Annie Awards presented...

Best Animated Feature
Up - Pixar Animation Studios

Best Home Entertainment Production
Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder - The Curiosity Company in association with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Best Animated Short Subject
Robot Chicken: Star Wars 2.5 - ShadowMachine

Best Animated Television Commercial
Spanish Lottery "Deportees" - Acme Filmworks, Inc.

Best Animated Television Production
Prep and Landing - ABC Family/Walt Disney Animation Studios

Best Animated Television Production for Children
The Penguins of Madagascar - Nickelodeon and DreamWorks Animation

Animated Effects
James Mansfield "The Princess and the Frog" - Walt Disney Animation Studios

Character Animation in a Television Production
Phillip To "Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space" - DreamWorks Animation

Character Animation in a Feature Production
Eric Goldberg "The Princess and the Frog" - Walt Disney Animation Studios

Character Design in a Television Production
Bill Schwab "Prep and Landing" - Walt Disney Animation Studios

Character Design in a Feature Production
Shane Prigmore "Coraline" - Laika

Directing in a Television Production
Bret Haaland "The Penguins of Madagascar - Launchtime" - Nickelodeon and DreamWorks Animation

Directing in a Feature Production
Pete Docter "Up" - Pixar Animation Studios

Music in a Television Production
Guy Moon The Fairly OddParents: "Wishology-The Big Beginning" - Nickelodeon

Music in a Feature Production
Bruno Coulais "Coraline" - Laika

Production Design in a Television Production
Andy Harkness "Prep and Landing" - Walt Disney Animation Studios

Production Design in a Feature Production
Tadahiro Uesugi "Coraline" - Laika

Storyboarding in a Television Production
Robert Koo "Merry Madagascar" - DreamWorks Animation

Storyboarding in a Feature Production
Tom Owens "Monsters vs. Aliens" — DreamWorks Animation

Voice Acting in a Television Production
Tom Kenny - Voice of SpongeBob - "SpongeBob SquarePants - Truth or Square" - Nickelodeon

Voice Acting in a Feature Production
Jen Cody - Voice of Charlotte - "The Princess and the Frog" - Walt Disney Animation Studios

Writing in a Television Production
Daniel Chun - "The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XX" - Gracie Films

Writing in a Feature Production
Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach - "Fantastic Mr. Fox" - 20th Century Fox

Oscar Nom Nom time...

Animated Feature Film
• Coraline Henry Selick
• Fantastic Mr. Fox Wes Anderson
• The Princess and the Frog John Musker and Ron Clements
• The Secret of Kells Tomm Moore
• Up Pete Docter

Again, Ponyo gets shut out. The Secret of Kells is a surprise, although the small distribution company, Cartoon Saloon, that did a small release of the movie in December pushed it and pushed it hard. Kells is already a winner if it wins or not for the nomination.

My pick is Up, though. I mean Princess and the Frog is a sentimental favorite because it's the return to form of Disney traditional animation and also the first 2D Pixar film. But Up is just masterful, affecting, effective and powerful. Up also was nominated for BEST PICTURE, and it deserves it. This is one freaking POWERFUL movie. The game-changing possibility of Ed Asner being nominated as Best Actor for his voice performance in Up did not materialize, sadly.

Short Film (Animated)
• French Roast Fabrice O. Joubert
• Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell
• The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte) Javier Recio Garcia
• Logorama Nicolas Schmerkin
• A Matter of Loaf and Death Nick Park

Another example of the disconnect between Annie Awards and Academy Awards short-subject nominations. If you did a Venn diagram of the nominations for the same category in each horse race, there would be no intersection. It is shocking that Nick Park didn't get nominated by the Annie nominators. Aardman Animation is usually an Annie favorite, and would have easily trounced those in the field for the Short Subject Annie, especially considering the weakness of the field. Pups Of Liberty WTF???

Music (Original Score)
• Avatar James Horner
• Fantastic Mr. Fox Alexandre Desplat
• The Hurt Locker Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders
• Sherlock Holmes Hans Zimmer
• Up Michael Giacchino

Randy Newman's song-oriented score for Princess and the Frog was disqualified about a month ago, so the lack of score nom was not a surprise. Joe Hishaishi's brilliant score for Ponyo, however, was shut out. :P

Music (Original Song)
• “Almost There” from The Princess and the Frog Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
• “Down in New Orleans” from The Princess and the Frog Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
• “Loin de Paname” from Paris 36 Music by Reinhardt Wagner Lyric by Frank Thomas
• “Take It All” from Nine Music and Lyric by Maury Yeston
• “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from Crazy Heart Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Love that song "Almost There." But "The Weary Kind" is the favorite. Too bad, Randy Newman deserves some love for his authentic take on the musics of New Orleans.

Just finished Annie voting...

...and this time I wasn't given any technical categories, just best features, best tv show, best tv show for kids, best commercial, best home video release and best short. Too bad, because I had definite ideas about some of the technical categories and who did and did not deserve Annie love. And as far as the kidvid category...I couldn't find anything to vote affirmatively for so I just didn't vote at all in that category. Then again, this meant that voting the Annie ballot wasn't the endurance contest it had been last time. I am still unhappy that Ed Asner is not up for best voice actor, because his was an example of real acting that you normally don't see in American animation. I still wish Ponyo had been up for best picture. But I voted for what I considered the best of what was there. I did my duty. I earned my screeners for the year. Hoo-yah.

