Sure, we always figured Wall-E was a longshot for a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars (though, Frost/Nixon? You really cared about that, huh? Go figure). However, this latest dis is just egregious. Take it away, Slashfilm:

WALL-E got completely snubbed at the 36th Annual Annie Awards. For those of you who don’t know, the Annie Awards is an all-animation award show presented by the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood since 1972. The awards range form Character Animation in a Feature Presentation to Production Design in an Animated Feature Production, the the more obvious, more prestigious Best Animated Feature award.

DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda beat WALL-E in every single category, including Best Animated Feature, Animated Effects, Character Animation, Directing in an Animated Feature, Production Design, Storyboarding, and Voice Acting categories. WALL-E didn’t even receive nominations in the Writing, Music, and Character Design categories. In Fact, Kung Fu Panda ended up taking home 15 statues in all (including the short film spin-off).

The Best Animated Feature win stunned Panda co-director John Stevenson into making an expletive-filled speech, though many of the same words were hurled at DreamWorks from online quarters, as the studio just happened to be a key sponsor of the Annies in the year its Panda pulled this upset. Others, though, are noting that the Annies tend to reward more expressive character designs; in other words, Wall-E should have been voiced by Zac Efron and had a Silly-Putty face with dynamic eyebrows. Still, that doesn't quite account for Panda's wins over Wall-E in screenplay (!), directing (!!), and production design.

Should we be worried about the little robot's chances at a Best Animated Film Oscar? Maybe briefly—though we're sure that the rest of the Academy will help even out whatever weird animator rivalry reared its head at the Annies. We're sure that the indomitable Wall-E is taking the news all right, but we've heard that EVE has reduced DreamWorks, the Annies, and UCLA's Royce Hall (where the event took place) to a steaming crater. Can't say we blame her!

• WTF: WALL-E Completely Snubbed at Annie Awards? [/film]

After the jump: Kung Fu Panda reups in 3D, Fringe reups in 2D, and crisis! grips! Bollywood!

· Jack Black and Angelina Jolie will return for a 3D Kung Fu Panda sequel, prompting the Chinese scientists so humiliated by the first one to ramp up their pursuit of a fourth dimension for their eagerly awaited response. [THR]
· The number of new DVD titles released through August is down almost 15% from the same time last year, 8,661 to 7,381. Come on, Hollywood — let's get going! Harvey can't keep up this pace all by himself! [THR]
· The Bollywood film industry is in a standstill today after 147,000 workers in 22 unions (even the dancing girls!) went on strike to protest substandard pay and work conditions. In related news, Warnari Bros. Studios drew fan wrath after the stoppage forced them to delay the release of Hari Puttar 2 to summer 2009. [Variety]
· You wanted it (we think), you got it: Fox ordered a full season of JJ Abrams's Fringe. [THR]

The idea of making a film in which the hero, a Chinese national symbol, is a bit of a slouch just doesn't wash. Which is also something Po isn't particularly good at.

"Both Asia and the West have elite culture, but in China, Confucian forms dominate," said Zhang Nian, a culture critic. "This panda is a flunky who haggles for his own selfish ends."

Chinese film heroes are generally long on perfection and short on foibles. The men are handsome and robust and the women fair and graceful. And they generally don't have Po's willpower problem, eating disorders or tendency to run from danger. ...

Added to the no-no list for Chinese animators is raciness, particularly in a children's movie. Witness Po's joking use of noodle bowls to simulate breasts and his bid to protect his family jewels — known in Chinese as "little brothers" — in the middle of a fight.

And that's the toned-down version — by fired writer Dan Harmon's infamous account, perhaps the 60th or 65th script draft in a process that once included thinly veiled references to co-star Angelina Jolie's "big sister" and featured Po kicking opium cold turkey in a second-act training montage. And then there was the whole unused Sharon Stone subplot... Seriously, China, it could have been so much worse.

• China had to import 'Kung Fu Panda' [LAT]

1. Get Smart - $39.2 million
The middling-at-best TV adaptation claimed the weekend essentially by default, but it also fell almost $1 million short of the $40 million opening it needed to trigger its principals' rumored sequel clauses. Will Warner Bros. call it even and commission a script by lunch? Is Anne Hathaway renegotiating with her bad-boy paramour for further "publicity consulting" in 2010? Will Steve Carell meet Don Adams at the Get Smart 2 premiere? Only time will tell!

2. Kung Fu Panda - $21.7 million
The ursine pugilist enjoyed one last top-five weekend before Pixar's Wall-E comes along on Friday to show him what true box-office violence looks like.

