By Steven Zeitchik

The weekend that “Astro Boy” sputtered at the box office may not seem like the best moment to revisit the topic of the animaton renaissance.

But even as the Imagi-produced, Summit-distributed pic earned a tepid $7m (and plenty of reason for that, from a lack of brand recognition to a marketing disconnect with younger auds), the category continues to intrigue those who might have been a lot more skeptical of it just a few years ago.

Warner Bros — which despite the $380m global success of “Happy Feet” hasn’t come up with an animated theatrical feature in three years — is getting back in the game. The studio has just bought a pitch about an animated peacock from a couple of television writers in a pre-emptive buy, in a move that shows the studio either really loves peacocks or really wants another animated franchise (the project is described as a four-quadrant family pic).

It’s become such a banner year for the category — Sony easily topping $100m with “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” “Up” bigger than ever for Pixar, Fox turning “Ice Age” into a franchise that hands out cash like the Oakland Raiders defense hands out touchdowns — that many studio execs now feel they have to step up their efforts, if only not to fall behind.

By Steven Zeitchik

UPDATE: With $68 million earned over its opening weekend, the 'Pixar is now 11 for 11' talk has been validated, and then some. The pic was just a couple million off Pixar's two biggest openers of the decade, "Finding Nemo" and "the Incredibles," and thus on pace to finish in or at least close to the range of a $600-800m global haul that those two pictures ended up with. If you have that whimiscal script about a gruff but lovable codger, now's the time to get it out.

With Pixar unleashing its annual springtime release this weekend, the one thing that will surely happen  – apart from high-pitched children sounds coming from mall multiplexes — is pundits proclaiming a hit (Pixar scores again, is now 11 for 11, etc.) and another victory lap for the animation studio and its business model.

There's little way, after all, the picture won't win the weekend, likely thumping even strong holdovers and beating out the other big release Sam Raimi's genre-y "Drag Me to Hell".

But there are Pixar hits and there are Pixar hits, and given the familiarity of the 'Pixar Rules' refrain, we're ague it's okay to apply a more sophisticated sense of criteria.

By Steven Zeitchik

The great animation experiment at Cannes' opening night just came to an end, and while it wasn't the incongruous experience it could have been — tuxedoes and 3-D glasses, French cinephiles and cartoons — we wouldn't describe it as, um, a soaring success either.

The audience — the people around us, anyway — seemed to enjoy the movie as it played, laughing at the comedic turns, clenching up at the action scenes and shedding a tear (beneath their 3-D glasses) during the wonderfully effective melancholy moments.

But the post-screening response — an overused but accurate gauge — was noticeably tempered. The continuous waves of ovation that can last five or 10 minutes when an audience really loves a Cannes film (especially an opening-night one), didn't happen.

Instead, what followed the credits was scattered applause that lasted about one or two minutes. Respectable, but, to our ears, very modest. It wasn't a disaster like "The Da Vinci Code" or "Marie Antoinette" — but it wasn't "The Diving Bell & the Butterfly," either.

During the applause, Pixar chief creative officer John Lasseter and "Up" director Pete Docter stood at their seats for the customary basking. As we watched them in close-up on the giant screen, there seemed to be a little discomfort on their faces, a disappointment that the clapping wasn't more hearty. (The applause ended when Lasseter shouted an abrupt "merci beaucoup.")

Of course, none of this will affect the movie's performance — it didn't for "Da Vinci" (and a good reaction didn't help "Blindness" last year). And you have to gve th movie a little credit and a little slack –
this is the first time something like this has been tried, Plus people aren't quite sure how to clap after an animated movie ends — the credits offers all sorts of doo-dads and don't offer a neat ending, while the lack of actors seems to make festgoers confused as to who, exactly, they should clap for.

Still, given how high the appreciation-ometer could have gone, it was notable to see it rise only a little.

More THR Festival de Cannes coverage

By Steven Zeitchik

There had been a lot of talk about what would would open Cannes — for its kickoff showing, many watchers always say, the fest needs stars, it needs filmmaking chops, it needs a big-time director, it needs a global feel,  it needs a lot of things that one film can rarely provide.

Would it be Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds? Stephen Frears' Cheri? Something yet to determined/announced?

Thierry Fremaux et al broke the suspense this morning when the festival announced its selection, and it's a bit of a surprise: the Pixar pic "Upp." And in news that might make make Jeffrey Katzenberg happy/forget it's happening to an archnemesis, the pic will be shown in digital 3D.

Studio animated movies have made appearances in high-profile slots before — "Shrek" was in competition in 2001 (and of course "Kung-Fu Panda" got an out of competition slot last year) — but opening night, where a red carpet filled with recognizable faces has been de rigeur, is sort of another matter. This one does have some names in its voice cast — Christopher Plummer, for instance — but it's hardly a star-studded roster. The biggest star, in fact, may be 3D itself, which gets a big stamp of artistic legitimacy with this choice.

Creatively there's plenty to be happy about with the selection. Pete Docter's movie centers on an old man who, after the loss of his wife, fixes balloons to his roof so he can float away on a trip to South America (which he and his wife had planned on taking) without literally leaving his living room, and the adventures that he meets along the way (including a stowaway in the house).

