When you've had trouble getting financing, had to move to a new company, and lost your lead actor, things don't bode well. So, how do you increase confidence in a film about Tintin? You grab Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, naturally. Ohhhh yes, folks!

Variety has confirmed that Pegg and Frost have been cast as Thomson and Thompson -- the mustachioed and bumbling detectives. While they might not be completely identical like the almost-matching men from the comic, I would love to see Simon and Nick dressed up as the pair. This whole deal might be performance capture, but maybe, just maybe, some promo material could be live action? Or maybe a brief live-action short to accompany the film? Please? (If you haven't already guessed, I'm a rabid fan of Hot Fuzz.)

Production is supposed to start in a month, but we're still without our star -- the one who will have to fill Thomas Sangster's shoes. With Pegg and Frost attached, along with Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock, who could hold their own? Freddie Highmore?

Of course, "family film" usually translates into "kiddie film," with the parents and older siblings left to grit their teeth and endure while the tykes laugh at the singing chipmunks. Rare is the film that is truly entertaining for the entire family -- which is why I'm always excited about a new Pixar project, since they're the only ones who pull it off regularly.

Pixar's Up (due May 29) is this year's entry, and there's no reason to suspect it will be any less admirable than the company's previous work. Coraline (Feb. 6), from the director of Nightmare Before Christmas, looks like it could be an imaginatively macabre treat for grown-ups and kids. There's also a Harry Potter movie due in July, though that series becomes darker and less kid-oriented as it progresses, so you might want to leave certain younger family members at home.

Here's as complete a list as I can muster for what family-oriented flicks are coming in 2009, including live-action, animation, and whatever the Jonas Brothers are.

January: Hotel for Dogs, Inkheart.
February: Coraline, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience.
March: Race to Witch Mountain (Disney + The Rock = $$$), Monsters vs. Aliens.
April: Hannah Montana: The Movie.
May: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Up.
June: Imagine That (warning: contains Eddie Murphy).
July: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (is this a prequel? How are the dinosaurs dawning after the mammals?), G-Force, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
August: None, unless you count G.I. Joe, which is based on a line of children's dolls.
September: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
October: Toy Story (3D re-release), Where the Wild Things Are, Astro Boy.
November: A Christmas Carol (one of those crazy 3D motion-capture things, like Polar Express), The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Old Dogs (aka John Travolta and Robin Williams remake Daddy Day Care).
December: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel (GET IT?!!!?!?!?), The Princess and the Frog.

During the Chargers vs. Colts playoff game yesterday, NBC was airing commercials advertising a 3D trailer for the movie Monsters vs. Aliens (first of its kind?), which will also coincide with the airing of a full episode of the TV show Chuck in 3D. The trailer will arrive at the end of the 2nd quarter of the Superbowl, and yes -- you'll have to pick up a pair of 3D glasses to watch it. Apparently, these 3D glasses -- which will be just like the ones you wore growing up, with one side red and the other blue, will be available at select Pepsi and Sobe kiosks leading up to the big game. No word on where these special kiosks are located, but I'm sure there will be a formal announcement and/or a website with exact details coming very soon.

Is it a fun gimmick that'll give folks something to look forward to during the Superbowl? Yes, definitely. People like little things like this, especially the ones who have kids and host big game day parties. But does it show the world how far we've come in the advancement of 3D technology? Not really. These will probably be the same glasses I wore to watch 1991's Nightmare on Elm Street 6. Then again, maybe it's about getting people used to the idea of 3D again -- bringing it into their homes, seeing how far they'll go to buy the glasses on their own, etc ... What do you think? Is this something we should be excited about?

[image via engadgetHD]

Zack Snyder isn't a director that lets a little legal drama bring him down, and currently he's busy at work on Guardians of Ga'Hoole, the Lord of the Rings of owl stories. (Two young friends of mine have since assured me it's a really good series; I should drop hints until they lend it to me.)

Sydney's Daily Telegraph is reporting that Aussie up-and-comer Ryan Kwanten has joined the voice cast of Ga'Hoole, along with fellow Aussies Hugh Jackman and Hugo Weaving.

While their involvement hasn't been confirmed anywhere else, this certainly could be the "schedule conflict" alluded to in Jackman dropping out of Cleo -- but would Snyder really reuse two memorable parts of the Happy Feet voice cast? Then again, why wouldn't he? Weaving is The Voice of All Voices, and Jackman did a pretty memorable job in Happy Feet and Flushed Away. Plus, they're Australian, which is where most of the Ga'Hoole work will be done. You might as well save on the production costs by using the local talent, right?

Going by Wiki's character list (don't read it, it's chock full of spoilers), I can hazard a guess as to which Aussie will be playing what owl -- Kwanten is probably going to be the young hero, Soren. Jackman sounds rather perfect for Twilight, "a confident and boastful owl who is always singing songs about himself." There's far too many wise and kingly owls to assign one to Weaving, so we'll have to wait and see on that one. I'm really very curious about this film -- an epic about owls sounds a lot more promising than half the stuff that gets optioned, anyway. At least there will be no question as to who owns the rights to this Snyder film.

What says the holidays more than apocalypses and killing conspiracies?

First up, there's Shane Acker's 9 -- the feature adaptation of his short film -- which you can check out over at Apple.com. The film, which got cooking back in March of 2007, explores a post-apocalyptic world similar to our own where rag dolls fight to survive. Elijah Wood voices the lead rag, 9, while other voices include the likes of Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Martin Landau, and Christopher Plummer.

The film looks stunning, but I can't help wishing that these players were all face-to-face and live action. You don't get a mix like this every day. Glover with Plummer? Can you imagine the possibilities?! Nevertheless, I'll take what I can get. The film opens, appropriately, on 9/9/09.

