Here’s something you don’t hear often: an analyst on Wall Street admitting they’re wrong. Richard Greenfield of Pali Research told the New York Times that he was “dead wrong” when he suggested that investors sell their Disney shares, in part because UP would flop. Prior to the opening of the film, Greenfield had said, “We doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character,” and he also claimed the film lacked commercial appeal because there was no female lead. Now that UP has become Pixar’s second-highest grossing film domestically, Greenfield is backtracking. It’s worth noting that Greenfield has a history of being wrong about Pixar and Disney. In 2008, he’d been hesitant about the potential of Wall-E, and in March of this year, he predicted that Disney’s stock would crash to $12.50 a share whereas it has jumped to over $22 in the past couple months. There is no animation business plan more foolproof than creating work from a foundation of creative integrity. Pixar gets that; it’s too bad the analysts on Wall Street don’t.

(via Michael Sporn)

It was announced yesterday that the Academy will now nominate ten films for Best Picture. From their press release:

For more than a decade during the Academy’s earlier years, the Best Picture category welcomed more than five films; for nine years there were 10 nominees. The 16th Academy Awards (1943) was the last year to include a field of that size; “Casablanca” was named Best Picture. (In 1931/32, there were eight nominees and in 1934 and 1935 there were 12 nominees.) “Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize,” commented Ganis.

One might coin this “the Wall-E decision”, as there was much speculation and controversy last year over Pixar’s Wall-E — that it could (or should) have been nominated for Best Picture.

This move to include more movies as nominees will allow more commercially successful films (i.e. big budget Hollywood fantasies) to compete with the artier fare (Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader, Milk, etc.), no doubt to help increase the ratings for the Oscar broadcast. Ten nominees could also boost box office gross and DVD sales for twice as many films.

But how will this affect the animated features? Will Pixar’s Up have a shot to go one-on-nine against the likes of James Cameron’s Avatar, Michael Mann’s Public Enemies and Sam Mendes Away We Go? Industry pundit Jeffery Wells thinks not.

Hollywood still places animation in a ghetto and nothing is going to change that. I hope Up, Coraline, The Fantastic Mr. Fox or some animated film can somehow crack the Best Picture category - but I won’t bet on it. Until perceptions change, I’m just glad we have the Best Animated Short and Best Animated Feature categories.

Speaking of which, at the mid-way point it’s looking like a great year for the Animated Feature category. There are already 13 releases set for 2009 (14 if you count Jim Carrey’s mo-cap Christmas Carol - I don’t). If a few more “dark horse” foreign films get submitted, as they usually do at the end of the year, that could trigger five nominees (I’m rooting for Mary & Max and Secret of Kells to get a legitimate U.S. release). However, recall that last year three eligible studio films were not submitted to the Academy (Fox ignored Space Chimps, Warner Bros. withheld Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Universal omitted The Pirates That Don’t Do Anything), thus forcing the Academy to consider only three nominees. It just goes to show, the major studios still control the process no matter how you perceive the results.

In all the years of reading animation blogs, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an artist post a tribute to an animation exec. This is a first. Chowder creator C.H. Greenblatt recently wrote some nice words on his blog about the executive in charge of his show, Jay Bastian. It almost makes him sounds human. (I keed…I keed.)

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NY is putting on a major retrospective about Tim Burton’s career this fall. It will run from November 22, 2009 through April 26, 2010. There is a page about the show on MoMA’s website, which includes the following information:

Following the current of his visual imagination from his earliest childhood drawing through his mature work, the exhibition presents artwork generated during the conception and production of his films, and highlights a number of unrealized projects and never-before-seen pieces, as well as student art, his earliest non-professional films, and examples of his work as a storyteller and graphic artist for non-film projects. The opposing themes of adolescence and adulthood, and the elements of sentiment, cynicism, and humor inform his work in a variety of mediums—drawings, paintings, storyboards, digital and moving-image formats, puppets and maquettes, props, costumes, ephemera, sketchbooks, and cartoons.

In conjunction with the show, MoMA is publishing a 64-page catalog that can be pre-ordered from Amazon. The images in this post are taken from a promotional item from the book. Tim Burton’s official website advertises that a new book called The Art of Tim Burton will soon be released that is 400 pages and has over 1000 illustrations. This appears to be a different book from the MoMA catalog.

More Burton images from the MoMA book after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Animation is not strictly a kids medium, despite the general perception (here in the U.S.) that it is. Clearly - South Park, Adult Swim and Fox Sunday Nights aside - animation produced for television is still largely kid-driven and supports the industry, thanks to multi-million dollar merchandising and ancillary businesses.

