AWN Headline News

The animated feature "Princess Mononoke," Japan's highest-grossing feature of all-time, had an amazing television debut in Japan on January 22. Airing on Nippon Television Network (NTV), the Hayao Miyazaki film brought in a 35.1 rating, the eighth highest ranking in Japanese television history for movie broadcast ratings and the highest rating for a broadcast movie in 15 years.

Kids WB! has ordered 13 additional episodes of the futuristic "Batman Beyond," which debuted in January to strong ratings in both its primetime preview and regular Saturday morning slot. The new episodes will be ready for the 1999-2000 season.

The 18th annual Imagina 1999, Europe's premiere computer graphics festival, wrapped up on January 22. During the show, the 13th edition of the "Prix Pixel-INA" awards were presented. Blue Sky | VIFX's "Bunny" took home three awards including top honors, the Grand Prix Imagina. For more information on the festival, visit www.ina.fr. Here are the winners from this prestigious European awards program honoring the world's best computer graphics:

Grand Prix Imagina: "Bunny" by Chris Wedge of Blue Sky | VIFX (USA).

* Saturday, February 6 - Saturday, February 13. New York City, New York, USA.

"The 1999 New York International Children's Film Festival (NYICFF) will be held at Cantor Film Center in Manhattan. Among the highlights are a screening of Hayao Miyazaki's feature "Kiki's Delivery Service" and an Ub Iwerks Retrospective in Animation. Forty-two films will be in competition including such animated entries as "Mario the Show Cleaner," "Pingu Steals," "A Dog Cartoon" [AF 12/22/98], "Frank the Wrabbit" and "Furious George." For further information call (212) 677-6478.

* Friday, February 12 - Thursday, February 18. London, UK.

"Art & Animation: An International Symposium & Week of Film Screenings takes place at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. The event kicks off on Friday with a lecture on Art & Animation by Russian filmmaker Yuri Norstein. Speakers in the symposium include Dr. William Moritz, Christine Panushka, Ruth Lingford, Stuart Hilton, Erica Russell and Simon Pummell. To find out more, contact Jayne Pilling at jsp@easynet.co.uk or call 0171 930 3647 to book symposium tickets.

HBO Family, a new 24-hour commercial-free channel dedicated exclusively to family programming, launched February 1. The channel is teaming up with producers like Nelvana, Cinar, S4C and Hit Entertainment to deliver original animated programming. Among the new animated series premiering are "George and Martha," "The Adventures of Paddington Bear" and "Anthony Ant," as well as a new mixed-media pre-school series from Curious Pictures, "A Little Curious." In addition, a variety of original specials will have a "sneak preview" on HBO Family Channel before they premiere on the main HBO channel.

Mark Osborne's animated short film, "MORE," has won the Jury Award for Special Recognition for Short Filmmaking at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The 6-minute film, about an inventor's struggle to find meaning in a grey emotion-less world, is the world's first stop motion short produced for exhibition on 70mm/15 perf (IMAX). "MORE" is inspired by and features the instrumental song "Elegia" by British electronic pop group New Order.

After the success of "The Rugrats Movie" and plenty of hit television shows, Klasky Csupo is relocating to a bigger building at 6353-57 Sunset Boulevard, across from the Hollywood Cinerama Dome. The 6-floor, 95,000 square ft., state-of-the-art glass and steel structure was originally designed as an auto showroom for Mercedes-Benz, but will now hold up to 500 Klasky Csupo employees. Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan says, "This is great news for the heart of Hollywood.

New York-based Spontaneous Combustion has hired 3D modeler/animator Brian Austin in a further expansion of the company's CGI capabilities. Austin, who had been freelancing in the New York City area for the past couple years, is an accomplished fine artist as well as a digital artist and has works in the permanent collection of New York's The Museum of Modern Art.

1999 marks the 40th anniversary of the longest running television series in history, "Bonanza," and New York-based Abrams/Gentile Entertainment is producing a new animated series based on the perennial Western. The show is a prequel of sorts taking place on the Ponderosa Ranch with a young Ben Cartwright and his teenage sons. Abrams/Gentile also presents numerous other new projects including:"Open Call" (13 x 22 minutes): a comedy about two divorcees who become casting directors, as unqualified as they may be, in a unique blend of "real-time" animation and live-action.

GoodTimes Entertainment announced that "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Movie," made its Latin American debut this Christmas on Cinecanal and Sky. This marked Cinecanal's first acquisition of an independently-produced animated feature and was the first time Cinecanal ran two versions of a single animated feature: neutral Spanish dubbed version for children and the original, English-language version with Spanish subtitles for family audiences.