UPDATED - Selick in Talks to Take Shademaker to Laika (Or Not)

To contact us Click HERE

Tweet

Director Henry Selick (left) and Laika CEO Travis Knigt (right)
IndieWire is reporting that The Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick is in talks to take his, previously tentatively titled, Shademaker, to Laika!
The project was being produced by Selick's Cinderbiter/ShadeMaker Productions, alongside Brain Trust members from Pixar, until news recently broke that Disney had pulled the plug. Claims were that the film's story wasn't where Disney wanted it to be and that production was lagging. The rumours emerging today though claims that Selick is shopping the idea to Laika, whom he previously worked with on 2009's Oscar nominated Coraline.
IndieWire also offers up some rumoured details about the film's plot and style:

I'm told that the once-titled "ShadeMaker" is the story of two brothers, and that it takes Selick's special brand of surrealism into a new direction. The sets are spectacular (especially Central Park) and they've been and they've been making use of a similar Rapid Prototype 3D printer for replacement heads that Laika introduced on "ParaNorman."
It's a shame that Selick's deal with Disney fell through - it might lead to awkwardness if/when he returns to make the planned adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book - but the film certainly seems a good fit for Laika and we know they work well together! Be sure also to check out our review of Laika's latest film, ParaNorman!

Via Craig Good and HitFix.
UPDATE: 27/09/2012 - 00:07 (GMT)
Times look dark Selick fans, and not good, Coraline, dark. /Film reports that whilst Henry Selick did meet with Laika, the talks "went nowhere and Laika will not fund its former director’s project." First Showing also reports that the film, apparently now titled The Shadow King, is not being taken on by Laika, and is seemingly done for.
Selick supposedly sent a memo to the team at Cinderbiter, saying that Laika chief Travis Knight couldn't figure out a financially sound way to continue production on the film. Selick could shop the film around some more, but following knock-backs from his two biggest options, it might be time, sadly, to move on.
Sad news for sure, especially so short after hearing that Digital Domain's closure meant the end of The Legend of Tembo. But here's hoping it gets picked up somewhere else in the near future, and we here at A113Animation wish the very talented Mr. Selick and all on the Cinderbiter crew all the best in whatever they go on to next!

New Wreck-It Ralph Poster and TV Spots

To contact us Click HERE

Tweet

A couple of weeks ago we got a concoction of fantastic new posters for Disney's Wreck-It Ralph, showing the film's characters alongside classic video game icons. Today, via Disney Movies UK's Twitter feed, we get another wicked new poster for Disney's 52nd animated feature.

The poster combines the classic characters that we've seen previously, such as Sonic and Q*bert, and the film's leading original quartet of Ralph, Vanellope, Felix and Sergeant Calhoun. Another great poster in the great advertising campaign of the great looking Wreck-It Ralph. Why yes, I am looking forward to it!


To further whet our ever more insatiable appetites, we also get two great new TV spots for the film! The spots, while funny, highlight the film's emotional core surprisingly well. They show Sarah Silverman's character, Vanellope von Schweetz, as rather sweet and helpless, as opposed to how annoying she's came across as in the trailers - we also get the first proper look at Vanellope's car from "Sugar Rush"! Not forgetting our first real look at Jane Lynch's Sergeant Calhoun.

Check out the Jane Lynch introduced TV spot below, and head here to watch the "Game Changer" spot, which helpfully has embedding disabled.



The TV spots also finally give us Wreck-It Ralph's rating: PG, unsurprisingly. Directed by Futurama and The Simpsons veteran, Rich Moore, Wreck-It Ralph is due out in America on 2nd November, and the UK on 15th February, 2013.

Vibrant Poster for The Croods

To contact us Click HERE

Tweet

Moments ago we shared the new Wreck-It Ralph poster with you, and now we've got another poster for you. Via ComingSoon.net, check out the bright, vibrant and stylised poster for DreamWorks' The Croods!

The Croods was originally in production at Aardman, during their deal with DreamWorks, as Crood Awakening, and directed by Kirk DeMicco (Space Chimps), but DreamWorks and Aardman's parting of ways ended that incarnation of the project. Now directed by Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon), and featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage, Ryan Reynolds and Emma Stone, The Croods will be the first picture in DreamWorks' 5-year distribution with 20th Century Fox when it hits cinemas on 22nd March, 2013 

Best of the Last Ten Years A113Animation Awards - Final Nominees

To contact us Click HERE

Tweet

For the past month and a half, we've been running our very interactive "Best of the Last Ten Years (2001 - 2011)" A113Animation Awards. I'll be handing out the official A113Animation Award for that, but we've also been running polls to decide "The People's Favourite" too! Now, we've arrived at the final list of nominees for the two awards.

Check out the final lists after the jump break!


