Since it's late, and I can't think of anything useful to impart, here's a few bits of animated-related news.
1906 is apparently on the shelf, but Empire Online says Brad Bird is slated to direct another live-action feature:
... Mission: Impossible IV is officially going to The Incredibles writer/director.
“I dig Edgar [Wright]. Very nice guy, very smart, very talented, I’d really like to do something with him,” said [MI star] Cruise, talking to Empire recently in Los Angeles. “I met Edgar on the set of Mission 3. Simon Pegg and those guys are hilarious. I love Shaun Of The Dead. It’s amazing. But we’re working with Brad right now. I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about it but everything’s signed... Brad is doing it.”
So we guess Brad is doing it ...
Gloo Studios (of Vancouver) wins themselves a Webby.
... [T]heir animation work for "Pixar Intro Parody", a College Humor comedy short, has won the Webby Award for Best Animation as well as the People's Voice Award.
"Pixar Intro Parody", an animated short in which the Pixar mascot Luxo Jr. accidentally kills the letter "I", consistently held more than 75% of the People's Voice votes through the 16 days of online voting. Trophies for both of the awards will be handed out on June 14th ....
The L.A. Times reviews the book that tells the story of the movie studio created by Spielberg, Geffen and Katzenberg:
'The Men Who Would Be King' by Nicole LaPorte
Nicole LaPorte's exhaustively reported book about DreamWorks SKG, the first new major Hollywood studio in more than half a century ... is the definitive history of the studio, an achievement of dispassionate reporting in the genre of corporate decline-and-fall ...
For readers interested in the power players, inside dealings and tick-tock accounts of Hollywood filmmaking, "The Men Who Would Be King" provides all the necessary fixtures and referents. ... Want to know the background on how "American Beauty" was made? There's a chapter on it. The nasty Oscar war for best picture between Miramax's "Shakespeare in Love" and DreamWorks' "Saving Private Ryan"? One on that, too. How the animated films "Prince of Egypt" became a huge disappointment at the beginning and "Sinbad" nearly sank the studio at the end? Ditto and ditto. ...
I'm a week late, but here is Mark Kennedy's head-kicker Part V:
I think most people don't draw as expressively as they can. They don't push their poses and expressions to the point that they could and ambiguous drawing is the result. We all know that one of the hardest parts about drawing is crafting an image where anyone that looks at it can tell exactly what the characters are thinking and feeling. It's not easy, and like all the other posts in this series, that's why I'm bringing it up. ...
Have yourself a rolicking Friday.
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9 comments:
So Pixar loses Bird and Stanton as directors and replaces (what would have been their) original movies with sequels.
Ouch.
Brad traded in an animation 'II' for a live action 'IV.' Might have ended with the short end on that one.
Ugh. Hollywood.
This is a bad move for Bird. Tom Cruise movies are all about making him look good. Everything else is secondary. Brad's talent will be wasted.
Half the articles have mentioned Bird by name, the other half simply call him "the Incredibles guy".
As if it weren't enough of a studio tunnel-visioned case of "We want him to make Movie B just like he made Movie A, so it'll look like it!")
The justification given is usually "Well, he wants to audition his career for 1906", but let's hope Bird has actually seen and liked the original 60's series, unlike the LAST time the MI series asked a Neato Director to copy one of his own cult films for them...That one didn't work out so well.
This is unfortunate. Cruise movies really are on the way out. Haven't seen an MI since the first one. I guess they are still big overseas. Too bad Incredibles 2 is a sure winner. Oh well... Times are forever changing I guess.
This is actually good for Bird, because he can direct a movie AND get rid of his thetans.
Brad's making the right move. Animation directors are ghettoized like everyone in animation until they successfully cross over to live action. He's got the talent to make it in live action like Tim Burton and then he'll have his choice to direct one or the other in the future.
I agree. He pulls off a high-profile franchise with some flair, the live-action world is his oyster.
So...the ultimate goal of animation directors is to aspire to live-action, then, because it's "better", and they're just killing time now with what they've "got"?
(As far as the whole "Will you make another Incredibles for us?" mentality of the producers, think a post on another forum summed it up:
"Remember, in Hollywood, Pixar movies are actually made by magic elves in a hollow tree, and if you catch one, you can make it grant wishes for you..." ;) )
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