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Comic-Con and SIGGRAPH are fast approaching and we want to know what you'll have in store for these big events. Send us all your news, including booth events and panels. Don't forget to include times, locations and booth numbers so we can get the word out to our readers. Send all the Comic-Con and/or SIGGRAPH info to editor@awn.com with Comic-Con or SIGGRAPH in the header. We can't wait to see what this year will have in store!

This week in AWN's Forums, a junior member has several questions on how others have produced independent projects. RATATOUILLE is out and the forum members are talking. Others are chatting about Annecy winner PETER AND THE WOLF. A senior member has re-watched CINDERELLA and found it disappointing. What do you think? Others have software questions. And as always, there are members posting their work for others to check out. As well as, tools for teaching animation, the business of animation and, as always, brand new stuff to check out in show and tell!

Screenwriting Expo Screenplay CompetitionLos Angeles, California, USAOct. 24-28, 2007Deadline: Aug. 14, 2007

Novelist Louis Sachar adapts his own young adult novel into this strange, but emotionally honest story about troubled kids and friendship. The real surprising thing about this film is not the originality of its story, but the lack of pandering toward its intended audience. Thus, the film rises above the tween set and becomes something truly for the entire family.

Stanley Yelnats IV (Shia LaBeouf, TRANSFORMERS) is from a long line of cursed men in his family ever since his great grandfather didn't follow through with the demands of the gypsy Madame Zeroni (Eartha Kitt, TV's BATMAN), who was trying to help him win a wife. Stanley is blamed for stealing a pair of sneakers and is given the option of either going to jail or going to Camp Greenlake, a reform camp for troubled boys. Now Camp Greenlake has no lake in sight. There, caretaker Mr. Sir (Jon Voight, DELIVERENCE), counselor Dr. Pendanski (Tim Blake Nelson, O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?) and Warden Walker (Sigourney Weaver, ALIEN), make the boys dig holes in the desert all day. As Mr. Sir states, "You make a bad boy dig a hole in the hot sun all day and you turn him into a good boy."

SIGGRAPH officials, along with AMD, DreamWorks Animation and HP, offered details for the world's first international FJORG! competition: an "iron animator" event in which 15 competing teams from around the world will have 32 hours to create the world's best character-driven animation in front of a live, "Gladiator-style" audience and judging panel at the San Diego Convention Center.

I love lists. So, best of film lists are like an addiction to crack for me. I can't get enough. THE GUARDIAN has put together its list of the 1,000 films to see before you die. Not as complete as Steven Jay Schneider's book, 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE — it's missing THE GODFATHER: PART II and Cocteau’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST — the Guardian list skews toward more modern films, shies away from sequels and certainly has eclectic taste. So I decided to highlight some of its more wacky choices that I think deserve your attention.

I commend choices like ONE FALSE MOVE, THREE KINGS, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW, GHOST WORLD, GHOST DOG and GRIZZLY MAN, but question picks like DODGEBALL, NEAR DARK, ZOOLANDER, ACE VENTURA and THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE. (Yes, THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE). Maybe not cinematic perfection, but it does pick modern successes that have influenced the business like AMERICAN PIE, BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, CROCODILE DUNDEE, X-MEN, SPIDER-MAN, TERMINATOR, T2 and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL. There are a lot of good films that I don't really think of landmarks like BAD SANTA, 8 MILE, ROMEO + JULIET and HOT FUZZ. Kevin Smith's CLERKS was a landmark film of the '90s, but MALLRATS instead of CHASING AMY? Lots of fun cult films like BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, ROBOCOP, STRICTLY BALLROOM, TWO LANE BLACKTOP, OFFICE SPACE, TOUCHING THE VOID and TIMECODE. It doesn't miss great animated films like SPIRITED AWAY, SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER & UNCUT, THE IRON GIANT, CHICKEN RUN and Starewicz's THE TALE OF THE FOX. It also doesn't miss some the "baser" genres like horror, picking such films as RE-ANIMATOR and SCREAM. But are films like DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, OUT OF SIGHT or PARENTS, really that good?