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.

There are some things better left unsmelled. That’s the moral of Out of Joint, a new short produced under Aardman Animations’ Darkside banner. Uploaded yesterday to YouTube, it follows a myopic protagonist who can’t see past the end of his nose (mainly because he doesn’t have one) as he and his steadfast gal search for a schnoz. A cute unassuming tale that, despite its subject matter, is never too on the nose. Unlike that pun.

Croatian director Veljko Popović brings us a despairing examination of the human condition as only an Eastern European can. An anti-consumerist Allegory of the Cave, She Who Measures, with its striking visuals and Easter Island character designs, is definitely an interesting watch. And it’s the kind of film that’s way open to interpretation, so take it to mean what you will (for my part, I’m choosing to believe the creepy toy-defecating clown represents good ol’ R McD).

By Keith Staskiewicz

The Goodes are the blue-state analogues of the Hills, Mike Judge’s venerable Texas-twangers who will soon be packing up the propane after a staggering 13 seasons. A bespectacled father voiced by Judge, an overweight son, a midriff-baring daughter, a cantankerous old coot of a father, and a dog named after a political figure; Judge’s creations for his new series The Goode Family, which premieres Wednesday May 27th (9:00-9:30 p.m., ET) on ABC, are the cultural and political negative images of his previous ones. Rather than chugging beer on the front lawn, the Goodes are more likely to be found swigging soy milk in their solar-powered home and then painstakingly recycling the containers.

Here’s a few clips from the pilot:

The pater familias here is Gerald Goode, a poncho-wearing member of the liberal academe. His wife is a local activist with whom he has two children, one adopted and one biological. The dog is an unwilling vegan and they shower outside in a home-made rainwater catchment system. Read more »

by Keith Staskiewicz

Directors: Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
Runtime: 104 minutes
Rated: PG
Distribution: Walt Disney Pictures

Pixar has always been in the business of telling human stories. Woody and Buzz were toys, but their struggles with friendship and their fears of obsolescence were instantly relatable. The Incredibles may have been superpowered but their insecurities were all too real. Ratatouille‘s Remy the rat embodied every underappreciated artist, Marlin the fish every overprotective father, and WALL-E every hopeless romantic.

In their latest venture, Up (in theaters May 29th), Disney/Pixar finally sheds these anthropomorphic and archetypical avatars to tell the story of Carl Fredrickson, an old man who lived a very average life. After his wife passes away, he decides to realize their dream of moving to the wilderness of Venezuela, and so attaches a kaleidoscopic squadron of balloons to his house to float up and out of his urban environs. Of course, unbeknownst to him, he has himself a stowaway in the form of a chipper young Wilderness Explorer named Russell.

They make it to South America, but must trek through the jungle and mountainous terrain to make it to Paradise Falls, on top of which Carl and his wife always hoped to live. On the way, they find themselves embroiled in scads of adventure of the deliciously pulpy variety, with sneering villains and giant dirigibles, but even as the story gets increasingly outrageous and the action more intense, the characters remain firmly grounded in reality. They are beset by packs of vicious dogs, dangerous thunderheads and a series of precipitous heights, but the real obstacles they must overcome are those of loss, abandonment and fear. Carl is one of the most three-dimensional 3D-animated characters ever put to screen. That, plus the fact that much of the violence is surprisingly un-cartoony, provides the film with quite a few moments of genuine peril.
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… for a modern retelling of Hansel and Gretel that might make you rethink that soft-serve. Who’s Hungry? was made by first-year CalArts student David Ochs, and it’s pretty impressive; a fascinatingly morbid tale of old school Brothers Grimmery that features some beautiful hand-drawn animation. Watch it yourself and then watch the CalArts’ audience’s reactions, both below. All I know is that now I have just one more reason to fear Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer.

reactions…
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Agent Orange Ready is a short film by German animator Christian Schlaeffer that combines some good ol’ fashioned body horror with a visual style that’s reminiscent of the work of Satoshi Kon. In it, Vietnam vet finds his PTSD is manifesting itself in some bizarre ways. Pretty harrowing stuff, especially considering that the psycho-botanical mutations of the short are based on some very real deformities caused by the titular substance during the war. Created in four months, it screened at this year’s EMERGEANDSEE Festival in Berlin.