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Entries in Shaun the Sheep (6)

Tuesday
Mar162021

93rd Academy Awards: On the Best Animated Feature nominees

by Tim Brayton

With a day between us and the Oscar nominations announcement, it’s time to start digging into some of the categories that fly under the radar a little bit without the proper love and attention. For now, I’d like to walk you through the five films nominated for Best Animated Feature, ranked in order of how good I think their chances are of winning the big prize...

Click to read more ...

Thursday
Feb252021

Art Director's Guild Nods: Mank, Mulan, Palm Springs, and more...

by Nathaniel R

Mank (in color on the actual set)

The Art Director's Guild have announced their nominations for the 2020 film year and 2021 ceremony which will be virtual on April 10th this year. As per usual the guild awards usually do a better job of showing us what the industry is actually watching and what's leading for Best Picture rather than what's happening in their own fields. Like Chicago 7 as one of the five very best Production designed Period films? Er okay Hollywood, but have you seen... Emma? Personal History of David Copperfield? First CowShirleyAmmonite? This is not a knock on the talented designer but there just isn't as much to work with when you're doing courtrooms and offices.

But enough griping. Here are the nominees in their four categories after the jump and if Daniel has written a piece on this particular achievement in his column "The Furniture" it's linked...

Click to read more ...

Thursday
Oct272016

The Linking Dead

Towleroad Jack O'Connell will star in Andrew Haigh's Alexander McQueen biopic. Good casting
MTV Is Jon Hamm funny... when the punchline is always just, "Jon Hamm"
Guardian Tom Hardy to play famous Antartica explorer in 1914 set film
/Film Scott Derrickson says he wants to make a Doctor Strange sequel 'in the vein of The Dark Knight'. First the Inception inspired visuals than this? Someone take his Chris Nolan dvds away pronto!
Tracking Board Catherine Keener joins Del Toro & Brolin for the Sicario sequel called Soldado
The Talkhouse Filmmaker Bruce LaBruce sings the praise of...wait for it... John Travolta & Lily Tomlin in infamous Moment By Moment (1978)

Express Susan Sarandon in costume as Bette Davis for Feud
Interview talks to rising star Alden Ehrenreich - great photoshoot too
Comics Alliance shares concept art from Suicide Squad that wasn't used. Too colorful and fantastically gorgeous (Enchantress) - not grimy and ugly enough for Warner Bros / DC comic aesthetic!
Nerds of Color grades the reviews for Doctor Strange on how they deal with the Swinton casting as The Ancient One 
i09 Star Trek: Discovery just lost Bryan Fuller as its showrunner
Variety Apparently Jude & Robert are going to make yet another Sherlock Holmes movie. Wasn't 2 enough? 
/Film Shaun The Sheep Movie is getting a sequel. Hopefully this one will have a less awkward title 
Coming Soon lots of photos from the set of Thor: Ragnarok as it wraps filming 

Gay Gay Gay
People Trevante Rhodes talks about playing gay in Moonlight (straight stars are getting much better at these interviews but one wishes gay actors could get a crack at some of these key gay roles) 
Variety Will & Grace considering a possible TV revival after their election special reunion
THR Sean Hayes apologizes for not coming out sooner while receiving a prize from OutFest
Kenneth in the (212) Stonewall Fundraising Event gets help from icons like Cher, Madonna & Steve Nicks 

TV
Playbill Patti LuPone on joining Crazy Ex Girlfriend
YouTube John Cleese recap of The Walking Dead's first six seasons - it's funny and I don't even watch the show
Vulture reminds me why I don't watch the show by discussing its more exploitative qualities when it comes to the violence
Fusion a great piece on the non-sexualized dude robots on Westworld 

Just 4 Fun
Gothamist best dog costumes at Halloween in Thompson Square Park including movie spoofs like Human Centipede, The Little Shop of Horrors, and Harry Potter
Vulture remembering the best Celebrity Vines

...And Lady Gaga on Carpool Karaoke 

Monday
Nov302015

BluRay/DVD: Get high with Kristen & Jesse

Since we haven't done one of these in awhile here is what is new or newish on DVD and BluRay as you try to catch up for your personal year-in-review mania.

American Ultra - Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg headline this pot-smoking action comedy. Which begs the question...


