Animated Thoughts: The 46th Annie Awards

Well, the 46th Annie Awards ceremony has come and gone. Some random thoughts I had during the ceremony:

• "The Ventura Brothers"... wut!?
• I put Mind Palace by the Filmakademie Badem-Württemberg GmbH on my list of films to track down.
• Weekends won the Best Animated Short Subject award, and deservedly so.
• Always glad to see Gobelins, L'École de L'Image get some recognition.
• Even more glad to see Age of Sail get some recognition. Need to take a closer look at Google Spotlight Stories.
• Wow! Am impressed by what films they're preserving -- especially those Terrytoons films. Wish we could get a screening of those out here for our ASIFA chapter!
• Am pleasantly surprised to see how much mileage studios are getting out of older properties like Rocky & Bullwinkle, Mickey Mouse, and Tom & Jerry.
• "Hi Brooke!" *waves back* :)
• The Blender demo reel was pretty impressive!
• Hrm... I like those ASIFA Hollywood lapel pins...
• Am baffled by how many awards Spider-man is getting. The animation in the trailers looks so choppy it's really distracting. Welp. That tears it. Gonna have to go see the movie for myself.
• Sometimes the jokes go on a little too long. Remember what Bill Plympton taught us: Keep it short, keep it funny!
• Every time they bring up Bill and Sue Kroyer, I have visions of sitting in the Odeon theater and seeing Technological Threat for the first time.
• Huh. So that's what Pinky and the Brain look like.
• Next year, need to download the program before the ceremony.
• "the right voice can make or break a cartoon..." Wow. That one statement needs to be hammered into the consciousness of every director (he said after watching one too many bad English dubs).
• "We love you Brock Sampson!"
• All the films in the Best Independent Feature category look so amazing! Fortunately, I've seen Ce Magnifique Gâteau and will see MFKZ, Ruben Brandt, Collector, and Tito and the Birds at TAAFI this month.
• And Japanese animation gets some well deserved recognition. I can't wait to see Mirai. Once it's released on DVD, I must bump it up on my list of features to watch.

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees.

Animated Events: 46th Annie Awards

 

On Saturday, February 2nd at 7 p.m. PST (10 p.m. EST), ASIFA Hollywood will be streaming the annual Annie Awards, a celebration of the best our industry has to offer.

Both the Production and Individual Achievement categories are listed on the Nominees page, however some highlights are below:

Best Animated Feature

• Early Man - Aardman Animations
• Incredibles 2 - Pixar Animation Studios
• Isle Of Dogs - Fox Searchlight Pictures / Indian Paintbrush / American Empirical Pictures
• Ralph Breaks The Internet - Walt Disney Animation Studios
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - Sony Pictures Animation

Best Animated Feature - Independent

• Ce Magnifique Gâteau! - Beast Animation, Vivement Lundi !, Pedri Animation
• MFKZ - Ankama / Studio 4ºC
• Mirai - Studio Chizu
• Ruben Brandt, Collector - Ruben Brandt LLC
• Tito and the Birds - Bits Productions, Split Studio

Best Animated Short Subject

• Grandpa Walrus - Caïmans Productions
• Lost & Found - Wabi Sabi Studios
• SOLAR WALK - Nørlum
• Untravel - Production: Film House Baš Čelik, Serbia Co-production: BFilm, Bratislava / Your Dreams Factory, Bratislava
• Weekends - past lives productions

In addition to the Production and Individual Achievement awards, they'll also be presenting the Juried Awards for the following:

• the Winsor McCay Award - 'for their career contributions to the art of animation',
• the Ub Iwerks Award - 'for technical advancement in the art of animation',
• the Special Achievement Award,
• the June Foray Award - 'for their significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation', and
• the Certificate of Merit.

You can watch the 46th Annie Awards ceremony live right 'here' on the Annie Awards website.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Animated Reviews: "Padak: Swimming to Sea"

I watched "Padak: Swimming to Sea" this past weekend on Amazon Prime. Such a beautiful and touching yet sad film. Highly recommended viewing but make sure that you have a box of tissues handy! If you liked Watership Down and Plague Dogs, then this is the film for you.

The film itself is about a Mackerel who is captured and sold to a restaurant on the docks. So she, and the other fish in the tank, try to survive without being eaten by the customers. But as Padak was not from a fish farm, she remembers what it was like to live in the ocean and tries to rally the other fish into escaping their tank while they still can!

Padak came out a year after the second most successful Korean animated feature film: Leafie, A Hen into the Wild so there's some similarity in the themes but it's it well worth the time (I actually liked Padak better than Leafie). And like Watership Down and Leafie, Padak does not shy away about how life (and death) can be short and brutal for animals -- and thankfully, just like the other films mentioned in this post, Padak is honest and unflinching without pushing the boundaries just for the sake of being gruesome or for shock value. If you've ever cleaned a fish (or watched a fish being prepared for a meal), you know what to expect -- and it ably sets the peril that the fish face as they must decide to either await their fate or risk escape.

Now, as it's been six years since its initial release in South Korea, I don't see Padak getting an English dub and wide release to the American market (the sub version was released to online services in 2016). And I "really" don't think that it plays to the tastes of an American audience that is still heartbroken over Bambi's mother dying over seventy-five years ago, so there's no telling how long it'll be up on Amazon Prime. Watch it while you can! Coincidentally, I bought a region-free DVD player this weekend, so hopefully, I can find a legal copy of Padak with English subtitles as I think this film would fit rather nicely in my collection.

Oh, one last note: on Amazon, they just call this film "Swimming to Sea".



* Blogger's note: updated post on 4/9/2020 to correct some erroneous information: the first fully Korean animated feature film was A Story of Hong Gildong released in 1967. Leafie was the second Korean animated feature film to break the 1 million ticket sales barrier after Hong Gildong with over a full 2.2 million tickets sold.