Mid-Week Linkage

A brief festival of links on a Wednesday, starting with the Martini Boys explaining why director Henry Selick dropped off the movie radar for so long:

... [F]or the most part it’s because he has been struggling to get Coraline made for the last ten years.

Selick first discovered Coraline in the 90s before the novella had been initially published. The story of a girl who discovers an evil alternate universe in her closet is perfect material for Selick, yet it has not been easy for him to bring it to the big screen. Selick hired Steven Soderbergh to help him adapt the book into a screenplay in the 90s, but the collaboration for troubled and ultimately unsuccessful (Soderbergh documented his hilarious procrastination-fueled failed attempt to write the script in his wonderful book Getting Away With It: Or Further Confessions Of The Lukiest Bastard You Ever Saw). He tried working with a few other writers over the years, but ended up just doing the script himself.

Then came the problem of getting the film made in stop-motion ...

Talented people at the top of their game often find themselves unemployed for long stretches. Not long ago my wife bumped into a veteran director with a mess of success behind him, who is currently trying to get something lined up. "Film financing is tight right now" is the way he described it.

The Animation Co-Op, skippered by Kevin Geiger and Moon Seun for the past five years, has shuttered its door:

... [E]xpended energy never truly disappears - it just takes a different form. Likewise, it is time for The Animation Co-op as we have known it to disperse into the community. Every person who has attended one of our events, pitched a project, or simply checked into our website now and then carries a bit of that flame with them ...

Having been there at a Co-Op get-together, which was great, I'm sorry to see them leave. But nothing is forever.

And something cartoon fans everywhere have been waiting for: an extended Kill Bill animated sequence:

“We’ve actually added some things to it. We did a whole little chapter that I wrote and designed for the animated sequence, that we never did, because we figured, back when it was gonna be one big movie, it was going to be too long, so we didn’t do it. So when we were talking about re-releasing it, they asked is there anything you can put in, and I said no I put everything in there, but… there’s one sequence that we wouldn’t even have to shoot! So we got together with Production IG and did it, and it’s really cool. So it’s this little seven minute sequence, it’s really cool, it’s in the O-Ren chapter.” -

It's the awards season, and the Visual Effects Society has jumped into the mix with its 'toon nominees:

Vying for outstanding animation in an animated motion picture are teams from "Bolt," "Kung Fu Panda," "Wallace and Gromit in 'A Matter of Loaf and Death' " and "Wall-E" ("Bolt," "Panda" and "Wall-E" animators are also nominated for animated character in an animated movie). For outstanding animated character in a live-action motion picture, nominees are from "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," "Iron Man" and "The Spiderwick Chronicles." Nods for effects animation in an animated film went to teams from "Bolt," "Panda," "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" and "Wall-E ..."

You're almost to the midway point of the workweek. Press on toward Friday.