Check out this brand new WALL-E trailer which introduces a new character. If the first video goes down, check out the video below it:
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The 21st annual (holy crap, I had no idea!) Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards nominees have been announced. There are two animation categories: Best Animated Movie and Best Voice From an Animated Movie. The nominees are:
Animated Movie: Shrek The Third, Bee Movie, Ratatouille, The Simpsons Movie.
Voice From an Animated Movie: Cameron Diaz, Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld.
I’m assuming the kids vote via Nick.com or something which leads me to wonder if they’ll do the right thing and award Ratatouille though something tells me Shrek the Third might win… (Please, kids, don’t do that!)
Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom is an educational Adventures in Music animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions, and originally released to theaters on November 10, 1953. Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom is a stylized presentation of the evolution of four musical instruments over the ages: the horn (“toot”), the flute (“whistle”), the guitar (“plunk”), and the drum (“boom”).
The first animated cartoon to be filmed and released in widescreen CinemaScope, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom won the 1954 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons). In 1994, it was voted #29 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.
The Old Mill is a 1937 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Wilfred Jackson, and released on November 5, 1937. The film depicts the community of animals living in an old abandoned windmill in the country, and how they deal with a violent thunderstorm that nearly destroys their habitat.
Marking the first use of Disney’s multiplane camera, the film also incorporates realistic depictions of animal behavior, complex lighting and color effects, depictions of rain, wind, lightning, ripples, splashes and reflections, three-dimensional rotation of detailed objects, and the use of timing to produce specific dramatic and emotional effects.
The Old Mill won the 1937 Academy Award for Best Short Subjects: Cartoons. In 1994 it was voted #14 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.
Disney President and Chief Executive Bob Iger believes that CARS has the greatest long-term viability of any of its current franchises. Although the movie did well at the box office, it is Pixar’s worst reviewed film, scoring 76% on RottenTomatoes.
But that won’t stop Disney. “We’re selling more merchandise now than in the year that the film was released,” Iger said. “[It’s] a relatively good bet that ultimately [there will] be a sequel.”
Along with all the licensed products, ranging from toys to tooth brushes, Disney is working on “Cars Land”, a theme park attraction scheduled to open at Disney’s California Adventure in 2012.
Thankfully, Disney won’t attempt to milk the recent Ratatouille because “that wouldn’t be one we would consider a true franchise in terms of its leverageability across multiple businesses or its ability to drive huge value over a long period of time.”
Via Forbes
Turok: Son of Stone, based on the original 1950s comic book series, as well as influences ranging from Frank Miller to Akira Kurosawa, is now available on DVD. It tells a dark and intense re-imagining of Turok’s origin story.
During 20 years in exile, Turok has become a powerful and feared warrior. He now returns home to find his village destroyed and his family slaughtered at the hands of the ruthless tyrant Chichak. On a mission of vengeance, Turok must journey to the Lost Land, a savage place forgotten by time, where primeval beasts hunt all who enter.
iTunes has refused to carry two animated short films: Teat Beat of Sex and Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People. Apparently they were rejected because they were too explicit and too political.
The deal was supposed to have included downloads via iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox, but neither film is available from any of the three services.
Karl Cohen, president of ASIFA-SF, commented: “I see this as another stupid act of censorship that illustrates the dangers of having a few corporations in control of our media. Teat Beat of Sex was commissioned for European television by a distributor and it is being shown there, but it’s considered too controversial to show on iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox. Isn’t something wrong with this picture?”
Update via AWN: The Sundance shorts need to go through a review committee for content and technical issues before they can make it into the iTunes store. A Sundance spokesman said that they should have an answer from iTunes by the end of the week and that the festival is pushing to have all the films it submitted online.
On April 15th we will be treated to the DVD release of The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection: Volume 2, a 3-disc set which includes 75 digitally remastered and completely uncut cartoons that feature Woody and his friends: Chilly Willy, Andy Panda, Buzz Buzzard, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Knothead and Splinter. To view the complete list of episodes, click on the link below the image below:
To help spread the word of the upcoming Horton Hears A Who, 20th Century Fox has teamed up with THX to create a special Horton edition of the THX opening that plays before the majority of films. Scroll down to check it out.
THX stands for Tomlinson Holman’s eXperiment. THX was developed by Tomlinson Holman at Lucasfilm in 1982 to ensure that the soundtrack for the third Star Wars film would be accurately reproduced in theaters.
The THX system is not a recording technology, and it does not specify a sound recording format. THX is mainly a quality assurance system. THX-certified theaters provide a high-quality, predictable playback environment to ensure that any film soundtrack mixed in THX will sound as near as possible to the intentions of the mixing engineer.
During the Superbowl a commercial for Pixar’s upcoming film WALL-E aired. The commercial features Woody and Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story talking about WALL-E the robot. Their conversation cuts away to WALL-E playing with a vacuum cleaner. Below is the actual commercial and the full unedited clip of WALL-E playing with the vacuum. Enjoy!
CommercialFull Vacuum Clip
Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor is a two-reel animated cartoon short in the Popeye Color Feature series, produced in Technicolor and released to theaters on November 27, 1936 by Paramount Pictures. It was produced by Max Fleischer and directed by Dave Fleischer, with musical supervision by Sammy Timberg. In 1994, the film was voted #17 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.
Part One
Part Two
The Big Snit is an animated short written and directed by Richard Condie and produced by the National Film Board of Canada. It was released in 1985. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film. In 1994 it was voted #25 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.
According to ComingSoon, Pixar’s 2008 film, UP, will now be released in theaters 14 days earlier than it was originally announced. The new release date is now set for May 29, 2009. The film is directed by Pete Docter and written by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson and it tells a coming-of-old-age story about a seventy-something guy who lives in a house that “looks like your grandparents’ house smelled.” He befriends a clueless young Wilderness Ranger and gets into lots of altercations. “Our hero travels the globe, fights beasts and villains and eats dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon.”
Back in 2001, Michael Eisner reportedly told Disney’s board of directors that he’d be postponing any further contract talks with Pixar Animation Studios. Eisner had just come back from a work-in-progress screening of Finding Nemo and he supposedly told the board that it was the weakest thing that Pixar had produced to date.
Eisner believed that it would be far easier for Disney’s attorneys to get Steve Jobs to agree to much more favorable terms if Pixar were coming off of its first “failure.” Boy did that backfire on him. Pixar went back to the drawing board and fixed the problems, which included recasting the voice of Nemo’s father.
Head on over to Jim Hill Media and read the entire article of How Pixar fixed Finding Nemo. Another quality article by Jim Hill.
Upcoming Pixar has a brand new image of concept art from Pixar’s upcoming film Up, which is due in theaters June 12, 2009 from the director of Monsters Inc., Peter Docter.
The image is a picture of concept art taken at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida.