3. The Incredible Hulk - $21.5 million
It might look underachieving, but don't worry! A 61% drop is exactly the kind of declining potency Bruce Banner has been searching for all these years. In a couple of weeks it'll be like none of this ever happened to him.

4. The Love Guru - $14 million
What more can we say? His karma was huge.

5. The Happening - $10 million
Manoj's Mint experienced an even steeper plunge than Hulk, driving the stroppy writer/director/profit-participant to challenge Mike Myers to a winner-take-all Bad Idea Marketplace showdown in which next weekend's lower performer flees theaters by noon Monday. We hear Paramount is said to be considering it.

Honorable Mention — 16. Kit Kittredge: An American Girl - $223,000
A few weeks after its previous release — the foreign-language epic Mongol — opened at $27K per screen, the penultimate Picturehouse film Kit Kittredge swung a staggering $44,600 per-screen average in the five cities where American Girl has retail outlets. That should hopefully make the box-packing around the office feel like it's going a little quicker.

1. The Incredible Hulk - $54.538 million
For first reactions to The Incredible Hulk—Universal's attempt at "rebootting" the Freakishly Betrapezoided One's franchise—we defer to non other than Hulk-fan-on-the-street Dante Reno. Approached by Variety for comment, Reno proudly gestured to the area of his brain once designated for foreign languages, which, after two punishing hours of Dolby Digital Cinema Smaaaash™ effects, had now solidified into a useless clump of scar tissue. Still, that smile, and the words, "Aw, dude it was awesome," suggests to us that it was all worth it. Hulk back. Hulk smash. Hulk good.

2. Kung Fu Panda - $34.321 million
Crossing the $100 million divide this weekend was DreamWork's literal-minded Kung Fu Panda, in which ancient Asian fighting techniques named for animals were transformed into an adorable CGI menagerie of martial arts masters. It's a clever conceit that will be used to lesser success in direct-to-DVD companion title Yoga Cow, featuring the voice talents of Larry the Cable Guy as Downward Facing Dog and Cameron Diaz as Squatting Fish-Lotus.

3. The Happening - $30.5 million
Manoj laughs last, as what was sure to be his Lady in the Water bellyflop follow-up—a woodenly paced arborcidal thriller promptly tossed by critics into the chipper— wound up bringing in a very respectable $30.5 million from horror fans looking for some Friday the 13th thrills. (They got some, plus Mark Wahlberg "placating a ficus.") Having established his bankability once more, there's virtually no limits on where director M. Night Shyamalan's imagination might take us next—perhaps a religious allegory set in rural Pennsylvania, where a film critics' convention threatens the very fate of the Shrimphrogs, an ancient race of clog-dancing extraterrestrial amphibia. (With, of course, a cameo by the director as the NASA scientist who first discovers their existence.)

4. You Don't Mess with the Zohan - $16.4 million
There really is a Zohan! His name is Nezi Arbib, and he lives in San Diego.

5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - $13.547 million
Want even more Jones excitement? Stay tuned for the further adventures of franchise inheritor Greaser LaBeouf, in...Mutt Williams and the 'Slap Me Harder, Faggot!'. SUMMER 2012.

• WEEKEND BOX OFFICE June 13–15, 2008 [boxofficemojo.com]

1. Kung Fu Panda - $60 million
The proposed steel-cage bout pitting DreamWorks' deadly plushy versus the horse-hung Mossad assassin who's also handy with a crimping iron (or whatever the hell that movie is about) turned out to be unfairly matched: Panda swiftly minced his opponent into sabra-fruit marmalade. And while Jack Black scored high with audiences as the voice of the endangered hero, Seth Rogen stole enough scenes as the movie's insectoid master-of-deflection that his perpetually stoned character's spin-off movie—Tae Kwon Do Stick Bug—will be fast-tracked into production for a summer 2010 opening.

2. You Don't Mess with the Zohan - $40 million
$40 million is certainly nothing to sniff at, particularly for a movie whose premise left 99.7% of Sandler's core fan base scratching their backwards-baseball-caps. ("What's with the hairdressing stuff?" "Why's he talking with an accent?" "What's Israel?") And while they were lured in with the promise of broad Sandler-style comedy, they left with a far greater understanding of Israeli foreign policy, which was stealthily embedded into the proceedings via Rob Schneider's uncredited cameo as Golda Meir. We thought he delivered the, "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values," speech from Munich stirringly.

3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - $22.805 million
This brings the grand total for Indiana Jones and Uh, Did We Just Wander Into Caddyshack? to $253 million, or one dollar per phoned-in performance, chintzy-looking set-piece, and CGI eyesore.

