The Weinstein Company’s new film, Youth In Revolt, opened in ninth place at the box office this weekend. I haven’t seen it myself, but have recieved reports that the film uses quite a bit of animation — from stop-motion opening credits, to pixilation and pornographic hand drawn animation in the middle of the film, and traditional 2D animation during the end credits.

Peter Sluszka of New York-based Hornet Inc created the animation, shot both in New York at Hornet’s Brooklyn stage and on location in Michigan (for the pixilation sequence). Here’s a link to the stop-mo opening credits.

(Thanks, Ryan McCulloch)

Hot of the heels of the recent spate stop-motion features - Fantastic Mr. Fox, Coraline, Mary and Max, $9.99 and A Town Called Panic - comes word of production of even more! A new UK feature called Jackboots on Whitehall is an epic World War Two satire, animated with what look like “Ken” dolls. Ewan McGregor, Tom Wilkinson and Alan Cumming are among the voice cast. Written and directed by newcomers Edward and Rory McHenry, the film is scheduled for a release later this year. Twitch Film has posted a dozen stills which display the scope of the production. For more information, join the film’s Facebook page here.

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Then there is a Polish film about Chopin on a flying piano! The Flying Machine (aka Project Chopin) seems to be a combo of CG and stop motion, and of course it’s in 3D! Animators Martin Clapp, Marek Skrobecki and Adam Wyrwas (of Susie Templeton’s Peter and The Wolf, 2006) are teaming with famed Chinese composer/pianist Lang Lang to create this feature. Here’s a behind-the-scenes promo:

Art Clokey, creator of Gumby, died this morning according to San Luis Obispo.com. Clokey, who lived in Los Osos, California was 89.

Clokey popularized clay animation with his Gumby cartoons in the 1950s and 60s. His studio thrived for decades doing various Gumby adventures and Davey and Goliath films for television. An excellent illustrated Clokey timeline is at the Premavision website. Gumbasia (1955) is the film that started it all - it’s success led directly to creating the Gumby universe and the Clokey style:

Here are Clokey’s opening titles for Dr. Goldfoot and His Bikini Machine (1965) - with vocals by The Supremes:

Clokey also did a more inventive 3-minute opening title sequence for How To Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965). No one posted that on You Tube, but the whole film is available free (and high quality) on Hulu.

This piece has been online and gone viral in the past week, but I couldn’t resist putting it here. It’s to promote ESCP Europe, a prominent business school in France. Whoever directed this piece should consider dropping out of ESCP and go directly in to filmmaking. Nice job!

(Thanks, Eric Graf)

After I did this interview with Canada’s National Post about trends in feature animation, I got to thinking about whether there might be the potential for three stop-motion Oscar nominations this year. That scenario is beginning to look like a distinct possibility with three top-notch contenders: The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Mary and Max and Coraline. Since the inception of the Animated Feature Oscar, there have been only two stop-motion nominees, Corpse Bride and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which took home the Academy Award in 2005.

For those enjoying Fantastic Mr. Fox and all others who might want to catch up on the history of stop-motion animation, I’m happy to announce the release of Stop Motion Matinee from my friend Tom Stathes. This is his first professional release through his Cartoons On Film website. It comes complete with beautiful packaging designed by the infamous David Gerstein and produced in collaboration with Ray Pointer of Inkwell Images. This DVD collection is an exploration of early stop-motion animated films and includes high-quality transfers of these historic classics:

The Automatic Moving Company (Bozzetti, 1912)
Revenge of the Cameraman (Starewicz, 1912)
Dinosaur and the Missing Link (O’Brien, 1917)
Chip in the Land of Whiz (Kinex Studios, 1929)
Creation (O’Brien, 1931)
and concluding with Starewicz’s surreal mini-feature masterpiece, The Mascot (1933).

Read a full description, complete with synopses and images, and see a video trailer on Stathes’ blog. For ordering info visit cartoonsonfilm.com

It’s becoming an annual tradition in Los Angeles - just as last year, the Cinefamily/Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax Ave. is running the classic Lou Bunin stop motion/live action Alice In Wonderland. Made in 1949, but released in 1951, the film was originally suppressed by Disney for fear of its potential upstaging of their own animated Alice. This rare showing of the beautiful MOMA-restored 35mm print will screen Saturday night at 5pm and 7:30pm. For advance tickets, a clip from the film and more info, click here.

This is an impressively elaborate papercraft animation created by London-based Andersen M Studio for the New Zealand Book Council. I wonder if CG was used in the planning of this film. According to the filmmakers, no computers were used in the actual production: “The animation took 8 months to complete and is 100% handmade with a good old 10A scalpel blade.”

(via Boing Boing)