Mark Evanier has posted an interesting story about a song he heard when he was eight years old. It was from a 78 RPM Little Golden Record that he won at a Disney event that featured two songs from One Hundred and One Dalmatians. The A side was the well known Cruella De Vil, and […]

GhibliWold has a look at a watercolor made by Hayao Miyazaki that shows the world of his upcoming film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. Naussica.net reports that according to the film’s production diary the number of the animation cels in Ponyo exceeds 160,000. That compares to about 148,000 for Howl’s Moving Castle, 140,000 […]

MOVIES (weekend box office from Box Office Mojo) 1. Horton Hears a Who! – $24.6 million ($86.0 million total) DVD (weekly sales from Nielsen VideoScan via The Hollywood Reporter) 1. Bee Movie 4. 101 Dalmations 6. Beowulf BROADWAY (weekly box office from Broadway.com) 2. The Lion King ($1,323,304) 3. The Little Mermaid ($1,186,297) 4. Mary […]

CGSociety has an excellent in-depth article where they talk to the the crew at Blue Sky Studios who worked on Horton Hears a Who! to find out what went into creating the unique look of the Who-world and its characters. The piece delves into the programming of the Seussian logic of exaggeration required to get […]

MSNBC reports that Japan has named an animated cat to be the country’s anime ambassador! Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura named Doraemon, a popular cartoon robot cat, to the post during an inauguration ceremony and said, “Doraemon, I hope you will travel around the world as an anime ambassador to deepen people’s understanding of Japan so […]

Alex Schwartz has been named head of development at DreamWorks Animation according to The Big Cartoon Database. Co-president of production Bill Damaschke said, “Alex is an exceptional and experienced executive with a proven track record. As we see the line between live action and animation continue to blur, we are eager to broaden our slate […]

Congratulations to animation historian Jerry Beck whose book The Hanna Barbera Treasury has been named a finalist in ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards. The book is nominated in the “Popular Culture” category and faces competition from seven other entrants. Beck said, “This was a rare case where the finished book turned out exactly […]

Box Office Mojo reports that Fox/Blue Sky’s Horton Hears a Who! was a big hit with audiences in it’s debut weekend, easily taking the #1 spot with $45 million.

Fox/Blue Sky’s Horton Hears a Who! opens today in 3,954 theatres, according to Box Office Mojo. The film is winning over the critics, garnering an impressive 82% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer. Their consensus is that the film “is both whimsical and heartwarming, and is the rare Dr. Seuss adaptation that stays true to the […]

Despite a baffling announcement yesterday that the studio was stuck with HD DVD despite the disc’s recent demise, it seems DreamWorks will be dropping the format according to High Def Digest. The HD DVD version of Bee Movie, which was set for release in less than two weeks, has been cancelled. Whether a Blu-ray version […]

Even though every other major Hollywood studio has come out in support of the Blu-ray high definition disc format Reuters is reporting that DreamWorks, for the time being, is sticking with HD DVD. This despite the fact that Toshiba, the primary hardware backer of the format, has all but killed it off. The Digital Bits […]

Brad Bird picked up his second Academy Award as Ratatouille took the prize for Best Animated Feature. It is the third time a Pixar film has won the award. Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman won Best Animated Short Film for their stop motion version of Peter and the Wolf. Best Visual Effects went to Michael […]

Toshiba, the major hardware backer of the HD DVD format, has announced that they “will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders”. The announcement signals an end to the high-definition optical disc war that has raged between HD DVD and rival Blu-ray for the past couple of years. Atsutoshi Nishida, President […]

Animated News and Views is currently running four different contests and giving away fourteen DVDs! Be sure to enter soon as several of the giveaways are about to close. • The Ten Commandments – Five winners will receive a copy of Genius Entertainment’s new CGI animated release. Last day to enter is February 5th. • […]

The nominations for the 80th Annual Academy Awards have been announced. Come tell us your thoughts in the Animated News & Views Forum. The nominees for Best Animated Feature Film are • Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud • Ratatouille – Brad Bird • Surf’s Up – Ash Brannon and Chris Buck The nominees […]

The Producers Guild of America has announced the nominees for their 19th annual awards. Getting nods in the Producer of the Year Award in Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures categoy are: Bee Movie, Ratatouille, and The Simpsons Movie. Winners will be announced February 2nd.