UP for the win at Golden Globes!!!

The miraculously wonderful Pixar movie Up won Best Animated Feature, and Michael Giacchino won Best Score for his score for Up as well. That's it for now.

Best animation of the Decade From Hell...

(in no particular order)

Lilo and Stitch
Just the most beautifully animated and beautifully staged 2D animated feature of the decade. You can't lose setting a movie in Hawaii, and the hand-painted watercolor background paintings are just to die for. The struggles of a barely-out-of-her-teens older sister caring for a feisty, troubled younger sister register as REAL even though the inclusion of the alien hexapodal genetics experiment Stitch adds a fantasy touch. I would even give this the edge over The Princess and the Frog even though that was a visual feast too.

Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence
This movie only gets more and more important to me with every viewing. You don't quite register it to begin with, the movie is so OMG spectacular visually, (see it on Blu-ray on a good 1020p HD setup) but this movie is an important criticism of the "moe" (mo-EH) subculture that is unfortunately ripping the guts out of the Japanese animation industry right now. The pretty, spooky, barely-pubescent Hadaly-type "sexoroids" that are malfunctioning all over Japan in the movie are a metaphor for the pre-pubescent sex objects that are all the rage in series and OAVs among male pop culture consumers. The reason why good anime is hard to find right now is because there is such a concentration on this very narrow category to the detriment of everything else. Heck, the best series I've seen in a while is Chii's Sweet Home, which is an Azumanga Daioh-style slice-of-life series centering not around humans, but A CAT. When feline stories trump human stories, something is wrong.

Wall-E
And here we have a story almost totally about robots that is one of the most touching and most human stories this decade. The first half of this movie has hardly any dialogue but it's incredibly acted. It was awesome that Ben Burtt, the genius sound designer who gave voices to the non-human side of the Star Wars galaxy, was persuaded out of retirement to work on this movie. And yes, Wall-E's a PC, and EVE is a Mac. Yay for Jon Ives also being persuaded to work out of the box on EVE's character design. And this has done more for ecological awareness than a thousand thousand showings of An Inconvenient Truth.

Waltz With Bashir
A documentary about an Israeli generation coming to terms with the brutality of the Lebanese War. It just so happens to be animated. The graphic novel look, which was all hand drawn, and the surrealism of the movie is 100% reality based. Slowly the truth is teased out, just like the protagonist (based on Ari Folman, the man who directed this movie) teases out the horrifying reality he experienced on the battlefield in 1982 but suppressed afterward.

Up
If Wall-E is about the spark of "young" love, then Up is about the richness of love between a couple who spent a lifetime together. It also is about a man moving on to a whole new set of adventures in his golden years. I can't believe that Ed Asner, who brings the protagonist character of Carl Fredricksen to life with a strong and nuanced vocal performance, is not nominated for a Voice Acting Annie Award. The Casting Society of America has already awarded the casting directors for the movie with their highest honor for an animated feature. Heck, I hope the Academy shakes everyone up and nominates Asner for best actor. Asner's is one of the best voice acting performances of the decade, hands down.

An Up bonus: here's a remix by an Aussie DJ that is a nice spoiler-free intro to the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2yt1ooLQGo

Sita Sings The Blues
Film is an ensemble art form, and animated film is doubly so. A small army of artisans usually works on an animated feature. The myth of the Auteur, of the Director as "author" of a given movie, is usually only a reality in documentary film, where it's not unusual for a single person to do everything on a documentary. But Nina Paley spent 5 long years with several iterations of Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash on one lone Macintosh to create a feature of her own.

This is a mindblower of a movie. The elaborate artwork of India and Southeast Asia tells not only the grand cosmic story of the the love of the Hindu god Vishnu and the goddess Laxmi, but the heroic legend of Vishnu's incarnation as King Rama and Laxmi's incarnation as the beautiful and faithful heroine Sita, and the earthbound story of Paley's long-distance breakup with her ex-husband, who gets a gig animating at a studio in India.

These three tales are woven together with an attempt by three Indian friends of Paley trying to retell the Ramayana in front of a live mic, and the the torch songs of Jazz-age diva Annette Hanshaw. It was the very latter that got this movie in trouble, because Warner/Chappell Publishing held up distribution of the movie because they owned the publishing rights to Hanshaw's otherwise public domain recordings. Warner/Chappell eventually settled things with Paley, but added a twist worthy of a villain in a heroic legend: she could only give the movie away and show it on the festival circuit unless they got beaucoups more bucks. So Sita is now the first Creative Commons licensed animated feature, and can be downloaded for free from various sources, including Archive.Org. However, if some farsighted major would pay the ransom to Warner/Chappell, or if Time-Warner themselves decided "Hey! let's distribute this awesome movie for a feature run and put it out on DVD and Blu-Ray!" I guarantee it would be worth their while. Heck, I'm not alone in this: no less than Roger Ebert agrees with me. Jai Sita!

