keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

Today is traditionally the day when everyone complains how boring the telecast was, how awful the fashions were and how out of touch the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is. I've stopped watching the Oscar telecast, finding it much more efficient to read the list of awards the next day in 5 minutes or less. My take on the Oscars has always been that it's just a fancy marketing tool. A film that wins or loses is the same as film it was before the win or loss. Perception may change, but not the actual film. And as perceptions keep changing over time anyway, an win or a loss is just a blip in the how the world judges a film or the people who made it. While La Luna lost for best animated short, it will have the last laugh. Being paired with Brave this coming summer, it will be seen by more people than the winning film, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore . Rango 's win will probably allow ILM to make another feature, but the film's influence w...

The DVD collection of UPA Jolly Frolics is now available for pre-order through both the TCM website as well as Movies Unlimited . The pre-release price is $34.99 U.S. For those of you ordering in Canada, Movies Unlimited offers the better deal in that they're charging $8 for postage, where TCM wants $20. The importance of these cartoons has probably been dulled by time, but when they were released, they shook the foundations of American animation and were widely influential around the world. Prior to UPA, the bulk of American animation was built on the Disney design model, where characters were drawn to be dimensional. While American animation had progressed beyond the circle and hosepipe design approach, it was still based on rounded forms that could be turned in space and that had definite volume. There was also a discontinuity between characters who were painted in flat colours and backgrounds that were rendered to give the impression of light hitting rounded forms. Each ...

This year the Annie Awards are being streamed live, starting at 7 p.m. Pacific (10 p.m. Eastern) time on various websites, including Cartoon Brew , A. Film L.A , Canadian Animation Resources , Animazing and the Animation Guild . You can download a pdf of the program book, 68 pages long, here .

The schedule for the Studio Ghibli retrospective at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto is now available here . Tickets can be ordered in advance on the same page.

UPDATED Børge and his wife are unhurt, but they have suffered a major loss of their possessions and artwork due to a fire. Their daughter Anna-Mieke, has set up a website where the pictures above come from and that has information on how to donate. There are other pictures of the house prior to the fire, including artwork by Børge and his wife, Joanika, who sculpts. I've made a donation and hope that the Rings are able to put their lives back together after this horrible event.