The Hollywood Animation Film Festival is currently accepting entries for the annual film festival. It’s a competitive film festival that highlights both domestic and international animated films. Selected animated films compete in the festival’s main competition.
Hollywood Film Festival 2008
Hollywood, California, USA
Oct. 15-20, 2008
Deadline: June 30, 2008
For more info, visit www.hollywoodawards.com.
The Library of Congress has named 25 more motion pictures to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, including the classic Disney short, “Three Little Pigs.”
Each year the Librarian of Congress, with advice from the National Film Preservation Board, names 25 films to the National Film Registry to be preserved for all time. The films are chosen because they are “culturally, historically or aesthetically†significant. This year’s selections bring to 475 the number of motion pictures in the registry.
Three Little Pigs (1933)
Voted the 11th-best cartoon of all time in a 1990s poll of animators, “Three Little Pigs†falls midway through a series of classic shorts (“Skeleton Dance,†“The Band Concert,†“The Old Mill,â€) that Walt Disney produced as he learned and refined the art of animation; each film marked another development in his path toward the 1937 feature “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.†The wildly popular “Three Little Pigs†proved a landmark in “personality animationâ€â€” each of the three pigs had a different personality—and the title tune “Who’s Afraid of
the Big Bad Wolf†became a Depression-era anthem.
Yet another award for Pixar’s Ratatouille has been awarded. This time it’s the fine folks over at RottenTomatoes who have placed Ratatouille in 13th place in their annual Top 20 Best of the Year list.
IFC has named their Five Best Directorial Debuts of 2007 and one of them is Persepolis’ director, Marjane Satrapi.
Satrapi’s film isn’t just a faithful adaptation but an energized improvement of its source material, lending the author’s personal saga of oppression and exile an aesthetic fluidity and vitality that few animated efforts, of this year or any other, can match.
“The fact is, we’re very, very excited about the future,” John Lasseter, creative director of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios. “The whole notion that the audience didn’t want to watch hand-drawn animation any more was ridiculous. It would be like saying the audience didn’t want to watch something made with a particular camera. Give me a break!”
“It’s storytelling. No one goes to a movie to see a particular technology. They go to see story and characters. They go to be entertained. What it was is that 2D became the scapegoat for bad storytelling.”
Disney will return to its 2D roots with The Princess and the Frog, a fairy tale about a young girl, Princess Tiana, who lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans during the jazz age. Princess Tiana will be Disney’s first African-American princess, joining the princesses we all know such as Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.
I would to personally wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays if you don’t celebrate Christmas). I want to thank you all for such a great year. Here’s to me writing another Merry Christmas post next year! Now go have some fun with your family and friends and remember, don’t drink and drive because real life isn’t a Road Runner cartoon!
The milestones just keep on coming. It seems like only yesterday I was typing up the “200th post milestone” post and now here I am… 300th post! Not bad for only 10 months and one person running the entire blog.
I want to thank each and every visitor who comes to TheAnimationBlog.com. Please continue to visit and I’ll continue to write. Subscribe to the RSS feed and spread the word to your friends!
Once again, thank you! I couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas gift!
Sincerely,
HC
The Animation Blog Founder
If there’s a time that movie studios want to advertise their films, it’s during the Super Bowl, one of, if not the most watched broadcast of the year. So it’s no surprise that the majority of studios will air ads during Super Bowl XLII, which airs February 3, 2008 on FOX.
Ads don’t come cheap though. A 30 second ad sets back the studios between $2.7~$3 million dollars!
Here are the movies set to be advertised during the Super Bowl:
Disney – Will either be Wall-E or The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Paramount/Marvel – Iron Man
Sony – Will Smith’s “Hancock”, Adam Sandler’s “Don’t Mess with the Zohan”
New Line – Will Ferrell’s “Semi-Pro”
Universal – Have purchased time, movie unknown
Warner Bros. – Have purchased time, movie unknown
Fox – Have purchased time, movie unknown
Via Variety
Toy Story 2 has finally been added to the iTunes store, thus completing the collection of Pixar movies. The movie will set you back $14.99 with a file size of 1.03 GB. For those who don’t want to download it and would prefer a DVD, you can find it at any retailer for $19.99.
A trailer for the upcoming Veggietales movie, The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything, has been released on the Apple Trailers website in both standard and high definition. Check it out:
www.apple.com/trailers/universal/veggietalesthepirateswhodontdoanything/
The movie will hit theaters on January 11, 2008.
RottenTomatoes.com has an interview with Marjane Satrapi (director) on Persepolis with exclusive clips and photos.
Here’s one of the questions she was asked:
RottenTomatoes: Persepolis and Ratatouille are the favorites for being nominated and winning the Animation Oscar and it’s interesting that they’re both, in one way or another, connected to French culture. Have you seen Ratatouille?
Marjane: Yes, it’s a nice one. I really like it a lot. I watched it with two kids and they were so excited. I was more excited by their excitement.
I don’t know, if we could have the Oscar for Best Animation and Best Foreign, that’d be a record. Yes! Why not? I worked for it. [Laughs.] I’d be a liar if I said I don’t care. I do care. I hope. At the same time, this is just a competition. It’s surreal. If it doesn’t come, it doesn’t come. But I hope it will. [Laughs.]
For the entire interview, click here.
Here’s another animated Christmas movie for you to enjoy. The first of seven videos (blame Youtube’s 10 minute limit) is below. The rest can be viewed by clicking here or on the READ MORE link below the video.
Part One
Since we’re so close to Christmas, I figured I would post some Christmas videos for you all to enjoy. First up we have Frosty the Snowman. Enjoy!
Part One
Part Two
Just in time for Christmas, The Simpsons Movie is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray. Grossing over $500 million worldwide, The Simpsons Movie delivered on its promise to entertain and bring something new and exciting to the table. How can you go wrong with Spider-Pig?
The DVD includes a ton of bonus features, including commentaries with writers/producers, actors and directors, deleted scenes and promo spots, including The Simpsons Judge American Idol and Homer’s apperance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
A heads up to everyone — Circuit City is selling it for only $13.99 for this week only!
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