4. Sex and the City - $21.31 million
No need to panic, ladies. You still rule Hollywood with a mighty, manicured fist. The Official Movie of the Female Gender™ may have seen a 63% drop since last week, but that was fully anticipated by Warner Bros., They insist City will "find sturdier legs over future sessions," presumably once the cast has a chance to unbuckle those 7-inch stilettos and file down their bunions.

5. The Strangers - $9.289 million
Choosy moms pick The Strangers' floppy masks over Funny Games's crisp tennis whites nearly 2-to-1 as their random-home-intruder family-torture-porn uniform of choice!

• WEEKEND BOX OFFICE June 6–8, 2008 [boxofficemojo.com]

WHAT'S NEW: With the May tentpoles out of the way, Sony and DreamWorks Animation are set to spar in the first head-to-head weekend of the summer. Sadly, however, with such diverging demographics for You Don't Mess With the Zohan and Kung Fu Panda, we will not get the Kimbo Slice-esque ass-beating the box-office sadists in us were quietly praying for. Theaters are happy about it, though, with Adam Sandler's annual mediocrity orgy guaranteed its minimum $35 million and Panda — with its Black/Jolie firepower and well-above-average reviews — raking in the $50-$55 million from families who dodged Speed Racer a month ago and have three weeks before Pixar's Wall-E emerges. Far be it from us to be content with a draw, but this is a weekend when our blood lust may go unsatiated.

Also opening: the John C. Reilly/Seann William Scott workplace comedy The Promotion; Dario Argento's slipshod gore-stravaganza Mother of Tears; the Sundance '07 leftover The Go-Getter; the Genghis Khan epic Mongol; and Heather Graham's long-awaited foray into menopausal baby-making comedy, Miss Conception.

THE BIG LOSER: We made a critical math error last week, underestimating the take for The Strangers by, oh, 150% or so. That won't happen again this week, if only because as mentioned above, nothing new stands to tank. Even Sex and the City enjoyed a robust week since its initial windfall ($73 million through Wednesday) and shouldn't drop more than 50%. But that's OK! Next week, The Happening should implode more than spectacularly enough to make up for it.

THE UNDERDOG: Another fairly flimsy week here, but we did kind of like the When Did You Last See Your Father?, starring Colin Firth as an author reconciling the secrets, guilt and memory of his dying dad, played by Jim Broadbent. Despite a few narrative lapses (a frustrating Firth affair subplot dies at the intersection of chamber drama and bad editing) and director Anand Tucker's overbearing stylistic flourishes, newcomer Matthew Beard's coming-of-age awkwardness as young Firth dovetails nicely with the adult animus that follows. You could do worse.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include the completely remastered, retooled and highly acclaimed Dirty Harry Collection; the less-highly acclaimed Will Ferrell basketball laffer Semi Pro; the much-less-highly acclaimed Jon Heder/Diane Keaton duel Mama's Boy; the Ian Curtis biopic Control; and the long-shelved, sadly underachieving The Onion Movie.

So who takes it? Bamboo or matzo, fur or mullet? Can SATC break $100 million before its sequel's screenplay is written (if it isn't already)? Tell us what's worth your time this weekend; are you retrofitting your bomb shelter for the next two weeks of releases? And can we join you?

boomp3.com



At the premiere of Kung Fu Panda, Dustin Hoffman had to step away from the Access Hollywood booth due to an interview that he thought he was too intense to handle so early on a Sunday morning. Hoffman remained mum about Access Hollywood's Billy Bush's particular line of questioning, but Hoffman did call Bush "the Woodward AND the Bernstein" of entertainment journalism. He also bristled when Bush called him "Dusty." "Dusty is a nickname reserved for friends, family and cast members in retrospective interviews," Hoffman said. Billy Bush offered up a different version of the story saying that he only asked Hoffman the standard questions. The standard questions included: his thoughts on Lindsay Lohan maybe dating DJ Samantha Ronson, does he know if Angelina Jolie has given birth for reals yet, what was it like working with Angelina Jolie, his thoughts about Heidi & Spencer and The Hills, what's up with the price of gasoline, what he'll be doing to celebrate the Fourth Of July and, finally, his recommendation for a good beach read. Bush said, "It's not like I asked him to solve the energy crisis or to rationalize the presidency of how George W. Bush!"

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

The uncensored photo is after the jump.

[Photo Credit: Splash News]

• Angelina Jolie Topless Pictures [Egotastic]

Paramount, producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg have made some changes in their game plan to avoid the Da Vinci scenario. For one thing, they're not having a big party. ...

In contrast, Indy's producers have skedded a "filmmakers party" for 250 people — no press invited. There will be the usual press conference following the screening; the only TV and print junket interviews with the cast are scheduled the day before the screening, instead of afterward; access to Spielberg outside the press conference is strictly interdit.

