InFurNation

Disney’s Gargoyles, the Movie… but not

rodney — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 02:04:21 +0000

Word has snuck out that the Walt Disney Company is working on a gargoyles-themed live-action movie. This is from Variety: “Zoe Green is in final negotiations with the Mouse House to pen a screenplay based on an original idea developed by Lauren Shuler Donner, who will produce the live-action film for Disney.” Unfortunately, much to the chagrin of many fans of the 1990’s animated TV series Gargoyles, the new project has nothing at all to do with that show. According to Variety, “Instead, it centers around a world and mythology of the menacing stone statues that the studio was keen to explore, sources said. Both Disney and Shuler Donner were circling separate gargoyle projects and ultimately paired up and hired Green to tackle an idea hatched with Disney exec LouAnne Brickhouse, who is shepherding the project at the studio. Shuler Donner will produce through the Donners’ Co., which she runs with husband Richard Donner.” None of which is sitting well with the many fans of the original TV series created by Greg Weisman. There’s a Facebook page dedicated to convincing Disney to re-think the whole idea. Stay tuned.

Yogi Bear. In 3D.

rodney — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:03:36 +0000

In the “Where the heck did this come from?” department… Warner Brothers is releasing a new live-action-with-CGI Yogi Bear movie this coming December 17th. Starring as the voice of the animated Yogi is none other than Dan Aykroyd, with Justin Timberlake (!) as the voice of Yogi’s little bear-friend Boo-Boo. And yes, it’s all about grabbing pic-a-nic baskets and running away from Ranger Smith (Tom Cavanagh). The new Real-3D film is directed by Eric Brevig (Journey to the Center of the Earth). You can check out the brand new trailer on YouTube and see what you think.

Johnny Depp is Getting Weird Again

rodney — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 03:12:16 +0000

You might have come across the teaser trailer for the upcoming CGI film Rango, which features a giant wind-up fish floating serenely through the air across a desert landscape. Well now there’s a possibly even more weird trailer that at least tells us a little more about the film. For one thing it stars Johnny Depp as the voice of a nerdy chameleon named Rango who aspires to be a swashbuckling hero. When he finds himself stranded in a run-down desert village beset by bandits, he might just have to play the role to save the day. Interestingly, this is the first animated feature film produced by Industrial Light and Magic (of Lucasfilms fame), and it’s directed by none other than Gore Verbinksi, who directed Mr. Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. This very odd (check out the trailer, trust us!) little film from Nickelodeon Movies and Paramount Pictures is set for release in March of 2011.

Werewolf Stories for a Summer Night

rodney — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:51:56 +0000

Two new collections of lycanthrope-themed short stories turned up in a recent visit to Barnes & Noble Booksellers. First up is Full Moon City, edited by Darrel Schweitzer and Martin H. Greenberg (in paperback, from Pocket Editions). Here’s the publisher’s description from Amazon.com: “From New York to Los Angeles to Bucharest, fifteen never-before-published tales by some of the world’s finest fantasy and horror writers celebrate the newest incarnations of an age-old terror that strikes when the moon is full . . . the werewolf. No longer confined to the forests, these modern monsters can be found in places you frequent every day—and never before thought to fear. Carrie Vaughn’s popular werewolf radio host Kitty Norville is drawn into a controversy as to whether it’s fair to ban lycanthropy from professional sports. New York’s famous Plaza Hotel is the setting for Esther M. Friesner’s tale of one very grisly little girl, while Beverly Hills may never quite recover from Ron Goulart’s middle-aged Hollywood screenwriter who falls prey to a most unusual problem. Celebrated fantasy author Peter S Beagle tells a chillingly lyrical story of three Louisiana loup garoux locked into a deadly dance of death. Plus many more biting tales from award-winning authors Holly Black, P.D. Cacek, Gregory Frost, Tanith Lee, Holly Phillips, Mike Resnick, Darrel Schweitzer, Lisa Tuttle, Ian Watson, Gene Wolfe, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Then there’s Running with the Pack, edited by Ekaterina Sedia (this one in paperback from Prime Books). The description goes: “Remember the werewolves of classic stories and films, those bloodthirsty monsters that transformed under the full moon, reminding us of the terrible nature that lives within all of us? Today’s werewolves are much more suave – and even sexy – and they’ve moved from British moors to New York City lofts, shaved, and got jobs. But as the tales of these writers will show you, they remain no less wild and passionate, and they still tug at the part of our being where a wild animal used to be. Running With the Pack includes stories from Carrie Vaughn, Laura Anne Gilman, and C.E. Murphy [and others -- ye ed-otter] and they will convince you that despite their gentrification, werewolves remain as fascinating and terrifying as ever.” You heard ‘em.

