Sean Murray, the resident programmer for 2008 studio startup “Hello Games,” was on hand to represent his team and to tell us a bit about the team’s transition from working at a big studio to their current indie lifestyle.
On the first day of the Los Angeles leg of the Oscar Showcase tour, the nominees had a chance to see the famed MGM backlot and the new Sony studios. Here are a collection of pics from the day.
The dynamic duo that make up Slick Entertainment, Kees Rijnen and Nick Waanders, gave a presentation on their journey to their first indie game launch.
Jonathan Soderstrom, aka Cactus, gave a presentation on how to abuse players “just for fun.” Cactus is well known in the independent game community for creating unusual games within YoYo Game’s “Game Maker” software. They often involve trippy visuals and 100% unique gameplay.
It’s a neat trick for a small Irish studio to snag an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature and go head to head with Pixar, Disney, Henry Selick and Wes Anderson, not to mention beat out Hayao Miyazaki for a slot. It’s even more impressive when it’s the first time you’ve directed anything longer than a few commercials or TV segments. But that’s what Tomm Moore has done with Secret of the Kells - and on a budget that’s probably less than what any of the other films spent promoting themselves.
This is the abstract that displays elsewhere on AWN - in our department and creative-focus listings as well as on our home page in the blog section. You should keep this to 1 or 2 sentences (about the size of the box provided) and make it snappy - this will be seen outside the context of your blog and the title of the post plus this abstract should entice people who see it to read it.
This is the abstract that displays elsewhere on AWN - in our department and creative-focus listings as well as on our home page in the blog section. You should keep this to 1 or 2 sentences (about the size of the box provided) and make it snappy - this will be seen outside the context of your blog and the title of the post plus this abstract should entice people who see it to read it.
Sam Bell has been on the moon for nearly three years. He's about to rejoin his family on Earth. He seems to be starting to develop a twitch. Has the years of loneliness made him lose his mind? He ventures out onto the surface to fix a mining vehicle and has an accident. When Sam wakes up, he ventures back out and finds someone who looks just like him.
Sam Rockwell (CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND) plays the dual role as Sam Bell and the second Sam Bell. The second Sam Bell is cocky and angered by the existence of the original scruffy Sam, who seems very calm about having a doppelganger. Second Sam wants to discover the truth. Their A.I. computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey, THE USUAL SUSPECTS) might know the answers, but has conflicting programming. The original Sam wants to ignore the new Sam and just get back to his wife Tess (Dominique McElligott, LEAP YEAR) and daughter Eve (Rosie Shaw).
And depending on how my Friday and Saturday goes – this is Tokyo, after all –, I might even try some live blogging; bring you some images and a report or two straight from the source. Hell, maybe I’ll even get a twitter and blow smoke up the rear of my mundane wait in the airport.
The Oscar winners have been announced and now some of last night's winners and nominees are arriving on Blu-ray and DVD tomorrow. Big name stars and amazing performances highlight this week's new releases, as well as an overlooked doc that is a must see.
Pick of the Week
UP IN THE AIR
One of the frontrunners going into the fall, surprisingly this one was goose egged at the ceremony with no wins. This was a top ten finisher for me in 2009 and holds a poignant place as commentary on the current economic landscape of America. The film follows a downsizing expert who shies away from commitment by staying up in the air, literally. Oscar-nominated leads George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick were all outstanding. Director/writer Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner were robbed of the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for one of the best written films of 2009. Must see cinema.
As mentioned previously, the BIFF screening schedule is not for the faint of heart. There are Beaufortonians that have seen EVERY film at all four BIFF festivals since its inception. This year over 4000 people watched the films and attended the Festival’s events.
"We're almost there." I don't remember which nominee said it, but it was very fitting, given that Walt Disney Animation Studios was the last stop yesterday on the L.A. leg. Of course, "Almost There," from The Princess and the Frog, summarizes the hopes and dreams of all the nominees. So, it was also very fitting that Princess and the Frog directors Ron Clements and John Musker were on hand to view the shorts and meet with the nominees.
Evangelion 1.11 is essentially the same movie as 1.01. And as we all know by now, this reboot is a creative recycling of the first six episodes of the original anime. Why release the same movie again? That is the question.
Each year the RFP Overlooked Awards celebrates films that didn’t quite get the praise in the awards season they deserved. New to this year's awards is the expansion of the Best Picture Honorable Mentions to nine entries. If the Academy Awards can nominate 10 films, there's no reason why I can't highlight 10 films as well.
