This endlessly clever short is one of the best produced by Pixar. Teddy Newton’s film features two 2D characters with a CG world alive in their bodies. One represents day and the other night. When Night sees the beautiful women sunbathing by the pool inside Day, a howl of jealousy bellows from him. He tries to take what day has, but every attempt shows that things that go on in the light are not the same in the dark.

For the most part, the short takes its setup and runs with it. The gags fly by at a clip. Just to get a taste, the short starts with a rooster crowing and Day waking. After a series of perfectly paced gags about his morning routine, the sequence ends with a stream appearing in a relieving place on Day’s body. What starts as an adversarial relationship between Day and Night turns toward the end as Night realizes that Day doesn’t have everything. The short ends up being a classic great short in the way it gets into its premise quick, keeps the pace fast and ends with a note of poignancy. At six minutes, it is driven by action, but the action reveals the personalities of the characters and even allows for growth.

On a technical note, the use of stereoscopic 3-D to create physical depth within the worlds inside the characters’ bodies is ingenious. For once, 3-D was actually used for a story purpose.

 

Astro Boy has not only met Imagi Animation Studios, but also the gaming team of High Voltage Software and D3Publisher. However, before you dive into any cultural recycling pit, an ounce of context is required.

 

Recently I went to see the new version of ‘The Clash of the Titans’, very curious to see what Hollywood had done to the Ray Harryhausen classic of 1981, directed by Desmond Davis. The modern day version’s director, Louis Leterrier, fueled by truckloads of money and a penchant for making overblown action adventures, picked a film that many animation aficionados hold very dear as one of Ray Harryhausen’s last masterpieces

 

 

There are films that have blitzed my senses into giddy, drunken stupors of delirium and bewilderment, riotous exhalings of creativity, desperation, and experimentation. Too often, these voices expire as rapidly as they respired, brief greetings before vanishing into the crowded darkness.

 

There’s no point lamenting. It is what it is. We all go hoping

Three of those films come from an Tie Domi-looking punk named JJ Villard. In the early 2000s, he exploded onto the festival scene with three beat up beauts: the creepy 9 in a Chimney or 10 on the Bed or Hates a Strong Word (2002), Son of Satan

a raw, urgent punk scream against the pain of abuse, bullying and the cyclical nature of violence, Chestnuts Icelolly (2004) is sadistic little tale about a scumbag who lures children into his icelolly machine/

BOOM. Three years plus of great student films that took animation down  a whole other path of filth aint encountered since Ralph Baksi.

As I sat, picking my balls (pre-2011, hence balls), nothing arrived. There were no more villard entries. Again, the next year, NOTHING.

I heard rumours. JJ finally settles the talk... 

As winter blows through the northern hemisphere, the season brings with it the chilling threat of illness to those in the voice over industry. Nothing halts a voice over production faster than the actors losing their voices! Even worse, for the struggling actor or singer, blowing an audition because you’ve caught a cough can be a devastating hit.

Taking care of your voice during cold and flu season really just involves paying extra special attention to the normal tricks and habits that most voice over professionals should already be considering. For instance, be sure to drink LOTS of water with a minimum eight glasses of water of day to ensure proper hydration. In the winter this is especially true because the air tends to be dryer than usual, therefore vocal cords tend to become stressed with the relatively low humidity. In addition, many of us often drink extra coffee or tea to warm ourselves up, however these things, in combination with the dry air, only serve to dehydrate the body even more and, as a result, strains the vocal cords.

 

 

Written by Dan Sarto

If it’s Friday, it must be Pixar.  And as most would attest, a visit to Pixar is pretty special.  In no particular order, we met John Lasseter, crawled around the infamous Love Lounge, drank Scotch with Andrew Gordon in the Lucky 7 Lounge, met up with Oscar-winner Ralph Eggleston and his mending broken finger, had lunch with Roger Gould, screened the nominated films for 235+ staff, saw concept art, original models and other visual goodies from several films and talked to Bob Peterson.  And, we bought Girl Scout cookies in the Pixar lobby.  Quite the day indeed.

If it’s every animation fan’s dream to visit Pixar, then at the conclusion of our Friday visit, the fan in all of us was ready to die and go to heaven.  The pouring rain outside did little to dampen our enthusiasm as we piled out of the van and into the lobby.  There, our host, Michelle Radcliffe, coordinator for in-house education at Pixar University, greeted us warmly and after a few introductions, patiently marched us all over the main building, answering all our silly questions and making sure we had a good time. 

It's been an interesting time for animation this spring in cinemas. Two new features are competing for audience attention, Ponyo from Studio Ghibli and Disney Animation Studio's latest The Princess and the Frog. Their parallel release is further energised by the way they promote traditional drawn animation. This emphasis is particularly felt in the wake of Avatar, James Cameron's computer animated epic. In our first feature article, we compare the Goldfish and the Frog, and ask the question, what makes a good drawn feature in 2010?

 

Here's a tip for professional television and film screenwriters.

If you haven't thought of this one yet it will save you time by eliminating the need to write some things twice.  But best of all, in just a couple of minutes it will let you see that you've probably already written half of your script.  And that will make most any writer feel GREAT!

What I do is this: After I've written an outline, and am ready to start the script, I cut and paste the outline directly into my script document.

But then I take it one important step further...

This is the least rewarding of the cinematic HARRY POTTER experiences mainly because it doesn't satisfyingly work as a film on its own. Unlike the LORD OF THE RINGS series, each film worked as a solo film, while setting up the continuing journey. DEATHLY HALLOWS - PART 1 tries to find its EMPIRE STRIKE BACK moment to end on, but without making Voldemort declare he is Harry's father, this film left me wanting more, but not in a good way. And yet I want more.

This PART 1, PART 2 nonsense will mean nothing after July 2011. After that DEATHLY HALLOWS can be enjoyed on DVD or Blu-ray or whatever comes next in home entertainment as one complete film. But because I am not clairvoyant I can't comment on the complete DEATHLY HALLOWS, because I have only seen half the film. PART 1 is kind of like the equivalent of tantric sex; all build up and no climax. But for POTTER fans, it's still sex… unless they're kids, because it's a family franchise, right?

I went into this film knowing only the basics about the title character. Jonah Hex is a severely scarred bounty hunter with some supernatural abilities. His family was murdered. The film didn’t really expand my knowledge and in some ways confused me even more. At 80 some minutes, there were times I thought I was watching a reel of the cut scenes from the JONAH HEX videogame.

The film begins with Hex (Josh Brolin, MILK) voicing a montage of his time fighting for the Confederacy. He explains why war suited him and why that changed. Then the story jarringly cuts to Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, BURN AFTER READING) burning Hex's family alive and branding his former soldier as he explains that he's doing so because Hex betrayed him and murdered his son, who was Hex's best friend. Then we jarringly cut to what seems like an excerpt from the JONAH HEX motion comic filling us in on how Hex nearly died, gained some powers, has something to do with crows and that Turnbull presumably died in a fire. For all intents and purposes, the first act of the film is simply told to the viewer instead of shown.