Team Experience is looking back on past Sundance winners since we aren't attending this year. Here's Tim on an animated indie honored early on...
The Sundance Film Festival isn't necessarily what you think of as a hotbed of animation: even a simple animated feature takes a large budget and hundreds of hours to produce, and these are resources that indie movies are particularly noted for lacking. So when The Brave Little Toaster screened at Sundance in 1988, it was quite the aberration. Such an aberration, in fact, that it would be 13 years before another animated feature would show up at the festival. It was well-received, however: the film received a special citation from the jury at the festival's awards ceremony, and director Jerry Rees has maintained in later years that he was told that it was only a concern that awarding a cartoon would dilute the festival's prestige kept it from...
The Sundance Film Festival isn't necessarily what you think of as a hotbed of animation: even a simple animated feature takes a large budget and hundreds of hours to produce, and these are resources that indie movies are particularly noted for lacking. So when The Brave Little Toaster screened at Sundance in 1988, it was quite the aberration. Such an aberration, in fact, that it would be 13 years before another animated feature would show up at the festival. It was well-received, however: the film received a special citation from the jury at the festival's awards ceremony, and director Jerry Rees has maintained in later years that he was told that it was only a concern that awarding a cartoon would dilute the festival's prestige kept it from...
- 1/23/2016
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
Hero Ventures, a Los Angeles-based entertainment company, is gearing up to make The Marvel Experience traveling attraction, teaming with theme park attraction director, producer and writer Jerry Rees, as well as vendors including VFX houses Rhythm & Hues (Life of Pi) and its parent Prana Studios. Launching later this year, The Marvel Experience is expected to feature dozens of Marvel Entertainment’s super heroes and travel around the country in a similar manner to a Cirque du Soleil show. At each site, the team will construct a dome with three theaters that host one original, continuous story that will unfold
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- 7/15/2014
- by Carolyn Giardina
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Finding Nemo encompasses a tremendous amount of positive imagery that makes up Disney and Pixar’s populous appeal. From learning how to trust family and friends, to overcoming biggest fears and obstacles, Finding Nemo understands how to tap into the audience’s heartstrings and neatly ties in a meaningful message for the viewer to take home. Yet with every good side, there is a dark presence that even Disney can’t back away from. Like many Disney films, from Bambi to Frozen, Finding Nemo deals with a story whose basis stems from a broken household struggling with a great deal of separation. Why does Disney cling onto threads of such despair and heartache? Perhaps it’s a factor many can relate to. Or perhaps it’s a working formula that sweetens the arc of a happy ending. Either way, separation is a tapped fountain of which Hollywood has dipped into time after time again.
- 3/2/2014
- by Christopher Clemente
- SoundOnSight
This is another edition of Short Starts, where we present a weekly short film(s) from the start of a filmmaker or actor’s career. I can’t actually confirm that Frozen co-director Chris Buck had a hand on The Small One, an animated short released 35 years ago this month. Only his Wikipedia entry connects him to the film, noting that it was uncredited work. And he’s not included in any extended credits to be found for the production, which is known to have involved other new recruits like Henry Selick and Jerry Rees. In one interview, Buck acknowledges that he was a trainee at the studio starting in the summer of 1978 but that his first assignment was as an “in-betweener” for The Fox and the Hound. Well, maybe he still breathed in an area in which Don Bluth and his team were making this little-remembered movie. If it’s not really either his short start...
- 12/1/2013
- by Christopher Campbell
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
The Brave Little Toaster
Directed by Jerry Rees
Written by Jerry Rees and Joe Ranft
Starring Deanna Oliver, Jon Lovitz, Thurl Ravenscroft
Originality is so rare these days that we latch onto anything that doesn’t smell of being laughably, obviously derivative. Of course, when I say “we,” I mean film buffs because there’s no denying that the latest Transformers film, the third film in a franchise of movies based on a line of toys that inspired a 1980s-era cartoon, is nowhere near original yet made an insane amount of money at the worldwide box office. So not everyone craves originality all of the time. But even the masses crave it enough that when a movie comes along that presents something unique, whether it’s a story, a character, or a new world, we salivate over it like a dog in front of a steak.
And so it is...
Directed by Jerry Rees
Written by Jerry Rees and Joe Ranft
Starring Deanna Oliver, Jon Lovitz, Thurl Ravenscroft
Originality is so rare these days that we latch onto anything that doesn’t smell of being laughably, obviously derivative. Of course, when I say “we,” I mean film buffs because there’s no denying that the latest Transformers film, the third film in a franchise of movies based on a line of toys that inspired a 1980s-era cartoon, is nowhere near original yet made an insane amount of money at the worldwide box office. So not everyone craves originality all of the time. But even the masses crave it enough that when a movie comes along that presents something unique, whether it’s a story, a character, or a new world, we salivate over it like a dog in front of a steak.
And so it is...
- 1/28/2012
- by Josh Spiegel
- SoundOnSight
And How Young Sherlock Holmes Unexpectedly Paved The Way For Pixar
The story of how Pixar began is a fascinating one when you consider the creative risks that a young John Lasseter took that ultimately cost him his job at a company he would later (practically) run! This, somewhat Shakespearean tale, can be punctuated quite well by a series of films that all, in some way, lend themselves to the development of the Pixar we know and love…
1. The Fox and the Hound (1981)
In 1975 the California Institute of the Arts set up a new programme for animation, taught by three members of Disney’s ‘Nine Old Men’, whilst that is impressive in itself the students they taught in that inaugural year included John Lasseter, Brad Bird, John Musker, Henry Selick and Tim Burton with artists like Joe Ranft, Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter.
After graduating Musker, Bird, Selick and Burton...
The story of how Pixar began is a fascinating one when you consider the creative risks that a young John Lasseter took that ultimately cost him his job at a company he would later (practically) run! This, somewhat Shakespearean tale, can be punctuated quite well by a series of films that all, in some way, lend themselves to the development of the Pixar we know and love…
1. The Fox and the Hound (1981)
In 1975 the California Institute of the Arts set up a new programme for animation, taught by three members of Disney’s ‘Nine Old Men’, whilst that is impressive in itself the students they taught in that inaugural year included John Lasseter, Brad Bird, John Musker, Henry Selick and Tim Burton with artists like Joe Ranft, Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter.
After graduating Musker, Bird, Selick and Burton...
- 6/22/2011
- by Owain Paciuszko
- Obsessed with Film
The 1976 Cal Arts Character Animation Class in Room A-113: Back: Joe Lanzisero, Darrell Van Citters, Brett Thompson, John Lasseter (pencil in mouth) Leslie Margolin, Mike Cedeno, Paul Nowak, Nancy Beiman; Middle: Jerry Rees, Bruce Morris, Elmer Plummer, Brad Bird, Doug Lefler; Front: Harry Sabin, John Musker The memo posted after the jump has been recently floating around the animation message boards. Cal-Arts is the only college to go to if you ever hope to direct anything longer than an animated television show in the United States. While I've known that the feature animation business was dominated by Cal-Arts alumni, I didn't know it was This extensive. Check it out now, after the jump. via cartoonbrew...
- 5/12/2010
- by Peter Sciretta
- Slash Film
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