AWN Headline News

Comedy Central is helping animation fans ring in the New Year with a four-episode "South Park" marathon running from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m., followed by a countdown to midnight from "South Park." The four "kick ass" episodes are fan favorites chosen by viewers through Comedy Central's web site. Alternately, animation fans in the U.K. can celebrate with BBC2's line-up of animated New Year's programming. Two episodes of Aardman Animations' "Rex the Runt" will air New Year's Eve (December 31) at 2:20 and 2:30 p.m. followed by the "The Old Lady and the Pigeons" at 3:20 p.m.

"Kirikou et la Sorciere" ("Kirikou and the Witch") is a new 70-minute classically animated film by Michel Ocelot released in France on December 9, 1998. The film is about Kirikou, a tiny little boy, who's born in a small African village which has been put under a spell by the flagitious witch, Karaba. Kirikou is determined to set his languishing village free from the clutches of Karaba. The film features music composed by famous African singer/composer Youssou N'Dour.

Atomic Vision Animation and Tub Studio have premiered their first episode of the innovative and stylish on-line animated comic book at www.jonninitro.com. The animated series follows the adventures of Jonni Nitro, an English superspy and heroine living in the near future. The animation is viewable using an Internet browser (i.e. Navigator, Explorer) and Macromedia's Flash 3.0 plug-in. "We've worked hard to create a new style of on-line animation," says Alex Ogle, Atomic Vision founder. "There has never been animation this realistic on the Internet before."

The box office was bustling this Christmas holiday weekend with DreamWorks' "The Prince of Egypt" and Disney/Pixar's "A Bug's Life" holding their own against many new live-action releases including "Patch Adams," "The Faculty" and "Stepmom." "Prince of Egypt" dropped two places from second to fourth; however, the film saw a 5% rise in business grossing $15.3M for a grand total of a little over $40M. "A Bug's Life" saw a 1% jump in totals despite being taken off more than 300 screens. The film finished seventh with $10.1M and has now grossed $114.6M in six weeks.

The results are in from the 20th Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latino Americano, which took place in Havana, Cuba, from December 1-11, 1998. All the films in competition were from Latin American countries. The following awards were given out for animated entries:

(Colossal) Pictures completed two 10-second Christmas IDs for Nickelodeon. The stop-motion Yummy Winter Wonderland features gingerbread people frolicking in a set made entirely of food with white frosting substituting as snow. A Weenie New Year is a brief New Years extravaganza hosted by a live-action puppet band leader Lawrence Weenie and his swingin Big Band of Weenies. Jim Matison was the director/creative director for these holiday spots.

J.J. Sedelmaier recently completed a simple 30-second spot, Filenes Turkey, promoting Filenes Basement annual charity Giant Turkey Giveaway. The spot used a stark black-ink-against-white-background style to feature a spokes-turkey who grows fatter and fatter each time the cash register rings until it fills up the entire screen. Director J.J. Sedelmaier commented about the ad, Filenes Turkey is a simple spot thats stylistically reminiscent of old black-and-white cartoons where personality carries the day over artistry.

UPN has ordered thirteen episodes of "Home Movies," a new half-hour primetime animated sitcom from Tom Snyder Productions, the producers of Comedy Central's "Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist" and ABC's Saturday morning series, "SquiggleVision" (aka "Science Court"). The series will be done in the producer's trademark production technique, "SquiggleVision" which is also used on Snyder's other shows. Tentatively scheduled to premiere in April, comedian Paula Poundstone, Brendon Small, and H.

Acclaim Entertainment has released the highly-anticipated "South Park" video game for Nintendo 64 with a PC version that will be available in January 1999. The adventure game features original dialogue recorded by Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and Issac Hayes and can be played in a single or multi-player mode. The game unfolds as a mysteriously evil comet approaches South Park causing much mayhem. It is left up to Kenny, Kyle, Stan and Cartman to save the day. All the perennial "South Park" characters pop up throughout the game including Mr. Hankey, Chef, Terrance and Phillip, and Big Gay Al.

Chris Wedge, one of the founders of Blue Sky Studios (now Blue Sky | VIFX), has released his personal film, "Bunny." The seven-minute computer-animated film utilizes "radiosity," an advanced computer rendering technique, a relative of the ray-tracing technology, that mimics subtle properties of natural light. The three-year project was written and directed by Chris Wedge, produced by Nina Rappaport, with music by singer/songwriter Tom Waits.

San Francisco-based Wild Brain has completed an in-house seven-minute short film called A Dog Cartoon, featuring a highly-energetic dog who faces many perils as he attempts to recover his coveted bone.