Persepolis
The upheaval in Iran has been one of the most compelling stories of 2009. The long-suffering citizenry has lived under autocrats for most of their history, from kings to dictators to Supreme Religious Leaders. In 1951, the Iranian people elected a reformist, Mohammad Mosaddegh, as their Prime Minister. However, one of the reforms the otherwise pro-Western and non-Communist PM was considering was the nationalization of the British oil concession, a relic of Iran's status as a protectorate of the British Empire post WWI. The UK and its US ally decided that this wasn't going to happen, so they participated in a rightist coup which toppled the Mosaddegh government and installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, formerly a figurehead head of state, as dictatorial ruler of Iran.

As the Shah's autocracy became more and more stifling, resistance simmered under the surface. It was in this pressure cooker that a woman named Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969. Her life under the Shah and later under the Islamic Republic made it into 4 graphic novels, collectively called Persepolis. In exile in France, Ms. Satrapi was able to take her graphic novels, which became worldwide sensations, and make an animated film based on them. The result is a powerful document, a personal testament of a life lived under two different despotisms, and the liberating power of art.

If you want to understand the roots of the current uprising, and understand why most Iranians who don't have a royalist axe to grind would rather the US stay out of the current conflict, watch this excellent animated feature.

Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone
Yes, we've been here before. This is Gainax's tale of the End of the World, which first blazed forth on Japanese television in 1995, then hit theatres with the two movies "Death and Rebirth" and "End of Evangelion." In some respects, this is Director Hideaki Anno's attempt to create a definitive retelling of the story of Angel attacks, a sinister cabal of scientists bent on metamorphosing Humankind into Godhood, and the designs of a renegade scientist, Ikari Gendou, to bend this process of metamorphosis, "Instrumentality," to his own ends. But in other respects, it is a totally new iteration, which is now starting to veer from the original story arc with the second movie, Evangelion 2.0, You Can (Not) Advance, which has already screened in Japan and is awaiting a Funimation release in the US.

Yes, folks, from a visual point of view, this is quite definitive. The CGI revolution has allowed some of the Angel attacks to look absolutely mindbogglingly beautiful, especially the last one they encounter which is like a living crystal that is able to morph into geometric shapes. Tokyo 3, the fortress city that UN NERV defends, is more detailed and impressive than ever. And the technology of the movie, the giant robot-like, armored Eva units, are more fully realized than in the original series and the older movies.

The story accelerates almost too much for people not familiar with it to follow. However, the Japanese audiences that this release was initially intended for are pretty much up to speed with the particulars, so it's understandable that we sort of "cut to the chase" from the beginning. Still, there is enough there so that even if you're an Evangelion virgin you'll be fine. It's a great thrill ride of a movie. Strap in and enjoy.

The Triplets of Belleville
One of the great trends going on in animation right now is that it is becoming more internationalized. It is notable that three of these movies on this list are from somewhere other than either the US or Japan. The Triplets of Belleville was made in Canada by a French and French-Canadian team, and the city of Belleville where the climax of this movie occurs is as much based on the city of Quebec as it is Manhattan.

This is another movie that, like Wall-E, has little dialogue, but which tells its story with the universal language of images. It also shares, with Up, a focus on a group of people rarely seen in animation: old people. The eponymous Triplets are a singing group who were in their prime in either the '20s or the '30s, and the main character, Madame Souza, is an older lady whose grandson, Champion, is a bicycle racer training for the Tour de France. Even the dog, Bruno, is an oldtimer, whose overstuffed contours make for much humor.

You'd think that a movie about old people, a bicycle racer, and a fat dog that chases trains would be a bore. But no, this is a visual feast. It is hard to describe, you just have to experience it.

Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, aka Spirited Away
Ghibli at its most surreal. A little girl and her yuppie parents are moving to a new town, and they get sidetracked by a tourist village centered around a Sento, a Japanese bathhouse. Little do they know, but this tourist village serves the myriad of Kami, the godlike beings of Japanese mythology, and mere mortals are not necessarily welcome.

In spite of the cultural resonances being so alien to American audiences, this has turned out to be the Studio Ghibli feature most honored by American critics. And rightly so, it's a trip and a half. While I think I'm still more impressed with Mononoke Hime, this movie is brilliant and needs to be on any best of list.

So there you go: 10 films for this misbegotten decade, plus links to the DVDs. I chose to link to Barnes & Noble because Amazon's labor practices are just unacceptable now considering how big and dominant the company is. However, I'm sure there are better deals out there. And one last comment about Sita Sings The Blues: yes, it's available for free, but please consider buying a copy of the DVD to support Nina Paley. She's worth it.

What is WRONG with you people???

Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel over The Princess And The Frog?

Kiss that frog...

OK, Disney's put out their first hand-drawn animated movie in five years and the first also under the leadership of Pixar's John Lasseter. The Princess And The Frog. A lot is riding on this movie, and it looks like Avatar might have taken a little wind out of its sails. But overall it is one beautiful confection, the most physically beautiful drawn domestic animated movie I've seen since Lilo and Stitch, and it has nothing to apologize for in its depiction of post-Plessy v. Ferguson race relations in New Orleans.