We didn't want to go to your stupid party anyway; we're too busy joining Pete Hammond in handicapping the Oscar chances of this year's higher-profile fest selections. Actually, we're doing no such thing, and we wish Hammond wouldn't either, but there it is: Jury chair Penn might help shepherd his ex-director Clint Eastwood's Changeling to the Palme d'Or! Che is a front-runner, except it's not finished! Kung Fu Panda is an animated film contender! Only 10 more days of this; thanks for nothing, LA Times.

Elsewhere, Anne Thompson is making the rounds in smoke-filled rooms, and Jeffrey Wells was on the scene at a panel during which David Poland — via Skype! — apparently predicted the end of The Hollywood Reporter within three years. So, you know, don't renew your subscription.

As Natalie Morales' best week ever continues, the (also expecting) Today Show correspondent revealed yet another tidbit: Hoffman decided to let her (and, by extension, the entire world) know that the twins are due on August 19th. As Lost fans, we should probably go ahead and find out what secrets hide behind the numbers 8, 1, 9, and 19, but we don't have enough time (or shame) at the moment. With her privacy sufficiently invaded, Jolie let her guard down during a press conference in Cannes after a reporter asked where she planned on giving birth: "I actually haven't completely decided...We are certainly thinking of France." Which means she can finally check off another country on her International Soccer Team Nationality Map! Sadly for Sweden, Jolie isn't feeling the Scandinavian love right now: "Asked by a Swedish reporter if she'd consider giving birth in Sweden, Jolie responded, 'Not at this time... But, you never know, there's more babies.'" More babies? Where are "more babies" hiding and what bizarre names do they have? More importantly, do they attack The Chosen One with utensils like the rest of the team?

• ANGELINA'S TWINS ARE DUE AUG. 19 [People]
• ANGELINA JOLIE ALLUDES TO GIVING BIRTH IN FRANCE [Us]
• THE TODAY SHOW [MSNBC]

Despite the fact that just about everyone and their favorite blog have known that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are expecting two Chosen Ones this time around, heroin dabbler-turned-UN Ambassador Jolie had yet to officially confirm the news. And until a Today Show interview taped today in Cannes, featuring Jolie and co-star Jack Black promoting their upcoming animated flick Kung Fu Panda, we’re pretty sure the very pregnant actress would have kept her lips sealed until the day those magical spawns open their cherubic eyes for the first time. But thanks to an impromptu joke made by Black, Jolie was put on the spot, and clever Today host Natalie Morales took full advantage of it...

During the interview, scheduled to air tomorrow morning, the scruffy Black proved that "funny" actors will do and say just about anything to get a laugh. Unfortunately for Jolie, her co-star felt the need to crack this joke for no apparent reason: "You're gonna have as many as [the] Brady Bunch when you have these." As we all know, the feisty Brangelina tribe currently adds up to four. Being the masterful mathematician that she is, Morales struck while the iron was hot and asked Jolie if she was expecting twins. Jolie's response? "Yeah, yeah, we've confirmed that already. Well, Jack's just confirmed it actually." Despite the awkward moment, we have to give kudos to Jolie for handling the tense situation with apparent grace, and cleaning up Black's mess.

[Photo credit: NBC via People]

• ANGELINA JOLIE AND BRAD PITT EXPECTING TWINS [People]

Also on the bright side, we won't get robbed on the Croisette like seemingly everyone else in an increasingly frequent rite of passage known as "Cote d' Ass-Losing":

Bill Pence, director of Dartmouth's film school and a co-founder of the Telluride festival, was lining up for a Cannes screening in the early 1990s on the Rue d'Antibes with his wife, Stella, when he felt a light touch on his buttocks. "I said, 'Stella, will you stop that!' And she said, 'I'm not touching you.' " A pickpocket was, and Pence's wallet was gone.

Finally, reviews of Cannes' opening-night film Blindness, which screened for critics this morning, are trickling in. The results are pretty much what we heard a few weeks back: Qualified praise, lukewarm at best, with Jeffrey Wells noting, "I respected Blindness — I certainly agree with what it's saying — but it didn't arouse me at all," and the Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu praising castmates Julianne Moore and Alice Braga before concluding, "They do well to save a film that, in trying so hard to be faithful to the novel, falls prey to tone-deafness." Yes, it's only May, but consider this the beginning of the end for its Oscar hopes.

• Jack Black takes on forty pandas [Fest Central]
• What's also playing at Cannes... [LAT]
• Cannes 2008: Blindness Review [Telegraph]