Ranked in order of most votes received, the finalists for "The People's Favourite Animated Film of the Last Ten Years (2001 - 2011)" are:

• Finding Nemo (2003)
• WALL-E (2008)
• How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
• Toy Story 3 (2010)
• Up (2009)
• The Incredibles (2004)

Group 3 was won by The Incredibles, with no real competition, while Group 4 was dominated by How to Train Your Dragon, making it the only non-Pixar film in the final. In fact, one thing these polls have highlighted is how highly Pixar films are valued - and also that most of the highest rated films were released in the last 5 years.
My longlist has also been whittled down into a, not dissimilar, list of 6 films, from which I will announce my winner at the same time as the interactive poll closes. Check out our final list of nominees below, ordered by year:

• The Incredibles (2004)
• Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
• WALL-E (2008)
• Up (2009)
• Toy Story 3 (2010)
• How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

The final "People's Favourite" poll will be up in a few minutes, and will run for 3 weeks, until Friday 20th October. We're so close to crowning our "Best Animated Film of the Last Ten Years" and "People's Favourite Animated Film of the Last Ten Years", so, please, keep voting!

UPDATED - 23:35 (GMT)
The poll's now up, on the right sidebar of the blog. Have your final say, now!

Hotel Transylvania Takes a Vampire-Sized Bite out of the Weekend Box-Office

To contact us Click HERE

Tweet

The critics may not be loving it, but US audiences clearly are; Sony Pictures Animation's Genndy Tartakovsky-directed Hotel Transylvania has done the studio proud on its tenth anniversary, opening to an astonishing (estimated) $43 million!

The studio's seventh film (including two Aardman releases, Arthur Christmas and The Pirates! in an Adventures with Scientists) sits at a lukewarm 42% on Rotten Tomatoes, but has raked in over a million dollars for every one of those percent at the US box office, placing it in the number 1 spot this weekend. Hotel T is the studio's strongest opener (far surpassing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' previous record of $30.3 million), and, if it proves to have reasonable legs, it could be the studio's highest grossing film yet! The film has also raked in $8.1 million from foreign territories.

Second place this weekend goes to another Sony pic, Rian Johnson's acclaimed sci-fi actioner, Looper, with $21.2 million (again, estimated). Looper boasts a cast including Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt, while Hotel T has the more youth-friendly line-up of Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg and Selena Gomez.

In spite of the negative reviews, it seems audiences are really taking to Sony's monster-flick (of course, the timing isn't bad either, with Halloween just around the corner). Speaking from an outside perspective, having not seen the film yet (it doesn't open here until 12th October), I think what's resonating with audiences is exactly what's putting critics off: it doesn't take itself too seriously. Hotel T looks like fun for the sake of fun, with not too much focus on emotional twists - the 'Art of' book stated that they repeatedly chose to forego solemn moments in favour of comedy. Jerry Beck says it best, that Hotel T is a "full “cartoon” feature"; just look how perfectly poised and considered the animation is! Genndy Tartakovsky's stylised cartoon style is here in abundance!

Seen Hotel Transylvania? What did you think? Let us know below!

Stats via Box Office Mojo.

Shutterfly Yearbooks giveaway

To contact us Click HERE
Another school year has started, and new memories are about to be made!  Thank goodness for that school yearbook!  Sure, those yearbook photos don't always come out the way your child wants them to, but parents cherish those photo memories, flyaway hair and all.

If you're on your school's yearbook committee, be sure to check out Shutterfly Yearbooks, as a great way to preserve those school year memories. It doesn't even matter what your school size is!  Whether your child goes to a school with hundreds of other students, or even if you belong to a homeschool group, you can Shutterfly yearbooks of any order size.  You can even order single copies!  Of course, if you order 10 or more books, you get a volume discount, and for big school-wide orders, yearbooks can go as low as $6 per yearbook.

When it comes time to create your yearbook, Shutterfly has you covered.  With their online Photo Book tool, the layouts practically create themselves, and you end up with a yearbook just as beautiful as the Shutterfly Photo Books you create for your own family.  They even have a section with yearbook photo suggestions, timelines, and other tips to create an A+ yearbook.  

Even if you're not on the yearbook committee, you can use Shutterfly to preserve your child's school year memories.  Here are 3 ways I came up with:

1)  Skip the other classrooms and grades, and make a yearbook just for your child's classroom!  That way, your child and his friends will be featured front and center, and every page will be chock full of people he knows and loves.

2)  Make a Shutterfly "artbook" featuring the best art projects your child created throughout the school year.  My kids always want to save their artwork, but all of that paper takes up way too much space.  A Shutterfly "artbook" saves their best work in a single book that your child can proudly show off (and avoids the big fight about throwing their artwork away!).

3) For a long-range project, collect First-Day-of-School photos of your child throughout the years, from preschool through high school.  Many parents even have their child stand in front of the same background, year after year, and hold up a sign saying which grade they are entering!  Then compile of those special photos into a single Shutterfly yearbook that you give to your child when he graduates from high school.  Don't forget to make a second yearbook for yourself!


Win a Shutterfly Photo Book
One lucky Bonggamom Finds reader will receive a code fora free 8x8 hard cover, 20-page Photo Book from Shutterfly, including free shipping to the US or Canada!

Required Entry
Leave a comment on this post and share your favorite school year memory.