Let's get the racial issue out of the way right up front. New Orleans has had a far more nuanced race relations situation than any other place in the Southern United States. For example, Faubourg Treme is a historically integrated community in NOLA where in the 19th Century CE a gumbo pot of ethnicities, including free Blacks, lived shoulder to shoulder. This racial mixing annoyed the more racist population of the rest of the state of Louisiana, and eventually climaxed in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision, which held that "separate but equal" facilities for Blacks and Whites were AOK. This stood until Brown v. Board of Education, the decision that desegregated the public schools in the US.

The depiction of a Caribbean prince wooing both an aristocratic White woman and a working-class Black woman, the latter being our protagonist Tiana, in 1920s New Orleans, is not out of line. Even after Plessy the traditional (for New Orleans) blurred color line was constant. However blurred the color line was, it was still present. And The Princess And The Frog portrays the truth about it without making a huge deal over it.

In one of the early scenes of the movie, you see Tiana and her mother leaving the home of a wealthy White family where the mother worked as a seamstress. They leave out the back "servant's entrance." They board a streetcar and find their place in the back of the streetcar, and the ride takes them to their working class Black neighborhood. I am not sure, but Tiana's neighborhood looks like it's based on the Ninth Ward before the 1927 Mississippi Flood. You see Black families living in small, crowded houses, and Tiana's dad sharing a huge pot of gumbo with the neighbors. It's an instant party. These are people living in bleak circumstances, but true to the spirit of the city that gave birth to Jazz they eke whatever happiness they can from simple things like food and music. The scene is brief in terms of screen time, but it's very, very true. It's light-years from the racial myopia of Song Of The South.

Tiana loses her genius chef dad to World War I, and supports her family as a waitress. She still carries a "dream from (her) father"...a desire to open up her own restaurant in a vacant building formerly a sugar mill. This dream is so ingrained in her she, unlike most Disney Princess characters, doesn't care a whit about handsome princes, not even Prince Naveen, the light-skinned Caribbean Creole Prince of a fictitious island kingdom. Invited to a party by her childhood friend, the spoiled rich white girl her mom sewed for, she is not entirely impressed by the handsome playboy who was looking for a rich girl to marry because his parents cut him off from his wealth.

The sinister Dr. Facilier rewards Naveen's desire for riches by turning him into the eponymous Frog. And of course, the only way of breaking the spell is the kiss of a princess...or a sufficiently wealthy heiress. Naveen mistakes Tiana for a princess, and asks her for a kiss. She's grossed out, but does it anyway. The kiss backfires, and as the official trailer makes evident, she's now a frog as well.

The whole movie is full of affectionate homages to elements of animation history. When Tiana dreams of her restaurant, the sequence becomes a homage to Tex Avery's classic '30s streamline moderne cartoon, "Page Miss Glory."



And the sinister Dr. Facilier? He's very very Cab Calloway in Fleischer-land. If you've already seen the movie, the animation of Calloway as Koko The Clown in the Fleischer masterpiece "Snow White" will be very familiar.



But what's not traditional here is that Tiana is no passive figure. She is a true "Self-rescuing Princess" who actually is way more active in finding her way out of her predicament than her "Handsome Prince" Naveen. She has a dream, a plan and is strong enough to see that dream through regardless of any help she might get along the way. For her, love is a distraction. It takes being turned into a frog and being disappointed initially by the good Voudoun shamaness Mama Odie to send her looking for comfort in the green slimy arms of Naveen.

This is the first time in a long time in any animated musical where the "showstopper" numbers don't literally stop the show, but push the storytelling forward. It helps that Randy Newman, who lived in New Orleans from shortly after his birth to age 11 and splits his time between there and Los Angeles ever since, is the one writing the words and the music. The original choice was Alan Mencken, who probably doesn't know what it means to miss New Orleans. Instead of faux-Jazz, faux-Zydeco and faux-Dixieland, you get Newman's take on the real music of the region. Newman is perhaps the best composer regularly doing animation scores, along with his cousin Thomas Newman, and he seems to have a real love of the medium and a flair for telling stories through words and music.

In a lot of respects, this is the first 2D Pixar movie. John Lasseter's hands are all over this, even though he only gets producer credit here. This is a glorious return to form that bodes well for the future of 2D at Disney/Pixar. The blockbuster Avatar has unfortunately made Princess' box-office sledding kind of rough. But Disney has already said they have green-lit two more 2D movies and is developing more. My dream is that they reach across the Pacific and do a co-production with a top-tier Japanese studio like Production IG. Anime, and independent animators in Europe, has kept the torch burning for hand-drawn animation. It's good to see Disney (or more accurately Disney/Pixar) back in the game.

Apparently "Princess" won't be the last drawn animated feature at Disney

Right now, The Princess and the Frog is in extremely limited release, showing at the Ziegfield Theatre in New York City and at the biggest screening room at The Walt Disney Company Studio in Burbank. The latter is history-making: the first time the studio has been opened to a public event. However, this Friday is the big day for the movie, the first hand-drawn animated feature for Disney since the ill-fated Home On The Range.

Thankfully it looks like it won't be the last. Disney has committed to at least two more drawn features, and hints are that more will be on the way.

