A lonely little robot made millions of friends during the weekend — and even outgunned Angelina Jolie.
"WALL-E," the Pixar Animation tale of a robot toiling away on a long-abandoned Earth, debuted as the No. 1 movie with $62.5 million in ticket sales, with Jolie's assassin thriller"Wanted" opening in second place with $51.1 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The two movies combined to keep Hollywood on a roll. The top 12 movies took in $179.2 million, up 22 percent from the same weekend last year, when Pixar's "Ratatouille" opened with $47 million.
It was the fifth straight weekend that revenues climbed. Revenues for the summer season that began May 2 are up 6 percent over last year's record pace, according to box-office tracker Media By Numbers.
The sour economy and high gas prices may be helping to fuel Hollywood's boom, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers. Movies tend to thrive when times are tough because they are relatively cheap compared to sports events, concerts and other outings.
"Audiences are obviously gravitating toward the movies as their first choice for entertainment," Dergarabedian said. "It doesn't take that much gas to get to the local multiplex. That might have a little something to do with this, as well."
The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, the Warner Bros. comedy "Get Smart," slipped to third place with $20 million, raising its total to $77.3 million.
"WALL-E" maintains the perfect track record of Pixar, the Walt Disney unit that has made nine films, all of them critical and commercial successes, including "Cars," "Monsters, Inc." and the "Toy Story" flicks. "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" put up the biggest opening-weekend numbers among Pixar movies, both pulling in just over $70 million.
Set centuries in the future, "WALL-E" is the story of a rickety, walking trash compactor that humans left running after abandoning the over-polluted planet.
The movie overcame a dialogue challenge — the two main robot characters barely speak, beyond each other's names — using wildly inventive visuals and sound effects to propel much of the story.
Like other Pixar films, "WALL-E" packed in family crowds, as well as adults without children.
"The real secret is they're not children's movies. They're movies for everybody. Children absolutely adore them, but parents enjoy them on a different level," said Mark Zoradi, president of Disney's motion-picture group. "You can't be nine-for-nine like Pixar is without that."
The G-rated "WALL-E" was complemented by Jolie's R-rated "Wanted," which distributor Universal originally planned to release back in March. The studio decided the movie was too good to release at a slower moviegoing time and moved it to summer on a weekend when competition for a violent action tale would be light.
"We knew `WALL-E' would be huge, but it's not the same audience as `Wanted,'" said Nikki Rocco, head of distribution for Universal.
"Wanted" stars Jolie as a member of a secret society of assassins whose new recruit (James McAvoy) is trained to use his superhuman abilities to take out a rogue killer.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. 1. "WALL-E," $62.5 million.
2. "Wanted," $51.1 million.
3. "Get Smart," $20 million.
4. "Kung Fu Panda," $11.7 million.
5. "The Incredible Hulk," $9.2 million.
6. "The Love Guru," $5.4 million.
7. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," $5 million.
8. "The Happening," $3.9 million.
9. "Sex and the City," $3.8 million.
10. "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," $3.2 million.
1st Trailer for Miyazaki's PONYO ON THE CLIFF is 非常に奇妙な
Hey folks, Harry here with the first trailer from Hayao Miyazaki's PONYO ON THE CLIFF which is 非常に奇妙な. I mean it, this thing is just plain 非常に奇妙な. So 非常に奇妙な that I don't know what else to say about it, other than it is 非常に奇妙な. Thanks goes to Chris Brown who discovered this 非常に奇妙な trailer for the new Miyazaki film - which you can see below. But tell me, did you think it was 非常に奇妙な?
From The Disney CGI People Who Aren't Pixar Comes BOLT!!
The trailer for BOLT! is online over at Empire. The film features voices by Malcolm McDowell, John Travolta, and Miley Cyrus & is about a TV action dog who doesn't know he's not the character he plays.
Evidently, Bolt the dog subjugates a cat in this...which makes the film transcendent in my book.
Heads up on yet another animation event at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The Sound Behind The Image II: Now Hear This! is an evening celebrating the art of sound in animated films. It will take place at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills on Friday August 8th. Hosted by Mark Mangini (Looney Tunes: Back In Action, Runaway Brain, Raiders of the Lost Ark, etc.), the presentation begins at 7:30. You can order tickets ($5./students $3) here.
