Tag: awards

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David Oyelowo, The LEGO Movie big snubs of Oscars

SelmaOscar nominations came out this morning (with a little help from J.J. Abrams as a presenter) and the main story seem to be how very, very male and white they are. The most noteworthy snub? Civil rights drama Selma, which earned a Best Picture and Best Song nomination, despite nothing for director Ava DuVernay or the cast, led by Rebels’ David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. The saddest thing, maybe? Shutting out one movie is all it took to whitewash the acting nominations.

The other big snub? The LEGO Movie, which is up for Best Song (‘Everything is Awesome’) but totally shut out of Best Animated Feature. At least one of the directors has a good attitude about it.

But as usual, the only field that’s heavy in genre is Visual Effects, which sees nods for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, Interstellar, X-Men: Days of Future Past.

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John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi wins a tie-in award

kenobi245The Scribe Awards, put on by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, have been awarding tie-in writing for the past eight years. This year, John Jackson Miller won the Speculative Novel category for Kenobi.

Several Star Wars books have been nominated for the awards before (including Miller himself) this is the first Star Wars win, though Star Wars authors Alan Dean Foster, A. C. Crispin and Kevin J. Anderson have all been honored as Grandmasters.

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The Clone Wars gets 2 Annie nominations

The Clone Wars Season Five

While we are eagerly awaiting news of how the bonus content for The Clone Wars will take shape, the show picked up nominations for the 41st Annie Awards, given out for the best in animation. Announced by ASIFA-Hollywood, nominations for The Clone Wars included two individual achievement categories: Keith Kellogg for Character Animation in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production and Jason W.A. Tucker for Editorial in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production. The nominations were released today, and the award winners will be announced in February.

Our frequent interviewee Michael Price, writer of the LEGO Star Wars specials earned a nomination for Writing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production for his work on The Simpsons. Juried awards have already been announced, including the Winsor McCay Awards to Steven Spielberg and Phil Tippett.

ILM also continued its streak of Annie award nominations, with four nominations, three of them in a single category of Animated Effects in a Live Action Production (two different teams for Star Trek Into Darkness and one for Pacific Rim). Another Pacific Rim ILM team got a nomination for Character Animation in a Live Action Production.

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The Clone Wars wins Daytime Emmys for Best Animated Show and David Tennant’s guest spot

The 40th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards - Press Room

The Clone Wars brought home the gold at the Daytime Emmys, presented over this past weekend, taking home two awards: Outstanding Special Class Animated Program, and Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for David Tennant as the voice of Huyang, the droid who mentors Jedi younglings in constructing lightsabers.

At the main Daytime Emmy presentation on Sunday, Carrie Fisher presented the Animated Program award to George Lucas, Dave Filoni, Cary Silver and Athena Portillo for the Animated Program win. Fisher did slip in reference to dropping acid, while George had his own slip of the tongue.

David Tennant’s award was given out on Friday at the Creative Arts presentation and Dave Filoni remarked on Tennant’s tenure on Doctor Who as a reason to cast him as the droid: “I absolutely loved what David Tenant was doing on Doctor Who. There was such a quizzical nature to his character, a sense of whimsy, but he could still get very powerful emotion out of the character — a lot of intensity, a lot of anger — just an incredible display of range.”

After switching to Saturday mornings for its final season, The Clone Wars was eligible for Daytime Emmys and earned seven nominations after the show’s cancellation.

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The Clone Wars earns seven daytime Emmy nominations

Hondo and Obi-wan

Despite being cancelled, Star Wars: The Clone Wars has earned seven Emmy nominations for daytime entertainment. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences released the list of daytime Emmy nominations today, and The Clone Wars picked up nominations in several categories, giving Cartoon Network 7 out of its 11 nominations:

  • Outstanding Special Class Animated Program for George Lucas, Executive Producer; Cary Silver, Producer; and Athena Portillo, Line Producer (alongside Dan Vs. and The Legend of Korra)
  • Three nominations for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program: Jim Cummings (for voicing Hondo Ohnaka), David Tennant (for voicing Huyang), and Sam Witwer (for voicing Darth Maul) – taking up half the nominations in this category!
  • Outstanding Directing in an Animated Program for Supervising Director Dave Filoni and Directors Kyle Dunlevy, Brian Kalin O’Connell, Steward Lee, & Bosco Ng (against Dan Vs., The Legend of Korra, The Penguins of Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness
  • Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition for Composer Kevin Kiner
  • Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing – Animation for David Acord, Re-Recording Mixer & Cameron Davis, Dialogue Recordist

Just putting it all into perspective: The top nominated show was The Young and the Restless with 23 nominations, and Sesame Street picked up 17 nominations, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show earned 10. But when compared to other animated shows, The Clone Wars is tied at the top with Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness with seven each. And a shout out to Cash Cab for its two nominations – woohoo!