The first one does not sound promising: yet another go-round with Winnie The Pooh. Disney has had more luck than they're entitled to with their bastardization of AA Milne's gentle classics, and the residents of the Hundred-Acre Wood are a bunch of tame characters, albeit tame characters with neuroses.

But the second announced feature is more promising. It is The Snow Queen, the first traditional fairy tale the Disney Animation people have taken on in years. No "attitude," no modernization, no Jazzing it up, this will be a fairy tale taken straight out of the Eastern European classic tale.



A character that elegant and with that much realism would fail horribly in CGI because inevitably it would fall right down into the Uncanny Valley. Animators have found that in order to make an appealing CGI character you have to go the opposite direction from realism into cartooniness. This is why Up's humans succeeded. This is why The Incredibles' humans succeeded. This is why every freaking Zemeckis CGI opus has failed miserably. Even Jim Carrey's rubber-faced brilliance could not save the Zemeckis A Christmas Carol from being a zombie puppet show. It is why I don't hold much hope for Avatar in spite of all the hype and the admittedly beautiful visuals. I was not a fan of the feature-length Blue Sky Pictures version of Horton Hears A Who, but the Dr. Seuss derived character designs were definitely on the cartoony side and worked.

However, drawn animation abstracts us enough from flesh and blood reality to make character designs like that work. One need only look to Japan to see the realistic design of many of their action-adventure characters working brilliantly. I'm thinking of Batou and Kusanagi in Ghost In The Shell and the officers at NERV in Evangelion 1.0. If you remade Eva and Ghost in CGI and kept the same kind of drawing style you'd wind up where Squaresoft took the Final Fantasy movies...right down into the Uncanny Valley.

The Japanese have shown us that drawn animation definitely has a place, no matter what Jeffery Katzenberg says. It's good that Disney is not placing all their traditional animation chips on Princess and the Frog no matter what the speculation up to now has been. It seems like Lasseter and Iger believe 2D has a place in this 3D obsessive world of American animation. And that makes me feel real good about the future of American animation.

Annie time! Annie time!

Here's the noms. Om nom nom.

Best Animated Feature
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs – Sony Pictures Animation
Coraline – Laika
Fantastic Mr. Fox – 20th Century Fox
The Princess and the Frog – Walt Disney Animation Studios
The Secret of Kells – Cartoon Saloon
Up – Pixar Animation Studios
Note: looks like DreamWorks won't be able to repeat its total domination of last year's awards. I always thought that was a bit fishy. Speaking of fishy, where the frak is PONYO in this list???

Best Home Entertainment Production
Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas – Universal Animation Studios
Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder – The Curiosity Company in association with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Green Lantern: First Flight – Warner Bros. Animation
Open Season 2 – Sony Pictures Animation
SpongeBob vs. The Big One – Nickelodeon

Best Animated Short Subject
Pups of Liberty – Picnic Pictures
Robot Chicken: Star Wars 2.5 – ShadowMachine
Santa, The Fascist Years – Plymptoons
The Rooster, The Crocodile and The Night Sky – Barley Films
The Story of Walls – Badmash Animation Studios

Best Animated Television Commercial
Goldfish: In The Dark – Blur Studios, Inc.
Idaho Lottery “Twiceland” – Acme Filmworks, Inc.
Nutty Tales – Blue Sky Studios
Spanish Lottery “Deportees” – Acme Filmworks, Inc.
The Spooning – Screen Novelties /Acne Media

Best Animated Television Production
Glenn Martin, DDS – Torante, Cuppa Coffee Studios & Rogers Communications
Merry Madagascar – DreamWorks Animation
Prep and Landing – ABC Family/Walt Disney Animation Studios
The Simpsons – Gracie Films

Best Animated Television Production for Children
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse – Disney Television Animation
SpongeBob SquarePants – Nickelodeon
The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack – Cartoon Network Studios
The Mighty B! – Nickelodeon/Polka Dot Pictures/Paper Kite Productions
The Penguins of Madagascar – Nickelodeon and DreamWorks Animation

Animated Effects
Scott Cegielski “Monsters vs. Aliens” – DreamWorks Animation
Alexander Feigin “9” – 9 L.L.C.
Eric Froemling “Up” – Pixar Animation Studios
Tom Kluyskens “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” – Sony Pictures Animation
James Mansfield “The Princess and the Frog” – Walt Disney Animation Studios

Character Animation in a Television Production
Mark Donald “B.O.B.’s Big Break” – DreamWorks Animation
Mark Mitchell “Prep and Landing” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Kevan Shorey “Merry Madagascar” – DreamWorks Animation
Tony Smeed “Prep and Landing” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Phillip To “Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space” – DreamWorks Animation

Character Animation in a Feature Production
Andreas Deja “The Princess and the Frog” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Eric Goldberg “The Princess and the Frog” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Travis Knight “Coraline” – Laika
Daniel Nguyen “Up” – Pixar Animation Studios
Bruce Smith “The Princess and the Frog” – Walt Disney Animation Studios


