In Contention

Tag: animation

  • We can officially add ‘A Christmas Carol’ to the animated list

    Gary Oldman in A Christmas CarolYesterday we covered the animated feature film race and the potential for the category to have five nominees this year, largely dependent on Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol” being submitted as animation (a decision completely in his hands).  As it turns out, the film will indeed be submitted for consideration.

    That, along with “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure” brings the tally up to 16 titles.  Some are expressing doubts that “Tinker Bell” can qualify, but I’m told the film “looks great, is made professionally, and will receive a theatrical run in LA, so those are the criteria.”  Still, being right on the edge, this thing could go either way.

    I’m still waiting on confirmation that the French film “A Town Called Panic” had a qualifying run or will have one (mass confusion), and ditto Summit’s “Astro Boy,” but that would be 17 and the absolute ceiling (by my calculation) on the number of submitted titles.

    Assuming five nominees, here’s what I’m thinking…

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  • Animated feature forecast: could be ‘Cloudy’

    Cloudy with a Chance of MeatballsOver at The Odds (The Wrap’s new Oscar blog, in case you haven’t been reading), Steve Pond brings up the fierce competition of this year’s animated feature category and brings up an intriguing tidbit worth considering.

    In looking through Time Out London’s list of the 50 greatest animated films of all time, collected by the magazine’s editors and filmmaker Terry Gilliam, Pond takes note of the complete absence of both “Up” and “Ponyo.” These are two films considered very much in the thick of this year’s toon Oscar race, of course.

    However, after that aside, he comes to the two animated films from 2009 that did make the list.  The first is Henry Selick’s “Coraline,” but, well, hopefully the other note will provide some insight to those puzzled over my animated feature film predictions.

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  • 9/10 Web Round-up

    Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles• Peter Travers is pissed about the “Shutter Island” bump to 2010. [Rolling Stone]

    • “Me and Orson Welles” gets a distributor in Freestyle Releasing. [The Wrap]

    • “The Road,” meanwhile, gets pushed to Thanksgiving, in direct competition with the Weinsteins’ other Oscar hopeful, “Nine.” [Variety]

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  • ‘The Princess and the Frog’ featurette

    (Courtesy: Cartoon Brew)

  • Regrettable: ‘Ice Age 3’ becomes highest grossing animated film overseas

    Ice Age: Dawn of the DinosaursThose who follow the site know I’m a “Finding Nemo” devotee.  The film has grown on me more and more over the years, and despite landing at #3 on my 2003 top 10, I’ve been toying with the idea of including it in my top 10 films of the decade list (which will be unveiled later in the year).  I’ve always felt a certain security knowing that, not only is it Pixar’s highest grossing film to date, but it is also the second-highest grossing toon worldwide and the top box office dog internationally.

    Or at least it was.  In a Variety piece gloomily (to me) titled “Nemo slips on ‘Ice,’” Pamela McClintock gives us this:

    Over the weekend, 20th Century Fox’s three-quel “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” became the highest-grossing animated title ever overseas, posting a cume of $551.4 million through Sunday.

    It took six years for a toon to overtake Pixar and Disney’s “Finding Nemo,” which grossed $524.9 million internationally in its 2003 release.

    Depressing.  Chad’s Sunday Cents column on the film’s opening weekend here.  Of course, with Chad’s preference of adjusted figures, this doesn’t move the needle.  But still.

  • ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Toy Story 2’ 3D re-release trailers

  • COMIC-CON: Acker, Bekmambetov and Burton showcase ‘9’

    9Focus Features rolled out an extended clip of Shane Acker’s “9” a few moments ago to adulating fans who seemed more eager to ask producer Tim Burton a slew of peripheral questions and offer the usual “you’re an inspiration” sentiments to the macabre-obsessed director.  So it goes at Comic-Con.

    But on the issue at hand, Burton offered that he connected to Acker’s original short film (which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005) immediately.

    “You see a lot of personal films, but you don’t see a lot of personal films that are animated,” he said in the post-screening panel discussion.  “I’ve been through it before, endless conversations with studios, ‘Why can’t Jack Skellington have eyes?’  I thought I could at least help fight those battles so he could concentrate on the film.  You’ve got enough to worry about making the film to have those kind of stupid conversations.”

    Acker, who chimed in there to mention how supportive Focus, which he calls a “director-driven” studio, has been on the project, said he didn’t originally conceive the story as a feature film.  It was more of a director’s reel piece meant to secure other work for him as a filmmaker.  But when Burton (and co-producer Timur Bekmambetov) took an interest and the project began to unfold as as a feature, he fell in love with the story all over again.

