Skiddoosh! It's a shocker at the Annies as Kung Fu Panda lays the smack down on Wall-E

Kung Fu Panda dominated the Annies, surprising all who expected Wall-E in a similar position. Here's the list of winners:

PRODUCTION CATEGORIES
Best Animated Feature
Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation

Best Animated Home Entertainment Production
Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs – The Curiosity Company in association with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Best Animated Short Subject
Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death – Aardman Animations Ltd.

Best Animated Television Commercial
United Airlines “Heart” – Duck Studios

Best Animated Television Production
Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II - ShadowMachine

Best Animated Television Production Produced for Children
Avatar: The Last Airbender – Nickelodeon

Best Animated Video Game
Kung Fu Panda – Activision

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT CATEGORIES
Animated Effects
Li-Ming Lawrence Lee Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation

Character Animation in a Feature Production
James Baxter Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation

Character Animation in a Television Production or Short Form
Pierre Perifel Secrets of the Furious Five – DreamWorks Animation

Character Design in an Animated Feature Production
Nico Marlet Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation

Character Design in an Animated Television Production or Short Form
Nico Marlet Secrets of the Furious Five – DreamWorks Animation

Directing in an Animated Feature Production
John Stevenson & Mark Osborne Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation

Directing in an Animated Television Production or Short Form
Joaquim Dos Santos – Avatar: The Last Airbender “Sozin’s Comet Pt. 3” – Nickelodeon

Music in an Animated Feature Production
Hans Zimmer & John Powell – Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation

Music in an Animated Television Production or Short Form
Henry Jackman, Hans Zimmer & John Powell – Secrets of the Furious Five – DreamWorks Animation

Production Design in an Animated Feature Production
Tang Heng -- Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation

Production Design in an Animated Television Production or Short Form
Tang Heng -- Secrets of the Furious Five – DreamWorks Animation

Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production
Jen Yuh Nelson – Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation

Storyboarding in an Animated Television Production or Short Form
Chris Williams -- Glago’s Guest – Walt Disney Animation Studios

Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production
Dustin Hoffman – Voice of Shifu – Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation

Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production or Short Form
Ahmed Best – Voice of Jar Jar Binks – Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II - ShadowMachine

Writing in an Animated Feature Production
Jon Aibel & Glenn Berger – Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation

Writing in an Animated Television Production or Short Form
Tom Root, Douglas Goldstein, Hugh Davidson, Mike Fasolo, Seth Green, Dan Milano, Matthew Senreich, Kevin Shinick, Zeb Wells, Breckin Meyer – Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II – ShadowMachine

JURIED AWARDS
Winsor McCay recipients - Mike Judge, John Lasseter and Nick Park for career contributions to the art of animation
June Foray award - Bill Turner for significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation
Certificate of Merit award - Amir Avni, Mike Fontanelli, Kathy Turner, Alex Vassilev

My take on Kung Fu Panda...

Saw Kung Fu Panda yesterday. To that end, I will first drop a little something for my homey Tom Reed...



That's how you do "Kung Fu Fighting." Fully embrace the cheese. EMBRACE THE CHEESE. The rewrite on the lyrics was totally lame...made me scan the credits afterward for a child psychologist on the payroll. It's a cheesy song, from the 1970s, the cheesiest decade ever. (The '50s might have eclipsed the '70s, but I personally experienced the '70s.) Also Jack Black should not try to sing R&B. Heavy metal? Sure. But not R&B.

Getting back to Kung Fu Panda the movie...it was good, alright, but not great. It could have been so much better. The trademark Dreamworks SKG Animation bogus physics totally made what could have been bitchen fight sequences look...well...not so bitchen. When people (and funny animals) already defy gravity and the laws of physics, wirework-style choreography doesn't look so impressive. To have gravity-defying stunts, you have to have gravity in operation. Sony Imageworks licked their physics problem with Surf's Up. Which is good, because surfing in zero-g wouldn't look nearly as impressive as the surfing sequences in that underrated gem. If Sony can do it, and they haven't produced a hit movie yet, why can't Dreamworks, which had a whole string of them?

Also, why hire on superstar voice actors when you aren't going to do anything with them? How many lines did they give Jackie Chan as Monkey? How many lines did Angelina Jolie get as Tigress? (BTW Tigress is going to get Furry obsession not seen since Minerva Mink...just watch. Or don't. I won't.) And why are most of these obviously Chinese animals not voiced by Asian actors? Where was George Takei? I'm sure that Shifu could have used a little bit of his trademark sarcatic delivery, particularly when dealing with Jack Black as Panda Po. James Hong was good as the Stork who delivers the noodles...I was hoping there would be a blooper at the end where he says, "You know what the secret ingredient is in the secret ingredient soup? Eyes. Just eyes." Of course, that might go way over the heads of all except film geeks like me, particularly film geeks with a Blade Runner obsession. Another "blooper" that would have been cool would have been to have Monkey have a stunt accident. In the classic Jackie Chan Kung Fu movies, there would always be a stunt accident during the credits. After he stopped doing stunt-heavy movies, the bloopers during the credits would inevitably revolve around flubbed lines, usually due to the difference between phonemes in Chinese and phonemes in English.

However, I was not bugged by Jack Black in the title role. This really was a Jack Black movie, when you get right down to it. Jack Black in School of Rock, not Jack Black in The Pick of Destiny...this is Jack Black being family friendly, not raunchy. Much as I like the occasional artful booger and/or fart joke, there were none here. And there was only a little bit of referential humor, mostly geared around Po's fanboyness and quotes from the canon of great chop-socky cinema.

However: there is a great deal of dubious humor surrounding big folks in this one. Great Pandas in nature are big and rounded and spend most of their time grazing on bamboo leaves and shoots. Eats, shoots, and leaves...remember? Red Pandas are not as rotund, and a bit more graceful. (And Shifu is one, BTW. He's neither a Raccoon nor a Tanuki. Thought I'd clear that up because I was confuzzled about his species.) I don't mind where Po literally throws his weight around...actually I think they should have watched some Sumo to get some ideas what his natural fighting style would be like. But the scenes where he breaks stuff because he's OMG FAT! were gratuitous and 99% of the time unfunny.

Still, if ASIFA-Hollywood doesn't bring the screener around Annie time, I will likely go out and buy a copy. But I will likely be content with the screener.