The Rise and Fall of DreamWorks Animation, Part 1: Rise

Tim here. It's not often that we come upon a movie which could be even semi-plausibly described as holding the fate of a studio in its hands, but next week we'll have just such a release, as DreamWorks Animation release its 28th feature (31 if you count their collaborations with Aardman), the sci-fi comedy Home. This comes at a perilous time for Dreamworks: after two and a half years of underperformers and outright flops, the company has been forced to slash its staff, write-off costly upcoming projects, and shutter the PDI DreamWorks studio, one of its main production hubs.

What brings a formerly prosperous studio, the biggest name in animation for a little while, just a decade ago, to such a precarious state? This week and next, we're going to try to answer that question with a little history of DreamWorks Animation, its greatest successes and its most sobering failures.

The company began when Steven Spielberg, newly-ousted Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen joined forces in 1994 to form DreamWorks SKG, an ambitious attempt to create a major movie studio right out of the gate. Katzenberg had been instrumental in overseeing the Disney Renaissance, which had just seen its biggest success in the form of The Lion King, and with animation riding high at the box office, it made sense for this new Hollywood megaforce to have a cartoon studio all its own. With Spielberg's Amblimation and the newly-acquired PDI forming the spine of DreamWorks's 2-D and CGI animation divisions, respectively, the company immediately threw itself into competing directly with Disney.

Directly with Disney.

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Best Visual Effects: "Will it be Apes or Aliens, Murph?"

It's not my imagination. I swear it's not. This year's Oscar competition is unusually tough to predict in quite a few categories . That's a refreshing change of pace. You might think this one is easy "Best Visual Effects" since it usually is (well, apart from the Golden Compass year. That was a shocker).

You might think that since Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) didn't win the prize so they kinda owe this series. Indeed, everyone seems to be in awe of the advances in motion capture technology that come with the series, particularly the way it's served as a new medium for the art of acting. But not so fast. The Apes series which dates back to 1968 and is composed of 8 films, has typically been an underperfomer with Oscars. To date the series has won only 4 nominations and 1 honorary Oscar (for makeup before the category existed) in its entire history. This despite starting as a mammoth zeitgeist hit and winning very strong reviews twice over during its rebirth this decade.

This one requires some extra thoughts and video so let's investigate after the jump...

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Beauty vs. Beast: Evil Julianne & Evil Eddie

Jason is out of town so it falls on me to complete his Beauty vs. Beast duties this week. I cycled through so many possibilities before I succumbed to this fact: I spend at least 15 minutes of every day lately fantasizing that off camera  Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmaybe are reenacting mother/son Savage Grace sequences at all of their awards season campaign stops. In addition to being the frontrunners for Best Actress and Best Actor they also are the primary villains of two of this weekend's big poorly reviewed would be blockbusters that busted no blocks. So a twofer today, Savage Grace's psychotic beauty and murderous beast and Jupiter Ascending and The Seventh Son's Beauties who are also both Beasts.

Two Gingers, Twice. You've Got Two Votes. Go! 

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LAST WEEK
Last time we looked to Groundhog Day and discovered we had more wintriness to endure. The battle of Phil Connor vs. Punxsutawney Phi is apparently doomed to repeat itself forever; you couldn't decide resulting in the second 50/50 split in this series history (the first and only other time was the Black Swan episode) 

Brookesboy summed up your wishywashiness this cycle

I started voting for little Phil because he's got better hair. But it was only a shadow of a doubt. Gotta go with Bill.

Interview: James Chinlund's Evolutionary "Apes" Vision. (Plus a Look Back at "The Fountain")

Production Design James ChinlundThough today's film culture is as as overun with franchises as the decaying cities of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes are with unchecked vegetation, franchise movies do have a few beautiful unique pleasures all their own. Chief among those, we'd argue, is the sheer scale of imaginative spectacle they can provide when the right people are hired behind the scenes. 

James Chinlund, the award winning production designer behind the fantastic world-building in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is one of those people.  Though his filmography was once mostly the domain of scrappy ambitious auteur indies, he's recently experienced a sort of super-size me effect. He credits Marvel's gamble in hiring him to design their biggest blockbuster The Avengers with reinvigorating his film career. This led directly to Dawn of the Apes, one of 2014's most acclaimed giant-sized hits. Though Chinlund undoubtedly has his share of film offers these days, he prefers the mix of small and large scale projects that his still-diverse career provides and opted out of superhero sequels from the time commitment. 

Apes, Avengers, and The Fountain are after the jump... 

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Podcast: An Interstellar Imitation Game

Travel with us into the black hole that is odd hit-and-miss reactions to the ambitious emotional Interstellar. We also discuss The Imitation Game and the controversy over its presentation of its gay protagonist. Starring: Nick Davis, Joe Reid, Katey Rich, and your host Nathaniel R.

33 minutes
00:01 Chris Nolan's Interstellar with asides to Inception and 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact and the ways in which it does or doesn't stretch Nolan's 
20:30 How does The Imitation Game machine work? Does its trifurcated structure work? And what of its collective performances?

You can listen at the bottom of the post or download on iTunes. The Imitation Game opens this weekend. Continue the conversation in the comments! 

Interstellar / Imitation Game