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Movie News

Animals United

Dec 31st, 2010
by rodney.
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Slipping under the radar for a lot of folks — including, yes, yours truly! — is the CGI animated film Animals United, recently coming out of Germany. It’s directed by Reinhard Klooss and Holger Tappe, known among fans of European animation for Impy’s Wonderland. In this new film, animals of various species must work together when the effects of human industrialization (read: Global Warming) threaten their supply of clean water. And yes, it’s a comedy. One look at the trailer will tell you that. So far there’s no word on a North American release, but an English language version has been created for the U.K., featuring well-known voices like Jim Broadbent, Dawn French, and Stephen Fry.

And with that bit of news: Let us wish a Happy and Joyful New Year to all you furry fans the world over! We hope to see you back here all through 2011… and beyond!

Christmas: A Time for Reflection

Dec 25th, 2010
by rodney.
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Merry Christmas, Blessed Solstice, Joyful Kwanzaa, and in general Happy Holidays to all of you. And of course, good wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year.

For those looking to learn more about Furry Fandom, or perhaps just to see what some folks think, you might want to look at Furries — An Inside Look, a new student film by Curt Pehrson that’s up on Vimeo. Here’s his description: “This documentary gives an inside perspective on the strange and interesting subculture known as the furry fandom. Filmed at Midwest Furfest 2010, a major furry convention, the fandom is explained by furries in their own words. This project was both a personal and an academic undertaking. The concept and production was my own, but I also got college credit for producing it, as an independent study at Bradley University.” The film has, needless to say, sparked a lively debate in the fandom already. Check it out at Vimeo and join in the discussion.

The Easter Bunny Is Coming… To Stay

Dec 18th, 2010
by rodney.
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By now you might have caught wind (or teaser trailer) of Hop, a new live action/CGI film coming next spring from Universal Pictures. If not, here’s the run-down: It seems that one day the Easter Bunny (voiced by UK comedian Russell Brand) is accidentally run-over by Fred (James Marsden), an out-of-work slacker. Now Fred is forced to keep the bunny in his home until he heals enough to complete his job — a fact that both of them find terribly annoying. The film is directed by Tim Hill, best known for Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, and Muppets from Space. The animation was created by Illumination Entertainment, who created this year’s film Despicable Me. Oh, and that trailer? You can find it on You Tube, or find out even more at Hop’s official web site, I Want Candy. Check out the film when it premiers on April 1st, 2011.

The Annie Award Nominees announced

Dec 7th, 2010
by rodney.
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The International Animated Film Society (ASIFA) have announced the nominees for the annual Annie Awards, to be presented at UCLA (in Los Angeles) on February 5th.  The Annies are a big deal these days, as they are often (but not always) a good predictor for how the voting will go at the Academy Awards later next year. Now as you may recall, there has been some controversy regarding the Annie Awards this year: Disney and Pixar have withheld their official support, citing what they feel are unfair voting practices that tilt things against them. Whether or not there’s any truth to that or not, the fact remains that Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon has clearly dominated this year’s Annie nominations, with a total of 15. Megamind and Shrek Forever After were also high on the nomination list, with six and five, respectively. On the Disney/Pixar side, Toy Story 3 picked up three nominations while Tangled picked up two. In the TV Animation categories, heavily nominated items included The Kung Fu Panda Holiday Special, Scared Shrekless, Star Wars: Clone Wars, T.U.F.F. Puppy, and eternal favorite Robot Chicken. The Best Animated Video Game Category returned this year and, interestingly, this year there is a new category: Best Character Animation in a Live Action Movie. Only two nominees for the latter: Clash of the Titans and Alice in Wonderland. To see the full list of nominees and find out more about getting tickets to the show, visit the Annie Awards web site.

