By Keith Staskiewicz

The season of animation is upon us. The hotly-anticipated new feature 9, not to be confused with the upcoming musical Nine nor the German negative “Nein!” arrived yesterday in theaters on 9/9/09, making it the most numerologically apt release date since the June 6, 2006 unleashing of the Omen remake.

And after 9, the deluge. From now until the end of the year we’ll be seeing an unprecedented avalanche of animation hitting mainstream American cinemas, and one that demonstrates just how many formats can huddle in under the medium’s single umbrella. We’ll see a not-so-classic adaptation of a much-adapted classic, an eagerly awaited return to form, the ambitious realization of a long-gestated original vision, and a live-action auteur’s first foray into animation, among many others, brought to us via CGI, stop-motion, traditional hand-drawn cel, and the latest performance-capture technology. It’s a good time for animation fans.

9

Focus Features and Starz Animation
September 9

In between putting finishing touches on orcs and trolls for the Lord of the Rings at Peter Jackson’s famed Weta Workshop, Shane Acker worked for over four years on a short film that would eventually be nominated for an Academy Award in 2005. Now, another four years later, his meticulously imagined world of ragdoll protagonists, apocalyptic malaise and an entire mechanical ecosystem of things that go bump in the night, is coming to the big screen. 9 is produced by Tim Burton, a man who also likes his fairy tales on the darker side, and Timur Bekmambetov of Wanted fame, and features the voices of Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer and John C. Reilly. Expanding on the mythology established in the 11-minute short and giving vocal cords to the once silent characters, Acker follows nine sentient dolls as they try to unravel their own existence as well as the terrible fate that has befallen humanity, both of which might be tied together in what Acker has dubbed “a Geppetto/Oppenheimer figure.”

Expect the film to be dark and genuinely scary. I had the opportunity to speak with Acker a number of months ago and he emphasized his desire to lend the film a genuine aura of fear and peril: “What I’m trying to evoke here is fairy tales, the real ones. They were moral tales and there needed to be severe consequences to teach those lessons. (In) some of these animated films nowadays, you don’t feel like there are any stakes. It’s set up so much as a series of gags. You don’t really feel the nature of the threat. But I tried to make that threat present in 9.” The TV ads have warned that 9 is “definitely not your little brother’s animated movie,” which sucks for my little brother, because he, like myself, thinks it looks totally badass.

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS

Sony Pictures Animation
September 18

The following week, we trade in 9’s muted tones and shades of black for J-ELLO greens and spaghetti sauce reds, and instead of the ash of a nuclear winter falling from the sky, we have meatballs. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is another in a series of films stretching a much-loved, but pamphlet-thin, children’s book into a full-fledged feature. SNL stalwart Bill Hader voices a zany but less-than-respected inventor who succeeds in transforming everyday precipitation into food, leading to a sharp decline in world hunger but a marked increase in the number of giant pancake-related deaths. The film also features the voices of James Caan, Anna Faris and Bruce Campbell, as well as music by Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh, who also scored the upcoming Fantastic Mr. Fox.

ASTRO BOY

Summit and Imagi Animation Studios
October 23

Astro Boy has come a long way since his black-and-white origins. For instance, now, during dialogue scenes, he can move parts of his body other than his mouth. The pointy-haired Japanese icon is on its way back thanks to Imagi Animation Studios, the Hong Kong-based company responsible for another update on a classic, TMNT. The film features voice work from Freddie Highmore, Kristin Bell, Bill Nighy, and Nicholas Cage as Astro Boy’s creator Doctor Tenma. And the best thing is, since it’s animated, we won’t have to see Cage’s hair.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Disney and ImageMovers Digital
November 6

Robert Zemeckis has got his hands on a classic work of literature that somehow, amazingly, has never been adapted into a film. It’s called A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, and apparently it’s just been sitting on the shelf of history gathering dust, waiting for someone to finally put it to celluloid.
Ok, so maybe it’s been done a couple (thousand) times already. But this time it’s with Jim Carrey instead of Alastair Sims, Bill Murray or a bunch of Muppets. It also co-stars Jim Carrey, Jim Carrey, Jim Carrey, and Gary Oldman. Through the magic of Zemeckis’ performance-capture technology, Carrey will be playing not only the timelessly tightfisted Scrooge, but all three ghosts who teach him the true meaning of Christmas (well, except all that Jesus stuff.) Also, in an interesting move, it appears that Oldman will be playing, among other characters, Tiny Tim. That popping sound is the WTF cortex of your brain short-circuiting. But on the positive side, it seems that Zemeckis’ tech has gotten better, and we may no longer have to fear our nighttime visions of sugar plums being invaded by the frightening blank-faced unreality of robo-Tom Hanks from The Polar Express.

