation (in case you’ve been under a rock, watch that here).  Adam Quigly at /Film shreds the attempt and says it “reeks of a marketing campaign that’s trying way too hard to be funny, hip and topical.”  I thought it was a bit more harmless than that, but judge for yourself after the jump.

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  • DreamWorks fires off first FYC ad and site of the year

    I don’t remember there being an earlier “For Your Consideration” ad than September 1 before, but nevertheless, DreamWorks Animation has seized an opportunity to surge out in front of the fray on behalf of “How to Train Your Dragon” with the first ad of the season, as well as the first FYC site.  The ad primes the film for not just an animated push, but an all out Best Picture push as well, and it hits at a time when toon competitor “Toy Story 3” is bringing in record-breaking box office.

    And why not?  It was one of the most critically and popular films of the first half of the year, even if its accomplishments have been eclipsed by Pixar’s this summer.  I sometimes go back and forth on which film I like better.  I’ll bet there are Academy members who’ll be doing the same.  And will Disney be as aggressive with its campaign?  Will the studio even feel a need to be?  Time will tell.

    The ad and site also promote upcoming screenings for the film in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and London, all of them happening in the next two months.  So, start your engines.  It looks like we’re already off to the races.  Check out the full ad after the jump (and note the “visual consultant,” who seems to be making the animated rounds lately.)

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  • Disney tells the Annies where they can stick it

    Remember two years ago when “WALL-E” was on a destined crash course with awards glory throughout the season, then the Annie Awards (the animation community’s annual kudo fest) came along and shut the lovable robot out?  The benefactor was “Kung Fu Panda,” largely considered infinitely inferior to Pixar’s (some would say) crowning achievement.

    The immediate reaction was, “Something’s fishy here.”  And sure enough, a lot of fingers were pointed to a DreamWorks-heavy membership.  Disney, fed up with the unbalanced nature of the voting process, sought rule changes, which it received, but none of it was satisfying enough.

    So you can expect the Annies to potentially be Disney-free from here on out, as the studio has respectfully bowed out of the organization, refusing to support it or submit their titles for competition.  Annie chief Antran Manoogian says the studio’s titles can still compete, though it’s unclear how.

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  • ‘Toy Story 3’ reaches box office milestone, MovieMaker remembers ‘Tin Toy’

    Pixar’s “Toy Story 3” is pretty much the only sure-thing contender for Oscar’s 10 at this stage, and with good reason.  It was the high mark of the summer movie season, a beautiful send-off to a beloved franchise that just got better and better.  Fitting, then, that the film has become not only Pixar’s reigning box office champ, but the highest grossing animated feature film of all time.

    With $920 million in the bank and climbing, the film sits at the top of that perch, just a few days after passing what I still believe to be Pixar’s most accomplished effort, “Finding Nemo,” and leaving other films like “Shrek 2” and “The Lion King” in the dust.  It will also surely be one of only six $400 million earners from the last decade (though talk to our resident box office analyst Chad Hartigan and you’ll get a different story, as he prefers figures adjusted for inflation).  Combined with nearly blanket critical approval, you have a perfect awards storm.

    While on vacation last week I read a piece by Eric Kohn in the latest issue MovieMaker Magazine that ties in nicely here.  It was a look back at Pixar’s Oscar-winning 1988 animated short “Tin Toy,” which of course planted the seeds for the “Toy Story” franchise.  Unfortunately, it’s not available online, but I’ve transcribed a section after the jump that I felt was worth passing along.

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  • COMIC-CON: ‘Megamind’ inverts comic genre tropes

    The opening Hall H panel of this year’s San Diego Comic-Con belonged to DreamWorks Animation’s “Megamind” from “Madagascar” director Tom McGrath.  The film, set for release November 5, is an “action comedy that takes the whole genre and turns it on its head,” McGrath told the packed hall.

    In the film, Will Ferrell gives his vocal talents to the title character.  Tina Fey plays a television reporter and Jonah Hill, her cameraman.  All three, along with McGrath, were on hand to preview five minutes of 3D footage from the film.

    Another key cast member, Brad Pitt, could not attend.  But the crew got a nice LOL pop out of the audience by bringing a cardboard cut-out on stage.

    Ferrell got into the Comic-Con spirit by donning the blue and black get-up of his character.  It’s the second time he’s been able to play a villain, following 2001’s “Zoolander,” but he said he was attracted to the idea of playing a “bad guy who becomes a good guy.”  No, nothing earth-shattering, but those are the kinds of quotes the panel was offering moderator Drew McWeeny.

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  • ‘Secret of Kells’ poster

    The Secret of Kells

  • ‘Secret of Kells’ trailer

  • SANTA BARBARA: ‘Kells’ screens and the writers talk

    The Secret of KellsIt’s been a slow ramping up for me in Santa Barbara, coverage wise.  I’ve had some Wi-Fi difficulties that are being sorted and I’ve posted when I can from where I can, but a couple of notes on the last two days.

