According to an article in Variety magazine, Disney Animation has given the green light to produce a live action Chip and Dale movie. Yes. What’s more, the film’s plot is an origin story for the Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers. This means we get to see not only Chip and Dale but Monterey Jack, Gadget Hackwrench, and the fly known as Zipper all portrayed as CGI characters in the real world, a la The Smurfs or the recent spate of Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. The film is being written and directed by Paul Rugan, previously best known as a director of TV commercials. No word yet on a planned release date or any cast members.
The Annie Award Winners
Your humble ed-otter and his mate were honored to once again attend the 2014 Annie Awards, honoring the best in animation from the year 2013. The event at UCLA’s Royce Hall (on Saturday the 1st of February) was hosted by Patrick Warburton, best known as Kronk from Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove but also appearing as a voice in the upcoming Peabody and Sherman movie. Though Disney’s Frozen won Best Feature and Best Directing (it was a favorite for both), no film or TV series really seemed to dominate the awards that night. Instead the honors were spread out over a wide swath of projects. Several furry projects — or projects with anthropomorphic characters in them, at least — were honored, which is good when you’re honoring a year like 2013 that, let’s face it, had rather a dearth of heavily furry works — especially compared to 2012. Overall Disney was one of the big winners of the night — no, not Pixar. Disney. Not only did Frozen take home the feature-length honors for Best Picture, Directing, Music, Production Design, and Voice Acting (Josh Gad as Olaf the snowman); but the Disney Mickey Mouse series of shorts won in TV/Broadcast categories for Editing, Character Design, and Music. What’s more, the popular Disney cartoon Get A Horse won the Best Short Subject award. Pixar was represented as well of course, both in feature awards (as Monsters University won for Storyboarding and Editing) and TV/Broadcast (where Toy Story of Terror took home awards for Storyboarding, Character Animation, and Directing). Dreamworks Animation’s biggest winner of the evening was The Croods, which took home feature awards in Character Design, Effects Animation, and Character Animation. In television Tom Kenny received the award for Best Voice Acting for his role as The Ice King in Adventure Time, and the show itself was honored as the Best Production for Children. Some popular furry projects were nominated in several categories but unfortunately the did not win any awards. Among them were the TV series Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and Dragons: Riders of Berk, as well as the French feature film Ernest & Celestine. The Annie Awards are administered by ASIFA-Hollywood, the Southern California branch of the International Animated Film Society (ASIFA). You can visit the Annie Awards web site to see pictures and videos from the event as well as a full list of all the winners for 2013.
Turtles Got… Lips?
So the Comic Book Movie site has released an image they found showing a much more detailed look at what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are going to appear like in the new film directed by Jonathan Liebesman (Battle Los Angeles) and produced by Michael Bay (Transformers, et al). The look is certainly… different, isn’t it? Guess we’ll see more images and probably some footage soon, as the film is scheduled for release this August.
More Raccoons at the Movies
Bringing yet another well-known video game to the big screen, Sony Pictures have announced that Sly Cooper — The Movie is filming and set for release in 2016. Erik Kain at Forbes.com has the complete story, as well as a link to the teaser trailer. The film is being directed by Kevin Munroe (one of the writers on the TMNT film from 2007) and animated by Rainmaker Entertainment and Blockade Entertainment (both of whom are currently working on the Ratchet & Clank movie, also for Sony). According to the press release, “Sly Cooper is a kinetic and comedic heist film that tells the story of Sly Cooper, an orphaned raccoon thief, along with his childhood friends and partners in crime, Bentley Turtle and Murray Hippo. In the film, Sly learns of his birth family’s secret legacy; that he comes from a long line of talented and international thieves. Endowed with this knowledge, Sly and his friends are catapulted into a global adventure as they race to reassemble pieces of an ancient book holding The Cooper Clan’s family secrets before it can fall into the hands of Clockwerk — an evil Russian metallic owl bent on ending the Cooper family line. ” With the movie not coming out until 2016, we can probably assume that the teaser trailer does not reflect the look or feel of the final film — but it does get the word out and hopefully gets people interested.
The Vampire Is The Nice One
It’s the far future, and one of the most popular viewing experiences out there is a deadly reality show called The Last Res0rt, where criminals from various worlds and species try to kill each other. Into this mix comes Jigsaw, a furry, who’s also a violinist — and a vampire. Or so she just discovered. She honestly wishes that she’d known that before she volunteered to be on the show! All of this comes from the mind of graphic artist Rachel Keslensky, and it’s all available for viewing at the Last Res0rt comic strip web-site. As well as in several paperback book collections Rachel has put together from previous material — books which also include extra new art work, of course. The web site also includes a handy new reader’s guide for those who need to catch up with the story and the characters.
The Ladies and Their Cats
Somehow we missed these! Back in 2011, author Rael Bayellis released not one but two erotic fantasy novels (or as the author calls them, paranormal romances) on line. Both are set in a modern world that also features magick, fey folk, wizards… and shadow cats, winged feline spirits. In Helen and the Shadow Cat, a bored housewife fantasizes about an affair with a shadow cat she passes one day — unaware that he has his eyes on her as well! And in Allison & Tiberius, a young college student from a backwater town observes a shadow cat hovering outside her dorm room window one day — and thus begins her adventures. More books in the Shadow Cat series have followed since then. Remember, these books are decidedly for adults only! The author’s works can be found in electronic form at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.
Fastest Fox in the West
Mandi Tremblay (also known as the artist Mitti, creator of Peachy Keen) has a new on-line graphic story in full color, Lucky August Carson. It goes like this: “On his first day as a small town sheriff, August Carson’s got caught in the snare of Freddie, the legendary Bandit Queen, who kidnaps him for her own mission. Can August survive the Mojave Desert, or is there more to Freddie than she’s letting on?” Find out at the official Lucky August Carson web site.
Dragons of the Internet Era
Meadowhawk is an on-line black & white comic strip created by Nicole Johnson — aka, the artist Ribnose (check her out at FurAffinity). The comic strip deals with dragons — but dragons of a decidedly modern nature, in a decidedly modern world. “Modern dragons who, if asked to account for dragon lore, would cluelessly click to the same wikis you or I would for a quick refresher. Dragons for whom words like ‘pillage’, ‘slay’ and ‘burninate’ are the names of faraway concepts, found only in musty histories of dubious accuracy. These are dragons who have only been around as long as you or I (so far). They know as much about their Middle Ages forbears as we know about our tribal ancestors. Heck, they barely remember a time before the Internet.” The comic is updated several times a month, and guest artists have been known to stop in and do a strip or two — so to speak. Take a look at Meadowhawk.net for the latest.
They’ve Got It In for the Panda
Sanctuary is an black & white on-line digital comic story created and illustrated by animator Stephen Coughlin. Now this February Slave Labor Graphic will be releasing Sanctuary as a series of softcover graphic novels. Their description: “A research station on a secluded island houses a game reserve/sanctuary where the animals seem to be just a tad smarter than the human researchers observing them. The arrival of a Panda bear threatens to upset the delicate balance of life for everyone involved. On the surface everything seems normal enough, but beneath all the cuteness lays something sinister and more than a little creepy.” That and the front cover below might give you a little idea what you’re in store for. Check out Volume 1: Fresh Meat and order it at Things From Another World. [And with that, we’ll see you again after Further Confusion!]