Orangina Goes Furry… Again

rodney — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 01:59:18 +0000

After blowing everyone’s mind with this commercial a couple of years ago, the French advert campaign for the beverage known as Oragina has done it again. That is, created a commercial with an amazing amount of sexy, anthropomorphic appeal. Only now it’s an entire set of short commercials, each with a different species. Taking off on the assertion that Oragina is “all natural” with no artificial ingredients, the ad campaign spoofs ads for various other “all natural” products, with Orangina standing in. Among them are: Orangina as a hair care product (featuring a lady afghan hound), Orangina as a deodorant (featuring an athletic bear), and Orangina as a feminine hygiene product (featuring a naked lady panda). An ad for Orangina as an aftershave lotion (featuring a male cougar and his… friend) is raising quite a few eyebrows. In fact, some nations in Europe have already banned it from TV. (If you can’t follow the links here, just go to YouTube.com and search on “Orangina”. You’ll find all of this and more.)

Berona’s War: The Field Guide

rodney — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 03:01:10 +0000

And now for something rather different: Cute and cuddly wars! Berona’s War: The Field Guide comes to us from the minds of Jesse Labbe and Anthony Coffey. According to Previews it’s “an epic tale of two adorable, fur-covered races doomed by their own escalating violence”. Whew. The Ele-Alta and the Cropones are soft and fuzzy on the outside, but hard as nails on the inside. When both tribes lay claim to Berona Island’s most valuable real estate — a land known as Amity — the result can only be bloody war. This full-color hardcover graphic novel is available now from Archaia Comics. This winter, look for the sequel, Berona’s War: Fight for Amity. And check this out for a preview of the whole series.

New Hollywood Hopefuls…

rodney — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:07:04 +0000

Last week, Jim Hill’s daily blog presented his review of the recent Licensing International Expo, held at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas. This is the annual show where t-shirt, candy, toy and a zillion other manufacturers look for “the next big thing” to put on their products before they get sold to the rest of us. And of course Hollywood studios are there in force, promoting their new upcoming movies and TV series to all the makers of tie-in merchandise. Among the interesting new items being presented: Dreamworks Animation was there advertising their new 3D Shrek spin-off movie that tells the origin of Puss in Boots; as well as Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom, the new sequel which features (along with the original voice cast) newcomer Gary Oldman as “a peacock who is far more than he seems”. 20th Century Fox was there advertising the 4th film in the Ice Age series, Continental Drift; as well as the upcoming “three-quel” for Alvin and the Chipmunks called Chip-Wrecked. Before that new Ice Age film though comes Rio, Blue Sky’s next 3D project coming out next April. (If you haven’t heard of it, the film is about a nerdy macaw who can’t fly — but who gets a chance to escape when he visits his species’ native Brazil. It stars the voices of Anne Hathaway, George Lopez, Tracy Morgan, Jamie Foxx, and Will-I-Am. Check out the trailer on YouTube.) Illumination Entertainment (the same house that animated this year’s film Despicable Me for Universal) is hard at work on an adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ environmental fable The Lorax, scheduled for release in March of 2012 (also from Universal). And of course (as we’ve reported before) this December Fox will be releasing Walden Media’s long-awaited third entry in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. And then, there’s the live-action Smurfs movie coming from Sony in 2011… but let’s not go there, shall we?

Re-Booting Winnie the Pooh

rodney — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 02:52:18 +0000

Evidently picking up on the fact that their attempts to take the world of Winnie the Pooh and make it ‘hip and happening’ (hel-loooo My Friends Tigger and Pooh) didn’t quite achieve the heights they had hoped, the Walt Disney Company is going back to the drawing board — literally — with A.A. Milne’s famous franchise. To that end, Disney has announced that a brand-new 2D feature-length animated film, titled simply Winnie the Pooh, is scheduled for release in July of 2011. And Disney is bringing out the big guns for this project: Among the animators working on the film are Mark Henn (“Princess Tiana”) for Pooh, Andreas Deja (“Scar”) for Tigger, Glen Keane (“The Beast”) for Christopher Robin, and Tony Bancroft (“Pumbaa”) for Eeyore. Burny Mattinson, who was actually an animator on the original 1960’s Winnie the Pooh shorts, will serve as the film’s lead story artist. And here’s an amusing note: The songs for the new film were written by Robert Lopez, who wrote the lyrics for Avenue Q.

Now It Can Be Told!

rodney — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:23:43 +0000

The 2010 Ursa Major Awards, celebrating the best in anthropomorphic art, writing, and other media were presented at FurAffinity United on Sunday, May 30th. 2 the Ranting Gryphon hosted the show and presented the awards. From the Ursa Major Awards web site: “More formally known as the Annual Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Award, the Ursa Major Award is presented annually for excellence in the furry arts. It is intended as Anthropomorphic (a.k.a. Furry) Fandom’s equivalent of the Hugo Award ® presented by the World Science Fiction Society, mystery fandom’s Anthony Award, horror fandom’s Bram Stoker Award, and so forth.” This year more than 1,100 fans from more than a dozen countries world wide took part in nominating and voting for the Ursa Major Awards. The most yet!

And here, now, are the nominees and winners in each of 10 categories.