Character Design in a Television Production
Bryan Arnett “The Mighty B! – Catatonic” – Nickelodeon/Polka Dot Pictures/Paper Kite Productions
Ben Balistreri “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends” – Cartoon Network Studios
Craig Kellman “Merry Madagascar” – DreamWorks Animation
Bill Schwab “Prep and Landing” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Character Design in a Feature Production
Daniel Lopez Munoz “Up” – Pixar Animation Studios
Shane Prigmore “Coraline” – Laika
Shannon Tindle “Coraline” – Laika

Directing in a Television Production
Pam Cooke & Jansen Yee “American Dad: Brains, Brains & Automobiles” – 20th Century Fox/Fuzzy Door/Underdog
Rob Fendler “Popzilla” – Animax
John Infantino, J.G. Quintel “The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: Candy Casanova” – Cartoon Network Studios
Bret Haaland “The Penguins of Madagascar – Launchtime” – Nickelodeon and DreamWorks Animation
Jennifer Oxley “The Wonder Pets: Help The Monster” – Nickelodeon/Little Airplane Productions

Directing in a Feature Production
Wes Anderson “Fantastic Mr. Fox” – 20th Century Fox
Pete Docter “Up” – Pixar Animation Studios
Christopher Miller, Phil Lord “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” – Sony Pictures Animation
Hayao Miyazaki “Ponyo” – Studio Ghibli
Henry Selick “Coraline” – Laika

Music in a Television Production
Michael Giacchino “Prep and Landing” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Kevin Kiner “Star Wars: The Clone Wars “Weapons Factory” – Lucasfilm Animation Ltd.
Guy Moon “The Fairly OddParents: “Wishology- The Big Beginning” – Nickelodeon

Music in a Feature Production
Bruno Coulais “Coraline” – Laika
Michael Giacchino “Up” – Pixar Animation Studios
Joe Hisaishi “Ponyo” – Studio Ghibli
John Powell “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” – Blue Sky Studios


Production Design in a Television Production
Mac George “Prep and Landing” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Andy Harkness “Prep and Landing” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Janice Kubo “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends” – Cartoon Network Studios
Production Design in a Feature Production
Christopher Appelhans “Coraline” – Laika
Ian Gooding “The Princess and the Frog” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Tadahiro Uesugi “Coraline – Laika
Christopher Vacher “9” – 9 L.L.C.

Storyboarding in a Television Production
Sunil Hall “The Mighty B!: Catatonic” – Nickelodeon/Polka Dot Pictures/Paper
Brandon Kruse “The Fairly OddParents: Fly Boy” – Nickelodeon
Robert Koo “Merry Madagascar” – DreamWorks Animation
Joe Mateo “Prep and Landing” – ABC Family/Walt Disney Animation Studios
Kite Productions
Adam Van Wyk “The Spectacular Spider-Man: Final Curtain” – Culver Entertainment

Storyboarding in a Feature Production
Sharon Bridgeman “Astro Boy” – Imagi Studios
Chris Butler “Coraline” – Laika
Ronnie Del Carmen “Up” – Pixar Animation Studios
Tom Owens “Monsters vs. Aliens” – DreamWorks Animation
Peter Sohn “Up” – Pixar Animation Studios

Voice Acting in a Television Production
Danny Jacobs - Voice of King Julien - “Merry Madagascar” – DreamWorks Animation
Nicky Jones - Voice of Chowder - “Chowder: The Dinner Theatre’” – Cartoon Network Studios
Tom Kenny - Voice of SpongeBob - “SpongeBob SquarePants – Truth or Square” – Nickelodeon
Dwight Schultz - Voice of Mung Daal - “Chowder:The Party Cruise” – Cartoon Network Studios
Willow Smith - Voice of Abby - “Merry Madagascar” – DreamWorks Animation

Voice Acting in a Feature Production
Jen Cody - Voice of Charlotte - “The Princess and the Frog” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Dawn French - Voice of Miss Forcible – “Coraline” – Laika
Hugh Laurie - Voice of Dr. Cockroach Ph.D. – “Monsters vs. Aliens” – DreamWorks Animation
John Leguizamo - Voice of Sid – “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaur” – Blue Sky Studios
Jennifer Lewis - Voice of Mama Odie – “The Princess and the Frog” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
And WHERE is Ed Asner? He did a tour-de-force performance in Up. Some of the best voice work done by a person not normally a voice actor. This is a REAL oversight. Too bad the ballot isn't set up for write-in candidates. This is the big surprise of the nomination pack.

Writing in a Television Production
Daniel Chun – “The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XX” – Gracie Films
Kevin Deters, Stevie Wermers-Skelton – “Prep and Landing” – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Valentina L. Garza – “The Simpsons: Four Great Women and a Manicure” – Gracie Films
Billy Kimball and Ian Maxtone-Graham - “The Simpsons: Gone Maggie Gone” – Gracie Films
Billy Lopez – The Wonder Pets – Save the Honey Bears” – Nickelodeon Productions/Little Airplane Productions

Writing in a Feature Production
Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach – “Fantastic Mr. Fox” – 20th Century Fox
Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy – “Up” – Pixar Animation Studios
Timothy Hyde Harris and David Bowers – “Astro Boy” – Imagi Studios
Christopher Miller and Phil Lord – “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” – Sony Pictures Animation
Up deserves the nod here. I've also seen AstroBoy and Cloudy, haven't seen Mr. Fox yet, but Up is just...awesome. And Ponyo should have gotten a chance to play in this category too.
End of list...

