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Paul Feig’s Ghostbuster’s remake has made waves on both sides of the Atlantic. As the original 1984 film set some significant action in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library, we couldn’t help but indulge in a rifle through the archives of cinematic tributes to libraries.

The post From the archives: the top 5 movie scenes set in libraries appeared first on OUPblog.

Today we look at the work of John Nevarez, Cartoon Brew's Artist of the Day!

Today we look at the work of Chris Sasaki, Cartoon Brew's Artist of the Day!

In 2013, filmgoers in the United Kingdom and Ireland watched more animation than any other type of film, according to a new report by the British Film Institute.

No new animated films opened last weekend, but there was plenty of animation in the theaters. Here are the estimated earnings of animated films in US theaters:

5th: Planes / $13.1 mil WEEKEND / $45.1 mil TOTAL
9th: Smurfs 2 / $4.6 mil WEEKEND / $57 mil TOTAL
12th: Despicable Me 2 / $3.8 mil WEEKEND / $346 mil TOTAL
16th: Turbo / $1 mil WEEKEND / $77.6 mil TOTAL

Internationally, the box office played out like this:
Smurfs 2 / $20 mil WEEKEND
Despicable Me 2 / $19.5 mil WEEKEND
Planes / $7.3 mil WEEKEND
Monsters University / $6 mil WEEKEND
Turbo / $2.9 mil WEEKEND

And the overall box office totals to date (US plus international):
Despicable Me 2: $781.2 mil
Monsters University: $658.6 mil
Smurfs 2: $207 mil
Turbo: $142 mil
Planes: $52.4 mil

In spite of a soft third-place opening in the United States, Sony’s Smurfs 2, directed by Raja Gosnell, managed to become the number one film globally last weekend. The film opened with just $17.5 million in U.S. theaters, but made up for it with $52.5 mil in over forty international markets. Even with the strong overseas opening, the film is unlikely to top the original Smurfs worldwide gross of $563.7 mil.

Illumination’s juggernaut Despicable Me 2 scored $10.1 mil in its fifth U.S. weekend, boosting its domestic cume to $326.4 mil. It also added $13.8 mil internationally, and after last weekend, its global gross is $716.7 mil. It is the third highest-grossing movie of the year so far, trailing only Iron Man 3 and Fast & Furious 6. Disney’s Monsters University earned $1.4 mil domestically and $11.4 mil internationally. Its global total is $613.5 million through last weekend.

In Japan, Hayao Miyazaki’s Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) held onto the top spot in its third week of release. The film grossed $5.6 mil from 454 screens, and has a Japanese box office total of $44.3 mil.

The Wall Street Journal published a story last weekend about Hollywood’s struggle to recoup its costs on big-budget tentpole films, but there’s one bright spot the WSJ (along with the rest of the mainstream media) always fail to recognize and that’s that animation is more successful than ever before.

Despite Turbo’ stumble at the box office and Henry Selick’s diss that American animated films are all the same, audiences around the world can’t get enough of big-budget CG animated features. Check this out:

Only six films have grossed $500 million dollars or more at the worldwide box office in 2013, and three of those films are animated. Let’s put this into perspective: animation studios have released just five animated features this year with a production cost of over $75 million and three of those films became half-billion grossers; on the other hand, live-action filmmakers have released over 20 films this year that cost $75 million or more, and only three of those films have achieved a similar mark. The evidence is clear: expensive animated tentpoles have a much better chance of being profitable than their live-action counterparts.

Leading the way amongst animated films at last week’s box office was the mega-hit Despicable Me which landed in 3rd place with $16.4 mil in its fourth U.S. weekend, boosting its domestic total to $306.8 mil. The film added $24.5 mil from foreign markets for an overseas total of $354.5 mil.

Monsters University continued a similarly strong run, earning $2.9 mil in its sixth U.S. weekend and $15.6 mil from overseas. The film’s totals are now $255.5 mil domestically and $321.6 foreign. The film has yet to open in markets like China and Italy, and by the time it’s all over, the film should become Pixar’s fourth highest-grossing movie ever.

The only animated clunker in theaters right now is DreamWorks’ Turbo, which had a sophomore frame gross of $13.7 mil, good enough for fourth place and a U.S. total of $56.2 mil. The film had a slim 35.5% decline, but it was slim only because the film couldn’t decline much further from its already meager opening weekend. Turbo managed to pick up $12.5 mil from 30 overseas markets pushing its foreign total to $41.9 mil. After two weekends, the film’s combined gross is $98.1 mil.

More animation is coming soon, too. Sony’s Smurfs 2 will be released this week, and Disney’s Planes next week.

