Animated Events: DFT Animation Club: Song of the Sea

From the Detroit Institute of Arts/Detroit Film Theater website:

DFT Animation Club: Song of the Sea
Saturday, April 09, 2016
4:00 PM

(Ireland/2014—directed by Tomm Moore)
From the creators of the Academy Award®-nominated The Secret of Kells comes a breathtakingly gorgeous, hand-drawn master-piece. Based on the Irish legend of the Selkies, Song of the Sea tells the story of the last seal-child, Saoirse, and her brother Ben, who go on an epic journey to discover the secrets of their past. Pursued by the owl-witch Macha and a host of mythical creatures, Saoirse and Ben race against time to keep the spirit world from disappearing forever. (93 min.)

See more and buy tickets online at the DFT website.

Animated Events: The 43rd annual Annie Awards

It's time to get your animation geek on and honor all the hard work that our colleagues have put into our craft at the Annie Awards.

The forty-third annual Annie Awards will be streamed online this Saturday, February 6th, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. The following is the link to the stream http://annieawards.org/watch-it-live/.

And while you're waiting, you can read all the nominees here: http://annieawards.org/nominees/.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Animated Events: 2016 Academy Awards Nominees

oscars.org

Well, the Academy Award nominations were announced today. I'm terribly disappointed that the beautiful and touching film The Prophet didn't get nominated while the terribly disappointing film Inside Out did. I haven't seen When Marnie Was There or Anomalisa yet. Will hopefully get to see at least one of them before the ceremony, but I have high hopes for 'Marnie' being a quality Studio Ghibli film and 'Anomalisa' comes highly recommend to me by ASIFA San Francisco's own Karl Cohen. Both Shaun the Sheep and Boy & the World were delightful films. If you haven't seen either yet, 'Shaun' is out on DVD and 'Boy' was picked up by GKids, who have stated that it'll see a limited US theater run shortly--it just played here at the Detroit Institute of Arts/Detroit Film Theater.

The Best Animated Short films nominated were:

• Prologue, by Richard Williams,
• World of Tomorrow, by Don Hertzfeldt,
• Bear Story, by Gabriel Osorio,
• We Can't Live Without Cosmos, by Konstantine Bronzit,
• and Sanjay's Super Team by Pixar.

Having so far only seen Cosmos, World of Tomorrow, and Sanjay, I'm really pulling for Bronzit and Hertzfeldt to take home the Oscar. Both World and Cosmos were delightfully quirky and touching films with more heart and solid storytelling skills than I've seen in most animated features.

For those who would like to see these short films before the awards ceremony, they will be playing at the Detroit Institute of Arts' Detroit Film Theater in January and February.

The schedule from the DIA's website is as follows:

Friday, January 29, 2016: 7:00 PM
Saturday, January 30, 2016: 2:00 PM
Saturday, January 30, 2016: 7:00 PM
Sunday, January 31, 2016: 1:00 PM
Sunday, January 31, 2016: 6:00 PM
Friday, February 05, 2016: 7:00 PM
Saturday, February 06, 2016: 7:00 PM
Sunday, February 07, 2016: 1:00 PM
Sunday, February 07, 2016: 6:00 PM
Thursday, February 11, 2016: 7:00 PM
Friday, February 12, 2016: 7:00 PM
Saturday, February 13, 2016: 2:00 PM
Saturday, February 13, 2016: 7:00 PM
Sunday, February 14, 2016: 1:00 PM
Sunday, February 14, 2016: 6:00 PM

See more and buy tickets online at the DFT website.

The Academy Awards will be broadcast on Sunday, February 28th.

Congratulations to all the nominees and to all the filmmakers who submitted their films for consideration.

* The Academy Awards and the Oscar are registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.