The Secret of Kells, which was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2010 Academy Awards, is now available on DVD here in the US. Tomm Moore and crafty crew at Cartoon Saloon in Ireland created a critically-acclaimed film that also brought new attention to the realm of traditional 2D animation. Here’s a clip:

The wonderful, traditionally-animated feature The Secret of Kells is playing in multiple cities across the US, including Los Angeles (at the Landmark on Pico). If you’re not already excited to see this Oscar-nominated feature, this review from Kenneth Turan should entice your clicking finger to go buy tickets.

Back in November, the Lineboil audience was nearly perfect in selecting the Oscar nominations, getting 4 or 5 correct. For Best Animated Feature Film, you chose Ponyo, as opposed to Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s stop-motion feature, which ended up snagging the nomination instead. Up stands out from the bunch, taking a total of 5 nominations, including Original Screenplay and a Best Picture nod. It’s only the second time an animated feature has been mentioned amongst the live-action films in this category (Beuaty and the Beast). Not to diminish this achievement, but BATB did it when only 5 films were nominated, while this year its 10. That said, I’d argue that if there were still 5 slots, Up would likely be amongst them. After all, it was the best-reviewed widely-released film of 2009, animated or not.

The other interesting development here is that a pair of 2D features (The Princess and the Frog and The Secret of Kells) were included. Only Persepolis (2007) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2005) had cracked this category in the past 5 years, while the onslaught of CG features basked in the limelight. Kells pulled off perhaps the biggest win by getting a nomination, as the film had such a small release in the US.

Here’s the nominations (5 this year, while previous years there were only 3):

• Coraline (Focus Features), Henry Selick
• Fantastic Mr. Fox (20th Century Fox), Wes Anderson
• The Princess and the Frog (Walt Disney), John Musker and Ron Clements
• The Secret of Kells (GKIDS), Tomm Moore
• Up (Disney/Pixar), Pete Docter

 
Congrats to all of the teams involved!

The award-winning Irish feature film The Secret of Kells hits theaters in March 2010, and if you’re lucky enough to be within a tank-of-gas from Burbank, you can also see the film now. It’s currently playing at the AMC Burbank 8 until December 10th.

New Yorkers – don’t forget to buy tickets for this weekend’s screenings of Cartoon Saloon’s The Secret of Kells feature. The rest of will have to wait, but I did read that a wider US release is in the works. Here’s some rough animation from Alessandra Sorrentino:

Animationinsider.net has announced the first public US screening of Cartoon Saloon’s The Secret of Kells feature. The New York International Children’s Film Festival will screen the film on July 18th and 19th. Tickets are currently available (lucky New Yorkers… grumble grumble).

Here’s some rough animation from the film, which is included in Alfredo Cassano’s animation reel.