Burying the lead - Dreamworks Animation to make CGI/traditional hybrid!

The Hollywood Reporter is um... reporting that Dreamworks has lined it the three main vocal cast members for a newly-announced upcoming animated film.  The picture, entitled Me and My Shadow, concerns the plight of a shadow (Bill Hader) who grows tired of being attached to human Stanley Grubb (Josh Gadd). To quote the piece, "When a crime in the shadow community puts both of their lives in danger, Stan is forced to take control of Stanley, thrusting both of them into an adventure featuring a shadowy villain, who intends to lead a rebellion to take over the human world."  Kate Hudson will play Grubb's would-be love interest and I'll do my best to roll my eyes at a female character once again being merely described as 'the love interest'.  It will be directed by Mark Dindal, who is best known for directing the best non-Pixar animated film of the 2000s, The Emperor's New Groove (edit - I was too focused on American toons.  Spirited Away is arguably one of the best animated films ever).  Anyway, Me and My Shadow comes out November 13th, 2013.  What is buried halfway down the article is this golden nugget, something that should make animation fans take notice of this project in a big way:

2011 year-end wrap-up part I: The Underrated.

 This is the first of several year-end wrap essays detailing the year in film.  First up, here are ten films that qualify as 'underrated'.  Some of them are good, if not great films, that were unfairly maligned.  Others were mediocrities that nonetheless did not deserve the level of scorn which they received and/or had content that was worth pointing out and praising within the flawed final product.  As always, they are in alphabetical order, with one special mention at the end for the 'most underrated film of 2011'.  I'm sure anyone who has been reading me this year can guess which film that is...

He's complex. She's a bitch. The implicit double-standard of 'unsympathetic' female characters.

I've long discussed, usually in the context of another topic, about how female film characters are judged on a far harsher sliding morality scale than their male counterparts.  The upcoming release of Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody's Young Adult, which basically plays like a classic anti-hero Oscar-bait dramedy except for the fact that the anti-hero is female, will be an interesting test case.  Had the film starred a popular male star, its quality would likely place it among the current Oscar front-runners.  But two days before release, it has been more-or-less absent from the Oscar talk. Male characters get to be selfish oafs, immature man-children, and all manner of criminals, but as long as they learn a lesson in the end and/or are doing their misdeeds for a noble cause (usually a pretty girl, a kid, or an animal), they are let off the moral hook.  But female characters are rarely allowed to be villains, and almost never allowed to be complex antagonists.  Moreover, in mainstream films, all a female character has to do to earn the wrath of critics (and audiences?) and/or be declared a villain is basically have a three-dimensional personality. And more often than not, the actresses themselves are often judged not entirely on the quality of their performance, but also on the relative morality of the character they are portraying.   

Weekend Box Office (05/08/11): Thor grosses $65.7m, Fast Five crashes, and other debuts perform well.

It's a $65.7 million weekend for Thor (review), giving the Marvel adventure pic a solid 2.6x weekend multiplier. It's kinda scary how accurately we can now predict opening weekend grosses just based on the midnight number, but the math once again worked (Thor did 5% of its weekend gross via Thursday midnight sneaks, per usual). Anyway, Marvel was successful at keeping expectations low, saying that anything over $60 million would be a win. And it more-or-less is. The film played heavily 3D, which meant higher ticket prices and the like. I heard plenty of anecdotal stories about moviegoers unable to find a convenient 2D location, which may be part of a depressing trend as the 'summer of 3D' unfolds. But the film had a solid weekend multiplier (if you discount the $3.25 million worth of midnight sneaks, the film's Friday and Saturday figures were pretty even) and decent word of mouth. It earned a B+ from Cinemascore, with an A from those under 18.