Despite the writer’s strike shutting down their more usual glitzy awards show, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association handed out their annual Golden Globes awards tonight. Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille picked up this year’s award for Best Animated Film. The animation prize has only been awarded since last year when Pixar also picked up the trophy, for Cars. […]

The Digital Bits has the scoop on several animated disc announcements made during the past week. On February 19th Warner will debut Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers and Tom and Jerry: Tales – Volume 1 DVDs. Fox will be releasing an Ice Age: The Meltdown special edition DVD on March 2nd. Paramount/DreamWorks’ Bee Movie […]

Warner Bros., the only major studio to release their films in both competing high-def optical disc formats, today announced that they will be dropping their support for HD-DVD and instead releasing exclusively on Blu-ray. With studios supporting Blu-ray now accounting for 70% of Hollywood content — only Universal and Paramount/DreamWorks support HD-DVD now — the […]

During the last few weeks the major studios firmed up the dates for their 2008 releases. Here’s a look at how the year in animation is shaping up so far: • January 11 – The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything – A VeggieTales Movie (Universal) • March 14 – Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! […]

As with everything in Rumored Rumblings, take the following with a grain of salt. Several different web sites around the net are buzzing that Pixar’s slightly mysterious 2009 release, Up, may be a re-telling of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic 17th century story Don Quixote. Variety wrote in the summer of 2007 that Up was “about […]

BroadwayWorld.com reports that Disney Theatrical Productions’ three shows currently running on Broadway all set box office records for the week ending December 30, 2007. The Lion King, a six time Tony award winner now in its tenth year, set a new record at the Minskoff Theatre with $1,571,937. Mary Poppins set a record at the […]

The Digital Bits reports that Universal Studios Home Video will be releasing The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection: Volume 2 DVD on April 15th for $39.98. According to The Bits, the 3-disc set will include some 75 remastered shorts — though the actual titles are unknown at this time. For now, you can […]

After its first preview on Broadway recently, composer Alan Menken talked to with Rotten Tomatoes about the difficulties of bringing Disney’s classic film The Little Mermaid to the theatre. “I really hadn’t thought about Mermaid for the stage, for the challenge of being under the sea. As everyone knows, that was one of the difficulties. […]

Walt Disney’s Academy Award winning 1933 short Three Little Pigs has been added to the National Film Registry according to the head of the Library of Congress, James Billington. Each year the Librarian of Congress, advised by the National Film Preservation Board, selects up to 25 films that are culturally, historically or aesthetically significant to […]

The American Film Institute has announced the official selections for their annual AFI Awards. This year, Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille was named one of the top films of the year. Unlike other award giving organizations the AFI awards are judged based on the “creative ensembles as a whole – those both in front of and behind the […]

The nominees for the 65th Annual Golden Globes have been announced. Here are this years’ animated entries. Best Animated Film: Bee Movie, Ratatouille, The Simpsons Movie Best Foreign Language Film: Persepolis Best Actress (Musical or Comedy): Amy Adams, Enchanted Best Original Song: That’s How You Know from Enchanted, Alan Menken

Variety reports that awards season has officially commenced this week with the National Board of Review naming the films winning its top prizes. Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille takes home the award for Best Animated Film, while Persepolis wins the Bvlgari Award for NBR Freedom of Expression, which “champions the voices of maverick filmmakers”.

The nominees for the 35th Annual Annie Awards were announced today. In the feature categories, Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille leads the field this year with 13 nominations including Best Animated Feature as well as individual nominations for directing, writing, character animation, animated effects (two nominations), production design, storyboarding, character design, character animation, music, and voice acting (three […]

Twelve films have been submitted for consideration for the Best Animated Film category of the 80th Academy Awards: Alvin and the Chipmunks, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, Bee Movie, Beowulf, Meet the Robinsons, Persepolis, Ratatouille, Shrek the Third, The Simpsons Movie, Surf’s Up, Tekkonkinkreet, and TMNT Three films (Alvin and the […]