Poster and New Clip for Monsters U Short, Party Central

Pixar might not be releasing a feature film this year, but that doesn't mean they're just sitting it out; the studio will release the Monsters University short film, Party Central, before Muppets Most Wanted later this month! And to get us hyped for that, Fandango has a new poster and clip.

4th Annual A113Animation Awards Results

It feels strangely surreal that our little animation blog has been going long enough to be at its 4th annual Awards, but here we are. 2012 was an incredibly strong year for animation, 2013 was less strong. There were some really good animated films released last year, but far fewer great ones than in previous years. As opposed to last year, then, there wasn't much of a spread of awards this year; one film dominated, and you'll never guess which one... So, check out the results below: the winners are in bold and there's a breakdown of who won what and why at the bottom.

4th Annual A113Animation Award Nominations

New logo designed by Damien Chevrier.

It's that time of year again; we're in the throe of awards season glitz and self-congratulation - and loving every minute of it! So, it's time for us here at A113Animation to get in on the act, with our 4th Annual A113Animation Awards! The winners will be announced on Saturday 15th February, and here's the list of what's nominated (it's a slightly different line-up of awards from last year, but broadly the same).

Frozen Wins Big at the Annie Awards

Disney's hot streak with Frozen is continuing into awards season now. The icy musical, which has now made $864 million worldwide (making it the third highest-grossing film of 2013), had a strong showing at the 41st Annie Awards (animation's self-titled "highest honour") a couple of nights ago, taking home, amongst other awards, Best Animated Feature! Check out our full breakdown of the results after the jump.

Why I Stopped Caring About Award Shows

By now, you've already learned that Monsters University was not nominated in the Best Animated Feature category for the Academy Awards. And that the same thing happened for the Golden Globes. Judging by the reactions I saw on twitter among animation fans, I would say there's a very good chance you are angry about this. Well, I'm not. Because I stopped caring about award shows. It wasn't always like that; there was a time when I cared about the Oscars and the Golden Globes. That wasn't so long ago, but it's now a thing of the past. No, it's not a sad story.

BAFTA Nominees Are In: Frozen, Monsters U and Despicable Me 2 Vie for Animation Prize

The nominations for the 67th British Academy Film Awards (or BAFTAs, because nobody wants to say that mouthful) were announced earlier today, and the animation nominees are a lot less contentious than those chosen by the Golden Globes.

First Look: Monsters U Short Party Central; Now Attached to Muppets Most Wanted

Pixar have released the first look at their upcoming Monsters University-based short film, Party Central, which was formerly going to play before The Good Dinosaur in theatres. Now that The Good Dinosaur has been pushed back to November 2015, Party Central will play with Muppets Most Wanted on 21st March.

2014 Critics' Choice Nominations Revealed

Awards season is starting to gear up now, and you'll be happy to hear, after the somewhat controversial Golden Globe nominations last week, that the nominations for the 2014 Critics' Choice Awards are a lot more in line with what we were expecting. That is to say, Pixar's Monsters University and Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises, notable omissions from the Globes, are both included in the animation line-up. Check the full list of five nominees for Best Animated Feature below.

Annie Nominations: Frozen and Monsters University Lead the Pack

The Awards season is upon us and the Annies have taken the lead, announcing their nominations for outstanding achievements in the animation field. For animation fans, this is the only time we can see animated films get rewarded in multiple categories, instead of just the usual "Best Animated Feature." Here's a full breakdown of the nominations for both production and individual categories in theatrical films:

Frozen, The Wind Rises, Monsters U and 16 More Submitted for Oscar Consideration

AMPAS have announced the 19 animated film that are in contention for a nomination for Best Animated Feature at the upcoming 86th Academy Awards. Among the contenders are the likely big-name frontrunners: Disney's upcoming Frozen, Miyazaki's final film, The Wind Rises, and Pixar's latest, Monsters University; there are also smaller scale films, like French animated pic, Ernest & Celestine (which won the Best Animated Film gong at the César Awards, the French equivalent to the Oscars, back in February). Check out the full list of films submitted for consideration below, complete with their Rotten Tomatoes score (current at the time of writing), where there is one.

Monsters University Coming to DVD/Blu-ray on 29th October (US)

Monsters University is coming to DVD and Blu-ray in just over a couple of months (in America anyway)! The studio's fourteenth feature film, which has been met with a generally positive response, will hit home video on 29th October.

The A113Animation Podcast, Episode 3 - Monsters University

Episode 3 of A113Animation's flagship - and for that matter, lone - podcast is now online! We were going to have the full team this week, but that plan went somewhat awry. Nonetheless, Damien's back this week, and joining him and me on the show is our live-action Disney writer, Nadine! The three of us reviewed Pixar's latest offering, Monsters University (which has only just arrived on all of our shores this month), along with some chatter about recent animated trailers (yes, so there's less griping about Disney's lack of Frozen promotion!). We also dip into the world of giant robots and aliens for a brief discussion of Pacific Rim, too.

As usual, enjoy the show, get in touch and, if you're particularly moved by the show, you could always help us out by heading on over to our Support page. The episode is available on Podomatic now, and will be appearing in our iTunes feed and Stitcher playlist very soon.

This Week on A113Animation (8th - 14th July, 2013)

This was a pretty mammoth week for animation news. Disney managed to both enrage and delight us, with some irritating release dates and remake news vs. exciting trailers and intriguing plot details; there were a few magnificent trailers, some intense posters, a crackpot theory and more! We've also got your latest Disney Retrospective and Futurama, A Swan Song columns, and a review of Pixar's Monsters University! Check out links to the past seven days of A113Animation shakings and happenings below.

