Oscars 2008 for Animation

Following my note on the Bafta's here's the same for the Oscars.

Best animated feature film
Persepolis
Ratatouille
Surf's Up

Ratatouille has got some stiff competition here going up against the serious Persepolis (shown at the London Film Festival this year) and the light weight documentary stylings of Surf's Up.

Best animated short film
I Met the Walrus
Madame Tutli-Putli
Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
My Love (Moya Lyubov)
Peter & the Wolf

I'm afraid to say that I don't know much about these films other than Peter and the Wolf, an excellent stop motion film from with Prokofiev's music. The film was shown on UK TV last month and has been popular in the UK animation festivals. For there rest there are some details of these on the Oscars site until I've had time to find out more.

Ratatouille is also in the running for five more awards; Origional Screenplay, Music Score, Writing, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.

Update: 24/1/2008
Thanks to Darkmatters, I've discovered that you can watch the Oscar Nominated Short Animated films online.

Baftas for Animation

The list of Bafta nominees for 2008 is now up, the animated films are:

ANIMATED FILM
RATATOUILLE – Brad Bird
SHREK THE THIRD – Chris Miller
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE – Matt Groening/James L Brooks

Although the Simpson's Movie is very funny I don't think it should win given that it's not outstanding animation just mediocre. Shrek the Third does not really deserve to be listed as it lacked plot, the animation although technically better was less in detail and I thought the lead characters looked more human than ogre. Of course I think Ratatouille should win for the reason's I've outlined in my blog.

SHORT ANIMATION
THE PEARCE SISTERS – Jo Allen/Luis Cook
The Pearce Sisters is from Aardman and has already won some awards and was shown at last years LIAF. It's production is something quite new for Aardman in that it's combined 3D and 2D.

HEAD OVER HEELS – Osbert Parker/Fiona Pitkin/Ian Gouldstone
Osbert's piece is mixed media with found film clips animated over stop motion.

THE CRUMBLEGIANT – Pearse Moore/John McCloskey (clip)
This was funded as part of Frameworks scheme from Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board and premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2007.

VISUAL EFFECTS
Ratatouille and Beowulf also were short listed for the visual effects category but did not make it to the nominations stage.

The Cat Came Back

The Cat Came Back by Director Cordell Barker from 1988 is one of my favourite short animations, its was made by hand with the drawings scanned into a computer. It's already possible to buy this on VHS and DVD but now the National Film Board of Canada has kindly posted it up on the web.
http://www.nfb.ca/animation/objanim/en/films/film.php?sort=title&id=17537

Smurf Aniversary Film

This year is the 50th aniversary of the smurfs and October 23, 2008 is their ‘Happy Smurfday!’
As well as an extensive range of events, competitions and a European Tour, the Smurfs will be producing a film (there are even rumours of a Triology)

Herbert Ratner III is writing the screenplay based on the origional characters by Peyo. The film will be distributed by Nickelodeon Movies / Paramount Pictures and produced by Kerner Entertainment who also produced Charlotes Web in 2006.

More Movie Info

MovieWeb, Movie-List, BlueBuddies.

Related News Reports

Yahoo!, Google, Metro.

Do you want to become a Smurf builder?

IMPS is advertising for a 3D modeller to create, texture and shade models. Rigging of characters is a bonus. The advert does not indicate if this is a permenant position so best check with them.

International Merchandising,
Promotion & Services s.a.
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1332 GENVAL
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Brothers Quay in HD on Sky Arts

The Brothers Quay dark and moody, stop motion films can been seen on Sky Arts and Sky Arts HD over the next few months. For those without the relavent channels, these films can be purchased on VHS from the British Film Institute Shop.

http://www.skyarts.co.uk/SkyArts/SearchResults.aspx?search=brothers%20quay

Thanks to a chap called Meph on MySpace for telling me about this.