Extra Entries
For extra entries, you can do any or all of the following. Please leave a separate comment for each extra entry with a way to verify the entry (i.e. tweet link, blog post link, Facebook id, Twitter id, etc.). 
1)  Follow Bonggamom Finds on Blogger (1 entry)

2) Follow bonggamom on Instagram (1 entry)

3) Follow Shutterfly on Instagram (1 entry)

4) Follow bonggamom on Pinterest (1 entry)

5) Follow Shutterfly on Pinterest (1 entry)

6) Pin this giveaway on your Pinterest board (1 entry).

7) "Like Bonggamom Finds" on Facebook and write this on my wall (1 entry):
I entered the Shutterfly yearbook giveaway http://bit.ly/S6UTMv

8) "Like" Shutterfly on Facebook and write this on their wall (1 entry):
I entered to win a free 8x8 Shutterfly Photo Book on Bonggamom Finds!  Giveaway ends 9/26 at http://bit.ly/S6UTMv 

9) Follow @Shutterfly on Twitter and tweet this, up to once per day (1 entry per day):
RT @bonggafinds: Enter to win an 8x8 Photo Book from @Shutterfly!  Giveaway ends 9/26 at http://bit.ly/S6UTMv #giveaways #backtoschool


The Rules
This giveaway ends at 11:59PM PST on September 26, 2012; I will draw a winner at random on September 27 and post his/her name after she/he confirms acceptance. Continental US and Canada residents only. For additional giveaway rules, click here. 

Disclosure: Thanks to Shutterfly for providing the giveway prize, as well as a gift card and free photobook for me. The views and opinions expressed here are my own.

Tweet this!

Clean Out Your Garage giveaway

To contact us Click HERE


Did you know that National Clean Out Your Garage Day is celebrated on September 8?  Even though that date has come and gone, there's still time to clean up your garage before winter hits -- don't wait until the Spring Cleaning urge hits!  We do a big garage clean-out every 1-2 years, regardless of the season.  It's amazing how much JUNK our family of 5 can accumulate in just 2 years!  Whenever it gets too difficult to park Alfie's motorcycle, we know it's time to clean out.  It's not just a clean-freak issue, it's a safety issue.  Check out some statistics from a recent home safety survey conducted by The Lehigh Group, manufacturer of Crawford branded garage organization products:

* Nearly four in 10 (39 percent) have tripped over an item in their garage

* More than a quarter (27 percent) have hit an object when opening a vehicle door

* 22 percent have accidentally hit something when parking

Yikes!

Win a Clean Out Your Garage Day prize pack
To help people prevent accidents like these, Crawford, Ace Hardware and Quickie are giving away some essential tools for garage organization to one lucky Bonggamom Finds reader!  The Clean Out Your Garage Day prize pack (ARV $83.16) includes:

Crawford 16” Adjustable Storage Organizer: Designed for use anywhere in your home, garage, workshop, tool shed or basement, this system is great for hanging brooms, rakes and other lawn supplies.

Crawford Sliding Spring Grip Organizer: Grips slide into position anywhere along the bar for maximum use. Guaranteed to never lose tension, the grips can hold hardware, garden tools, shovels and more.

Quickie 2-in-1 Squeegee Pushbroom: This 2-in-1 pushbroom is designed for both indoor and outdoor use. Effortlessly sweep away dirt and debris or use the built-in professional-grade squeegee to push away excess water.

ACE Multi-surface Pushbroom: This durable pushbroom is perfect for sweeping heavy debris, including caked-on dirt, gravel and construction materials.

Lysol Sponges: Super absorbent and safe on most surfaces, these sponges can help tackle any tough mess.


Required Entry
Leave a comment on this post and tell me the last time you organized your garage (or main storage space).

Extra Entries
For extra entries, you can do any or all of the following. Please leave a separate comment for each extra entry with a way to verify the entry (i.e. tweet link, blog post link, Facebook id, Twitter id, etc.). 
1)  Follow Bonggamom Finds on Blogger (1 entry)

2) Follow bonggamom on Instagram (1 entry)

3) Follow bonggamom on Pinterest (1 entry)

4) Pin this giveaway on your Pinterest board (1 entry).

5) "Like Bonggamom Finds" on Facebook and write this on my wall (1 entry):
I entered the Clean Out Your Garage giveaway http://bit.ly/QmWcVD

6) Follow @bonnggafinds  on Twitter and tweet this, up to once per day (1 entry per day):
RT @bonggafinds: Enter to win a Clean Out Your Garage prize pack worth $80!  Giveaway ends 9/30 at http://bit.ly/QmWcVD #giveaways


The Rules
This giveaway ends at 11:59PM PST on September 30, 2012; I will draw a winner at random on October 1 and post his/her name after she/he confirms acceptance. Continental US residents only. For additional giveaway rules, click here. 


Disclosure: Thanks to Ace, Quickie & Crawford for providing the giveaway prize pack, as well a second prize pack for me.  The views and opinions expressed here are my own.


Tweet this!