    Yesterday I took in a late afternoon screening of Tomm Moore’s “The Secret of Kells,” the film that probably served up the biggest surprise last Tuesday when it slid into the animated feature field over the populist, branch-respected “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” and the less-respected “Ponyo,” which nevertheless comes from a titan of the medium.

    The film is beautiful in so many ways, offering a rich, artistic palette of shapes and color to paint a portrait of a well-circulated Irish story revolving around the non-fictional Book of Kells.  The artwork ultimately mirrors, in some way, the Insular art featured in the book, and the narrative itself, abstract as it feels at times, seems to be about the persistence of art and history.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Short Film (Animated)

    French RoastThis is one of the few times the animated short category doesn’t have an American in the bunch.  One of the big snubs, in fact, was probably Pixar’s “Partly Cloudy.” So I wouldn’t bank on any domestic bias this time around.

    The animated short films feature a wide array of creative prowess, but it almost seems unfair to have such brief exercises up against longer-form narratives. The shortest entry of the bunch is roughly six minutes long, while the longest is nearly 30. You get vastly different pros and cons when you get that mixture of pace and comedic (since most animated shorts are comedies) timing. Nevertheless, none of them stands out as outright bad, so that’s certainly a plus.

    The nominees are:

    “French Roast” (Fabrice O. Joubert)
    “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty” (Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell)
    “The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” (Javier Recio Gracia)
    “Logorama” (Nicolas Schmerkin)
    “Wallace & Gromit in ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’” (Nick Park)

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  • THE LISTS: Top 10 movie-related moments of 2009

    UpAs the year (and decade) slowly winds down, I thought it would be a pretty good time to revive our long-slumbering Lists feature here at In Contention. And what better way to do so and salute the year at hand than to lay out the most significant movie-related moments of 2009?

    The American Film Institute kind of tried its hand at this yesterday. I was already considering a list along these lines, but the AFI thing definitely got my the ole’ gears turning once again. Suffice it to say, I think they missed a few spots.

    It was an intriguing year. For me, as mentioned many times, it was the best year of filmmaking the decade has seen. But it was also a pivotal year for the film industry, as everything from standardized digital projection to 3D technology, experimental distribution schemes to economic effects on the business seemed to be on the table as points of consideration along the way.

    It was the first year of the Obama administration, something that found its way into the arts discussion as well. Whether it was the consideration of “Slumdog Millionaire” (which ultimately won the Best Picture Oscar this year) as the “first film of the Obama era” or the desire to include films like “Precious” (a stretch) and “Invictus” (not such a stretch) in that conversation, the political environment, as ever, was in the cinema air.

    It was a year of many things, so obviously, a list like this could be filled with any number of instances. But these 10 stuck out to me as the most significant ticks on the clock of 2009. Agree, disagree, whatever the case, don’t look too hard for a “Twilight” mention (though I suppose one may have been warranted).

    My picks…

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  • AFI’s moments of significance in 2009

    James Cameron on the set of AvatarThey should add an “L” between the “F” and the “I.”  American Film List Institute.  Anyway, this just arrived via press release.  The criteria is apparently “accomplishments of considerable merit; influences with either a positive or negative impression; trends, either new or re-emerging; anniversaries or memorials of special note; and/or movements in new technologies, education, preservation, government or other areas that impact the art film, television and digital media.”

    It leads off with the obvious choice.  More after the jump:

    AVATAR – JAMES CAMERON’S MILEPOST IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE ART FORM

    James Cameron’s pioneering effort to unleash the human imagination was fully realized in 2009 with the release of AVATAR, a film that firmly established itself as a landmark in the way stories are told.

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  • ‘Coraline’ leads the field of Annie nominees

    Coraline“Coraline” and “Up” both received nominations in eight categories.  “The Princess and the Frog” showed up in five while “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” showed up in four.

    “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (3),  “Monsters vs. Aliens” (3), “9” (2), “Astro Boy” (2) and “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” (2) brought up the rear with mentions in three and two categories respectively.  “Ponyo” also only landed two nods, for music and direction, so that’s probably worth noting.

    I’m listing per category, by the way, because it’s weird to me to have two separate “nominations” in fields like character design and production design, one per person.  Why not just one for the film with the artists listed as nominees?  It makes sense for vocal performance nods, but not really otherwise.  Anyway, to be fair, I guess “Coraline” leads the whole field with 10 total nominations, while “Up” has nine.  “The Princess and the Frog” has eight, with that in mind.

    Anyway, check out the full list of feature nominees after the jump (and the full list of all nominees at the Annie website).

