Friday, August 13, 2010

Your Tail of the Week Linkages

Now with churlish Add On.

She's been with us for a decade. How time flies.

With Saturday and Sunday upon us, more news you can use.

... Hannover House and Red Bear Entertainment are teaming to develop "Terminator 3000", a $70 million 3D animated feature based on the characters and storyline of the franchise ...

The toonage just gets wider and deeper all the time.

But wait! According to the Nikkster, it seems that Pacifico, owner of Terminator rights, is not necessarily on board with this:

Pacificor ... has sent a cease and desist letter in response to a press release issued by Hannover House detailing plans to develop Terminator 3000 ...

There is happy animated news for the Diz Co.

...Earlier this week, Toy Story 3 surpassed Finding Nemo to become the highest grossing film in Pixar history. Today Lee Unkrich’s sequel has passed another major milestone, becoming the highest grossing animated film of all time. The film has grossed more than $920 million worldwide, surpassing DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek 2 ($919.8 million worldwide) for the title. ...

The New York Times is less than fully enthralled by a freshly released animated feature from Japan:

Stolid and humorless, larded with windy speeches about keeping Earth’s balance and other virtuous platitudes, “Tales From Earthsea,” a Japanese animated adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Earthsea” fantasy novels, feels a little like a science-fiction Sunday school pageant. ...

And there are new animated features percolating on the Emerald Isle:

16 years ago Cathal Gaffney and Darragh O’Connell founded Brown Bag Films. In a pre-digital era the pair set up the studios as a means of making their own films. The group was founded at a time when Ireland has the biggest animation industry in Europe with the ironic fact that none of the studios here were Irish-owned. ...

Brown Bag Films are now two months into a 24 month plan now to pull in a pure animated feature and bring it to Dublin for production. “The office has been running since the start of July and we have a number of projects that are under review,” Cathal explains, “but it’s going to be family and children’s films - that’s what we do. We’re looking for hybrid movies as well - which would be live action and animation - but primarily animated films, and for the US market. We are looking for the Global market ...

Time Magazine rhapsodizes about Clone Wars -- the Series:

... [A]s bad as the animated Clone Wars movie was, I've really come to like the series—on its own action-adventure terms—as it has developed and found its voice. But the persistence of the series raises a question about the balance of the Star Wars franchise. Namely, the prequels now dwarf everything else like the Death Star dwarfs the Millennium Falcon. Just in terms of sheer canonical story, there is now far, far more "prequel" material (i.e., anything taking place before episode IV) than there is material of the post-episode III, Darth Vader era. That is, the stuff that the parents of Clone Wars watchers really like. ...

And we'll end with Happy Birthday news for Nickelodeon and Viacom!

"Dora the Explorer" has been on Nickelodeon for 10 years this month, which the network is celebrating in prime time Sunday evening with the hour-long "Dora's Big Birthday Adventure." That's followed by a 12-minute tribute documentary in which toddlers, child psychology experts and bubble-eyed celebrities (Shakira, Salma Hayek, Elisabeth Hasselbeck) pay fitting homage.

... Here's the thing about Dora. She is still and forever 7 (pay no attention to that tween makeover she got last year) ...

Add On: Forbes Magazine points out that Snow is still the fairest of them all in constant box office dollars:

... The No. 1 animated spot belongs to Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (released in 1937) which earned an inflation-adjusted $866 million at the domestic box office compared to $400 million for Toy Story 3. ...

Add On Too: Since I just learned from comments that Scott Pilgrim has its share of animation (I get around so little), here's the Cartoon Network version of S.P.:

Have yourself a grand weekend.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I do not let my kid watch Dora. Dora is a zombie child with dead, dead eyes. The "art" direction on the series looks like it was designed by 10,000 chimpanzees placed in front of canvases, using their doo-doo as a medium. The mangy, pop-eyed puppets infesting Sesame Street are even preferable to Dora. But then my kid doesn't watch Sesame either. She watches TV for entertainment. The education she gets at school. Radical, I know, but sue me, I'm a Rad Dad.

Justin said...

I love Dora. She's one of the few preschool series that I can stand watching along with my kids, and my kids get so involved. They yell out "Swiper!" whenever Swiper shows up. They get off the couch and do the dances and other movements. Happy Birthday Dora!

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