Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/22819
POST’S OSCAR PICKS Pixar’s Toy Story and DreamWorks’ Megamind are just two of the films that will duke it out for Best Animated Picture. Steve Carrell’s Eastern European accent as Gru, the heartless thief who morphs into a doting dad.Throw in Julie Andrews’ plummy English tones and you get a smart, funny and charming 3D kiddie tale that got rave reviews and which turned into a huge $250 million hit in the US. Warner’s Legend of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga’hoole , based on the children’s book series, is a much darker tale — more like Animal Farm meets The Lord of the Rings by way of Braveheart. Directed by Zack Sny- der, who does for owls and feathers what he did for Greeks and armor in 300, the film uses lush 3D animation from the team be- hind the ‘07 hit and Golden Globe-winner Happy Feet . Shot in Australia, it features voiceovers from such stars as Helen Mirren and Geoffrey Rush, but despite good re- views, it failed to ignite the box office. Walt Disney Animation Studios had better results with its film Tangled, which took a big team of animators, software en- gineers and a new program, Dynamic Wires, to create the 70 feet of hair that trails behind Rapunzel. DreamWorks Animation is also behind Megamind, a clever twist on all the comic superhero stories, where the super-villain both wins the day and gets the girl. Imagine a world where Lex Luthor defeats Super- man and wins the heart of Lois Lane and you get some idea of how Megamind, which was directed in 3D by Madagascar helmer Tom McGrath and which features the voices of Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt,Tina Fey, David Cross and Jonah Hill, both pays homage to comic book conventions and subverts them at the same time. Of course, not all the likely contenders are big-budget studio efforts. My Dog Tulip, based on the beloved 1956 memoir by British writer J.R.Ackerley about an adopted 26 Post • January 2011 dog, was made by well-regarded filmmakers Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, who used French software TVPaint to create over 60,000 drawings and a painterly look to the film’s detailed post-war London settings that is very different from the shiny CG surfaces of other contenders. And an Oscar-friendly all- star cast (Christopher Plummer, Isabella Rossellini and the late Lynn Redgrave) for the voiceovers can’t hurt. Tales From Earth- sea, directed by Goro Miyazaki, son of Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese master behind Ponyo, Princess Mononoke and Oscar-winner Spirited Away, features gorgeous dream- scapes, and the voices of Timothy Dalton and Willem Dafoe. VISUAL EFFECTS Oscar has always gone for the truly spectacular in this category. Recent winners include The Lord of the Rings franchise, Spi- der-Man 2 and Benjamin B utton. While Avatar was the no-brainer win in this cate- gory last year, the picture looks less clear- cut this year. But Chris Nolan’s visual effects tour-de-force Inception probably has the edge. Nolan has always loved pushing the technical limits of filmmaking, as Inception perfectly demonstrates. All 500 visual ef- fects were done by Double Negative in London, with Paul Franklin, who co- founded Double Negative, acting as the vi- sual effects supervisor. Always a big fan of in-camera effects, the film combined a lot of unusual rigs — including several sets that could rotate 360 degrees for the famous “floating corridor” sequence — with CG. But the new Fox 3D/2D release The Chronicles of Narnia:The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third in the franchise, might give Inception a run for its money. Directed by Michael Apted, who’s helmed such big stu- dio hits as the Academy Award-winning Coal Miner’s Daughter, (see our interview with Apted in the December issue), the film has nearly 1,400 visual effects shots, which were divided up between five visual effects houses in London where post was based — MPC, which did 70 percent of the shots, Frame- store, Cinesite, The Mill and The Senate. DreamWorks’ Shrek Forever Afterhas a shot. www.postmagazine.com