Here’s a heads up on Quantum Quest - the Movie, a 50 minute 3-D Large Format film with an amazing ensemble cast of recognizable voice actors, a lame story and cliche characters & dialogue. It has Delgo written all over it. It opens in museums and Imax Theatres starting this month.

(Thanks, Al Young)

News media stories about the Oscars are cropping up all over and all of them are parroting the same factoid: Up is only the second time since the inception of the award that the Academy has nominated an animated film for Best Picture. (The first time was Beauty and the Beast in 1991.) What they should be writing is that today is a milestone day because two animated films were nominated for an Oscar: Up and Avatar.

There is little doubt in the minds of both Brewmasters, Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi, that Avatar will eventually be recognized as an animated feature as more and more films are created using the constantly evolving performance capture animation technique. Within the industry, most already recognize the film as heavily animated, from top feature film animators who wonder why Avatar’s animators are receiving so little credit for their work on the film to animation union rep Steve Hulett who stated that if, “Avatar isn’t halfway to three-quarters animation, I will eat my computer.” Most importantly, had this film been submitted to the Academy for consideration in the animated feature category, it would have qualified under the Academy’s own rules.

While James Cameron’s publicity machine may be unwilling to acknowledge the extent of animation used in creating Avatar, let us be the first to congratulate Mr. Cameron on his nomination for his groundbreaking piece of animation.

After nine weeks in wide release, Disney’s Princess and the Frog limped across the $100 million mark last weekend. It generated $757,000 at the North American box office for a grand total that now stands at $100,309,000. Somehow I have the feeling there won’t be a lot of people uncorking the champagne in Burbank today.

And most of you are asking “Who cares?”

The original Hoodwinked had art direction and character design that were - let’s face it - piss poor, but I enjoyed the film nonetheless. It had a funny, clever script with good performances — and took me (and a whole lot of other people) by surprise, grossing $51 million in January 2006.

The Weinstein Company has pulled the sequel, Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs. Evil, off its release schedule for the time being. It was first set for January 15th 2010, then pushed back to February 12th, and now… who knows? According to his blog, Hoodwinked’s creator himself, Cory Edwards, has no idea when the film will be released. But that hasn’t stopped Weinstein’s pre-existing deal with Burger King to offer toys from the sequel with its Kids Meals this month. Better scoop them up now, they may become quite a collectible.