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  • AMPAS announces shortlisted animated shorts

    The Cat PianoVia press release:

    • “The Cat Piano,” Eddie White and Ari Gibson, directors (The People’s Republic of Animation)
    • “French Roast,” Fabrice O. Joubert, director (Pumpkin Factory/Bibo Films)
    • “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty,” Nicky Phelan, director, and Darragh O’Connell, producer (Brown Bag Films)
    • “The Kinematograph,” Tomek Baginski, director-producer (Platige Image)
    • “The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte),” Javier Recio Gracia, director (Kandor Graphics and Green Moon)
    • “Logorama,” Nicolas Schmerkin, producer (Autour de Minuit)
    • “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” Nick Park, director (Aardman Animations Ltd.)
    • “Partly Cloudy,” Peter Sohn, director (Pixar Animation Studios)
    • “Runaway,” Cordell Barker, director (National Film Board of Canada)
    • “Variete,” Roelof van den Bergh, director (il Luster Productions)

    You can watch one or two of these on YouTube I think.  Anyway, thoughts?  Anyone?

  • Animated feature contenders pushing 18 now

    The Secret of KellsOne of the titles we mentioned a couple of weeks ago that could slide in and help rescue the animated feature category (as in, push the field of qualifying contenders closer to 16, which would yield the potential for five, rather than three nominees) was something called “The Secret of Kells.”

    Since then, “The Missing Lynx: Paws on the Run” has come to the category’s aid, as has the stop-motion “A Town Called Panic,” so we’ve got 17 contenders before this news, but 19 gives a nice cushion.

    Peter Debruge reports at Variety:

    GKIDS picked up U.S. rights to “The Secret of Kells” just three days before the Oscar submission deadline and plans to open the 2D toon for a one-week qualifying run on Dec. 4 at the AMC Burbank 8 in Los Angeles, followed by a wider release in March 2010.

    The story of a ninth-century boy who rebels against his guardian’s orders and helps to illuminate a famous Irish manuscript, pic garnered numerous accolades abroad, including an audience award at the Annecy toon fest and a nomination for the European Film Awards’ animated feature prize.

    Also worth noting: the film won the audience award at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June.

  • SHORT TAKE: “The Princess and the Frog” (***)

    The Princess and the FrogIt’s a little difficult to argue with the nostalgia that Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” conjures.  As effective as Pixar has been for over a decade and as exciting as the computer-generated leaps have been in animation, there is something to be said about a well-crafted, traditional piece of animated feature filmmaking.

    Filmmakers Ron Clements and Jon Musker stretch back to the “Black Cauldron” days of the studio after all, and they were largely responsible for two of the biggest Disney animated hits of the pre-Pixar era, “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin.” “The Princess and the Frog” isn’t in that league, however.  It’s an effective story and a clever twist on a classic tale, a twist that works quite well, in fact.

    That having been said, the vibrant animation and striking color palette the film’s animators are working with make “The Princess and the Frog” a truly beautiful fixture in this year’s healthy slate of animated feature films.  Working with the bayou particulars of New Orleans goes a long way toward servicing those visuals, of course, but the sheer energy of the piece, an organic extension of those particulars, is what makes it feel so comfortably familiar.

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  • Fascinating look at voicing ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’

    Yahoo! Movies has an awesome exclusive look today behind the scenes of Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and the unusual process by which he and his team of actors recorded voices for the film.  Check it out:

  • Animated feature looking like five all over again

    The Missing Lynx: Paws on the RunTwo weeks ago we told you about the animated feature film category’s state of flux and how a little film no one has heard of called “The Missing Lynx: Paws on the Run” could be its saving grace.

    With “Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone” and “A Town Called Panic” currently off the qualification list, and Disney trying hard to pad the field of eligible titles by submitting Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol” (when Zemeckis has gone on the record as saying such a thing is a “disservice to the great animators”) and even squeezing in the formerly-straight-to-DVD “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure,” the magic number of 16 has been too close to call.

    Well, today at 5:00pm is the official deadline for submissions, and prints of qualifying titles are due by November 13.  It’s now or never, and things will start to take shape soon.  But getting back to “The Missing Lynx,” Steve Pond is reporting that the film was officially submitted and gets some great quotes form director Raul Garcia about the situation.

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  • Animated slate still in limbo

    The Missing LynxEarlier today Tom O’Neil reported that “Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone” will not qualify for the animated feature Oscar race because it was released in Japan in 2007.  That would bring the number of qualifying titles from 16 down to 15.

    However, there seem to be films in play that we hadn’t previously considered.  According to a commenter at the website Cartoon Brew, an Antonio Banderas-produced film called “The Missing Lynx: Paws on the Run” will receive a qualifying run on November 13.  I haven’t verified that info yet but it’s something to keep an eye on.  Here’s a quick profile of the project.  There is also the outside chance of “The Secret of Kells” making it’s way at the last minute.

    Nevertheless, for the moment, without “Evangelion,” we’re looking at a three-nominee race once again, unless something comes along to save the day.  Does Disney have anything else it would like to randomly shuffle from home video to theatrical run?

    More coverage of the category here, here and here.