Let’s hope that The Clone Wars takes home some Emmy gold in June, when the winners are announced.

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Other worlds: The Nebula noms are in

The Killing Moon by N.K. JemisinAwards. The finalist list for the Nebulas was released yesterday, and I’ve read… Exactly one of the novels. (The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin. It was okay, but I found the sequel much more engaging. Still, not a bad book at all.) So, no idea who will win, and I won’t even guess at the rest. I am likewise ignorant on the Andre Norton nominees, but I do have two of them on my to-read shelf.

I’m not much one for short fiction, but if you are, the SF Signal link above has links to the lions share of novelette and short story nominees.

As for the Bradbury (Dramatic Presentation,) the selections are The Avengers, Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Cabin in the Woods, The Hunger Games, John Carter (?!?) and Looper. Alrighty then.

Controversy. With the Ender’s Game adaptation on the horizon and author Orson Scott Card’s anti-gay views in the news news due to protest of his involvement in a Superman anthology, Summit has a bit of a marketing challenge on their hands.

Game of Thrones. The season two Blu-rays of the HBO series are out now – what lurks in the extras? And is a second Westeros series in the cards?

Adaptations. SyFy is aiming for Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle, while Heathers and Mean Girls alums are taking the reins of the Vampire Academy movie. One of these projects is doomed, and sadly it’s not the one about a vampire academy.

Oh hey, books! io9 lists the SF/F books you can’t afford to miss this month, and writer Charlie Jane Anders is really into Karen Lord’s maybe-ex-Star Trek-fanfic The Best of All Possible Worlds. If you’re thus intrigued, here’s 50 pages to read right now.

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Lucasfilm, ILM nabs a few pre-Oscar awards

RedTails-image-award-lucasIn the land of not-Star Wars, Lucasfilm picked up a couple awards last weekend:

Red Tails won the NAACP Image award for Outstanding Motion Picture, beating out others such as Flight and Django Unchained. In a video clip from the event, George Lucas shares why he produced the WWII action film about the Tuskegee Airmen.

While the Annie Awards were dominated by wins for Wreck-It Ralph and Dragons: Riders of Berk, a team from Industrial Light and Magic won for Outstanding Achievement, Animated Effects in a Live Action Production: Jerome Platteaux, John Sigurdson, Ryan Hopkins, Raul Essig, and Mark Chataway won for their work on The Avengers. Also in the running, we had The Clone Wars crew with four nominations and LEGO Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Out with one nomination.

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Ewan McGregor nabs surprise Golden Globes nom

It seems like Salmon Fishing in the Yemen flew mostly under the radar this year, so there was plenty of surprise when it received 3 Golden Globe nominations – most notably, for our purposes, best actor in a comedy or musical for Ewan McGregor.

McGregor is up again Jack Black (Bernie,) Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook,) Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables,) and Bill Murray (Hyde Park on Hudson.)

The Golden Globes nominations are, per usual, very slight on genre.

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Several Annie nominations for The Clone Wars, ILM, LEGO Star Wars team

The nominations for the 40th annual Annie Awards, showcasing the best in animation, were announced today, with a few nominations headed towards Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Joel Aron got a nomination for individual achievement for Animated Effects in an Animated Production (for the second year in a row).

Sam Witwer was nominated for voice acting for his role as Darth Maul in the season four finale ‘Revenge,’ while Keith Kellogg was a nominee for Character Animation in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production. The season five premiere, ‘Revival,’ was granted a nomination for Jason Tucker for Editorial in an Animated Television Production. The judges do love Maul.

Threshold Animation Studios earned an nomination for Best Animated Television Production For Children with their LEGO Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Out, that aired back in September. See… more love for Maul! (Don’t forget our interview with writer Michael Price!)

LegoSW_Annie_Nom

Meanwhile, two teams from ILM got nominations for Animated Effects in a Live Action Production: The crews that worked on The Avengers and Battleship. Another ILM team was a nominee for Thor’s abs and Hawkeye’s butt Character Animation in a Live Action Production for The Avengers.

Overall, Disney and Pixar picked up a handful of nominations across the board, including 3 Best Picture noms for Brave, Wreck-It Ralph, and Frankenweenie. On the TV side, DreamWorks’ Dragons: The Riders of Berk snagged a slew of nominations for its crew.

“I am very excited about this year’s slate of nominees!” ASIFA-Hollywood president, Frank Gladstone, said in a statement. “We had more submissions to choose from this year than for any prior year in Annie Award history, running the gamut from big studio features to indie films, television series to internet shows, games, shorts and, for the first time, student films, all showcasing the huge variety of venues, creativity, technical innovation, and story-telling that our art form has to offer.”

The 40th Annual Annie Awards will take place on February 2, 2013 at UCLA and are selected and presented by the International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood.