What a year. Coraline, Up, Ponyo, 9, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs - topped off with The Princess and The Frog and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

In Fantastic Mr. Fox director Wes Anderson injects an adult sensibility, along with his usual indie filmmaking quirkiness, turning a childhood classic into a uniquely satisfying filmgoing experience. As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the best films of the year. The animation style is refreshingly, intentionally retro: Rankin-Bass meets Willis O’Brien, by way of Ladislas Starevich. In this exclusive promo (below) we get a quick peak behind the scenes at the London studio that put it together:

(via Atom Films)

Here’s the way it should be: the stop motion sequence from Flintstones: On the Rocks (2001), by the gang at Screen Novelties.

P.S. Grab a higher quality download off the Screen Novelties website.

Another purchase I made at Cinecon this past Labor Day, was an entire stack of Films In Review magazines, the entire run from 1956 through 1959. I’ve been going through them slowly and enjoying them throughly, finding many great insights and articles about the history of film. There was so little written about animation in these pages that I was surprised to find this piece on pioneer stop motion animator Ladislas Starevich in the April 1958 issue. It’s a nice overview of his career, written while Starevitch was still alive and working. Since I couldn’t find it posted anywhere else on the web, I figured it was my duty - in the interests of history - to add it here myself. (Click thumbnails below to enlarge)

For those who need to brush up on their Starevich I highly recommend the DVD collection, Cameraman’s Revenge & Other Fantastic Tales. In the meantime, here is the one of his classics, from 1933, The Mascot:

A graduation film by Sjors Vervoort of The Netherlands, with sound design by Steven Aerts. While I would have liked to see the interplay between the cardboard creatures and their real-world surroundings pushed even further, there’s some imaginative ideas throughout the piece.

Oregon Live is reporting that Henry Selick is leaving his home base at Laika. The studio did not explain the departure other than to say that Selick’s contract has expired. This follows Laika’s decision to focus primarily on stop-motion and lay off 63 CG animators.

You can read Laika’s official statement on Henry’s departure here.

Here are two non-narrative pieces that are quite pleasing to the eye. Adam Avilla and Tony Benna have joined forces to “try our might at becoming an artistic superpower.”

“Our most recent project spawned a notion to animate one of the most unruly mediums known to man: Yarn. After two cold months in a dark warehouse bedroom (which we transformed into a shooting stage) the spot was complete. The result of the exploration left us conjoined at the temple and deprived of precious vitamin D.”

Lucky is the collaboration between Melbourne based All India Radio and Darcy Prendergast’s animation company Dee Pee Studios

“It involves a painstaking animation technique, whereby the team paints in the air with glow sticks, frame after to frame to create entire sequences of animation, sometimes taking a whole night to shoot.”

In case you were wondering what happened to a U.S. release of Adam Elliot’s clay animated feature Mary And Max… The film was finally picked up for US distribution by Sundance Selects, a video-on-demand service that’s an adjunct to the Sundance Channel and the Sundance Film Festival. The film will be available to purchase and view on cable and satellite systems beginning October 14th.

If you have a hankering to see the film on the big screen, the way it was designed to be seen, it starts tomorrow at the Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino for an Oscar qualifying one week run. It will screen everyday at 10am Friday and Saturday at 10pm, Sunday through Thursday at 1pm. Asifa-Hollywood members have been invited to a private screening in Glendale next Wednesday, which will feature a Q&A with director Eliiot.

Mary and Max will also screen Wednesday October 14th, 7pm, as the opening selection at the Ottawa ‘09 International Film Festival.

(Thanks, Eric Graf)