Turbo, the DreamWorks-produced and David Soren-directed animated feature about the snail that could, opened in a disappointing third place in the U.S. with an esimated $21.5 million. The film is the third-lowest all-time opening weekend for a DreamWorks CGI film, doing better than only Antz (1998) and the Aardman-produced Flushed Away (2006). However, adjusted for inflation and 3D prices, Turbo had the smallest opening weekend audience EVER for a DreamWorks CG pic. The film has grossed $31.2 million since opening last Wednesday.

Illumination’s Despicable Me 2 kept up its amazing run in its third weekend. The film landed in second place with an estimated $25.1 million. Its current domestic total is a smashing $276 million, and by next weekend it will pass Man of Steel to become the second-highest grossing film in America this year. Holding up the tenth place spot was Pixar’s Monsters University, which earned an estimated $5 million in its fifth weekend. The film’s total now stands at a robust $249 million.

International numbers to come in a bit.

The audience pleasers Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 have now resulted in fully-animated features leading the U.S. box office for four straight weeks. Despicable Me 2 retained its number one slot this weekend while facing stiff competition from two newcomers—Grown Ups 2 and Pacific Rim. The modestly budgeted Illumination film grossed an estimated $44.8 million over the 3-day span, boosting its overall total to $229.2M.

To put this into perspective, the last time that fully-animated features led the U.S. box office for four weeks or longer was nearly twenty years ago, when Toy Story was the number one film for six straight weeks in 1995.

In its fourth weekend, Monsters University landed in sixth place, grossing $10.6M for a $237.8M domestic cume. International figures for these films coming soon.

For the third week in a row, an animated film has taken the crown at the U.S. box office. This week, the winner is Illumination Entertainment and Universal’s Despicable Me 2. The Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud-directed film scored an estimated $82.5 million over the weekend, and since its debut last Wednesday has earned a massive $142.1 million. The film’s three-day opening was nearly identical to the opening of Disney/Pixar’s Monsters University, however, Despicable Me cost a reported $76 million to produce, whereas the Pixar film cost closer to $200 million. Overseas grosses on Despicable Me 2 are still to come, but Box Office Mojo reports that the film has already made over $150 million overseas, and Deadline Hollywood says the film opened in first place in 35 of its 38 new markets and set the following records:

Territory highlights/records: biggest opening ever for an animated film in Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Trinidad and Vietnam; highest opening day ever for all films in South Africa; Universal’s biggest opening day ever in Brazil, Hungary, Mexico and South Africa; third biggest opening day ever in Mexico just behind Iron Man 3 and The Avengers.

The biggest story here is that Despicable Me 2 is performing as well as any Pixar/DreamWorks CG tentpole on a fraction of the budget. The other studios throw money at their films, but the producers of Despicable Me 2 focused on delivering the best entertainment bang for the buck.

With the new competition in the kiddie film market, Monsters University took an expected hit in its third weekend, dropping 57% for an estimated take of $19.6M. The film, which landed in fourth place, has grossed a solid $216.1 in the United States. Combine that with $184.4M overseas, and it has now crossed the $400M mark worldwide.

Pixar’s Monsters University, directed by Dan Scanlon, held first place at the U.S. box office with an estimated $46.2 million in its second weekend. The film declined 44% weekend-to-weekend, a smaller drop than any Pixar film since Up. Its domestic total now stands at $171 million.

Foreign box office results still to come.

With LGBT Pride festivities taking place all over the country this week, the San Francisco Gate got together with Pixar power couple Kori Rae and Darla K. Anderson to chat about their relationship, the recent Supreme Court strike down of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and the box office opening of Monsters University, which Rae (above, left) produced.

The twice-married (to each other), domestic-partnered producers and self-described “Pix-Mos”, Anderson (Monsters Inc., Cars, Toy Story 3) and Rae (Up, The Incredibles) started dating in 2001 during the production of Monsters Inc. and when they eloped in 2004, infuriated their family and friends, including Steve Jobs. “I remember Steve Jobs was mad,” Anderson recounted. “He said, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t invite Laurene and I to come down to City Hall to be with you guys.’”

“I was willing to leave the company at that point,” said Rae, expecting professional consequences to their new romance. “But [Pixar was] completely great. They were nothing but supportive, and have been the whole time.” The two maintain the sanity in their relationship by never working on the same film and maintaining strong boundaries. “It’s hard enough making one of these giant movies, and you put your heart and souls into them,” Anderson explained. “If we carried too much of that at home, we would just turn into animated characters ourselves.”

When asked if there will ever be (or has been) a gay character in a Pixar film, Anderson replied, “Our goal is to create great art, and if we’re telling true stories with great characters, people will project and identify with a lot of our films. A lot of people feel like a lot of our characters are gay, and have projected their stories onto it. If we’re doing our job right, that’s what should happen.”

Pixar vizdev artist Chris Sasaki posted a generous heap of his Monsters University development art on his blog. One can’t help but think that the clarity of his design approach, with the simple funny shapes and candy colors, might also lend itself well to a hand-drawn animated version of Pixar’s Monsters universe. Of course, there’s plenty more of this type of work in the film’s ‘art of’ book.

Bill Plympton with Chris Landreth

BILL PLYMPTON is the Oscar-nominated filmmaker of seven animated features and more than thirty animated shorts. His new feature Cheatin’ will premiere this fall. Learn more about his work at Plymptoons.com.

I went to Annecy with mixed emotions this year—after all, it was a year of major changes.

The iconic Bonlieu Centre, where all the action usually takes place, was being torn down to be replaced by a larger and hopefully more beautiful structure. Some say the new theater complex will be finished next year and some say in two years—who knows, with French construction workers.

The other new kink was the fact that celebrated artistic director Serge Bromberg was leaving after fifteen wonderful years, to be replaced by Marcel Jean. So, naturally, I felt that this would be a transitional year.

My wife Sandrine and I arrived just in time to go to the opening night event, taking place in the freshly-constructed hybrid tent cinema. The opening film was the long anticipated Pixar sequel Monsters University, directed by Dan Scanlon, along with the new Pixar short Blue Umbrella. The latter six-minute short by Saschka Unseld had a very different look from all of the former Pixar shorts, a lot more realistic, and the love story involving two colored umbrellas in a rainstorm has certain similarities to last year’s Oscar winner, Paperman.

Monsters University was a bit disappointing—for me there were too many extraneous characters to get emotionally involved, and the colors, especially the backgrounds on the campus grounds, were too neon-bright, which made it hard to enjoy the beautiful design and follow the characters.

The next morning I had a panel about crowdfunding and Kickstarter. Like a similar panel I hosted at Stuttgart, it was a packed house. After years of sucking off the government teat, the Europeans are mad for a more democratic, and perhaps hassle-free, way for raising money to make films.

Bill Plympton with his son Lucas Plympton

Tuesday afternoon was the Competition Shorts creening #2, and my film Drunker Than a Skunk was in that group, so Sandrine and I needed to attend to present the film. The program started off promisingly enough—meaning that the films were not that good and hence the audience would love our film. All the early films in the program were abstract or avant-garde, therefore not crowd-pleasers. Then came Remi Vandenitte’s Betty’s Blues, a wonderful ode to Southern blues music that had a terrific style. Then Drunker came on and we received a very nice reaction. We felt we were looking good for Awards Night.

But, later in the program, came Chris Landreth’s unmemorably named Subconscious Password, a totally delightful and bold CG film starring Chris and the enigmatic John Dilworth. Then and there, I knew our awards chances flew out the window. Oh well, once I knew I didn’t have to worry about awards, I could just enjoy the week and relax.

My next event was a work-in-progress screening of my new feature, Cheatin’. There was a really good buzz going about this film, so tickets were hard to get and a lot of people asked me to sneak them in.

I showed some pencil tests and finished scenes, drew some of the character designs and talked about the production. The audience applauded throughout (which I loved) and then I moved to a table just outside the exit, next to a beautiful creek, and gave everyone in line a free sketch, which took about an hour.

For the past seven years, I’ve been presenting the “Annecy Plus” show, first with Pat Smith, and now with Nik and Nancy Phelps. It’s been a smashing success. This year, we were forced to relocate the popular event to the wonderful Café des Arts in Old Town. We promoted the hell out of it, and the weather was perfect so we had high hopes for a big success. Unfortunately, there was no movie screen!

Jonas Raeber, the projectionist and sound man, was able to “borrow” two large sheets from his hotel. Another problem: the door with access to the balcony, where we wanted to hang the sheets, was locked with no key. So, a drunk Indian animator volunteered to leap from an open window across to the balcony—a real Jackie Chan-type moment. I had visions of a terrible accident, and me spending three years in French courts fighting a lawsuit, but the dashing Indian succeeded, and he had free beers all night.

Nik Phelps and his band kicked off the evening with some lively music, and we began the show. Then, the next tragedy struck. Even though Virginia, the proprietor of the bar, had received permission from the city council to hold a late-night screening, there was a rave the night before and it created such a ruckus that her permit was revoked. Thus, we had to turn the sound off at 10p.m., and the problem with that was that it didn’t get dark until 9:30. As a result, the audience only heard one out of the four programs—the last three were silent. Quel dommage.

Bill Plympton with Titmouse’s Chris Prynoski

However, there was enough beer and wine for everyone, and a good time was had by all. The Annecy Plus winning film, by the way, was Super by Johan Klungel. As for the main Annecy awards show, it was a happy affair with nice weather, and Serge showed up to give out the awards with Marcel Jean. The big winner of the evening, and justifiably so, was Subconscious Password by Chris Landreth. He gave a fantastic speech, then we all went to party at the Palais, where I visited with Eric Goldberg, Bill Kroyer, Chris Prynoski of Titmouse Studios, Dominique Puthod (the president of the festival), Chel White, and Michaela Pavlatova, last year’s winner with Tram.

The best news was that everyone was talking about Cheatin’, so chances are good it will be in competition next year in Annecy. See you all there!

Dominique Puthod (Annecy Festival President), his wife Catherine, Bill and
Sandrine Plympton

Pixar’s Monsters University opened with a powerful first-place finish in the United States. The Dan Scanlon-directed film nabbed an estimated $82 million in its opening weekend, which makes it the second-biggest Pixar opening ever behind Toy Story 3′s $110.3M opening in 2010. The real test will be next weekend: will the film decline in the mid-40% range as Toy Story 3 did or will it drop over 60% as Cars 2 did? Overseas, Monsters University opened in approximately three dozen international territories with an international cume of $54.5M, also good enough for a first place finish. After one weekend, the film’s total gross is $136.5M.

Meanwhile, as expected, Monsters University pummelled Blue Sky’s Epic at the American box office. Epic plunged a massive 72.5% percent for an estimated fifth-weekend total of $1.7M. The film finally crawled its way across the $100M mark, but it will now certainly end up as Blue Sky’s lowest grossing film in the U.S., and among its lowest grossing films internationally.

Pixar’s fourteenth feature film, Monsters University, opens this weekend in the U.S. and many other countries. The film, directed by Dan Scanlon, is playing better with audiences, who have given it a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, than with critics, whose reviews currently stand at 77% positive. In the New York Times review, Manohla Dargis offers the typical dissenting viewpoint that suggests Pixar has been unable to fix the clumsy and cliched storytelling that had mired the studio’s previous two efforts:

[T]he story remains disappointingly familiar, mired in recycled buddy movie dynamics and the usual child-developmental directives about finding yourself and learning to work well with others. Both the originality and stirring emotional complexity of Monsters, Inc., with its exquisitely painful and touching parallels with the human world, are missing…

The feature is accompanied by a new photorealistic Pixar short, The Blue Umbrella, directed by Saschka Unseld. Check out both films and report back here with your opinion in the comments below. As always, this talkback is open only to those who have seen the film and wish to share an opinion about it.

(Monsters University billboard via Daily Billboard)

This afternoon, Disney announced release dates for all of its animated features produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar through 2018. The two studios will be responsible for fifteen theatrical releases over the next six years. During the previous six-year period (2007-2012), Disney and Pixar released a total of 12 films.

Here’s what we know so far based on available information:

• Pixar’s Monsters University – June 21, 2013

(via @ERCboxoffice and /Film)

Many people online have already criticized the premise of Monsters University, which appears to want to be both a raunchy college life movie and a safe children’s film. Promotional tie-ins don’t lie though, and this Huggies promo with its euphemistic “Big Kid” language, suggests that Monsters University will be neutered enough creatively that parents will still feel good about wrapping their children’s asses in characters from the film.

Click image to biggify.

Google is celebrating the birthday of graphic designer Saul Bass (1920-1996) with a classy animated tribute on their homepage to Bass’s famous film title sequences including Vertigo, The Man with the Golden Arm, Around the World in 80 Days and West Side Story. The piece was designed and directed by Matt Cruickshank who offers some behind-the-scenes production details on his blog.

It’s a busy time for Cruickshank, who is also the illustrator of the new Monsters University Golden Book that will be released next week. It’s available as a pre-order on Amazon for $3.59.

Here it is, the brand-new “official” full length trailer (#2) for Pixar’s summer release, Monsters University.

Those kids at Pixar sure know how to advertise a film. Today they launched an authentic-looking Monsters University college website, more than eight months before the release of the Monsters, Inc. prequel. It’s a lovingly detailed exercise in universe building, complete with a full map of the university campus, a faculty page, and, of course, the chance to buy MU gear.

The trailer for Pixar’s Monsters University directed by Dan Scanlon. Pixar cut three additional versions of the trailer that can be seen on iTunes, Yahoo Movies and HuffPost.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 21 comments | Post tags: Dan Scanlon, Monsters University

Among the many movies discussed at Disney’s D23 conference (we’re most excited about ‘Monsters University,” the prequel to the beloved “Monsters, Inc.” As the title suggests, the film will focus on Mike and Sulley at school way... Read the rest of this post