Amy - Glenn recently wondered aloud about the ethics of posthumous privacy invasions but that hasn't stopped audience and critics from rallying around this one.
Cooties -It only took this horror comedy two years since its Sundance premiere to show up for home entertainment.
Goodnight Mommy -Jose interviewed the directors of this Austrian horror film, one of the most unusual Oscar submissions for 2015. It's done well at the arthouse, breaking the increasingly difficult 1 million mark
Grace of Monaco - what a long and tortured ride this biopic starring Nicole Kidman has had, huh? We've been covering it for 3 years! A year and a half since its Cannes debut and one cable premiere later and only now is it on DVD?
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. -This franchise hopeful adaptation of the spy TV series was a pleasant summer surprise featuring Guy Ritchie's best work in ages, heaps of style, and a disgustingly beautiful cast.
Meru - An Oscar seeking documentary abou t
Mississippi Grind - Ryan Reynolds & Ben Mendlesohn are pool sharks

Mistress America - The latest divisive comedy from Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig. I didn't like it much but Jason loved it. As stated, divisive.
Outlander S1 - Somehow I fell off this series after that super hot super costumed Wedding episode. Should I tune back in?
Ricki & The Flash -in which Meryl Streep does some of her best and most relaxed work in ages as an aging unsuccessful rocker ... naturally there was little audience reaction and no Oscar buzz as a result! They like to see her sweat for it. Anyway... I liked it. How about you?
Shaun the Sheep - It shall remain a mystery why this hilarious & sweet Aardman animation effort didn't get US families into theaters to see it (it earned three times as much abroad) considering the absolute garbage parents will take their kids to. The new question is will it be Oscar nominated given the strangely low number of qualifying films in that category this year?
Stanford Prison Experiment -This ensemble indie (filled with a ton of promising young male actors) about the infamous titular study didn't really catch on but years from now people might look back on it as a "look how many stars are in this!" petri dish.

Thursday
Jul022015

Tim's Halfway Toons: The year so far in animation

½way mark - part 3 of ? 

Tim here. We're spending the first few days of July looking back at the first half of the movie year, and now it's time to glance over the animated features of 2015 so far - about half of the total number of wide releases we should get, including the immediate carved-in-stone frontrunner for the Best Animated Feature Oscar until further notice. Here are some of the noteworthy achievements in the year's cartoons so far.

Best Design
Inside Out
's horizonless world inside the mind, full of bright and soft physical depictions of complicated psychological notions, providing a space for the thematic concerns and the grandiose adventure alike to both play out. Bonus points for the unstressed way that, from a sufficient height, it resembles the folds of the brain.

Funniest & Most Accurate Joke
The cat in Inside Out. My fellow cat owners understand why.

Most Creative Animation
The abstract through sequence in Inside Out, a simple but elegant mixture of styles and textures and depth that shows off without distracting from the movie itself.

Best Proof That There Are Other Good Animated Movies Besides Inside Out
The current last ever Studio Ghibli film, When Marnie Was There, is a catalog of all the things that studio does so well: generosity towards all its characters, complex young women dealing with real life issues, lush backgrounds that more resemble fine art than a movie. If this is really the end, the studio left on a high note.

Best-Looking Film That's Ugly as Hell
Strange Magic
, the misbegotten George Lucas production whose striking, photorealistic images are in service to designs that look like somebody got bored halfway through making Dungeons & Dragons fanart. Please forgive me for reminding the universe that Strange Magic exists.

Worst Ad Campaign for a Good Movie
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
is, for almost all of its running time, a charming throwback to the beloved TV show. It uses the surrealist jokes strung along a dizzy, fantastic narrative, with proudly old-fashioned 2-D animation that's severely colorful and defiantly flat, powerfully reminding us of the elegant pleasures of hand-drawn animation instead of the ubiquitous rendered models of CGI. Then, for about 15 minutes at the end, it morphs its characters into CGI effects interacting with the real world in what feels as much of a parody of garbage like The Smurfs as an attempt to hop on the bandwagon. Naturally enough, the trailers and TV spots drew almost exclusively from that last 15 minutes.

Unlikeliest Sure-Fire Way to Make Everybody Bawl Like a Child
The goofy-ass lyrics "Who's your friend to likes to play? Bing Bong, Bing Bong!" sound like something a three-year-old made up on the spot, because that's exactly what they literally are in the world of Inside Out. But I'll bet half of the people reading up are already misting up just thinking about that song. Also, I'm done talking about Inside Out.

Most Surprising Hit
Pretty much every box office analyst out there was set to write-off Home as the film that would finally murder DreamWorks Animation. There was even a two-part history right here at the Film Experience based on that assumption (which I otherwise remain very proud of). Instead, the film broke out to become one of the studio's biggest hits in years, after several consecutive underperformers and bombs.

Most Disappointing Hit
Sadly, Home is also tepid junk.

Best Movie That Hasn't Come Out in America
In the United Kingdom, Aardman Animation's Shaun the Sheep Movie had an enormously successful winter release that gained critical raves and an enthusiastic audience for its humor, invention, and warmth, a top-notch kid's movie that's smart and energetic enough for anybody. It's already on DVD in that country, in fact, which is how I know what I'm talking about. Here in the States, we have another month to wait. On the other hands, the Brits still haven't seen Inside Out, so it all comes out in the wash.

Previously: Best Lead Performances & Oscar Chart Updates in Acting