Erick Oh: How His Oscar-Nominated Animated Short ‘Opera’ Addresses Asian Hate Crime & Social Issues: “This Is Something We Are Experiencing Every Day”

As we steady our for another brilliant episode of Call The Midwife, we thought it’d be fun to look at what happened to the stars of the show who have left the BBC One drama behind. From Line of Duty and The Crown, to Taskmaster and even an Oscar nomination - yes, you read that correctly - former Call The Midwife cast members have been making waves in the entertainment industry since leaving Nonnatus House behind.

Angelique Jackson Cartoon Saloon, the Oscar-nominated Irish independent animation studio behind Apple TV Plus’ “Wolfwalkers,” has signed with CAA.Formed by creative heads Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey and Paul Young in 1999, the five-time Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Emmy-nominated studio will now be represented by the agency.“Wolfwalkers,” directed by Moore and Ross Stewart, is nominated for the best animated feature Oscar at Sunday’s 93rd Academy Awards.

EXCLUSIVE: Triple Oscar nominee Tomm Moore has joined the creative team of The Inventor, the feature animation being helmed by Ratatouille writer Jim Capobianco.

If Anything Happens I Love You challenge. The rules were simple—to participate, TikTokers had to film themselves before and after watching an animated short on .

In his 92 years, African-American businessman Horace Bowers Sr.—one of the two main subjects of the Oscar-nominated short documentary A Concerto Is a Conversation—has faced many obstacles in his path. He’s always found a way around them.

When Judy Heumann—one of the main subjects of the Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp—was five years old in the early 1950s, her mother tried to register her for kindergarten in New York City. The staff took one look at Judy, who used a wheelchair as a result of polio, and denied her.

Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal went into 2019’s Toronto International Film Festival without a distributor. Now, a year-and-a-half on, it’s a six-time Oscar nominee and perhaps the most hard-fought of all of this year’s crop of Best Picture candidates. Joe Utichi meets Marder and stars Riz Ahmed and Paul Raci to take stock of a film that transformed its key players in ways they hadn’t expected.

EXCLUSIVE: WarnerMedia has revamped its content innovation hub WarnerMedia OneFifty, relaunching a redesigned platform focused on highlighting new content and projects from underrepresented creators. The new site features a bulked up content acquisitions and projects slate, including its recent acquisition of Tomer Shushan’s White Eye, which has just been nominated for the Live Action Short Form Oscar.

EXCLUSIVE: Following its Oscar nomination, Elvira Lind’s short film The Letter Room has been racking up the sales. The movie, which stars Oscar Isaac and Alia Shawkat, has sold to France and Germany (ARTE France), Spain (Telefonica), Denmark (TV2), Russia (Shot TV), Poland (New Europe Film Sales), Airlines (JetBlue) as well as an international deal with Kanopy for the educational circuit.

Despite previous outrage that streaming service Netflix could have films nominated for Oscar Awards, this year the site has proven once again that its movies can play with the big boys.

Parasite director Bong Joon-Ho recently opened up about Asian hate and called on his fellow filmmakers to speak out and use their medium to respond to the racism and hate directed towards Asian and Black communities. “I’m far away in Korea and I have to see everything in the news from an outsider’s perspective, but as someone who is a part of mankind, as a person, it’s quite fearful to watch the hate crimes against Asian-Americans and the BLM movement,” Bong shared during a virtual masterclass

The Oscar-nominated filmmaking team behind the documentary Time are looking forward to a reunion at Union Station in Los Angeles, the main venue for this year’s Academy Awards. Director-producer Garrett Bradley and producers Lauren Domino and Kellen Quinn haven’t seen each other in person for a while, because of Covid-19.

In the Oscar-nominated documentary short A Concerto Is a Conversation, acclaimed composer Kris Bowers traces a line from his family history to the premiere performance of his original concerto "For a Younger Self" at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2019. Following that line is Horace Bowers Jr., Kris Bowers' 91-year-old grandfather, who sits down with his grandson to tell the story of his journey out of the Jim Crow-era South in the pursuit of his American Dream.

The L.A. Stage Alliance, the 46-year-old nonprofit service organization behind the Los Angeles-area’s annual Ovation theater awards, has ceased operations following the mass resignation of members last week sparked by the misidentification of an Asian actress during the awards ceremony.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticThose who typically scope the Academy Award-nominated shorts programs hoping to win the Oscar pool will have a particularly tough time of it with this year’s animated roster, as the options are wide-ranging but lack a clear frontrunner. A few of the talents have ties to Pixar, though only one short was actually developed at a studio, while the other four are far more personal, independent expressions with little in common, least of all technique.

A couple of truly daring visions spice up the expected fare in this year's crop of Academy-honored animated shorts — one of which would be as at home in an art gallery as in the theaters, which, pandemic be damned, will still showcase nominees as a big-screen event. Each candidate has something to offer, including those non-nominees that have been added (as "highly recommended") to stretch the program's running time to feature length.

Shirley Chung, a Top Chef finalist and owner of Culver City's Ms. Chi Cafe, recalls an incident last year in which a group of diners made her staff sanitize their outdoor table — twice.

Laika is expanding into the world of live-action filmmaking for the first time, with an adaptation of John Brownlow’s upcoming debut novel, Seventeen.

CAA has assembled a packed lineup of Asian American influencers and leaders to discuss the wave of anti-Asian violence and hate that continues to sweep the country. The 90-minute CAA Amplify Town Hall will take place online April 1 at 10 a.m.