Here’s a rare treat: El Mono Relojero (The Clockmaking Monkey - Argentina, 1938) is only surviving film by the creator of the first animated feature (El Apostol, 1917), Quirino Cristiani (who also created the world’s first animated sound feature, Peludópolis in 1931). The rest of his films perished in a fire in 1962. Oscar Grillo says the voice is by Pepe Iglesias (aka “El Zorro”), the actor who later dubbed into Spanish the voice of the fox in Disney’s Pinocchio. A few months ago Jorge Finkielman posted a rare cel from this film on the Animation Show forum. For more about Cristiani, read Giannalberto Bendazzi’s 1983 article on AWN.
The tortured history of the TMS feature film Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland (1992) could rival that of Richard Williams The Thief And The Cobbler. It was an American/Japanese joint project, with no less than Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata involved in the pre-production stage (1982-83). George Lucas, Chuck Jones, Gary Kurtz, Ray Bradbury, Chris Columbus, Moebius, John Canemaker, Leo Salkin, Paul Julian, Ken Anderson, Frank Thomas and Brad Bird (who talks about his involvement in the comments here) were attached to this film at one time or another. Bill Hurtz (George of the Jungle, Unicorn In The Garden) and Masami Hata (Sea Prince and the Fire Child) ultimately directed the final release, admittedly a mixed bag.
The idea of making a fully animated adaptation of Winsor McCay’s comic strip masterpiece somehow seems like a good idea (McCay himself authorized a musical stage play based on the strip in 1908), and the names assembled (above) to tackle such a project were certainly capable doing so.
If you’re wondering what a Miyazaki version might’ve been like, check this out. Below I’ve posted a short test film dating from December 1984. Key Miyazaki animator/director Yoshifumi Kondo (Whisper Of The Heart) directed this test sequence, supposedly filmed in 70mm. The mind boggles as to what could have been.
"Great job on bringing up Nemo. I actually wrote about the 1984 Nemo pilot on the Ghibli blog, and showed the entire four-minute short. You can read my post by clcking on the website link here."
The 1984 Nemo pilot was created by Yoshifumi Kondo (director), Kazuhide Tomonaga (animation director/e-konte/key animator), Nobuo Tomizawa (key animation), Kyoto Tanaka (key animation), and Nizo Yamamoto (art director).
Tomonaga is one of the great action men of the period. You’ve seen his work before and likely didn’t realize it. For instance, he animated the car chase from Castle of Cagliostro; the destruction of the floating city in Castle in the Sky; numerous action scenes from Sherlock Hound; and any number of Studio Ghibli movies. Tomonaga also worked on several WB cartoons in the early ’90s, including Animaniacs and Batman - he animated the original opening to Batman: the Animated Series, actually."
"I think the Nemo pilot is one of the great highlights of Japanese animation. It’s a thrilling example of what makes anime great. There’s that kinetic action, the wide cinematic sweep, the brilliant sense of imagination, and a terrific sense of polish. Anime at its best always defined “cool” animation. Of course, you have to dig deeper than naked chicks and giant robots to discover this." "If you’re a Ghibli freak and a very careful observer, you’ll spot some cuts that were later quoted in My Neighbor Totoro and Porco Rosso. Parts also point back to Sherlock Hound, which in turn pointed back to Toei’s 1971 movie Animal Treasure Island (another essential cartoon classic, especially for Miyazaki fans)." "As this was a “pilot” film, there was no attempt to dig any deeper than the thrilling, freewheeling action setpiece. But it’s a perfect example of where Kondo and his team would have gone, if everything didn’t fall apart. To me, this sequence is far closer to Windsor McKay’s original vision than the watered-down Disneyesque version that was finally made. That movie was much more of an embarrassment, if only because it was so blandly lifeless, forced into the Disney paradigm as so much American animation was. Why Westerners could never grasp any other paradigms for the medium puzzles me."
"Kondo was more of a veteran than most Westerners realize, however; his career dates back to the original Lupin III tv series (1971-72), where he met Takahata and Miyazaki, who were directors. He was later involved in the two Panda Kopanda films shortly after. He worked on Miyazaki’s Future Boy Conan in 1978, and was Animation Director for Sherlock Hound. His most important collaboration was with Isao Takahata for Anne of Green Gables in 1979, where he served as the Character Designer. His more naturalist style of drawing was exactly what Takahata wanted, in pursuit of his own documentary/neorealist/Ozu fueled work. At Ghibli, Kondo became Takahata’s right-hand man, as seen with Grave of the Fireflies, Omohide Poro Poro and Pom Poko. Kondo, of course, was a big player at Ghibli and certainly set to sit alongside Takahata and Miyazaki as the studio directors, if not for his 1997 death."