Anyway, it's going to be Up's game to lose, and Coraline might be the likely challenger. 9 got shut out of everything but relatively minor nominations, which means that Fred Stuhr's laughing up there in the Great Beyond.

Monsters Vs. Aliens also got short shrift, which might actually be blowback from the Kung Fu Panda pwnage of last year. And Ponyo...good god, didn't anyone SEE Ponyo??? Way to go, Disney. Nominating Miyazaki as director without nominating Ponyo as best picture is a tremendous oversight.

Another shutout that I can't understand: no honors for Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone. That was absolutely spectacular. Perhaps it's the long lag time between Japanese and US releases that did Eva in. They've already seen 2.0, and 1.0 was barely released here.

Oh well, warts and all, those are the Annie noms. Bring on the endless online ballot....oy....

Disturbing...

...but super cool. Not for the kiddies. A really good short by one of 4 Degrees Celsius Studio's hotshots.

Extra [Ken Ishii] from Xix on Vimeo.

Looks like there will be 5 nominees for the Animated Feature Oscar

Here we go...they're under starter's orders...the 20 qualified films that will be winnowed down into 5 nominees for the Animated Feature Oscar.

* “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel”
* “Astro Boy”
* “Battle for Terra”
* “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”
* “Coraline”
* “Disney’s A Christmas Carol”
* “The Dolphin – Story of a Dreamer”
* “Fantastic Mr. Fox”
* “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”
* “Mary and Max”
* “The Missing Lynx”
* “Monsters vs. Aliens”
* “9”
* “Planet 51”
* “Ponyo”
* “The Princess and the Frog”
* “The Secret of Kells”
* “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure”
* “A Town Called Panic”
* “Up”

You haven't heard of many of these? You will. The Oscar rush will probably bring all the movies that haven't been in theatres locally here in LA to theatres between now and December 31st. I'm sure many of these aren't worthy. However, with Up and Ponyo likely nominees, it's likely that something good will wind up winning.

Quick reviews: Astro Boy and Ponyo...

Yeah, I know, this is awfully late, and these are going to be really cursory reviews. Still, I thought both of them had their really good points, and one of them is a must-get when it comes out on DVD. The other one? Well, let's get to the really stand-out one first.



Ponyo
The dub wasn't sick-making, first off. I wish I could have heard the Japanese performance and read subtitles throughout, but this wasn't too bad. This is Miyazaki in his Totoro mode, with winsome magical creatures, and a benevolent nature guided by the Kami vs. malevolent human destruction of the natural world.

I also like what he did to the Little Mermaid myth. In the original a love-struck mermaid gives up being immortal and a sea creature to be the human bride of a handsome prince, always tortured by her forever aching feet but glad to be with the man of her dreams. Instead of love, Ponyo is motivated by a need for friendship and for belonging to a family. Isn't that something everyone wants, anyway?

As always with Ghibli films Ponyo is a visual feast, and exists in that Ghibli universe where Modern Japan and Old Europe meld and mingle into a single beautiful place. Even the flotsam and jetsam in the ocean is gorgeous. This is coming out on DVD in March 2010, although there is another DVD I've seen in some places in Little Tokyo that actually has English (British English) language subtitles. I'm thinking it has its origins in Hong Kong. If you are impatient I'm sure the latter is available online. But for crying out loud buy the R1 Disney release if you do. I recommend this one highly.

Astro Boy
I can't say the same for Astro Boy. The director of Aardman's Flushed Away has turned his attention to the founding myth of Japanese animation: the legend of Tetsuwan Atomu, the robot who wants to be a Real Boy. I don't think Tezuka Osamu would entirely recognize this version of his creation, but it's got enough of it to be sensible.

It is interesting that this was made by Hong Kong-based Imagi Studios and had a Brit at the helm, because much of the added elements in the movie were very British in their origin. Once you get off of the floating island of Metro City and onto the surface of Planet Earth, you wind up in a broken-down world run by the Fagin-esque Hamegg and his horde of scavenger children who look for usable parts in the ocean of junk cast off from Metro City. And in the midst of the Dickens-in-the-future life on Earth, a rag-tag band of revolutionary robots bicker Pythonesque between direct acts for robot liberation.

There are so many direct quotes from other animated movies and TV shows it's not funny. It's yet another attempt to try to arrive at the same success as Shrek with referential humor. (Or Humour in this case!) Visual quotes from everything from Wall-E to The Iron Giant are everywhere.

Nevertheless I was entertained for an hour and a half by this. I have searched in vain for a DVD release date on this, but I suspect that since it hasn't exactly been a barn-burner in the theatres it will likely go out on DVD and Blu-Ray quite soon. I would characterize this as a rental and not a buy, though.

More fun from Japan: welcome the Hotaru-san!

The same crazy guys who brought you Vending Machine Red and friends, and later the Limon guy from Sprite and his journey across Japan, are now invading unsuspecting communities in Tokyo with a horde of dancers with yellow lights on their butts. It looks like a silly flash mob but they're FIREFLIES (Hotaru-san) and they are advertising a new service from Japanese Internet Service Provider So-Net. Very cute, very Cirque du Soleil. This is going to go viral worldwide.

