By Derrik J. Lang, Entertainment Writer
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) --Ale Abreu wasn't confident about his animated film "Boy and the World" after screening it for an audience for the first time. The imaginative parable about a stick figure's search for his father left viewers feeling sad.
"I realized it wasn't the film I had expected to make," the Brazilian filmmaker said through a translator at the motion picture academy's headquarters. "The solution was to change one scene."
It worked. "Boy and the World" is among the five nominees up for the animated feature film Academy Award on Sunday. Abreu and the other nominees shared their fears of working in the fragile medium during an event Thursday celebrating their creations.
"Inside Out" filmmakers Peter Docter and Jonas Rivera noted there was originally concern children wouldn't understand the concept for their Pixar flick about a team of personified emotions working together inside a young girl's noggin.
"In the end, we had to simplify the film for the executives, but the kids loved it," joked Docter.
The creators of "Anomalisa" said constructing the film's stop-motion sex scene was one of the biggest challenges of bringing writer-director Charlie Kaufman's script – originally written as a radio play – to life with puppets.
"That scene took the longest," said director Duke Johnson. "It took six months to animate. We didn't know actually until we screened the film if it worked."
Other nominees vying for the animated feature film trophy at Sunday's 88th annual Academy Awards include the Japanese adaptation "When Marine Was There" and the stop-motion comedy "Shaun the Sheep Movie." The category was first introduced at the 2002 ceremony with "Shrek" winning the inaugural trophy.
Despite the more emotional of this year's animated nominees, none cracked the best picture category for a spot alongside the likes of "Spotlight," ''The Big Short" and "The Revenant." (Only three animated films have ever been nominated for best picture at the Oscars: "Beauty and the Beast," ''Up" and "Toy Story 3.")
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More