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  • ‘9’ clip

  • In honor of tonight’s screening

  • Sneek peek at the ‘Coraline’ DVD

    Neil Miller over at Film School Rejects has an exclusive clip from one of the special features on the forthcoming “Coraline” Blu-ray/DVD. “This little sequence is called ‘Wrapping Up Coraline,’” Miller writes, “and it focuses on director Henry Selick talking about the final stages of work that went into creating this wonderful little film. He also speaks a bit about the incredible amount of work that was turned in by countless artists and animators.”  Take a look below.  The disc hits shelves July 21:

  • Could ‘Mr. Fox,’ ‘Carol’ join toon Best Pic hopefuls?

    Fantastic Mr. FoxJoBlo has an exclusive first look today at the central character from Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” a Scott Rudin-produced animated Roald Dahl adaptation.  The film was recently shifted from Fox over to Fox Searchlight for the purposes of distribution, lest a small, niche film such as this be lost in the shuffle.  But I have also heard murmurs (none of them confirmed, mind you) that the film will be pushed for a Best Picture nomination now that there are 10 slots up for grabs.

    What is confirmed, however, is that Henry Selick’s “Coraline” will be campaigned for the top prize by Focus Features (while Richard Curtis’s “The Boat That Rocked,” recently speculated in this space as being primed for Oscar, will not).  And of course, Disney/Pixar will be hitting the pavement in favor of “Up.”  Before long, the question becomes, “Well if they’re going for it, we should, too.”  Which leads me to wonder…

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  • ‘Up’ becomes Pixar’s second-highest grosser ever

    UpI expect Chad may get into some of this later in today’s Sunday Cents column (unless his silly inflation observation gets in the way), but Pixar’s “Up” grossed another $6.5 million today, bringing the domestic total to $264.8 million, surpassing the $261.4 million “The Incredibles” racked up in the fall of 2004 to become the studio’s second-highest domestic grosser ever behind 2003’s “Finding Nemo.”

    I would assume the answer here is lack of demographic comeptition to an extent.  “Monsters vs. Aliens” was the only animated film within earshot of “Up”‘s May 29 release date until “Ice Age” came along this weekend.  And there hasn’t been much else for the kids beyond “Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian.”  That’s a solid month of focused box office play for the film.

    Obviously “Nemo”‘s $339.7 million is safe and will likely remain safe for a long time to come (and it’s worth noting that “Up” opened in the same frame), but Pixar’s latest has nevertheless become a personal record-breaking success for the studio?  And yet it’s not even in the top 25 for the decade, which tells you the leaps and bounds box office has made in the last 10 years.

    So, congrats to all involved.  Well-deserved.  Check out my interview with “Up” director Pete Docter here if you missed it.

  • Miyazaki’s ‘Ponyo’ closes LAFF

    Hayao MiyazakiI’ve come to the awkward, “I’m the only one” conclusion that, despite my best efforts, the cinema of Hayao Miyazaki just doesn’t paddle my boat.

    Looking back over the animator’s past works again throughout the week in preparation for this write-up, and having taken in his latest, “Ponyo,” just a few weeks back, I still find myself struggling to maintain an interest in these films.  “Ponyo” is probably more in line with “My Neighbor Totoro” or “Kiki’s Delivery Service” than the director’s more ambitious fare, but it nevertheless represents an imagination that, despite my aversion to the work, is a welcome dose of creativity in a business sorely lacking it year after year.

    “Ponyo” is a loose adaptation of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” though Ariel’s mermaid has been swapped for Ponyo’s gold fish and there isn’t a villain within earshot.  But a narrative lacking an antagonist is par for the course for Miyazaki, perhaps one of the reasons I never warmed to his work but still a brazen way to go about visual storytelling business.

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  • Miyazaki’s ‘Ponyo’ US trailer

    I’ll write more about “Ponyo” when the film closes the LA fest next week.  For now, we’ve got a new trailer (that I’ve been rather slow to post).  I imagine most Miyazaki devotees will be head-over-heels in love with this thing.  I don’t count myself in their ranks, though I have the utmost respect for the filmmaker’s uncompromising imagination.

  • Disney sneaks a little ‘Christmas’ into June

    A Christmas CarolEvery hour on the hour until 7:00pm today, Walt Disney Pictures is screening a pair of scenes from Robert Zemeckis’s upcoming “A Christmas Carol” over at the Universal City IMAX theater as part of the excited, long-winded publicity build-up for the film.  Currently a cross-country train tour is parked in Sacramento, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the making of process as well as the scenes exhibited today.  Next weekend it’ll be on to Oakland and will continue through its five-to-six month odyssey until it pulls into New York’s Grand Central station just days prior to the film’s November 6 release.

    For details on when the exhibition will be in your neck of the woods, check out the tour’s schedule.

