keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

Fortune Magazine has posted its list of the 100 best companies to work for. DreamWorks ranks number 10 , and no other film or animation studio made the list.

I've read a fair number of business books about the film industry and this is a good one. Author Nicole Laporte does an excellent job of portraying the three partners, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, who formed DreamWorks. What's clear from the book is that the company and partnership were always tenuously held together. The partners each had very different personalities and more important than that, very different goals. It's this area where the structural flaws in the company eventually caused problems. Most companies start small and if they're lucky and well-managed, grow larger. The two words that best define DreamWorks are grandiose and hubris. DreamWorks started out large with large expectations and then systematically shrank over time. The expectations of the partners, the investment community and the public were too large and the partners, for all their money and skills, failed to live up to them. Those interested in the animation si...

(No spoilers.) While I haven't seen all the DreamWorks animated features, I've seen most of them. How to Train Your Dragon is my favorite so far. While I enjoyed Kung Fu Panda , I didn't find Po's transformation from loser to warrior convincing. The arc for Hiccup, the boy pictured above, is better constructed and the plot points are all in place. The story has elements of E.T. and is pretty predictable, but it is well told and emotionally satisfying. There's a good balance of humour and suspense. The film is built on a father-son relationship that works within the context of the film and resembles Disney's Chicken Little . The dragon designs are nicely balanced between caricature and menace and the Vikings are fun to look at. There are things that I could criticize in the film, but they don't detract from the overall experience. I saw the film flat, not in 3D, as I was more interested in judging the story elements than I was the technique. I...

Jeffrey Katzenberg was in Toronto last Monday, talking about DreamWorks' commitment to stereoscopic 3D and showing clips from the forthcoming film Monsters vs. Aliens . Katzenberg believes that in 5-8 years, all movies will be projected in 3D. He stated that there were 10 or 11 films (both live and animated) slated for release in 2009 and two dozen for 2010. All future DreamWorks releases are slated to be 3D, starting with Monsters vs. Aliens . Dreamworks' features currently cost $150 million, and 3D will add an additional $15 million to their price tag. Bloomberg news reports specifics about what 3D films are coming: Next year's 3-D releases include a version of the original "Toy Story" from Disney and James Cameron's "Avatar" from News Corp., the director's first feature film since "Titanic" in 1997. Disney plans five 3-D films, the most of any studio. In February, NBC Universal will release "Coraline," based on the book...

Courtesy of Harvey Deneroff' s blog, here's a link to an interview with Nick Park from The Guardian . In the article, there are some interesting comments about the relationship between Aardman and DreamWorks, including the following: Aardman fought hard to retain the rights to [Wallace and Gromit], which left DreamWorks feeling uncomfortable about losing control of an area almost as important to the bottom line as the box office take. "They found it difficult working with characters they didn't own," says Park. "They were trying to respect that at the same time as trying to completely dictate to us. There was a sense of tension."