Savage Popcorn

Marsipan is a stop motion series created and produced totally independently by Nikolay Moustakov and Liz Rosenthal with the help of a great team of collaborators, Nathaniel Tapley, Brian Kelly, Tom Russell, Nils Kloth and Lynne Pritchard, just to mention a few.

Their latest mission, Mission Striker is online now at aniboom and it manages to be both cute and funny. Go check it out.

Found at the StarWreck blog.

Minuscule is a fusion between the documentary style of National Geographic and the universe of Tex Avery in which animated insects experience their adventures against a background of real-world sets. The films are short, dialogue-free and very, very funny.

Inevitably enough, plenty of these films have turned up online and you can also subscribe to the sites RSS feed and download the much prettier MP4 clips. And don’t forget to check out the DVD for over four hours of comedy genius.

Via BoingBoing

Here’s a story to warm the heart of anyone who likes their animation a bit twisted. While talking to Bloody Disgusting (via Latefilm) Guillermo del Toro mentioned that he is involved in trying to get a full stop-motion version of Gris Grimly’s Pinocchio off the gound. Del Toro is planning to produce while Grimly - whose forst foray into film was the very well received Cannibal Flesh Riot! - is set to occupy the director’s chair.

The idea came from Gris, and everybody loves his book about it. The original story is far more perverse and spooky and semi-necrophilia vibe to it in certain aspects. Gris certainly has that vein in him, he wants to do this with that original spookiness in it, we are trying to get it going. The Jim Henson Company is the behind it and we are currently working on the screenplay! Its not coming to a screen near you any time soon, even if it were to begin today it would be about three years in the making, but we are working to make it happen. A full-scale puppet universe takes time.

It’s going to be a long time coming, but well worth the wait.

Focus Features have just released a new poster for Coraline and added the tagline: “Be careful what you wish for.” There is a larger version under the fold, and it looks pretty damn impressive.

Directed by Henry Selick and based on the Neil gaiman novel of the same name, Coraline would probably be one of my most anticipated films of 2009 even if I knew nothing else about it. But from what I’ve seen so far, it does look very much like this film will live up to all of my expectations.

2008 has proved to be a good year for animation. Here’s hoping 2009 turns out to be even better.

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According to Flanders Today, the Ghent International Film Festival will be honouring Belgian animator Raoul Servais with an honorary doctorate next month in recognition of his contribution to both the art and teaching of animation in Flanders.

“He was revolutionary in form – because he was far, far ahead of other people working in animation films – but also in content,” explains Luc Deneulin of Brussels Free University (VUB). “His political views, which were not that linked to the times, still have a message today.”
And although his films often have an international feel, there is a fascinating relationship between Servais’ work and Belgian painters such as the Flemish expressionist Constant Permeke and surrealist Paul Delvaux.

I can’t claim to be familiar with Servais’ work, but thanks to the convenience of the internet I have now watched a few of his animations and they are strikingly good. Check out Chromophobia and Harpya (after the fold) to see what I mean.

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… On Rotten Tomatoes (via Twitch)

In 1984, soviet studio Uzbekfilm produced a short animated adaptation of the Ray Brabury short story There Will Come Soft Rains. As is increasingly inevitable these days, the film has turned up on the internet.

Enjoy.

Found at Quiet Earth.

Neil Marshalls Doomsday in Lego.

Variety (via) brings us the rather excellent news that Ari Folman, whose animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir is picking excellent reviews at Cannes, is set to direct Stanislaw Lem’s The Futurological Congress.

The darkly humorous book, written in 1971, details the exploits of Ijon Tichy, as he visits the Eighth World Futurological Congress at the Costa Rica Hilton. The Congress is set to focus on the world’s overpopulation crisis and comes under attack from both government and rebel forces.

“It was my all-time science fiction favorite ever since I was a student,” Folman said. “One of the advantages of animation is that it can be dubbed into any language so we’ll start with making it in English.”

This could well be one to watch out for.