(Apologies to pascal and ian for blatantly trying to emulate their awesomeness.) And for anyone who hasn't seen it yet...Ratatouille opens tomorrow!! Victor Haboush calls it "the best animated film since Pinnochio." And that's coming from a guy who worked on Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmations. Damn!
This is huge news. Amazing awesome news. Doug TenNapel's masterpiece of claymation interactive fun is being turned into a feature film, written and directed by TenNapel himself. Frederator will be producing the film (along with a new feature film adaptation of Samurai Jack!) Hooray Frederator! Your coolness factor just shot up about 1000% in my book.
For the uninitiated, The Neverhood was a PC game released in 1996 through Dreamworks Interactive. (This was back when Dreamworks took a chance on cool new ideas, rather than just making sequel after sequel...interesting that Frederator is making this film and not Dreamworks!) Check out some footage from the game:
Read the official Variety press release. Funny that the title claims "indie studio develops 2D animated films"...when the Neverhood is obviously claymation. I guess when it's not made on a computer people forget that it's 3D? Also, you can read more about The Neverhood on Wikipedia. Looks like a copy of The Neverhood will run ya about $40-60 on eBay...hopefully it still plays correctly on the systems we've got running eleven years later. On a side note, I met Doug TenNapel a couple years ago when he spoke at RIT (I even sat next to him at dinner!) and I got him to autograph my copy of the game. Maybe it'll be worth more now that there's the film coming out...and I can only hope this means another game too!
So after being hounded by fellow animators I caught a matinee of Surf's Up today. Wow! What a surprise! When I first saw the previews and posters for this film I had zero interest in seeing it. MORE penguins?? But to even try to compare it to Happy Feet is ridiculous. This film had everything Happy Feet was missing - character designs, a great story, fun music, actual animation done by real animators with a ton of personality...If you are thinking about seeing it, you should. You won't be sorry. (There were a couple of poop jokes in there that were unnecessary, but they DID get big laughs from the kids.) As Brittney said, it has a whole lot of heart in it. (Something Happy Feet was also lacking.) Now the film to really compare it to would be next week's Ratatouille. I have seen both films, and honestly I think they are both great and worth seeing. Ratatouille was a little more appealing to me right off the bat, and I think it has some really impressive performances and animation. Surf's Up was consistently funny and really made me feel for the characters...see them both! Now!
And while you're at it, go check out some of the sweet pics Marcelo Vignali has been posting on his blog. Marcelo was one of the designers on the film and he is great! He also worked on Open Season. If Sony continues to get better and better (this film was waaaay better than Open Season, imho) I think they just might give Pixar a run for their money.
So today at work, Josh told me about this strange Andy Panda cartoon he saw when he was a kid. It featured a devil character and Andy Panda going to hell and being forced to eat apples. Ofcourse it is on Youtube, (in Portuguese?!) so here you can all see it. It starts out kind of strange, but really hits it's stride around 5:30. Gah.
I just returned from a sneak preview of Pixar's new film Ratatouille. What can I say? It was amazing. Brad Bird has done it again. This is probably the most interesting and hilarious Pixar film ever made. EVERYTHING is spot on - the voices, the acting, the animation, the RENDERING...holy crap everything looks so real! But not in a creepy Final Fantasy way. In a beautiful dream world sort of way. The audience reaction to the film was terrific. (Though I did see it at Bay St. theater, which is about a mile from Pixar...so there may have been some slightly bias folks there.) Seriously, if you see one animated film this year, make it Ratatouille. And once you do, tell your friends to see it too. I can't get over it. I'm in animation heaven right now.
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