In the category of Best Anthropomorphic Game, the nominees were:

Earth Eternal (created by Sparkplay Media)
G-Force – The Video Game (Developed by Keen Studios, published by Disney Interactive)
Predation, the Board Game (created by Quentin Long)
Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time (Developed by Insomniac Games, published by Sony Computer Entertainment)

And the Ursa Major Award went to: Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time

In the category of Best Anthropomorphic Published Illustration, the nominees were:

Blotch: Cover for Out of Position by Kyell Gold
Patrick Farley: “Gaia’s Strange Seedlike Brood” from Thoughtcrime Experiment
Jailbird: “It’s Beautiful” from “Trading Wishes” by Kevin Frane
Kenket: Illustration for New Coyote from Anthrozine.com
Sara Palmer: Cover for Jasmyn by Bernard Doove

And the Ursa Major Award went to: Blotch, for the Out of Position cover.

In the category of Best Anthropomorphic Magazine, the nominees were:

Anthro
Heat
New Fables
South Fur Lands
Tales of the Tai-Pan Universe

And the Ursa Major Award went to: Heat

In the category of Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip, the nominees were:

Dan and Mab’s Furry Adventures by Amber M. Williams
Doc Rat by Jenner
Freefall by Mark Stanley
Housepets! by Rick Griffin
Kevin and Kell by Bill Holbrook

And the Ursa Major Award went to: Housepets!

In the category of Best Anthropomorphic Graphic Story (with continuous story arcs) the nominees were:

Concession by Immelman
Furthia High by QuetzaDrake
Lackadaisy by Tracy J. Butler
TwoKinds by Tom Fischbach

And the Ursa Major Award went to: Concession

In the Category of Best Anthropomorphic Other Literary Work, the nominees were:

Bloom County – The Complete Collection, Volume 1, by Berke Breathed, published by Idea & Design Works
Draw Furries: How to Create Anthropomorphic and Fantasy Animals, by Lindsay Cibos and Jared Hodges, published by Impact
The First Book of Lapism, by Phil Geusz, published by Anthro Press
Who Are The Furries? by Denise Winterman, from BBC News
X, edited by Kyell Gold, published by Sofawolf Press

And the Ursa Major Award went to: Draw Furries: How to Create Anthropomorphic and Fantasy Animals

In the Category of Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction, the nominees were:

“Drifting”, by By Kyell Gold, from FurAffinity.net
“Moonthief”, by Not Tube, from X by Sofawolf Press
“Stop the World”, by Kyell Gold, from Anthrozine.com
“Thou Shalt Not Make Wrongful Use of the Name of Thy Lord”, by Whyte Yote, from X by Sofawolf Press
“Trading Wishes”, by Kevin Frane, from FurAffinity.net

And the Ursa Major Award went to: “Drifting”

In the category of Best Anthropomorphic Novel, the nominees were:

Bone Crossed, by Patricia Briggs, published by Ace Books
Cheetah’s Win, by Phil Geusz, published by Anthrozine.com
Jazmyn, by Bernard Doove, published by CreateSpace
Out of Position, by Kyell Gold, published by Sofawolf Press
Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, by David Benidictus, published by Dutton Juvenile
The Unscratchables, by Cornelius Kane, published by Scribner

And the Ursa Major Award went to: Out of Position

In the category of Best Anthropomorphic Short Subject or Series, the nominees were:

The Cat Piano (from the People’s Republic of Animation, directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson)
Partly Cloudy (from Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation, directed by Peter Sohn)
The Penguins of Madagascar (produced by Dreamworks Animation for Nickelodeon)
Prep and Landing (from Walt Disney Pictures Animation, directed by Kevin Deters and Stevie Wermers)
The Secret Saturdays (produced by Cartoon Network)

And the Ursa Major Award went to: The Penguins of Madagascar

In the Category of Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture, the nominees were:

Avatar (from 20^th Century Fox, directed by James Cameron)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (from 20^th Century Fox, directed by Wes Anderson)
The Princess and the Frog (from Walt Disney Pictures Animation, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker)
Up (from Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation, directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson)
Where the Wild Things Are (from Warner Brothers, Directed by Spike Jonze)

And the Ursa Major Award went to: Avatar

The staff of InFurNation.com wish to extend our congratulations to all of this year’s nominees and winners — as well as all of the fans who took the time to participate in the nominations and voting! Remember to visit the Ursa Major Awards web site to find out more about how to nominate the best in anthropomorphics from 2010 for the 2011 awards.

The Turtles are back again…

rodney — Sun, 30 May 2010 01:06:45 +0000

… with a bang and a boom?

It’s been announced that Michael Bay’s production company Platinum Dunes (best known for a recent slew of horror-movie remakes like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th) will be creating a new live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Mr. Bay and his team of producers (Brad Fuller, Andrew Form, Galen Walker, and Scott Mednick) will begin seeking script-writers in June. No word yet on a planned-for release date, or even a possible director, but the project is to be released by Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon.