Bill Plympton Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticThe book of Genesis contains two competing creation stories: There’s the one where an all-powerful deity conjures everything in six days, and the version where a more anthropomorphic god rolls up his heavenly sleeves and makes man from clay.Guess which one visionary stop-motion artist Will Vinton would have preferred.Co-inventor of the “Claymation” technique, Vinton wanted to be the second Walt Disney. Colorful eyegasm “ClayDream” celebrates all that Will Vinton Studios achieved — its most beloved characters include the California Raisins, rabbit-eared Domino’s Pizza menace “the Noid” and Eddie Murphy series “The PJs” — while musing about what might have been, had control of the company not been wrested away from him by Nike honcho Phil Knight, who rechristened it Laika and put his son Travis in charge.

This year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF, March 28-April 8) will open with the Asian premiere of All Shall Be Well, directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Ray Yeung, which recently won the Teddy Award at Berlin film festival.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Debbie Harry, lead singer of Blondie, will be among those taking part in on-stage talks at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which runs Jan. 25 to Feb.

Sandra Hüller Set For Rotterdam Talks Program

Anna Marie de la Fuente Animayo, Spain’s leading animation festival, is celebrating its 18th edition with the help of Disney legend Andreas Deja who will be presenting his independently-produced short, “Mushka.” “Having Deja choose Animayo to debut his film in Spain is the greatest honor,” said Damian Perea, founder-director of the festival, which unspools May 3-6 on the island of Gran Canaria. A hand-drawn 2D animated story about an unlikely friendship between a young girl and a Siberian tiger in 1970s’ Soviet Union, “Mushka” is Deja’s directorial debut. His lauded Walt Disney Animation Studio credits include “The Lion King,” “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

Emilio Mayorga Two-time Oscar nominee Bill Plympton (“Your Face,”“Guard Dog”) has boarded the series “Guard Dog & Bill Plympton in Brazil,” directed by Brazilian animator Cesar Cabral.Cabral’s stop-motion “Bob Spit: We Do Not Like People” won best feature at the Quirino Awards last May.Currently in pre-production, “Guard Dog” follows the celebrated over-anxious or just neurotic yellow canine of te title alongside his creator Plympton. “The series’ general idea is to bring Guard Dog and his owner –in this case Plympton himself – to tour Brazilian cities and draw their tourist and artistic impressions of our country,” director Cabral told Variety.The Coala Filmes and Cup Filmes co-production is backed by Federal incentive body Fundo Setorial do Audiovisual (FSA).

Outside episodic television, adult animation is seldom procured at studios in the U.S. Still, the medium has found stateside keepers of mature content among independent creators.