"It’s always a bit of a problem that Americans know so little of Japanese animation. But there’s little interest or desire to notice anything before Ghibli, or to be aware of any name other than Miyazaki. Anything from Japan that’s good is dimly dubbed as a “Miyazaki” anime, which often is not the case. This just reinforces the notion of Americans as not very bright, as people who can’t retain more than one foreign name at a time."
"Ahem. Not to become cranky on the subject. We’re all doing the best we can. There’s still only a small handful of resources to turn to for a history of Japanese anime. Ben Ettinger’s Anipages is the gold standard. I’ve tried to follow suit with Conversations on Ghibli."
The past week, I've gotten e-mails complaining about salary cuts at Disney, along with the question: "Can they do this?"
The answer is, sure they can.
Salary decreases happen all the time. Over the years I've seen internal memos from studios that say: "Hold down wages!" I've watched higher-priced employees laid off for months, then brought back at union scale. Employees don't like it, but they accept the job and work at the lower rate, because they're not in a position to say no.
And the studio knows it, and acts on the knowledge.
There is nothing inherently evil or vindictive in this, because (mostly) it's "only business". Companies strive to pay no more than they have to ... for acquisitions, outside services, or employees.
"Companies," as honest CEOs like to say, "are not charities."
A dozen years ago, when studios were bidding against each other for talent, weekly salaries went into the stratosphere. Companies weren't crazy about this, but for a moment they were unable to prevent the sky from being the limit.
I remember the time well. Artists came through my office, gleeful about the salaries they were getting. Many of them thought the flush times would last the rest of their careers, but it was over in fifty or sixty months. The lesson I took away from the mid-nineties boom and the animation depression that followed was:
Everything is temporary. Plan accordingly.
What employees need to wrap their heads around is that, as it's only business for companies, it must also be business for employees. Know what your rights are under the collective bargaining agreement, know labor regs. Know the phone number and address of the California Labor Commissioner. Share wage information. Build a support network. Improve your chops.
And don't fall into the "we're one large, huggy family" seduction that companies often spin. Despite what department and division heads might say, they're not looking out for your interests. Companies are focused on the bottom line. They are Fox or Warner Bros. or Disney or Viacom, not the Red Cross.
In the end, it's business, and always will be. Companies decide what they need to do, and then do it.
Heath Ledger delivers brilliantly as the Joker
The buzz over Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker in "The Dark Knight" for the last several months was justified. With his final full film role, Ledger delivers what may be remembered as the finest performance of his career.
A press screening of the "Batman Begins" sequel Thursday night had the audience cackling along with Ledger's Joker, a depraved creature utterly without conscience whom the late actor played with gleeful anarchy.
At times sounding like a cross between tough guy James Cagney in a gangster flick and Philip Seymour Hoffman's fastidious Truman Capote, Ledger elevates Batman's No. 1 nemesis to a place even Jack Nicholson did not take him in 1989's "Batman."
Nicholson's Joker was campy and clever. Ledger's Joker is an all-out terror, definitely funny but with a lunatic moral mission to drag all of Gotham, the city Batman thanklessly protects, down to his own dim assessment of humanity.
Spewing alternate personal histories for how he got the horrible scars on his face, the Joker hides behind distorted clown makeup that looks like a chalk drawing left out in the rain.
The Joker masterminds a series of escalating abductions, assassination attempts, murders and bombings, all aimed at calling out Batman (Christian Bale) and proving to the tormented vigilante hero that they are two sides of the same coin.
"You complete me," the Joker tells Batman, dementedly borrowing Tom Cruise's sappy romantic line from "Jerry Maguire."
Long before Ledger's death in January from an accidental prescription drug overdose, his collaborators on "The Dark Knight" had been describing his performance as a new high in the art of villainy for a comic-book adaptation.
Director Christopher Nolan, reuniting with "Batman Begins" star Bale, told The Associated Press earlier this year that Ledger came through with precisely what he had envisioned for this take on the Joker, "a young, anarchic presence, somebody who is genuinely threatening to the establishment."
