Report

Bay Area's Pixar rises again at Oscars

Cementing its status as the preeminent animation company of the ‘00s, Pixar won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for the third time in seven years. Up director Pete Docter collected his first trophy in six trips, a stunning run that includes original screenplay nominations for Toy Story (1995), Wall-E (2008) and Up. The helium-fueled adventure was further buoyed by Michael Giacchino’s Oscar for original score, the category in which he was nominated two years ago for Ratatouille.

Pixar received five nominations altogether, including Best Picture (snagged by The Hurt Locker, directed by San Carlos native and San Francisco Art Institute alum Kathryn Bigelow), Original Screenplay (awarded to Mark Boal’s for The Hurt Locker over Docter and co-writer Bob Peterson) and Mixing.

topics: activism, animation, awards, bay area, hollywood, independent film, oscars

Report

Thoughts on the aughts: best/worst trends of the year and decade

A decade as odd as this one, with George Bush and Barack Obama as its bookends, deserves to be examined. While the U.S. moved from rebuilding decimated skyscrapers to the rebuilding of an entire economy, film moved from the multiplex to the mailbox to the cell phone. But did the pictures really get small? We tried to find out by surveying Bay Area film-industry professionals as well as everyday fans on the trends that moved them. We found love for animation and hate for the ascendancy of the first-person narrator-star in documentary films. We saw pleas for more collaboration and less ego. We encountered disdain for CGI and hope for independent exhibitors and filmmakers. The comments below were selected from many we received; needless to say, we couldn’t publish everything. If you feel we missed anything in particular, we encourage you to issue a few opinions of your own in the "comments" box at story’s end.

topics: activism, actors, animation, bay area, cinephiles, critics, critics year end polls, digital distribution, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, diy, documentary film, drama, environmental films, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, tv, world cinema, youth

Critic's Notebook

3D reloaded: Where does 3D go from here?

The release of Avatar this month put a fitting capstone on a frenzied campaign by studios to reintroduce stereoscopic 3D to audiences in 2009. No less than 10 feature-length films were released in 3D versions this year, almost all of those animated films. In terms of animation, what began as a minor novelty has become the norm. There’s no doubt that some of the work is satisfying. (As Dennis Harvey noted recently here in SF360.org, animated features were some of the best releases of the past year.) And Monsters vs. Aliens, Up and even Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, were better in 3D than 2D. (Of course, I mean stereoscopic 3D, since these were all animated in the 3D CGI style, as opposed to 2D hand-drawn….) The technology itself is impressive. This is not, as Jeffrey Katzenberg was so fond of saying during the run-up to the Monsters vs. Aliens release, the red-and-blue-glasses 3D of the 1950s. The technicians have found a way to smoothly present depth and action, and are not intent on simply having hands reach out or explosions engulf viewers purely as spectacle.

topics: activism, animation, avant-garde, bay area, technology, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Graphic transformation: Animation rises, CGI sinks in 2009

Science fiction has often dwelt upon the fear that machines will overtake man—which of course they kind of have, from the Industrial Revolution through the Digital Age, in terms of lessening the need for manual labor or even organic brainpower. But while technology may have taken some jobs, polluted our environment, etc., it hasn’t yet completely stolen humanity’s place in the scheme of things.

Except, one could argue, in the realm of movies. With this year’s summings-up extended to considering our first post-millennial decade, it’s a good moment to consider where mainstream cinema has gone since CGI sank its bloodless talons into the already less-than-exquisite corpse.

topics: animation, anime, bay area, comedy, cult cinema, filmmakers, genre films, hollywood, independent film, internet, red vic movie house, sf international animation festival, world cinema, youth

Report

SF critics' group issues 2009 awards

The San Francisco Film Critics Circle (SFFCC) named its top films and filmmakers of 2009 Monday evening. Best Picture went to The Hurt Locker, and the film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, was voted Best Director.

For the first time, the Circle voted on Best Animated Feature, and Henry Selick’s Coraline won from a field of strong contenders.

The Marlon Riggs Award, which honors Bay Area filmmakers who show courage and innovation, went to Frazer Bradshaw for his Sundance-premiered drama Everything Strange and New, about family/working life shot in Oakland, California, and Barry Jenkins for Medicine for Melancholy, his San Francisco-shot black-and-white portrait of two African American twentysomethings exploring each other and a changing city.

topics: animation, authors, awards, bay area, critics, critics year end polls, hollywood, independent film, women filmmakers, world cinema

Experience

Feast your eyes: a holiday film preview

I don’t know about you, but I know what I want for Christmas (and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, for that matter): Some decent movies. Hope springs eternal, especially at this time of year. It’s Hollywood custom now to reserve the majority of its prestige titles for an annual late onslaught, the idea being that award-bestowing organizations’ voters naturally gravitate toward whatever is freshest in their memories. In the indie sector, too, there are some goodies timed for holiday gifting.

So, here’s a glancing, far-from-exhaustive preview of what we’ve got to look forward to between now and New Year’s Day.

topics: activism, actors, animation, art film, awards, bay area, castro theatre, children's issues, comedy, critics, critics year end polls, cult cinema, directors, distributors, documentary film, dramatic films, music, musicals, roxie, world cinema

Platform

Russell Merritt animates the archives for SF International Animation Festival

Celebrating the Bay Area’s status as a hotbed for animation creators as well as enthusiasts, the now annual San Francisco International Animation Festival kicks off Wednesday, November 11, with an historic live event that features Lawrence Jordan among others. It then officially opens Thursday, November 12 with the premiere of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, a stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s fantasy featuring George Clooney. And it continues through the weekend with experimental shorts, commercial features and family cartoon classics that push the boundaries of the medium. Among them are rarities gleaned from the archives: Walt Disney’s Alice Comedies, a series of Disney shorts produced between 1923 and 1927, in which a live-action girl is inserted into an imaginary cartoon world. J.B. Kaufman and Russell Merritt, authors of Walt in Wonderland and Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies will introduce a selection of films and lead the program, presented with the help of the Walt Disney Family Museum. Merritt, a lively raconteur and Professor of Film Studies at UC Berkeley, where, for over 20 years, he has taught animation, art-house cinema and film history, will share a portion of his vast knowledge of film lore, Disney and otherwise, with the audience. First, he offered a preview for SF360.org readers. (SFIAF runs November 11-15; the Alice Comedies program takes place November 14, 1 p.m. at Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema.)

topics: animation, archives, avant-garde, music, san francisco film society