Picture
Winner: GOODBYE SOLO
Ramin Bahrani's touching drama blew me away like few films did in 2009. As a result I named it the best film of the year. It was a hard choice along with THE HURT LOCKER and A SERIOUS MAN as the three films were instant masterpieces to me. Bahrani's story of Solo, an African immigrant who befriends an old white man who seems determined to kill himself, is full of life — both the good and bad parts. The tight, but simple, screenplay wraps the audience up in the lives of these characters and uses our discovery of them as the driving force of the narrative. Souleymane Sy Savane's lead performance is electric and he is supposed wonderfully by the gruff Red West. Bahrani's direction is simple and direct, ending the film with bittersweet poetry. Small films with no stars get overlooked every year, but rarely do they have the dramatic power of this one. Bahrani has quietly become an indie superstar. His previous films, MAN PUSH CART and CHOP SHOP, have received great praise. From story to direction, this magnificent film clearly shows he is a master of his craft.
Anyone who attends Animation Festivals immediately recognizes the British gentleman with the warm smile, a twinkle in his eye, and sketchbook in hand. Peter Parr and his lovely wife Astor have been dominant figures on the animation scene for over three decades.
At The Arts University College at Bournemouth (formerly The Arts Institute of Bournemouth) in Bournemouth, England he is a beloved Founder, Principal Lecturer, and Leader of their award winning BA Honors Animation Production Course. It is recognized on an international level and accredited by Skillset.
When I visited Peter and Astor in their lovely home in South West Hampshire on the edge of the New Forest I was fascinated to learn about Peter's other life. I should not have been surprised to learn that he has also had a distinguished international career as a designer for film, television, and theater in the United States and London as well as his acclaimed work in animation.
Peter has designed murals for London’s Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company. His murals have gone on world tours in productions of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice’s renowned stage presentation of Evita and Harold Pinter’s The Doll's Life. His work also appeared in the Hal Prince production of Lulu on Broadway. These are just a few of the many productions that he has worked on.
Exhibits of his work have been held in diverse locations. Madame Tussaud’s in London and Amsterdam displayed his Trompe L’oeil Murals and Old Masters Paintings. English Heritage and Yorkshire Television have permanent displays of figurative murals for The Book Tower at Sudbury Hall. Figurative murals have been shown at the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The word is, once the show starts, the hilarity never stops!
I haven’t sat down with either yet. But the artwork for Dance in the Vampire Bund is damn sexy!
I just wish the Oscar's were not so important financially to the winners and runner-ups. I think the awards would mean just as much to the actors and production staff without knowing that millions of dollars could be riding on the votes of their fellow Academy members. I know you can't go back but one can wish...
For our current film, Roland Emmerich's "Anonymous", we just finished up three days of camera testing with the ARRI Alexa prototype and the RED Mysterium X.
Mobile Media Platforms (media phones and other hand held devices) have proven to be a good launching pad for animation in Asia - Why not here?
The AWN Showcase tour has a full day at DreamWorks.
At The Eighth Annual VES Awards Show Dr. Ed Catmull was rightly presented with the George Melies Award for Pioneering. His contributions to computer motion graphics and the entertainment industry as we know it today are myriad and foundational. Dr.Catmull gave a thoughtful, moving and understated speech while accepting the award. At the end of his speech he softly expressed that the best part of the journey had been the people that he had gotten to know. This brought to my mind two very special people that have since moved on.
The AWN Oscar Showcase tour stops at agency CAA where the filmmakers talk animation with agents and "Napoleon Dynamite" star and fellow animator Jon Heder.
In Disney’s animated version of Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s tale, Alice constantly described Wonderland as nonsense. Tim Burton’s rendition combines Carroll’s two Alice books and makes nonsense of them booth. But when I say nonsense I mean pointless.
In this version, Alice (Mia Wasikowska, AMELIA) is a 19-year-old who is about to be married off to the boorish Lord Ascot (Tim Pigott-Smith, QUANTUM OF SOLACE). To escape his very public proposal, she runs off into the woods where she follows a white rabbit in a waistcoat (Michael Sheen, THE QUEEN) down a rabbit hole. The White Rabbit and others believe she has been to their land before, but she doesn’t believe them. The Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman, SWEENEY TODD) tells her that she is hardly the Alice they were looking to slay the Jabberwocky, a fire-eyed dragon.
This is a great week for family films on Blu-ray and DVD. And in addition to all the wonderful family offerings, the Pick of the Week is a strictly for adults production. It's a pretty fun week in the world of home entertainment.
Pick of the Week
We Live in Public
If I had seen this in 2009, it would have been in my top ten. Along with ANVIL, it's the best doc of last year. You probably don't know who Josh Harris is, but you should. He was an early Internet pioneer who became a Big Brother-like performance artist who through his art in 1999 talked about how we'd be living our lives today. It's a must see for anyone interest in the history and future of the Internet.