Kevin James is The Zookeeper

Nov 22nd, 2010
by rodney.
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Okay, so, recently the trailer for Kevin James’ 2011 live action/CGI film The Zookeeper has been making the rounds at movie theaters. The animation and cartoon blogs have been going “wild”, calling it friendly things like “Madagascar in live action with a fat guy” and such. We’ll let you make your own decision when the film comes out on July 8th. Here’s the official description from Sony Pictures: “In Zookeeper, the animals at the Franklin Park Zoo love their kindhearted caretaker, Griffin Keyes (Kevin James). Finding himself more comfortable with a lion than a lady, Griffin decides the only way to get a girl in his life is to leave the zoo and find a more glamorous job. The animals, in a panic, decide to break their time-honored code of silence and reveal their biggest secret: They can talk! To keep Griffin from leaving, they decide to teach him the rules of courtship.” Really now. The film is directed by Frank Coraci, who’s directed several successful comedies starring Adam Sandler — including The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy, and Click. In The Zookeeper, Sandler plays a monkey. According to Cinema Blend, the film was originally scheduled to be released this fall, but Sony later decided to save it until next summer and put it up against films like Transformers 3 and the final Harry Potter film. Really.

Firebreather — The Movie

Nov 18th, 2010
by rodney.
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In the past we’ve told you about Firebreather, the comic book series created by Phil Hester and Andy Kuhn, published by Image Comics. Now it seems that Cartoon Network has gone and snuck out a CGI movie based on it! The story is the same as the comic, described here from Firebreather’s Wikipedia entry: “High school teen Duncan Rosenblatt is the son of divorced parents — a typical suburban soccer mom who wants him to get into a good college, and a 300-foot fire-breathing dragon who wants him to follow in the family business — conquering the Earth and inheriting the throne of King of Monsters; they share custody. Like every other teenager, he struggles to fit in with his peers. His being half-dragon further complicates matters.” The movie comes to Cartoon Network on November 24th. Check out the trailer on YouTube, too.

Movie Calendar for 2011

Nov 10th, 2010
by rodney.
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Thanks to Animation Magazine, we now have a more precise schedule of animated movies coming to theaters in 2011. Some of them we knew about, some of them (we’ll admit) we didn’t! So, in order: Rango (starring the voice of Johnny Depp) comes to us on March 4th, Rio (from Blue Sky) hits the air on April 8th, Kung Fu Panda 2: The Kaboom of Doom (whew!) kicks off May 27th, Cars 2 (from Pixar of course) takes off on June 24th, Winnie the Pooh (in 2D, based on never-before-adapted-stories) comes to us July 15th, Puss in Boots (the long-awaited Shrek prequel) slices up the fall on November 4th, and Happy Feet 2 (once again directed by George Miller) finishes things off on November 18th. Oh, and if you haven’t seen it: The first teaser trailer for Kung Fu Panda 2 is playing in front of Megamind, in theaters now.

Return of the Love Skunk

Oct 16th, 2010
by rodney.
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And they just keep coming… Now word is out from Hollywood that Warner Brothers will soon be starting work on a live-action-with-CGI Pepe Le Pew feature film. In other words, a world of humans where only the amorous skunk Pepe and his feline love-target, Penelope, would be animated. New York Magazine is reporting that none other than Shrek himself, Mike Myers, will be voicing Pepe le Pew for the movie (rather than Joe Alaskey or Maurice LaMarche, who’ve voiced him in other recent animation projects). The point of all of this, of course, is to re-brand Warner Brothers characters like Pepe before they run out their copyrights, and to get them back in the public’s eye so they will again start moving merchandise. No word yet on a planned release date for the film. The folks over at Cartoon Brew don’t seem very happy about this whole development.

Disney and the Annie Awards split up!

Aug 25th, 2010
by rodney.
2 comments

Word is spreading like wildfire around the industry newspapers and blogs that Disney/Pixar have completely withdrawn their support from the annual Annie Awards, presented by ASIFA-Hollywood. The Annies are considered to be the Oscar Awards of the animation industry, and Disney has been a financial supporter of the awards since 1972. But now (according to reports) Disney fears that the awards process has been skewed towards Dreamworks Animation, as evidenced by the 2009 awards when Kung Fu Panda swept everything — and Wall-E was shut out entirely.  Now (again, this is the word going around) Disney fears that a similar thing might happen, causing How to Train Your Dragon to beat out Toy Story 3 in one or more categories. As evidence, Disney/Pixar have pointed to the fact that Dreamworks offers a free ASIFA-Hollywood membership to its employees as part of their employment package, and previously voting on the Annie Awards was open to all members of ASIFA, regardless of where they worked in the animation industry — if at all. This story is still breaking, and it will be very interesting to see how it plays out. Interestingly, because of the way the Annie Award rules work, Disney/Pixar films can still be nominated for the awards, and win them, even if they’re not official entered by the creators.

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