Screen Gems UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION (with Luma Pictures as the leading vfx house) led the box office with $26.8M in its opening bow for the weekend ended Jan. 22, 2006. HOODWINKED, the hot 3D-animated indie from The Weinstein Co., followed in second place with $10.4M and a two-week cume of $28.6M. Buena Vistas GLORY ROAD slipped from first to third with $8.76M and $27.7M. Paramounts LAST HOLIDAY was right behind in fourth with $8.71M and $25.9M.
Wingspan Arts presents its second annual Kids Film Festival at The Film Society of Lincoln Center
The VES will present its Show And Tell Event 2006, its version of the Motion Picture Academy visual effects
NVIDIA Corp. will offer its Quadro professional graphics to Adobe users through the newly announced Adobe Production Studio. NVIDIA and Adobe have established a strategic partnership that allows tighter integration between these hardware and software solutions in order to support industry initiatives, such as the recently announced Adobe OpenHD alliance.
Eyetronics, the international 3D scanning leader, enjoyed its most successful year to date in 2005, doubling its volume of work, according to Nick Tesi, vp of operations for Eyetronics in the U.S. As a result, Eyetronics has moved its U.S. operations to handle further growth this year.
The board of directors of the Walt Disney Co. will meet on Monday (Jan. 23, 2006) to decide the fate of the proposed buyout of Pixar Animation Studios, the LOS ANGELES TIMES reported. The stock transaction would be in the neighborhood of $6.7 billion, The WALL STREET JOURNAL reported. A deal would make Pixar ceo and Apple chief Steve Jobs a board member and biggest shareholder with a 6% stake. Shares of both companies rose slightly Thursday.
Monster Distributes will be taking its animated preschool series PICME to NATPE for the first time. From Irish-based Jammedia, PICME is an award-winning interactive animation where a child literally stars in his/her own cartoon. Commissioned by RTE, PICME creates an interaction between broadcaster and audience. Great emphasis is put on the stories themselves, so that children who are not in the story also get huge enjoyment out of it.
Mexican commercial directors Jorge and Javier Aguilera known as Big Brother have been tapped to helm the live-action adaptation of the Japanese anime, KITE, reports VARIETY. Rob Cohen and Anant Singh are producing.
Singh and Brian Cox will produce for Singh's Distant Horizon. Cohen and Marc Pitre will produce for Cohen's Nowita Pictures. Joshua Rubin is penning the script.
Disney Online, part of the Walt Disney Internet Group, in partnership with Disney Channel, has launched a new broadband subscription product called Playhouse Disney Preschool Time Online. The service is available for an annual subscription fee of $49.95. Parents can log-on to www.preschooltime.com to subscribe to the product or to access a free trial.
An animation rendering support center for animation production is being set for Shenzhen, in south China's Guangdong Province, reports People.com.cn. The project hopes to bring all areas of animation production studio-design, financing, production, selling to the area.
The Institute of Digital Media Technology (Shenzhen) Ltd. (IDMT) will build the center. IDMT is a major 3D animation production company, which made the first 3D high-definition cartoon movie in China.
Several animated films will be part of Sundance 2006.
Canadian production company Global Mechanic has two of its directors films screening at the prestigious event.
Alain Bielik reports on the more ambitious vfx utilized in Underworld: Evolution, resulting in a pipeline shift by Luma Pictures and further reliance on ZBrush.
The Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) will present the 53rd Annual Golden Reel Awards, honoring the finest work in the various areas of sound and music editing in motion pictures and television, on March 4, 2006, during a black tie ceremony at The Beverly Hilton Hotel.
The MPSE Career Achievement and Filmmaker's Awards will also be presented.
The gala stars with cocktails at 5:30 pm, dinner at 7:00 pm and the awards at 8:30 pm, plus dancing. For tickets phone 818-506-7731 or e-mail office@mpse.org.
Sharon Katz talks with independent animators Patrick Smith and Signe Baumane about the agony and the ecstasy of entering ones film into festivals.