    As for the footage itself, the scenes are strikingly different.  The first is something of a character initiation for Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey), in case you’re somehow unaware of his place in literary lore.  It isn’t the best scene for showing off the film’s 3D particulars but it is, however, a great indication of the detail and textured artistic direction of the film.  The sets are rendered as beautifully as Zemeckis’s “Beowulf,” though there is more of a glimmer of existence in the “lifeless eyes” that many were so loathe to observe in “The Polar Express.”  We also get a look at Bob Cratchit in this scene, one of actor Gary Oldman’s three gigs on the production.

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  • 6/3 Web Round-up

    Steve• Steve Martin: banjo enthusiast. [CNN]

    • The complete “Terminator” timeline. [Empire]

    • Speaking of which, Ben Child spends some time with the best part of “Terminator Salvation,” actor Anton Yelchin. [The Guardian]

    • Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula ascend at Searchlight. [indieWIRE]

    • Brooks Barnes on the swath of upstarts leaping into the CGI animation fray. [New York Times]

    • Revisiting the summer of 1997. [Cinematical]

    • Nathaniel Rogers does some Oscar predix clean-up, joins the “Precious” train. [The Film Experience]

    • John Horn previews this weekend’s Produced By Conference with a producers roundtable. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Top 10 hockey moments in non-hockey movies.  Yeah. [Premiere]

    • Alonso Duralde on the many faces of Vegas on celluloid. [MSNBC]

    • Patrick Goldstein wants to know why Israel’s biggest box office success of 2008 has yet to secure U.S. distribution. [The Big Picture]

  • Taking Pixar to task

    PixarFilm writer extraordinaire, James Rocchi — this time wearing the hat of resident film blogger for Redbox — has penned a passionate open letter to Pixar Animation Studios that is a must-read for fans and non-fans alike. I think both of his concerns are valid points.

    Here is the meat of the piece (mind you, Rocchi never met a period he liked):

    I’m worried about two things that seem a lot more institutional, and a lot harder to shake. The first is, bluntly, why can’t you guys seem to write strong female characters? With the notable exception of The Incredibles’ Mrs. Incredible (who was voiced by Holly Hunter) and Violet (Sarah Vowell), your female characters are ether dead, irrelevant, under-written or absent. And all your directors are male, too. Both those things are going to change with your upcoming The Bear and the Bow — about a young woman in a fairy-tale take on Scotland, directed by Brenda Chapman — but you’ve got to do more than that – up the bench strength for women on both sides of the camera, with more opportunities for characters and more opportunities for female writers and directors.

    The other problem, I have to be just as blunt about, and it’s inspired by the Up press conference where I watched Up’s director Pete Docter express faith in the limitless possibilities of animation: “Animation’s a medium, not a genre.” Well, that’s a nice thing to say; it would be a more interesting thing for you to really follow up on. And right now, all you at Pixar seem to be doing is churning out PG- and G-rated family-friendly adventures over and over again. Which is great — there’s a need for well-made children’s entertainment — but I wonder if anyone at Pixar ever dreams of pitching people in charge an amazing computer-animated Western of mythic proportions or a stunning hard-knock science-fiction action film full of things you simply couldn’t do in live action, or a horror film that involves the scarier version of the kinds of creatures your animators showed they could create with the cute, cuddly Monsters, Inc.

    The bit about a Pixar “Western of mythic proportions” strikes me as brilliant. Get on it. Please.

  • INTERVIEW: 20 questions with ‘Up’ director Pete Docter

    Pete DocterPete Docter’s filmmaking career is as tethered to the history of Pixar as it gets.  After all, he was the third animator hired by John Lasseter back in 1990, when the company was a fledgling computer-animation house making it’s name in short films and commercials.  Nineteen years (and 10 features) later, the studio has more than made its mark on the industry, and Docter has just finished helming his second feature film, “Up,” which opens nationwide today.

    Docter’s initial crack at a project this size was 2001’s “Monsters, Inc.,” the first Pixar film to be nominated for the animated feature film Oscar.  Eight years later, the pressure is certainly on, especially in the wake of the studio’s most critically acclaimed film to date (2008’s “WALL-E”).  But if early reviews are any indication, Pixar — and Docter — not only have another success on their hands, but one that could potentially eclipse the impact last year’s lovable robot had on the critical community.

    I recently spoke with Docter about, among other things, taking the reins on his second feature, what impact 3D technology will have on the medium, the decision to write an Asian-American character into the film and just why the heck no one has cast Delroy Lindo in an animated film until now.  And yes, I asked about that little conversation we’ve been having about the final shot of “Monsters, Inc.”  Keep reading to find out what he had to say.

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