animation

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The tenth Pixar movie, "Up", has the honor of being the first animated picture ever to open a Cannes festival. Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner) is a 78-year-old widower who has always longed to visit the mythical lost worlds of South America. When developers conspire to pack him off to a nursing home, he ties up thousands of balloons to the roof of his house and flies away to fulfill that dream. Alongside him, rather unexpectedly, is an 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell (Jordan Nagai), a peppy naïf who offsets his grousier temperament.

It's utterly delightful, certain to appeal to audiences young, old and all points in between. Cannes audiences are notoriously vocal. They'll whistle if they're unhappy -- a French version of a boo -- and a movie that doesn't meet the audience's high standards will be treated to the repeated "whop" sounds of theater seats banging shut as patrons leave. "Up," on the other hand, received little but cheers.

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Sometimes the most interesting movie for children isn’t necessarily a children’s movie. That seeming contradiction lies at the heart of the New York International Children’s Film Festival, which this Friday begins three weekends of screenings, filmmaker visits and voting, culminating in a juvenile version of the Oscars: a prize ceremony and reception on March 15. While the festival’s 100 films from 30 countries offer plenty of animation and fantasy, they also delve into real-world conflicts that affect children’s lives. “With a great many of these films, the filmmaker would say, ‘That’s not a kids’ movie,’ ” Eric Beckman, who founded the festival in 1997 with his wife, Emily Shapiro, said in an interview.

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You may have missed it, but one of the great inspirational figures of the last century celebrated his 80th birthday a few days ago. Born in Los Angeles in 1928, he has surely brought more pleasure to more people than anyone of his generation. His features are recognizable in almost every city on earth, and he has probably raised a smile from almost everyone whose life he has touched.

And while his name has become a metaphor for anything gimcrack, cheap or childish, he remains the supreme symbol of American optimism, fun and sheer zest for life. He is, of course, Mickey Mouse.

Oddly, the Disney corporation is not making a big deal of Mickey's birthday, perhaps because it is worried that mentioning his great age will damage his reputation among his youngest fans. So it is up to the rest of us to celebrate for him - and celebrate we should. For while Mickey's first 80 years coincided with some of the darkest moments in history, and while Disney has become a byword for commercialism, the great Mouse reminds us of the best in humanity. Sure, he may not have the muscles of Michelangelo's David, but he has a much better sense of humor.

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"The Simpsons" once again claimed U.S. television's highest honor for a prime-time cartoon on Saturday at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, extending the show's record winning streak. It marked the 10th time that "The Simpsons," airing on the Fox network for 19 seasons, as the longest-running comedy series in prime time, was named best half-hour animated show. The latest accolade for the hit cartoon came during a 3 1/2-hour presentation of the 60th annual Creative Arts Emmy Awards, mostly honoring achievements in categories like makeup, costumes, sound editing and art direction.

The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom which was created by Matt Groening, a satirical parody of the middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its titular family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The show is set in the fictional town of Springfield, and it lampoons many aspects of the human condition, as well as American culture, society as a whole, and television itself.

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So you’ve fallen for WALL-E and want to keep the buzz going on into the millennium. Don’t worry. There are plenty of brilliant animation movies with an environmental message, and maybe even a few on this list that you haven’t seen before. Among the top nine picks of enviro-flicks by Flixster.com:

Chicken Run

Animal rights activists can get their fill from this charming clay-mation chicken comedy set in a British poultry farm in the 1950s. Featuring the voices of Mel Gibson and Miranda Richardson, this hilarious fowl flick comes from Nick Park, creator of the acclaimed Wallace and Gromit.

Happy Feet

This truly heart- warming film covers a lot of ground – literally. When baby emperor penguin Mumbles is exiled from his community, he gains acceptance by discovering the cause of the food shortage: irresponsible fishing practices. Winner of the ‘Best Animated Feature’ Oscar in 2007, Happy Feet’s star-studded cast includes Robin Williams, Elijah Wood, and Nicole Kidman.