Genius Products Inc. the exclusive U.S. home entertainment distributor for The Weinstein Co., has sold its Baby Genius brand to Pacific Ent. Corp., a newly formed company headed by Klaus Moeller in a deal enabling Genius to focus its efforts on distributing its wide range of top independent and mainstream feature film titles while retaining exclusive U.S. distribution rights for the preschool brands.
Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. has launched an enhanced consumer website for the CGI animated boys action property Dragon Booster, offering a new interactive game, RACE FOR POWER, where players can create their own dragons, race them on personally designed race tracks and ultimately customize their DRAGON BOOSTER experience.
CGI pioneer Gary Demos will receive the first Oscar this year when Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honors him with the Gordon E. Sawyer Award. Longtime sound editor Don Hall will be awarded a John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation. The Oscar statuette and Bonner medallion will be presented at the Scientific and Technical Awards Dinner on Feb. 18, 2006, at The Beverly Hilton.
Dear Friends:
In October 2005 Nik and I were invited to present a program of the history
of animation through music. The festival turned out to be such a wonderful
experience that I wrote an article about it for our ASIFA newsletter. I
want to share it with our animation community.
If you are not on our e-mail list because you are interested in animation
then just delete this message now. To the rest of you -- hope that you
enjoy it.
Nancy
-----
On October 14 and 15 2005, Nik and I had the rewarding experience of appearing at the Co-operative Young Film Makers Film Festival at the National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television in Bradford, England. The Festival is one of the few non-competitive young people's film festivals in the world (the films are juried), and is a celebration of filmmaking which allows young people from 6 to 21 to see their works beautifully projected on the big screen and to explore creativity through workshops presented by industry professionals during the two day event.
The 12th annual Slamdance Film Festival is a leading independent film festival taking shorts and features. Slamdance is currently accepting submissions. The early deadline is Aug. 29 for all films. The final shorts deadline is Oct. 11. The final features deadline is Oct. 17. Go to www.slamdance.com for more information or to download an application.
Hosted by the Sundance Institute, the Sundance Film Festival will screen approximately 120 feature films, including world, North American and U.S. premieres. As the premier showcase for American independent film, and an important new platform for international independent film, the festival screens films that embody risk-taking, diversity and aesthetic innovation. For more information, visit www.sundance.org.
Writer-director Timur Bekmambetov, whose NIGHT WATCH series is a sensation in Russia, has inked a one-year, first-look deal with Rogue Pictures for English-language flicks, reports VARIETY. The second film in his horror/sci-fi series, DAY WATCH, was released on New Years Day and has already become the highest grossing film in Russian history. The first film in the series, NIGHT WATCH, is set to hit theaters in the States Feb. 17, 2006, from Fox Searchlight.
Adobe Systems Inc. has begun shipping Adobe After Effects 7.0 software. Professionals can streamline their workflows to produce compelling content for any media with the new features packed in Adobe After Effects 7.0, including a re-designed, unified user interface, accelerated high-fidelity OpenGL 2.0 support and the most comprehensive Flash Video (FLV) export capabilities. Adobe After Effects 7.0 is available as a stand-alone product or as part of the newly launched Adobe Production Studio.
The British Academy has announced the nominees for the next Orange British Academy Film Awards to be held on Sunday, Feb. 19, 2006, at the Odeon Leicester Square in London.
WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT will compete for the Alexander Korda Award for the Outstanding British Film of the Year. Its competition includes A COCK & BULL STORY, THE CONSTANT GARDENER, FESTIVAL and PRIDE & PREJUDICE.
LAIKA/house (previously known as Vinton Studios), has promoted longtime LAIKA/house director Kirk Kelley to creative director and Jan Johnson, formerly head of 2D production, will assume co-exec producer title for all LAIKA/house productions.
Tribeca Underground Film Festival 2006New York, New York, USAMay 2-7, 2006Deadline: March 1, 2006
The Tribeca Underground Film Festival showcases works in all genres and visual forms with a length ranging from 3 to 30 minutes. For 2006, the event is opening of a new category for spec commercials running time 30 sec to 3 minutes, internationally aired or non aired. For additional information, visit www.TribecaUndergroundFilmFestival.org.