PLANET 51

Tristar and Ilion Animation Studios
November 20

The idea of human beings playing the role of the alien invaders is well-used: from this year’s Battle for Terra, to the upcoming Avatar (from what I can tell), all the way back to that classic Twilight Zone episode with Agnes Moorehead. And now it’s being played for laughs in the Anglo-Spanish collaboration Planet 51. When an astronaut from Earth, played by Dwayne Johnson and not The Rock, thank you very much, lands on the idyllic titular planet he discovers an entire civilization of picket fences and aproned mothers seemingly modeled off of old episodes of Leave it to Beaver. The film also stars Jessica Biel, Justin Long and John Cleese.

FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Fox Animation Studios
November 25

At some point you might have thought to yourself that director Wes Anderson’s painstakingly constructed aesthetic and color-coded characters would fit in nicely into the world of animation, and someone must have told him that too, because he’s adapting his distinctive talents to a new format in Fantastic Mr. Fox. Coming from one of the few yet-unadapted Roald Dahl books, Fox features the voices of George Clooney and Meryl Streep, as well as those of Anderson veterans Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson. It was originally conceived as a joint venture with Henry Selick, who instead went on to make this year’s stop-motion gold standard Coraline. Judging by the trailer, it appears that Anderson’s humor will remain as dry as a bone, although I’m slightly worried by the fact that the animation looks a bit like a taxidermist’s fever dream. In any case, it’s exciting to see a well-established director stepping outside of his comfort zone to blend his artistic mentality with the unique offerings of animation.

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG

Walt Disney Animation Studios
December 11

It seems like an eternity since we saw the last 2D Disney movie, but it’s only been five years. Well, longer since the last good 2D Disney movie. I’ve got my fingers crossed for The Princess and the Frog, despite the fact that the production has had its fair share of controversy, manufactured and otherwise. Tiana is the newest addition to the Disney Princess stable, and the first African-American one, which is great, albeit somewhat sad that it took nearly 70 years to get to here from the shuck-and-jive crows in Dumbo. Along the way there’s been a flurry of anxiety over ensuring that everything is handled correctly: Tiana’s original name, Maddy, was changed over worries that it was unbecoming to Disney royalty and too close to “Mammy;” there was fear that her position as a maid would be racially demeaning, despite the fact that it was the same occupation held by Snow White, the Whitest of Them All; and there was even worry by some that the choice of New Orleans as a setting was “insensitive.” But the production survived all this as well as a change in songwriters (Alan Menken was dropped in favor of the slurred N’awlins drawl of Randy Newman) and we’ll finally be able to see it in wide-release on December 11th, and a few weeks earlier if your lucky enough to live in New York or Los Angeles. All I can say is thank you John Lasseter for fashioning some glasses for those myopic Disney execs who ok-ed the closing of the traditional animation division years ago. A fan cannot live on CGI alone.

AVATAR

Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment
December 18

What can I say about Avatar, James Cameron’s long-awaited, uber-hyped vehicle, that hasn’t already been said? Well, nothing that wouldn’t be completely made up. Everyone who is in the film-making industry seems to think that this is going to be the technological revolution that Cameron touts it to be, and everyone I’ve spoken to outside the industry seems to think it looks a bit like watching your little brother play his new Xbox game. But judgment should be withheld until we can see it in its entirety and in any case it raises an interesting question: should this be considered animation? If more and more film-makers continue down this path (as Spielberg appears to be with his Tintin film) it might become increasingly difficult to distinguish between live-action and animation; heck the definition of “movie” might even need to be rewritten. Guillermo del Toro seems to think that films will be interactive experiences before long, kind of like a grand-scale choose-your-own adventure book. Maybe cinema as we know it will be as outdated as magic boxes and zoetropes in a few decades. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: maybe we should wait to see whether Avatar’s oversized Smurfs are really all they’re cracked up to be.

ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: THE SQUEAKQUEL

Fox and Rhythm & Hues
December 25

I believe this one is pretty much self-explanatory.