The Simpsons Movie

One could argue that what makes The Simpsons so side-achingly funny is not just the grand over-arching humor, but also the little things, the wisecracks, the peripheral gags. This flick is chock full of subtle bad taste – but in a good way – with an overt anti-pollution agenda.  read more »

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Groundbreaking yet familiar, part romance, part sci-fi, Pixar's latest work is wonderful and full of wonder. - Kenneth Turan, Times Movie Critic

If Pixar Animation Studios has an enviable record of consistent success -- and with a worldwide box-office gross of $4.3 billion from its eight films, it certainly does -- it's because the company has an uncanny gift for pushing things further without pushing too far. Pixar's adventurous new film, the one-of-a-kind "Wall-E," shows how it's done. Daring and traditional, groundbreaking and familiar, apocalyptic and sentimental, "Wall-E" gains strength from embracing contradictions that would destroy other films. Directed by Pixar stalwart Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote and directed the Oscar-winning "Finding Nemo," "Wall-E" is the latest Pixar film to manage what's become next door to impossible for anyone else: appealing to the broadest possible audience without insulting anyone's intelligence.

The origins of "Wall-E's" story, as related in the film's teaser trailer, go back to 1994, when Pixar honchos held a now-celebrated lunch to spitball story ideas, which became "A Bug's Life," "Monsters, Inc." and "Finding Nemo." "Wall-E" is the last of that group to get made, in part because elements of it are so unconventional. For one thing, the film's exceptional first half hour or so lives and breathes on screen with just about zero human dialogue. But with the storied Ben Burtt, who did the job on "Star Wars," creating all kinds of noise as the film's sound and character voice designer, as well as music by Thomas Newman, you won't miss those words at all. You also won't miss them because the world of "Wall-E," created by production designer Ralph Eggleston and his team, with the advice of high-powered cinematography consultants Roger Deakins and Dennis Murren, is so remarkable. The time is 800 years in the future and the setting is our own Earth, but it's not an Earth anyone would want to recognize.

Not to put too fine a point on it, our planet is a disaster, a bleak and disheartening ruin where every available surface is covered by towering skyscrapers of trash. It got so bad that Buy n' Large, the conglomerate that has somehow taken charge of the planet, leaned on the entire human population to leave with a "space is the final fun-tier" campaign that featured slogans such as, "Too much garbage in your face? There's plenty of space out in space." Though not likely the main reason the film was made, "Wall-E" can't help but send out a powerful and even frightening environmental message. Though G-rated, its dystopian vision (shot by Jeremy Lasky and Danielle Feinberg) of what the perils of consumer excess have in store for the planet is unnerving without trying too hard.

One reason "Wall-E" is as audience-friendly as it finally is is the presence of the endearing title character, whose name is an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter -- Earth Class. What that means in practical terms is that Wall-E is a robotic trash compactor who has been quietly doing his job attacking Earth's endless mountains of refuse for 700 years. Unless you count his pal, a nameless but convivial roach, Wall-E is the only thing still moving on the entire planet. Given all that, it's to be expected that Wall-E, whose large binocular eyes and narrow neck turn him into a squat, mechanical E.T., has developed a few personal eccentricities over the years. For one thing, he's quite the collector, squirreling away everything from old Rubrik's Cubes to light bulbs to an actual living plant.

More than that, this set-in-his-ways old bachelor robot has developed a fixation with the movies. Not really the movies, but one movie in particular, the only video he's got. It is, of all things, "Hello, Dolly!" and screenwriters Stanton and Jim Reardon had the shrewd idea of opening the film with the jaunty lyric, "Out there is a world outside of Yonkers," as the camera somberly pans both the universe and the ruins of Earth. What really entrances "Wall-E" about "Hello, Dolly!" is the spectacle of people expressing emotion and connection by holding hands. Not a word is spoken, but we understand that this lonely Robinson Crusoe, like so many movie creatures before him, would like nothing better than to hold hands with another entity. And then it happens. A spaceship lands in Wall-E's neighborhood and leaves behind a sleek white oval-shaped probe-droid with bewitching blue eyes named Eve (for Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), sent to Earth to find signs of life. High tech and armed with a laser weapon that pulverizes anything in sight, Eve fascinates Wall-E and he nervously scuttles around after her, fearful but intoxicated by her every move.