Monsters University Review - Pixar Scares Up Some Laughs, Twists and a Lot of Fun

*This review is largely spoiler free, and most plot-details mentioned are evident in the trailers, but read cautiously if you haven’t seen the film yet*

Pixar are the gold standard of animation. Once upon a time that was Disney, and if all stays as is it might well be again sometime in the near future, but since 1995, Pixar have been fully leading the animation revolution. We've gone from a time when Disney was more or less the only source of feature animation, to a time when there's about a dozen mainstream animation studios. That's thanks to Pixar. Toy Story was a complete game-changer - revolutionary both visually and thematically - and since then the studio have created classics like The Incredibles and Up. Since 2011 and Cars 2 though, it seems faith in the studio has been broken: that film was widely panned, Brave got a much harsher reception than it deserved, and their fourteenth feature film, Monsters University, has been received - while rather more warmly than the previous two films - to a kind of glum acceptance unfitting of a Pixar film.

An editorial Munir wrote recently has stayed with me; Pixar haven't lost a step, they're not slumping, they're not making poor films, but it is undeniable that their last three films aren't their greatest. The key line, I thought, was "Toy Story 3 is Pixar's Lion King," meaning, once you have reached the absolute pinnacle of creative, critical and commercial success, there's nowhere to go but down. So, while Monsters University is not Pixar's finest film, while it's not as good or as groundbreaking as Monsters, Inc. was 12 years ago, it is still a fine piece of cinema, a testament to great storytelling, and proof that Pixar isn't going anywhere fast.

Do All Pixar Films Exist in the Same Universe? Well, No, But this Theory's Magnificent.

I'd say it's extremely unlikely that you haven't thought about the possibility that the talking fish of Finding Nemo exist in the same universe as the talking rats of Ratatouille or the talking insects of A Bug's Life. In fact, a lot of Pixar's filmography could well be interlinked. Well, Cars kinda scuppers all of that... But nonetheless, I doubt you've thought about in as much detail or as cripplingly hilarious a fashion as Jon Negroni.

According to Negroni's "Pixar Theory", which is making the rounds online, A Bug's Life is post-apocalyptic, Monsters, Inc. is set in the distant future and the witch from Brave is actually a time-travelling Boo looking for Sulley through time and scattering Easter eggs to help him find her. Oh, and "Wall-E is basically Robot Jesus". The theory is so massively extensive, at least some of it has to be true... right?

Check out the hilariously ridiculous and ridiculously hilarious theory in all its extensive glory here.

This Was a Big Weekend for Despicable Me 2

While Monsters University started the week as the number 1 film in the US, it was usurped by another animated film this weekend, as Illumination's Despicable Me 2 took the top spot. The film, which had already been playing in foreign territories, including the UK, opened at #1, with an estimated $82.5 million haul over the weekend. That's impressively about on par with Pixar's mammoth hit, Monsters University. Factor into that the fact that Despicable Me 2 was made for allegedly about $200 million less than Monsters U, and this is a very good result for Illumination's parent company, Universal.

Editorial: In Defence of Pixar -- Why Their "Decline" is Completely OK

While this editorial may seem like a contradiction to my previous one - where I condemned how critics seem to give a passing grade to every animated film whether they're good or bad, and how we need to demand better films from animation studios instead of being content with "fun" stuff - when it comes to Pixar, critics (and, in parts the audience too) have been particularly harsh towards as of late. Not that I think Pixar needs any defence, since they can do that themselves, or that we, as an audience, or film critics need to cut them some slack because they're Pixar and we need to take their side no matter what, but I want to share with you why some of this criticism is unfounded and, in many instances, malicious.

Monsters University Holds On Strong at US Box Office

Monsters University opened in a massive way for Pixar, providing their fourteenth #1 North American box office opening weekend, and it seems to be continuing down that impressive course. The film once again had the top spot this weekend, taking an estimated $46.2 million. That's a 44% drop from last week, but that's the smallest second week drop for the studio in recent years; Toy Story 3 dropped 45.5%; Cars 2, 60.3%; Brave, 48.6%.

The continued strength of the film means that Monsters U has already grossed about $170 million domestically, and close to $300 million worldwide. Bear in mind, that's also without having even opened in several territories, including the UK and France. Monsters University seems poised to be another colossal hit for Disney and Pixar. Meanwhile, Disney executives are currently drooling thinking about how much Finding Dory will make...

Figures via Box Office Mojo.

This Week on A113Animation (24th - 30th June, 2013)

While news wasn't particularly heavy this week, we did have a lot of cool blog content for you. As well as the 24th week of Munir's Disney Retrospective, we had the 2nd week of Damien's final Futurama countdown; Mayra reviewed My Neighbor Totoro on Blu-ray; I posted an list of 5 animated sequels that should get made; not to mention that episode 2 of the A113Animation Podcast finally came online. That, in addition to a trailer, some clips and featurettes, more release date news and some good ole Pixar stuff, mean this was still a pretty fun week here on A113Animation.

Ed Catmull Promises Fewer Pixar Sequels, "An Original Film a Year"

Pixar have been getting quite the reputation as sequel-mongers as of late; the bad rep comes from the fact that for 14 years they produced only one sequel, but have released a subsequent three follow-ups in the last 3 years. And of course Cars 2 didn't help matters (I very much liked the film, but it is unquestionably not as stellar as the studio's classics like WALL-E or Toy Story - a sign to many that quality was slipping over in Emeryville). While Brave has been the lone original film sandwiched between a sequel and a prequel in recent years, Pixar president Ed Catmull promises - as if their almost entirely original upcoming slate wasn't indication enough - that the studio is reining back on sequels again, but that they are still part of the plan going forward.