Second, you can travel over to Yahoo and see the HD trailer for State of Play. The film stars Russell Crowe as a reporter investigating the murder of a congressman's (Ben Affleck, believe it or not) mistress. This might sound familiar -- it's based on the UK series of the same name.

State of Play looks like your standard "journalist on a mission" drama, and has a decent cast to boot -- Crowe and Affleck are joined by the likes of Helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman. But the big question is whether it will all be worth it. You might remember that Brad Pitt backed out of the project because he wasn't happy with the script, and now there are rumors floating around that Crowe is in hot water for not losing his State of Play weight in time for Nottingham. This ones hitting screens much sooner -- April 17, 2009.

In today's technology-obsessed entertainment world, most of the animated fare is done with computers. That's not to say it's any less legit than hand-drawn animation -- because if you're working on a CG feature, you BETTER know how to animate in "traditional" fashion -- but I'm just explaining why the sweat behind the Wallace & Gromit films is just a little extra-special. Plus, with three award-winning shorts and a fantastic feature behind them, W & G have more than proven their worth by now.

So YAY! Aardman Animation has a new one to show us! A Matter of Loaf and Death will premiere on BBC1 come Christmas Day, so I might have to wait a few extra weeks, but boy am I psyched to see it. (I've watched The Wrong Trousers, A Grand Day Out, and A Close Shave more times than I care to mention -- and I say The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is just awesome.) According to the official site, the 30-minute Loaf and Death is a mystery about missing bakers -- but you can (can't) check out the trailer right here!

Mice have enjoyed a great ride in the movies. The animated variety first rose to prominence thanks to Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in the late 20s, enjoyed a rebirth as heroes in the late 70s and 80s with The Rescuers, The Secret of NIMH, The Great Mouse Detective, and An American Tail, and overflowed into live-action territory a few years later with Stuart Little. More recently, Flushed Away was a superior entertainment about a spoiled upper-class mouse who must learn to survive in the wild and wooly sewers, while the superb Ratatouille gave a rat a rare favorable turn in the spotlight as a culinary artist.

Adapted by Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Dave) from the award-winning book by Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux features both a rat and a mouse in leading roles, but the self-described fairy tale is much more than a slapdash character study of two rodents. The setup makes it sound like a cousin to both Flushed Away and Ratatouille: a disgraced rat must learn to survive in a dark dungeon, a mouse develops a friendship with a human, and gourmet soup features prominently. Yet as the tale unfolds, it deepens and broadens its themes to a welcome degree. Though it never climbs too far above average and too often embraces the familiar, Despereaux remains a gentle and nurturing children's story, imparting lessons without being too condescending to its audience.

While Despereaux is aimed squarely at the little ones, adults may enjoy the top-notch animation and appreciate the above average performances by a celebrity voice cast (Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Watson, Tracey Ullman, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin Kline, William H. Macy, Stanley Tucci) that is well matched to the characters they play, which is a rare pleasure indeed.

I don't need much of an excuse to visit Austin, Texas. Find me an event that A) strings more than four movies together, and B) takes place at one of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters, and there's a good chance I'm checking my bank account, desperately scrambling for flight money. But despite the fact that I've done five SXSW visits, three Fantastic Fest trips, and a few more Austin journeys just for the heck of it ... I'd never attended a BNAT shindig. But I made it to the tenth annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon, and of course I had a damn good time once it got rolling.

Let's just do a quick run-through, chronologically speaking, and I'm listing just the FULL movies here. At the end I'll go over the various clips we were treated to...

So, of course, this year's most popular animated robot would have to be WALL-E -- and as that particular Pixar flick continues to find itself on top ten "best of" lists (as well as juggling plenty of award nominations), we here at Cinematical thought you should consider another animated robot; one that's, well, a bit more aggressive. Below we've posted a short film called World War, which was created by animation student Vincent Chai for a final project. The film takes place 100 years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and it follows a robot who's trying to bomb the city once again. However, when something goes wrong, it leads to a major square off between robots ... and a pretty cool fight at that. Kudos to Chai for putting this together; it looks rad. Something tells me we'll see more from this kid in the future.

Check it out below and let us know what you think.


World War - 3D Animation @ University Of Hertfordshire 2008 from Digital Animation Herts Uni UK on Vimeo.

The story behind the making of Delgo is heartwarming and inspiring. Fathom Studios, based in Atlanta, Georgia, has been creating commercial computer animation for more than ten years. When they decided to produce their own feature-length narrative film, they did it completely independent of the Hollywood studio system. They labored long and hard with a much smaller budget and a much smaller staff than the animation behemoths. They bravely posted "digital dailes" throughout production, a kind of progressive, online series of "making of" snippets. They recruited a slew of actors with name recognition -- Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, Louis Gossett Jr., Michael Clarke Duncan, Burt Reynolds, Chris Kattan, and the late Anne Bancroft in her last performance -- to voice the characters.

If only the film as a whole was as dramatic and lively as the behind-the-scenes story. Under the direction of Marc F. Adler and Jason Maurer, the 3-D animation is quite lovely to behold, but the characters are one-dimensional and the script, credited to six writers, spends too much time on convoluted plot mechanics. Delgo falls into an uncomfortable place where the technical achievement can be admired without the emotions ever being engaged, provoking nothing more than a tepid response ("meh") when the end credits begin to roll.

Set in a lush fantasy world of flying creatures, colorful reptiles, and the odd monster, beast, and giant insect, Delgo pits two races against one another. The proud, dominant, invading race lords it over the humble, subjugated, native race. Sound familiar?