Children’s Medical Center’s “Brooke”–a stop motion paper cutout animation tour de force directed by Jamie Caliri of DUCK Studios, Los Angeles, for The Richards Group, Dallas–has won the Annie Award in the commercials category during a gala ceremony held this past weekend (2/5) at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles.
Now in its 38th year, the Annie Awards competition annually recognizes outstanding achievement in animation. The Annies are presented by the Burbank, Calif.-headquartered International Animated Film Society (ASIFA-Hollywood).
“Brooke” topped a field of Annie spot nominees that consisted of: the DUCK-produced McDonald’s ad “Spaceman Stu” directed by Oliver Conrad of the Kompost collective for Leo Burnett, Chicago; LAIKA/house, Portland, Ore., for Frito Lay Dips’ “And Then There Was Salsa” directed by Nicholas Weigel for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco; Nathan Love, New York, for Pop Secret’s “When Harry Met Sally” directed by Joe Burrascano for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners; and DreamWorks Animation for the How to Train Your Dragon Winter Olympics interstitial “Speed Skating.”
On the feature film front, How to Train Your Dragon from DreamWorks Animation dominated the Annie proceedings, winning 10 categories, including Best Animated Feature, Best Directing (Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois), Best Character Animation in a Feature Production, Best Character Design, and Animated Effects in an Animated Production,
For the Best Animated Feature honor, How to Train Your Dragon was up against Despicable Me (Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures), Tangled (Disney), The Illusionist (Django Films) and Toy Story 3 (Disney/Pixar).
According to an AP report, Disney boycotted the Annies ceremony, opting not to make any awards push for the Annies in a dispute over voting procedures, which Disney claimed were stacked in favor of DreamWorks Animation movies.
Nonetheless Pixar did win the Annie for Best Animated Short Subject on the strength of Day & Night.
Best Animated TV Production honors went to Kung Fu Panda Holiday from DreamWorks Animation.
And topping the category for Best Animated Television Production for Children was Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants.
For a full rundown of Annie winners, click here.
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More