Animation

Cowabunga! A ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” remake is on the way. But perhaps the bigger news is this: Actress Megan Fox and director Michael Bay are reuniting for the “TMNT” redo. The director took to his website Thursday night to announce the news: “TMNT: We Are Bringing Megan Fox Back Into the Family” Bay and Fox famously clashed while working on the first two “Transformers” movies. At one point during an interview with a British magazine, Fox compared her director to Hitler.  Bay lashed back with some tart words of his own, questioning Fox’s work ethic: “I’m sorry, Megan. … I’m sorry that I’m making you show up on time.” Shia LaBeouf wages Twitter war They parted ways for the third installment in the series, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley stepping in to play the part of […]

It was only Wednesday, but sitting at a small table in the restaurant at the Chateau Marmont, Tim Burton looked a little defeated by the week, and not simply because of the sling supporting his arm. A fall in London in December fractured his shoulder — a nasty injury that he said will likely limit his range of motion for about a year — but it was a recent bout of Hollywood glad-handing that had the filmmaker most excited to return to his home in England. Two days earlier, Burton had attended the Oscar nominees luncheon – his most recent film, “Frankenweenie,” is up for the Academy Award in the animated feature category. That evening, he’d appeared at the American Cinematheque for a screening of the movie, a black-and-white love letter to Universal horror films and his Burbank youth, along […]

In the massively popular Cartoon Network series “Adventure Time,” veteran voice actor Tom Kenny plays Ice King, a curmudgeonly wizard who lives in a snow fortress with a legion of penguins and whichever princess he has most recently kidnapped. For Kenny, the Ice King is the latest in a long line of zany characters; during his 20-plus years in the industry, he has lent his voice to more than 200 productions, including such landmark series as “Rocko’s Modern Life,” “Dexter’s Laboratory,” “The Powerpuff Girls” and “SpongeBob SquarePants,” in which he played SpongeBob. Like those groundbreaking predecessors, “Adventure Time” has earned a loyal audience by defying the tropes typical to children’s television shows. The series, created by Pendleton Ward, follows Finn, a human boy, and Jake, his magical shape-shifting dog, as they fight monsters and rescue princesses in a whimsical, post-apocalyptic […]

Albert Brooks took the bait. After lengthy discussions — and, a nice paycheck? — Brooks has reportedly agreed to join the cast of Disney/Pixar’s “Finding Nemo 2.” It would have been difficult (but not impossible) to imagine a sequel that did not include Brooks. Despite the title of the Oscar-winning movie, it’s Brooks’ character, Marlin — the overprotective orange-and-white striped clownfish who must overcome his own fears to save his son — who provides the animated film’s most recognizable character. Are you glad to hear there will be a “Finding Nemo 2″? Or do you wish Hollywood would just leave a good thing alone? Valentine’s Day gift ideas: ‘Star Wars’ and more The deal was first reported by Deadline.com. A representative at Disney said Pixar would not discuss its production. A representative for Brooks did not return a phone call […]

The creative weirdos/geniuses at Laika — the Portland-based animation studio that brought you “Coraline” and “ParaNorman” — have just announced their next feature film: “The Boxtrolls.” The film is based on “Here Be Monsters,” a children’s fantasy novel by Alan Snow, and will open in theaters in October 2014. It will tell the story of the people of the Victorian-era town of Cheesebridge, who are obsessed with stinky cheese, and the shy, troll-like tinkerers who live beneath the streets. The trolls are called Boxtrolls because they cover themselves in cardboard boxes, the way a hermit crab covers itself with a snail shell. Ben Kingsley will voice the villainous Archibald Snatcher, a pest exterminator who is trying to eliminate the Boxtrolls as his ticket to Cheesebridge society. Isaac Hempstead-Wright, last seen playing Bran Stark in “Game of Thrones,” will play Eggs, a […]

Studio Ghibli fans can get a glimpse of the Japanese animation studio’s latest film ”From Up on Poppy Hill” in a new trailer released Monday. “Poppy Hill” follows high school students Umi (voiced by “Once Upon a Time” actress Sarah Bolger in the English-language version) and Shun (“Star Trek Into Darkness” actor Anton Yelchin), who find love when they team up to save a historic building from demolition in 1963 Yokohama. The film deals with nostalgia for a bygone era and hope for a modern future, as the country heals after World War II and prepares to host the 1964 Olympics. The film is based on a 1980s manga by Tetsuo Sayama and Chizuru Takahashi. Studio Ghibli’s co-founder Hayao Miyazaki wrote the screenplay and his son, Goro, directed. “Poppy Hill” was a box office hit in Japan and went on to win […]

If you missed it in theaters, Disney’s Oscar-nominated romance “Paperman” is now online, in time for Valentine’s Day. The animated short film screened before “Wreck-It Ralph” in theaters last fall and debuted on YouTube Tuesday, already garnering more than 26,000 “likes.” “Paperman” is about a young office worker in midcentury New York who meets his soul mate while waiting for the train. The train arrives and the girl is gone, but he gets a second chance at a meet-cute when he looks out his office window and sees her in the skyscraper across the street. Cue the paper airplanes. It’s a love story rendered in gorgeous black and white, harking back to the days of hand-drawn animation — which is exactly what first-time director John Kahrs was aiming for. When Kahrs served as animation supervisor on Disney’s “Tangled,” he worked […]

Kevin Smith has no small amount of praise for Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns.” “‘The Dark Knight Returns,’ for many people of my generation, for many people that followed, from the moment it was published forward is kind of like ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ of comic books,” Smith said at the West Coast premiere of “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2,” the concluding chapter of Warner Bros.’ animated adaptation of Miller’s landmark 1986 miniseries. “It’s a very important book that we all carry with us and just like the ‘Catcher in the Rye,’ they’ve never done a movie of it, because most people thought it was unfilmable,” he said. Perhaps, though the animated format seems to have served the story just fine, judging from the reaction of the audience attending a screening of the new PG-13 rated […]

Frank Miller’s genre-shaking graphic novel “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” is getting the movie treatment. The second installment in the two-part animated adaptation premieres Monday evening at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills. The premiere includes a panel discussion moderated by filmmaker and geek personality Kevin Smith, featuring director Jay Oliva, dialogue director Andrea Romano, executive producer Bruce Timm and screenwriter Bob Goodman. The panel will be live streamed from PaleyCenter.org beginning at approximately 8:30 p.m. The film — which doesn’t stray far from Miller’s classic 1986 story — features the voice talent of Peter Weller (“Robocop,” “Dexter”) as a time-worn (and probably psychopathic) Bruce Wayne who becomes so disturbed by Gotham’s worsening crime that he decides to come out of retirement against the wishes of local and national government. The president turns to none other than Superman to […]

Some of Hayao Miyazaki’s most popular films — including “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Princess Mononoke” — are returning to the big screen as part of a Studio Ghibli retrospective hosted by the American Cinematheque. It’s a return engagement after last year’s series at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica enjoyed sold-out screenings. The retrospective begins  Friday at the Egyptian with a double feature of the Academy Award-winning “Spirited Away” and the tanuki tale “Pom Poko” — two of 11 films being showcased through Feb. 10. Miyazaki could be considered Japan’s answer to Walt Disney. Studio Ghibli — founded in 1985 by Miyazaki, his mentor Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki — releases films that are immensely popular in Japan and have been growing in recognition in the United States. The films are known […]