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Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech, Quills, Shine) is back at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) and having a blast.

In 2022, the big festival in the scenic Czech spa town honored the Australian star and Oscar winner with its Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema, its lifetime achievement award.

For this year’s 58th edition of Kviff, Rush serves as a member of the main competition jury, along with the likes of indie film industry veteran Christine Vachon.

In between seeing competition films, Rush talked to The Hollywood Reporter about current projects, his experiences with AI, his love of animation and his connections with Czech art and culture.

You have appeared in so many films and seen movies all over the globe. What is it like being a juror here at the Karlovy Vary festival?

It takes us to a very definite place in the...

Spider-Verse writer team Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have joined the growing praise behind Coyote vs. Acme, whose future has gone from shelved to a possibly new lease on life in the span of a few days.

Lord and Miller joined fellow filmmakers like Brian Duffield and BenDavid Grabinski in rallying behind Coyote vs. Acme. On Nov. 15, 2023, Miller posted to X (formerly Twitter), "I saw Coyote Vs Acme and it’s delightful. Funny, charming, good physical comedy timing, with a surprising amount of heart. I hope several studios go after it so the world can see all the good work people did." Lord echoed this: "Coyote Vs Acme is wonderful. Dave Green nails it. Hilarious, smart existential and moving and makes this all-time character more relevant than ever.

"Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" had big shoes and expectations to fill. The sequel is coming after an Oscar win and a revolution in Hollywood studio animation that has inspired experimentation in every major studio. And yet, the movie not only exceeded expectations but also crushes them. This is a grand achievement in myth building and deconstruction, with the film pulling not an "Empire Strikes Back" but a "Matrix Reloaded," interrogating the idea and tropes of the hero, while continuing Miles' poignant coming-of-age story.

Unsurprisingly, the film is gorgeous. It is easy to take that for granted but to see it with your own eyes defies description and expectations. Like the first film, it breaks apart the rules of animation to challenge the entire medium, but "Across the Spider-Verse" goes beyond, breaking film itself like it's the second coming of Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese's "Duck Amuck." The result is...

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Some coyotes just can't catch a break. Wile E. Coyote, the cartoon canine created by animator Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese, can never seem to catch one. He can't ever catch the Roadrunner, either, despite using many contraptions and traps from the fictional Acme corporation in his attempts. Warner Bros. is set to release a new cartoon and live-action hybrid film, "Coyote vs. Acme," highlighting the efforts of the wily Wile E. Here's everything we know about the upcoming...

The post Coyote vs. Acme: Release Date, Cast, and More appeared first on /Film.

Wile E. Coyote, the eternally doomed Looney Tunes character, will star in the upcoming Warner Bros. animated film Coyote Vs. Acme. Chris McKay (The Lego Batman Movie) will produce the comedy, with sibling writing duo Jon and Josh Silberman (Living Biblically, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) onboard to write the script, Variety reports.

The beloved coyote is part of a iconic Looney Tunes stable that includes Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Speedy Gonzalez, Tasmanian Devil and Yosemite Sam. The ever-silent character debuted in the...

December was Tarantino Month here at Sos, and since January is dedicated to westerns, I thought it would be best to whip up some articles spotlighting films that influenced Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Since I began my list back in December, I’ve noticed similar lists popping up online – all of which are somewhat suspect, since they recommend some terrible films. For my money, all of the movies listed below are essential viewing for fans of Django Unchained, and come highly recommended.

Note: This is the third of a three part article.

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I Giorni dell’ira (Blood and Grit) (Day of Anger) (Gunlaw) (Days of Wrath)

Directed by Tonino Valerii

Written by Ernesto Gastaldi, Tonino Valerii, Renzo Genta

Italy, 1967

Day of Anger is a spaghetti western directed by Tonino Valerii, who began his career as Sergio Leone’s assistant and would later direct My Name Is Nobody (1973). Lee Van Cleef stars as Frank Talby,...

Warner Bros has unveiled four new images from the second "Looney Tunes" short, called "Daffy's Rhapsody," which is set to appear in front of theatrical 3D and conventional showings of "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island," starting February 10th. Check out the images below. In the new short, a relaxing evening at the theater turns into hunting season as Elmer Fudd is surprised by the unexpected appearance of his perpetual and ever-elusive target, Daffy Duck, on the stage. As Elmer gives chase, Daffy cleverly evades him while regaling the audience with a song that illustrates his plight - how hunters will never leave him alone. The lyrics to Daffy's song were written by Warren Foster and Michael Maltese, legendary writers of hundreds of classic Looney Tunes shorts during their golden age in the 1940s and 50s. Images: (click to enlarge)...

#233 (Vol. 2 #5): Cunning Canines

One of the animated films nominated for an Academy Award this year is live action director Wes Anderson’s venture into stop-motion animation, Fantastic Mr. Fox. This is based on Roald Dahl’s children’s book, which draws upon the traditional characterization of the fox as a trickster, which goes back to Aesop’s fables and the European tales of Reynard the Fox. Other wild members of the dog family likewise have appeared as tricksters, notably the coyote in Native American mythology, and sometimes the wolf.

Thinking about Hanna-Barbera’s 1960s animated trickster Top Cat for a forthcoming installment of this column led me to consider another example of the canine trickster: Top Cat’s predecessor at Hanna-Barbera, Hokey Wolf. Baby Boomers may find this chilling, but 2010 marks Hokey Wolf’s 50th anniversary. Yogi Bear (another trickster) had originally appeared in cartoons in The Huckleberry Hound Show...

#231 (Vol. 2 #3): Killing Katnip

During my lengthy leave of absence from writing “Comics in Context,” the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City and the Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco jointly held a traveling exhibition on the art of Harvey Comics, many of whose most celebrated characters, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, originated in animated cartoons produced by Paramount’s Famous Studios. I’m not that interested in Casper or Richie Rich, but the exhibit did reawaken my interest in some of the less famous animated stars of the Famous cartoons.

Towards the end of 2009, character actor Arnold Stang passed away, and I decided to write columns about two of the most memorable characters he voiced in animated cartoons. The first, starting in 1944, was Famous Studios’ Herman the mouse, who was eventually teamed with perennial antagonist Katnip the cat, voiced by the late Sid Raymond,...

The fine lads over at Chud added this up to their site (and gave thanks to a link from Neil Gaiman's Twitter), and it's a fascinating little piece of video for those of us who love animation.

While working on my masters I had a few animation classes, and I've done some limited computer-style animation, and lemme just say that it is easily one of the hardest things you'll ever do. I don't know exactly if an animation studio can really rip itself off, since Disney wasn't exactly stealing from MGM or Warner Bros. here, but there's more than a few interesting comparisons.

Granted, I've never been the afficionado of Disney that many animation buffs are; I always felt too much of the studio's early work was all polish, sheen and saccharine, whereas the Warner Bros. shorts, with less money typically per short, were far superior due to stronger...