"It was though they'd taken the Joker and all the colors, everything of it, and just kind of put him through a Turkish prison for a decade or so," Bale told the AP. "It's like he's gone through that personal hell to come out being this, if you can even call him mad, at the end here."
A best-actor Academy Award nominee for "Brokeback Mountain," Ledger has earned fresh Oscar buzz for "The Dark Knight," which could land him in the supporting-actor race.
Running just over two and a half hours, "The Dark Knight" is a true crime epic. Throughout, the Joker's bag of tricks is bottomless, twisted to the point of horror-flick sick.
"Some men aren't looking for anything logical," Michael Caine's butler Alfred tells Bruce, who's trying to decipher the Joker's motives. "Some men just want to watch the world burn."
Come July 18, when "The Dark Knight" lands in theaters, the world will be watching Ledger burn up the screen.
Next Man: Chris Yost on Writing the Animated Avengers
The X-Force and Emperor Vulcan writer dishes the dirt on Next Avengers
Next Avengers assemble!
This summer, the fate of the world lies in the hands of children. Thankfully, though, these kids happen to have some very powerful hands.
Set decades in the future, "Next Avengers," Marvel's next animated feature, focuses on the children of Earth's Mightiest Heroes as they learn to follow in their parents footsteps when Ultron returns to menace their world. This time around, not even Tony Stark—the man formerly known as Iron Man—can protect them...but can they band together in time to save the day?
For the kids, living up to their parents' legends hasn't crossed their minds much. "The kids know the story of the Avengers, but they know it as just that...a story," writer Chris Yost explains. "They know the tales of their parents' heroics, they know the names and the adventures, but for reasons you'll see in the movie, they aren't really thinking about the Avengers as something they'll have to live up to."
The son of Storm and the Black Panther lets loose
However, he adds, "That changes pretty quick."
And while the movie focuses on the next generation of heroes, will we see the classic Avengers in action at all? "It's definitely the kids' movie," Yost teases. "That being said...mmmaybe."
Yost's versatility as a writer, evidenced by both his work in animation ("Fantastic Four") and comics (X-FORCE), shines through in his first full-length screenplay. The writer says he tried to blend the more dramatic, adult aspects of his writing with the lighter elements.
"This is a fun adventure film, starring a really young cast of kids," Yost says. "But at the same time, the stakes are incredibly high, literally the survival of humanity. The situation is grim. And while all that seems like it could be a big bummer, we keep the kids so busy running for their lives that they don't have a lot of time to think about it."
Verily, Thor's daughter isn't one to be trifled with
Making the film accessible while still giving longtime Avengers fans enough to chew on might have caused others to stumble, but not Yost. "It's tricky, but I think we've done a good job. If you don't know anything about the Avengers, this movie still works, and works well. It's a fun, fast, action-packed adventure in the vein of 'Goonies' that introduces a new generation of viewers to a new generation of heroes.
"But!" he continues, "If you do know the classic characters, and do know the history, then there is a TON of stuff packed into the movie. Nothing distracting, nothing that will take people out of the moment, but there's going to be plenty of goodness for hardcore Avengers fans."
With all this to look forward to, the wait until "Next Avengers" hits shelves seems unfathomable…so to whet your appetite, check out the film's all-new preview below and stay glued to Marvel.com for the latest news and features throughout the coming months!
Ben studied animation under former Disney animator Milt Neil at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. He has been in the animation industry since 1984. He started doing animation for small commercials, then years later moved on to J.J. Sedelmaier Productions working on the "Cluckin' Chicken" parody for Saturday Night Live, which led to MTV, where he worked on "Beavis and Butt-Head", doing storyboard revisions, character and prop design, layout. animation on the hallucination sequence on the feature "Beavis and Butt-head Do "America" and also MTV's "The Maxx", doing character layout. As a freelancer, he's worked for various companies including Disney TV, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, HBO Family, Miramax, Warner Bros., Saatchi and Saatchi, General Mills and Comedy Central. Currently, he's still doing the freelancing thing, while developing some personal projects for pitching.
A lonely little robot made millions of friends during the weekend — and even outgunned Angelina Jolie.
The buzz over Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker in "The Dark Knight" for the last several months was justified. With his final full film role, Ledger delivers what may be remembered as the finest performance of his career.