But animated feature films have been appealing to adults for a while now - and yet with every success, it’s still a surprise to the mass media. As The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday:

“UP grabbed the attention of audiences of all ages in its first weekend, according to Disney officials. “It was as strong with kids aged two to 11 as it was with adults both under and over 25,” says Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Motion Picture Group.

Is this still news? Not to me. Every (or most) Pixar and Dreamworks film has opened at number #1 and gone on to gross well over $100 million dollars domestically. Mainstream reporting like this just shows that we still have a way to go to change the kiddie-show perception of animation.

Brooks Barnes wrote this in yesterday’s New York Times:

The medium is showing signs of expanding beyond the kiddie market. The success of video games has resulted in a generation of adults who are comfortable consuming animated entertainment, Hollywood executives say. One indication: “Coraline,” the sophisticated 3-D picture about an adventurous girl, found an adult audience, so far selling $85.2 million in tickets.

Disney will test this part of the market with “Ponyo” on Aug. 14. This Hayao Miyazaki film is centered on a 5-year-old boy’s friendship with a goldfish that wants to be human. “Sophisticated stories coupled with powerful imaginations and beautiful animation appeals to everyone,” said Kathleen Kennedy, who is co-producing the English version of the film.

I’m not sure Ponyo is the film to test the adult appetite for animation. I haven’t seen it yet, but it looks like one of Miyazaki’s more juvenile films (though personally, I can’t wait to see it). Barnes’ article notes the emerging competition to Disney and Dreamworks - a whole slew of forthcoming films films (Astro Boy, Planet 51, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) vying to compete for the “new” all-ages theatre going audience. While noting the failure of Battle For Terra and mild success of Igor, Barnes neglects to mention the true tests of his theory: Shane Acker’s 9, Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max and perhaps Wes Anderson’s the Fantastic Mr. Fox - all opening later this year, all with a more mature point of view.

As for The Princess and The Frog, Mr. Barnes (who is apparently the official NY Times animation reporter) wrote a separate article last Friday on the “controversy” (is there one?) over a black princess. This piece alone indicates that the mainstream media has a long way to go to catch up with what the rest of us has known all along: animation is for everyone.

I was, and still am, a huge fan of Dreamworks Kung Fu Panda. But the announcement today of the a new Nickelodeon TV series based on the movie has saddened me.

If ever there was a character with the potential to fuel a series of theatrical sequels, it’s Po. I don’t expect Jack Black to be providing the voice and personality of the character for the TV version.

A TV series poised to appear before the second film (now in production) seems like a business decision based more on a way to make some fast cash, rather than a sincere effort to nurture a worthy property. Going to series doesn’t neccesarily negate the possibility of further theatricals, but it sure cheapens the franchise.

Couldn’t Nick have been simply based a series on the Panda’s co-stars, The Furious Five?

This is one of the most sage pieces of filmmaking advice I’ve ever run across:

“Don’t let this idea ‘Box Office’ and this idea of what pleases people bother you. Concern yourself with the best and finest thing, by God, that you know and do it to the top and give it to them to the hilt and you’ll go places and you’ll never lose.”

Who said it?

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

He offered this golden nugget to Disney artists during his visit to the studio in the 1939. Historian Wade Sampson has written a nice article—“Why Frank Lloyd Wright Disliked Fantasia“—which appears at MousePlanet.com. And here is the link to the transcript of Wright’s entire Disney talk.

Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues—now a film that everybody can (and should) watch—continues to make an impact in surprising and unexpected ways. Last week, the above Reuters photo by Krishnendu Halder appeared online with the following caption: “Members of laughter clubs attend a session during ‘World Laughter Day’ celebrations in Hyderabad, India.” The celebration in India included a huge sculpture of the mythical figure Ravana based on Nina’s design from the film.

Consider for a second the amazing nature of this photo’s contents. Nina Paley made Sita Sings the Blues in her apartment—all by her lone self, on a shoestring budget, using a desktop computer. One short year after its debut, with absolutely no promotional budget, no theatrical distribution and little mainstream media coverage, the film has traveled around the globe and fans are creating sculptures based on her work.

Nina has made it possible for everybody to see her film by placing her film into Creative Commons and allowing it to be shared without copyright restrictions. Conventional thinking leads us to believe that this type of distribution is impossible and that global visibility is only possible through millions of dollars worth of marketing and advertising. Paley, however, has entrusted the distribution to her audience and (surprise, surprise) people are watching her film and building a community around it. The success of her experiment proves that independent artists with limited means can indeed compete on a world-wide playing field, not by trying to mimic strategies of entertainment conglomerates, but by taking advantage of ideas like Creative Commons licensing and employing comprehensive online distribution strategies.