Another week, another Megamind trailer.

Nicely done test piece for a proposed feature by Headless Studios and Six Birds Productions in Barcelona.

(Thanks, Mike Stanfill)

Paul and Sandra Fierlinger’s My Dog Tulip had a terrific debut last week with the third-highest per-theater average at the North American box office. Granted, the film played in one theater—the Film Forum in Manhattan—but its weekend gross of $11,550 from a single location is impressive for an indie animated film. The film continues to screen at the Film Forum this week, with many other cities coming up. Animation fans, it’s up to us to support this film and help encourage more variety and choice for animated features!

Paul Fierlinger’s animated feature My Dog Tulip opens an exclusive two-week run on September 1st at the Film Forum in New York. It opens later elsewhere in the US (complete list of cities here). Fierlinger is an exceptional and exceptionally devoted animation filmmaker (he made the artwork for his film with only one other person—his wife, Sandra), and I can’t wait to finally see the results. As this article from the Boston Globe makes clear, the film isn’t conventional animated fare; the book on which its based, by J.R. Ackerley, has been called the “[most] preeminently disgusting of all great dog books” and derided as “meaningless filth about dogs.”

This is a revealing quote from Fierlinger from an interview in The Bark magazine, which says a lot about where he’s coming from:

From a very young age, I disliked Disney and loved The Little Prince because the fox explains to the boy [in The Little Prince] what he must do to tame him, the fox. If the fox would know this, wasn’t he already tame? But instinctively—I was seven or eight at the time—I undersatnd that it shows Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s understanding of nature. He wasn’t violating any rules, whereas Disney violated all the rules of nature. That’s what I want our film to be: the opposite of 101 Dalmatians. So that people would not want to buy a dog after they saw Tulip, like too many people do who watch Disney movies.

Consider me impressed. Here’s a 30-second trailer promoting the San Diego Comic Con panel for The Goon on Friday night. Based on the Dark Horse comic by Eric Powell, the animated feature is being produced by David Fincher and is currently in production at Blur Studios in Venice California. This could be interesting…

The images above and below are from a new environmental documentary currently making the rounds, Deep Green. The feature contains several animation sequences produced by Portland-based Bent Image Lab.

Interstitial sequences include Greenagraphics (pictured above), directed by Pascal Campion, using a stick figure line-art style for a Flash piece explaining the importance of energy conservation in the home; and Earth Faces, directed by Chel White and Brian Kinkley, a combination of 3D CGI, live action and still photography that provide different views of the Earth combined with images of human faces depicted in clouds, “implying that planet stewardship begins with each one of us.”

Bent also created the two animated shorts that accompany the film. Voiced by Tom Kenny (SpongeBob SquarePants), they take a comedic approach to explain the most serious manmade problems facing our planet’s forests and oceans: Trees directed by Randy Wakerlin, offers a humorous yet urgent warning about the effects of deforestation – told by two talking trees, “green-collar guys”, voiced by Kenny; and The Krill is Gone (pictured below), directed by Jeffery Bosts, is a mix of 3D CGI and 2D After Effects animation, featuring a comedic cast of marine life voiced by Kenny and his wife Jill Taley.

Today, Toy Story 3 surpassed Finding Nemo as the top grossing domestic Pixar feature. However, as Box Office Mojo points out, “it will still rank in the bottom half in terms of estimated attendance.” In other words, an evening at the movies in the United States increasingly turns into an elitist activity for middle and upper-class audiences who can afford to pay inflated prices.

The big surprise at the box office was the stellar debut of Despicable Me which opened with an estimated $60.1 million. Even the most generous estimates pegged this in the $30-40 million range. Score one for producer-driven Katzenberg-style filmmaking. Looks like this won’t be the last we hear from Chris Meledandri and Illumination.

I went in to see Despicable Me with very low expectations… and came out very pleased with the film. It’s not Pixar… but it’s in the same ballpark Sony Animation plays in. The visuals are wonderful (Mac Guff, the Paris-based studio behind the neglected Dragon Hunters did the animation), particularly the layouts and color design, and though the story isn’t important, it is fun. It’s a kid’s film – and a good start for Universal’s new Illumination Entertainment.

But what did you think? The film opens this weekend and now its time for you to have your say. Comments accepted only by those who have seen the film.

Rango intrigues me. Here’s the second trailer for the Gore Verbinski/Johnny Depp/ILM/Nickelodeon Movie slated for release next March:

(Thanks Justin, Iain, Isaac and Hal)

The list above, snatched from Box Office Mojo, shows the top five movies at the North American box office in the first half of 2010. Whether you like the films or not, animated features have rarely dominated Hollywood’s box office as they have done this year so far. Nobody in Hollywood dares point it out, but the numbers speak for themselves and they clearly show that the few films made by our small animation community are consistently more popular with audiences than the glut of movies being churned out by the rest of Hollywood.

Joe Dante and our friends from Trailers From Hell have just posted the coming attractions preview for Ralph Bakshi’s Heavy Traffic (1972). This time, screenwriter Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood) gives his commentary on Bakshi’s career over the original theatrical trailer:

Based on email received this week from several Brew readers who attended E3 – this is the game with the most interesting animation and art direction. At least in 2D. And I have to agree. Rayman Origins is a prequel to the original Ubisoft Rayman game published in 1995: