Over the weekend the trailer for the animated Aussie film Legend of the Guardians was released. The film is based on the young adult-fantasy book series: Guardians of Ga’Hoole. The film is produced by Australian outfit Animal Logic who did the animation work for Happy Feet (and also co-produced that film with Kennedy Miller). They were primarily a visual effects and animation outfit (they worked on The Matrix among others), and this is their first foray into developing and producing a feature film on their own. They certainly aren’t doing things by halves, because this is a big budget animated feature designed to go up against anything DreamWorks and Pixar can come up with.

To be honest I know very little about the series, but I have to say I’m damn glad they changed the name from Guardians of Ga’Hoole because somehow I think a film title that would have most people thinking “What the?” is not the way to make money. Read more »

Next Monday, Australia time, the 2009 Oscars will be held (Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are doing the hosting). Now the Oscars are always fun to disparage – after all they very rarely get it right – and I like to write about how they get it wrong as much as the next person, but in the spirit of the season (err Oscars season), let’s try and focus on the good things – let’s look for the best of the Best Picture winners.

A while ago I thought about trying to build up my DVD collection so that it would have every Best Picture winner. The problem though is that there was so much dross that I gave up pretty quickly. But there are some gems among the winners. Now I could try and rank all 81 winners, but bugger that for a joke. Instead I’ll divide the winners into their decades and select the best. It’s hard enough to try and compare films made around the same time, let alone trying to compare say The Godfather with Casablanca. Read more »

Well, we haven’t condemned at all in 2010, so it must be long past time to condemn again. Here’s a 42nd open condemnation thread. What’s been worthy of condemnation this year so far? Which evil political, cultural, social, musical, religious, and other phenomena need condemnation? (Or loud denunciation?)

You can condemn anything you like except French po/mo vampire movies and their soundtracks.

This week’s Flick of the Week takes us with Bill Paxton, from his role as astronaut Fred Haise in Apollo 13, to that of Marine Pvt Hudson in James Cameron’s brilliant sci-fi war film – Aliens. Read more »