Australian Animators Studio Joho comment on games and work in their recent short, Dan the Man. It tells the story of the eponymous Dan in his daily grind. Except things aren't that simple, since Dan is modelled as a classic videogame hero from the 16-bit videogame era.

Special Guest:  Janie Geiser

This week on the Frenzer Foreman Animation Forum: a big announcement, time-travel, and special guest filmaker/animator/object-manipulator/shadow-hugger Janie Geiser.  Join Joel, Alan, Sam Olschan, and Computer as they discuss with Janie the finer points of puppet-performance, the gallery vs. the theater, funding your personal art, and how to fix your apartment or life with gaff tape.

Check Out the Trailer

What could a 3-D family film from Martin Scorsese be like? With HUGO now as an example, the answer is magical. And it's a magic that Scorsese is best suited to bring to life — the magic of the movies. At one point, a young boy visits a movie studio and the director leans down to him and tells him if he's ever wondered where his dreams come from this is where they are made.

Based on Brian Selznick's celebrated illustrated novel THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET, the story follows its title character (Asa Butterfield, THE BOY WITH THE STRIPED PAJAMAS) as he survives as an orphan in the clockworks of a Paris train station. After his father (Jude Law, A.I.), a clock maker, died, he has been trying to finish a project they were working on together — fixing an automaton. This mechanical human is a complex one that seems to be designed to write something and Hugo believes it will give him a message from his dad. But the boy loses his notebook filled with calculations to Papa Georges (Ben Kingsley, GANDHI) after the toyshop owner catches him trying to steal. What Hugo doesn't know is that Georges is Georges Melies, the once famed filmmaker who is best known for A TRIP TO THE MOON, where a rocket sticks into the eye of the man on the moon.

Check Out the Trailer and Clips

This might be the gutsiest release of the summer. Theatrical films geared toward the preschool and slightly above set are rarely made today. They usually dwell in the land of direct-to-video. Pooh is Disney's biggest merchandising producer. Every preschooler has something Pooh related in their room. But once the kid hits school, is Pooh cool? That's why this is a difficult sell. But those who buy a ticket will be transported into a simple timeless production filled with wit and whimsy.

John Cleese provides the narration for this tale of Christopher Robin (Jack Boulter), the imaginative boy who brings his toys to life in the Hundred Acre Woods. While looking for the lost tail of Eeyore (Bud Luckey, BOUNDIN’), Winnie the Pooh (Jim Cummings) discovers a note at Christopher Robin’s tree house. He takes it to Owl (Craig Ferguson, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON), who misinterprets it as a kidnap note. The veracious beast the Backson (which sounds a lot like Back Soon) has taken the young boy, so it is up to Pooh and friends to set a trap for the monster.

Dragon Sword

It’s no secret that VIZ’s catalogue is diverse, and truly has something for everyone. Well, continuing along those lines, the release of The Ouroboros Wave and Dragon Sword and Wind Child has just been announced.

  There is a point in everyone's life, where you look back at the last few months, years, or - depending on your age - decades, and ask yourself: Why the hell am I doing this?

For some, this might happen only once, for others once a week. It usually happens to me when I'm standing on set at 5am, freezing my ass off in some remote location. I just got dropped off by helicopter, and  now I'm standing alone on this glacier, shooting HDRI stills. Or, I'm standing in heavy rain next to a garbage dump (well, that's the location) after an 16-hour day (so far), my clothes are starting to soak all the way through, while there's a crew of 200 people buzzing around, trying to make the last shot of the day before losing the light.

So why the hell am I doing this?

Screenshot from EA's new Medal of Honor.

With today’s release of EA’s controversial new version of Medal of Honor, set in Afghanistan, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about, who’s upset at what and why did this story get so much traction in the months leading up the product launch. 

At a casual glance, you might think “guns, violence and mayhem in video games” are once again being used as easy media fodder. Been there, done that, if you don’t like it don’t buy it. Get a life.  But let’s not let ourselves off so easily.  The root of the issue seems to be EA’s decision to allow gamers to play as the Taliban, rather than the usual non-descript “insurgents” or “terrorists.”  With the US and key allies firmly entrenched in a long and vicious war in Afghanistan, with the daily list of casualties getting longer, not shorter, how could EA not spark controversy with such a game? One would think a giant like EA would be neither flippant nor careless in the face of such potential commotion and one assumes that they are no stranger to controversy or moral arguments on all sides of game-related issues.   

Even though the New Year has begun, it’s not too late to think about a few resolutions… animation and otherwise…

Rin Daughters of Mnemosyne

Rin is a private dick in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. She also happens to be immortal! Within in her resides the time fruit of Yggdrasil, the tree of all life. Yet, immortal she may be, Apos, a hermaphroditic demi-god, desires to tear this berry from her body and devour its delectable memories. Over sixty-five years, and cases ranging from lost identities to missing virtual girls, Rin will have her body torn apart, even blown up, as she folds time to unravel her destiny.

Engineers, scientists and other supposed great-thinkers don’t often make for interesting copy.  Centrifuges, remote sensors, pressure valves and biopsies don’t bring smiles to most people’s faces, unless of course, you’re my mom, who never met a biopsy she couldn’t fret over, going back to Marcus Welby, M.D. To those who don’t understand, like or appreciate scientific thought, even MacGyver is mundane and hopelessly highbrow.

Enter stage left the magnificent pair of stop-motion Brits, Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit, front and center in a new DVD release of their complete six-part BBC1 TV series, Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention.  This nifty series pairs the eternally bumbling but kind-hearted inventor Wallace, along with his trusted companion, always-in-the-nick-of-time dog Gromit, and a series of live action vignettes on engineers, scientists and designers whose contraptions are truly extraordinary.  Part Mythbusters, part National Geographic, the pairing is clever, with our animated duo introducing and wrapping in and around the live action segments.