Que viva Dali, Que viva surrealismo, Que viva animacion!

I know this has been out for a few years now, but it's only recently shown up on YouTube. This is freaking incredible.

Two Nostalgic Capes

One of the greatest heroic team-ups in comic history has always been Batman and Superman. Simply by reading stories where they appear together, you can see the history of comic book characterization.

At the beginning, of course, they were always best buds. Never a moment of conflict. DC's World's Finest Comics was a monthly celebration of friendship. Then, characterization became more complex, and writers with distinct ideas turned their personalities against each other. (You could also say they were "writers with something to prove to their peers" or "writers show-boating angst and conflict.")

The high point of that conflict was the fourth and final issue of Frank Miller's graphic novel Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, in which Bats fights Big Blue in a literal battle to the death. Bruce Wayne snarls angrily about the stable, conservative, patriotic, obedient parents that Clark Kent had - parents he didn't have. The result was Superman working for a Ronald Reagan-looking warmongering President, and Batman a wanted criminal that Supes was ordered to break.

Since that histrionic excess, regular comics have toned it down, but the two heroes still note each other's differences - and worry about them. The current team-up book, Superman/Batman, has thrown the heroes into random alien circumstances, against odd villains and alternate universes. All the time, their thought balloons provide a running commentary on their thoughts. Supes thinks Bats is too paranoid, Bats thinks Supes is too trusting. And so on.

The made-for-video animated movie, Public Enemies, is loosely based on the most coherent story line that ever ran in Superman/Batman. Thanks to domestic problems and a failing economy (interesting coincidence it's released now), Lex Luthor becomes President. And, of course, he arranges to have his two most hated enemies hunted down with a billion-dollar bounty. All at a time when a gigantic meteor made of Kryptonite is hurtling towards Earth, threatening not only Kal-El but everyone.

The movie's main visual interest is seeing a lot of minor DC characters get a few seconds of animation. The most attractive appearance is a fully-grown young-adult Starfire - not the cutesy child from the Teen Titans series, but the hot, stacked, underdressed orange-skinned alien woman who sexed-up DC comics two decades ago. The other "big stars" of the DC Universe didn't even get cameo appearances, to provide more time for Captain Atom, Major Force, Giganta and other second-stringers.

One of the best factors in this movie is the return of the voice actors who did wonders for the Superman and Batman animated series. Tim Daly as Superman, Kevin Conroy as Batman and Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor are welcome presences. They are good reminders of the animation past of those characters, and necessary, because the animation style isn't the art-deco of the TV series. It looks uncomfortably like Fox's old X-Men series, with thick black lines and a blocky look.

The two-disk version of the movie provides one of weirdest DVD extras I've seen. It's an imitation of the Dinner For Five celebrity show. Voice director Andrea Romano, the aforementioned Kevin Conroy, producer Bruce Timm and DC Comics editor Gregory Noveeck all sit around and gobble an expensive restaurant meal while talking about...well, old times. The great animated series they made when WB was willing to produce mature animation for kids. Besides two episodes of the Superman series with team-ups, there's not much to recommend the more expensive two-disk version.

And frankly, I can only recommend this movie for comic fanatics and completists. There's nothing here that expands the history of Batman and Superman, or their history together. The subsidiary DC characters are just cannon fodder, thrown in to make the battle more elaborate.

I have to add something else. Apparently Warner Animation is intent on producing a lot of these. It wasn't too long before we had Green Lantern: First Flight. The DVD promotes their next feature, and one of the comic book lines (thanks for making us pay for your advertising, guys).

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths is a story written by Dwayne McDuffie, creator of Static Shock and producer of the Justice League Unlimited series. It was supposed to be the last episode of the series, cut for budget and resurrected for this movie. It's the story where the heroes face their mirror-universe criminal versions: Ultraman, Owl Man, Super Woman and the like. And their only supporter on the mirror world is a "good" Lex Luthor.

The comics promotion is for "Blackest Night," DC's answer to the Marvel event that turned a bunch of heroes into undead zombies. In the DC Universe, a bunch of "black power rings" bring several dead heroes back to life. Death has always been a "revolving door" for comic book characters, especially at DC. This is heavily hyped among comic fans, and now they're trying to hook the animation fans on it as well.

Pardon my lack of enthusiasm, but this is schlock. It's pulling stuff out of the comics and animating it - without regard to whether it works as a story or not. The New Frontier worked, especially since its art style was outstanding and its story was set in a great part of history. Superman: Doomsday set up the Superman-Lois Lane love affair and sealed it, bringing it up to date for the animated world.

Public Enemies isn't that special or specific. It's almost all combat with almost no humanity stuck in. The few bits of humanity are incidental, such as Power Girl (with the most prominent cleavage of all DC herones) being ogled by Toyman (the new one, a 13-year-old Japanese inventor with typical anime lecherousness). They don't involve the main characters at all.

I would love to see vital stories with these characters brought out in animation form. I don't want to see animated projects simply slapped together, or adapted willy-nilly from the comics. I hope that Crisis on Two Earths is worth the money. It had better be.