AFF co-hosted the Austin premiere of Robert De Niro's new film, The Good Shepherd, last night at the Regal Metropolitan. The turn out was great and while we co-hosted the screening, AFF members still got priority seating for the film. To find out how you can be a member of AFF, click here.
AFF is happy to announce that Scott Alexander (pictured at the 2003 AFF) will be returning to Austin for the 2007 Conference. Scott's credits include Problem Child, Agent Cody Banks, Screwed and the upcoming 1408, starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, scheduled for release in 2007.Together with his writing partner, Larry Karaszewski, they have also written three of the best bio pics of the 1990s, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon, and Ed Wood.
According to Kaiju Shakedown, The Weinstein Company recently bought all English-language rights to Shinya Tsukamoto's NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE. The film had it's US Premiere at AFF in October.
DRAMA
"Babel" *
"The Queen"
ACTRESS (DRAMA)
Helen Mirren - "The Queen"
MUSICAL OR COMEDY
"Little Miss Sunshine" *
ACTRESS (MUSICAL OR COMEDY)
Toni Collette - "Little Miss Sunshine"*
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Adriana Barraza - "Babel"*
Rinko Kikuchi - "Babel"*
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Brad Pitt - "Babel"*
DIRECTOR SCREENPLAY *screened as part of our year-around AFF Membership Screening program
Stephen Frears - "The Queen"
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu - "Babel"*
"Babel"- Guillermo Arriaga*
"The Queen" - Peter Morgan
You might recall the AFF trailers from 04 and 05 involving an animated Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, they were both animated by Austin animator, Dano Johnson. Since then, he has gone on to form Collection Agency Films with producer Troy Campbell where they have done animated ads for Kinky Friedman's campaign and an award-winning short called Tall Tales and Other Big Lies (based on a story by musician Ray Wylie Hubbard). Tall Tales can now be seen on the Frederator podcast and has also been recently adapted into a comic book.
As if that wasn't enough, they also did the video for the New York Dolls single, "Dance Like a Monkey" and it recenly took home the Best Animated Video Award from the Bradford Animation Festival.
Dano is also animating a new adaptation of Edwin A. Abbott's novel, Flatland.
Below is the "official" word on the big win....
Austin's Collection Agency Films Collects UK Animation Award
“Dance Like a Monkey” brings home
Best Animated Music Video Award from 2006 Bradford Animation Festival
Austin animation house Collection Agency Films won best animated music video at the 2006 Bradford Animation Festival in England on Saturday, November 18th. Their film, “Dance Like a Monkey”, is a music video for the New York Dolls' new album “One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This.”
Producer Troy Campbell accepted the award in Bradford, where he took a break from his European concert tour. “Everyone at the festival was so nice. I felt treated like a star!” The annual celebration of animation is the longest-running and largest animation festival in the UK“Dance Like a Monkey” was one of 5 animated music videos in competition and was the only nominee from the United States. “A brilliant visual interpretation of the spirit of the music,” said the BAF webpage.
Director and animator Dano Johnson received a text message from Campbell Saturday night that simply read, “we won! we won! you are a star here!” Johnson couldn't believe the good news. “I was pretty surprised, especially since we were up against great videos for the Gorillaz, Wolf Parade, and Smog. But this validates all the late nights of hard work. I'm incredibly proud of our talented team and I can't thank the New York Dolls enough for giving us this chance!”
The video came about when Troy Campbell's friend Darren Hill, manager of the Dolls, approached Collection Agency Films about doing an animated music video. After phone conferences with David Johansen, lead singer of the New York Dolls, Dano and Troy won their confidence with a humorous and satirical concept. Dano recalls, “When listening to the song, which has lots of clever references to the evolution/creationism/intellige
The video was animated early in the summer of 2006. Cameron Petri illustrated the main sets and characters, while Maura Murnane provided illustrations for the video's montage sequence. Dano Johnson animated and composited the video, while 'Heart of Texas' animator R. Don Smith animated David Johansen's simian likeness. Despite fatal computer crashes and sleep-deprivation, the video was a resounding success, eliciting approval from the label, the band, and fans.
“We're big fans of the Dolls, so it was incredible to be a part of their first album in 30 years,” Campbell remarked. “This video was so much fun to make. Who doesn't like dancing monkeys? And you won't see another music video featuring Charles Darwin, Pat Robertson, Dick Cheney, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster for a long, long time, I reckon,” says Johnson.
This is the first international award for Collection Agency Films. They won previous awards for their short film “Tall Tales & Other Big Lies” (Runner-up Animated Short, SXSW 2006 Film Festival) and their political cartoons for Kinky Friedman (2006 Telly Awards for Best Online Political Ad). Currently Troy Campbell is promoting his acclaimed album, 'Long in the Sun'. Dano Johnson is furiously animating an adaptation of the classic novel 'Flatland', which stars Martin Sheen, Kristen Bell, and various talented Austinites. Collection Agency Films is about to release a comic book, 'Tall Tales & Other Big Lies: the Stories of Ray Wylie Hubbard.' “Dance Like a Monkey” can be seen at various sites online, as well as on Austin's MeTV.
Congratulations to AFF favorite The Queen! Peter Morgan's screenplay for the film was selected as the best of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle. Helen Mirren also took the best actress honor from the critics association for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in the portrait of the British royal family in crisis following the death of Princess Diana.
The Austin-American Statesman recently ran an interview by Joe Gross done during the Austin Film Festival with visiting filmmakers Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck about their film, Shut Up and Sing, and the film's subjects, The Dixie Chicks.
Writing the R Rated Comedy panelRecently came across Michael Showalter's blog and noticed a section by him and Michael Ian Black about their recent tour and the time they spent in Austin, which included the two of them (along with fellow Stella member David Wain) being panelists at AFF. They had this to say...
(Sho) So we drove in to Austin from our degenerate casino jaunt. The Austin Film Festival is in Austin this week and we're on a bunch of panels. The first one is "Making An R Rated Comedy." David Wain has flown in from New York to join us for the weekend. Tonight there are two screenings of The Stella Shorts at a really cool art house theater in Austin called the Alamo Drafthouse. We're hosting the screenings and doing Q & A and stuff. So anyway, we get to the panel "Writing An R-Rated Comedy." The other panelists are the guys that wrote "Wedding Crashers" and Jake Kasdan who made the movie "Orange County" and was a director on "Freaks & Geeks" and many other things. The panel was fun. We all talked about how great we were.
(Black) There's not that much to say about writing an R-Rated comedy other than you should put in tits. That's pretty much it. Other than that, they're pretty much like other comedies. The "Wedding Crashers" guys and Jake Kasdan all seemed nice. We didn't hang out afterwards. But we did shake hands, which seemed like the right thing to do.
You can read Michael Showalter's entire blog here.
David Wain and Jake Kasdan shake hands after the panel, which does actually seem like the right thing to do.