Vibrant, whimsical, melancholy and a stunner to look at, footage from the film pretty much blew us away when we saw it at Comic-Con. It looked unlike pretty much anything that had been done even by the groundbreaking Pixar — it contained the whimsy that recent artistic achievements like "Wall-E" and "Ratatouille" had, but it also had some pretty genre-defying elements, not the least of which is a sad, slightly crusty old man as its main character.

Some Disney execs had quietly been saying, when the big push for "Wall-E" was on last year, that they saw their big release next year ("Up") s a big commercial play but not necessarily as an awards/prestige one. Look for that to change now that the Cannes has been opened.

By Steven Zeitchik

The Oscar battle for animated film <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN0133454320071101
“>was intense last year.

But it may be even more wild this year.

So wild, it may not even just be about best animated film anymore.

Ever since the best ani category was created seven years ago, the conventional wisdom is that no movie eligible for the category will ever work its way into the best picture race. (”Beauty and the Beast” was nommed, but that was in 1991, long before a separate category was created that siphoned off best pic votes.)

But Wall-E is getting serious critical acclaim, not to mention pop-cultural cachet, as film editor Gregg Kilday notes in his recent story. (Check out the THR review here.)

And while predicting Oscars in June is like predicting a World Series winner in February, this may in fact be the year that the Pixar set crashes the party.

People forecast that every year, you say? They said it with Ratatouille last year? Sure. But 2008 is different. Last year at this time Cannes had already offered a few frontrunners like “No Country,” which wound up landing best pic. This year there are no obvious candidates so far (we’re still not anywhere near sold on “Changeling”).  

There will also be a lot fewer specialty releases overall – about 20% fewer, by the count of one recent exec –and thus less competition.

And Ratatouille, for all its polish, took on relatively modest themes like the subjectivity of taste. This one, set in the future but urgently about the weird and fraught path we’re on today, is a clever metaphor about the hubris of human ambition, an environmentalist cri de coeur and a cautionary tale about the power of technology. Bigger stuff than what does or doesn’t make for a good bouillabaisse.

There are also a lot fewer of the traditional Pixar touches — no cartoonish villain or madcap child-friendly pacing — that we suspect puts off some Oscar voters.

What’s more, as well-reviewed as it was, “Ratatouille” trails even “Wall-E” when it comes to a critical Q rating; at 96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s one tick higher than that film (and also higher than any best picture winner in nearly a decade).

There is the money problem — contemporary wisdom, after all, says that when it comes to the Oscars, box-office is a bell curve; you can’t earn too much or too little — but given all the Oscar movies that didn’t make money last year, there may be a sympathy vote to counteract that.

“Wall-E” isn’t the only animated pic with an intriguing Oscar storyline. A film with Academy potential did get a bow in Cannes — and it, too, wasn’t live action. “Waltz with Bashir,” Israeli Ari Folman’s first-person animated docu in which he tries to reclaim blacked-out memories of his time fighting in the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war (it’s not Rotoscoping — he interviewed his subjects and then hand-drew them, so it feels more animated than actorly). We caught the movie in Cannes and it’s a work of dreamlike poignancy, a rebuke against war even as it methodically tracks war’s twists and turns.

At first glance, the SPC pickup follows in the footsteps of its previous arthouse animated faves which earned ani Oscar nominations, like “Persepolis” and “Triples of Belleville.” But Bashir may have a few more swings of the bat — it’s the only pic that we know of that’s ever been potentially eligible for best picture, best documentary, best animated and (assuming Israel puts it forth as its selection) best foreign film.

So the year is nearly half over, and among the few early Oscar contenders, two are animated movies. Maybe Andrew Stanton and the creators of “Wall-E” are right — we do live in strange times.

In the crowded summer movie marketplace, everyone is looking for an advantage. Paramount Pictures confirmed this week that it is moving up the opening of DreamWorks’ “Transformers,” the Michael Bay extravaganza, by a day. Instead of bowing on Wed., July 4, the movie will now debut on Tuesday, July 3. And though no decision has made yet, there will also probably be special showings in some situations the night before on July 2. Bay himself had encouraged fans to urge the studio to move the date, writing on michaelbay.com, “If you spread the word on the Net – everywhere — they might listen.” Guess, they did. Meanwhile, Walt Disney Studios is hoping to get the buzz buzzing on its Pixar animated movie “Ratatouille” by launching public sneak previews on Saturday, June 16. The movie, about a foodie-loving rat named Remy, will play in 800-900 theaters nationwide where “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” is booked. The movie then officially will open on Friday, June 29. The studio already has a nine-minute clip from the movie playing on the official “Ratatouille” website — it’s essentially the footage that drew big laughs at ShoWest. And although there’s plenty of other animated competition this summer, “Ratatouille,” directed by “The Incredibles” helmer Brad Bird, sure looks like a winning combination of slapstick for the kids, clever character comedy for the adults and really winning production and character design. (Gregg Kilday)

Given that the completed ballots from the 5,830 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are due in the offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers no later than 5 PM on Saturday, January 13, these BAFTA nominations (like Monday’s Golden Globe Awards), won’t have any impact on the Oscar nominations; those results will be announced on Tuesday, January 23. (The 79th Academy Awards for 2006 will be presented on Sunday, February 25.) The BAFTAS will contribute continuing momentum for the eventual Oscar nominees.

Here’s the BAFTA report from THR’s London bureau chief, Stuart Kemp:

Time critics Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel pick their top ten. Clint Eastwood’s Letter from Iwo Jima is number one.