Every year for many years now, on the Saturday before the Oscars, DreamWorks Animation hosts a fantastic brunch at the famous Campanile. A lively mix of executives and creative riff-raff, the crowd feasted on delectable comfort food, boozing it up while speculating who the winners and losers would be the following evening. Many noteables were in attendance. Check out some of the festivities.

No Oscar Tour would be complete without the famous Nominee Cake! As the 2011 Tour winds down, so do the nominees and assorted guests, at least for one evening. Held again this year at Ron's house, the party was fun, intimate and warm, despite the rainy weather outside. And of course, we all got sugared-up feasting on the nominated films - literally!

The final day of the 2011 Oscar tour was the busiest of all – morning at the Disney ARL, lunch, 2 screenings and several tours throughout the afternoon, followed by the AWN-Acme Oscar party Friday evening. You could sense the animators were getting a bit antsy, greeting the same questions with the same answers for the umpteenth time, their smiling faces showing traces of exhaustion and anxiety as they silently counted down to the Oscars on Sunday. No rest for the weary however as things really were just getting started.

One of the highlights of the week was a morning spent at Disney's Animation Research Library (ARL). Housed in the non-descript former feature animation studio, the library houses more than 65 million pieces of animation art representing over 80 years of work from Walt Disney Animation. If you love animation, or have any sense of animation history, then the Disney ARL is a little slice of heaven. Actually, it's the whole pie.

Every year for more than a decade we’ve toured DreamWorks’ expansive Glendale campus with either the Animation Show of Shows, our Oscar Showcase tour, or both. We’re always greeted with open arms and we’re always shown tasty morsels of upcoming films – last year, for example, Simon Otto showed us 20 minutes of How To Train Your Dragon well before it was released. This year did not disappoint.

The 10th Kecskemet Animation Film Festival (KAFF) is a parallel competition of European animated features and TV specials as well as Hungarian short animated films.

In addition to film screenings musical and theatrical shows, exhibitions and professional discussions will take place in town during the festival. Kecskemet is a city with 100,000 inhabitants and with a lively cultural life, 80 km south to Budapest, the capital of Hungary.

KAFF is a member of the European Coordination of Film Festivals.
For more information, visit www.kaff.hu or e-mail us at kfilm@kecskemetfilm.hu.

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.

Tippett Studio is a well-known cg studio that specializes in feature film visual effects and creature animation. Legendary founder Phil Tippett is the creative force behind some of the most iconic animated creatures and characters in cinematic history. Our second day ended with a screening and highly anticipated tour of their main production facilities. We were not disappointed.

The 2011 Mile High Horror Film Festival announces its call for entries!

This coming fall, Denver, CO will once again host this independent cinematic THRILLRIDE at HIGH ALTITUDE! The festival will take place October 7-9 at the Starz Film Center.

We are planning a three-day film festival with activities, events, and most importantly independent horror films.

Submission categories include Feature Length Films, Short Films, Local Colorado Films, and ANIMATIONS!

For general information and to submit to the festival visit www.withoutabox.com and search for "Mile High Horror Film Festival" or visit our website at www.milehighhorrorfilmfestival.com

Early Bird Deadline - April 15th, 2011

Regular Deadline - June 15th, 2011

Late Deadline - July 31st, 2011

WAB Extended Deadline - August 15th 2011

Like intrepid but warmly dressed explorers venturing into mysterious but GPS-identified territory, our group set forth into the crisp morning air in search of our first tour stop, the new Walt Disney Family Museum. We caught a break – the rain had stopped, at least for a few hours, leaving behind a beautiful sunny sky. We weren't so lucky later in the day - we were pounded by rain and hail.