Though this wordless section of the film, punctuated only by Wall-E's frequent and idiosyncratic croak of "Eve," is in some ways merely a set up for the second half, it is easily the most memorable and distinctive part of the film. This segment, a kind of song without words, is a world-creating work of pure imagination that has been thought out to the nth degree.

"Wall-E's" second half involves the dauntingly overweight humans who have sent the probe (and who are shrewdly not pictured in any publicity material.) They've lived for centuries on a cruise liner-type spaceship called the Axiom run by a barely functional captain (Jeff Garlin) in thrall to a Hal-type eminence called Auto, voiced, in a nod to "Alien," by Sigourney Weaver. This part of the story gets increasingly familiar and sometimes borders on the predictably sentimental. But along with these inevitable elements of calculation, "Wall-E" never loses its sense of wonder: wonder at life, wonder at the universe, and even wonder at the power of computer animation to create worlds unlike any we've seen before. How often do we get to say that in these dispiriting times?

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Images courtesy of Disney/Pixar, mlive.com, hamptonroads.com

Original Source and Video: LA Times

Special Gallery:Showbiz 7s: Movies that inspired 'Wall-E'

Related Article: :'Wall-E' draws design inspiration from Apple

Original Source: CNN

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CANNES, France (AP) -- Fur might be a politically incorrect fashion statement on the red carpet at the world's most-prestigious film festival. Not when you're the star of a movie called "Kung Fu Panda," though. DreamWorks Animation, whose past Cannes entries include the first two "Shrek" flicks and "Over the Hedge," put its adorable martial-arts hero alongside the festival's highbrow cinema entries Thursday with the premiere of the action comedy whose voice cast includes Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman.

While Black hammed it up with some kung fu poses, he wisecracked that the incessant camera flashes could go a long way to solving the energy crunch. "If you harnessed all that electricity, it would probably be enough to take a small unmanned ship to the moon and back," Black said. "It's got to be 1.21 gigawatts of light flashes. It's just going to be sick. Do we really need that many pictures? Where are all those photos going?"

Black provides the voice of Po, a panda in ancient China who idolizes his country's martial-arts heroes but is too slow and clumsy to emulate their moves, stuck instead toiling in his family's noodle shop. A twist of fate lands Po under the tutelage of a revered kung fu master (Hoffman), who must train the klutzy panda to battle an evil snow leopard (Ian McShane) intent on marauding and vengeance. Po's allies include a tiger (Jolie), a viper (Lucy Liu) and a monkey (Jackie Chan), whose graceful martial-arts skills put the lumbering panda to shame.

"I do think that Po the panda is going to give Shrek a run for his money, because I think that Po in a very different way is without question the most lovable character we've ever created," Katzenberg said. "Shrek's an anti-hero hero. Po is an unlikely hero. He is more in tune with what we are ourselves. He actually has to find the hero within, and I think we all have a hero within us. "So it's just very relatable to find this kind of average guy who's working in his dad's noodle restaurant suddenly have an ambitious fantasy to be something great, only to learn that being the best version of yourself is greatness."

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Black also let slip that his co-star, Jolie, and her partner Brad Pitt are expecting twins, who would be the fifth and sixth children for the couple, joining siblings Maddox, Pax, Zahara, and Shiloh. Jolie confirmed the news, mentioning she may decide to give birth to the twins in France.

Images courtesy of AFP and EPA/GUILLAUME HORCAJUELO