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– My favorite discovery from the 2014 television season has to be Cartoon Network’s Rick and Morty, which takes the character relationship of Doc and Marty (more or less) from Back to the Future and transplants them into Doctor Who style adventures with some the sharpest humor I’ve seen in an animated program since Archer first hit the air. The series, created by Dan Harmon (Community) and Justin Roiland, has had its first season available on Blu-ray for awhile now. If you can handle some cruder, gross-out moments, I highly recommend it.

This week, Cartoon Network announced that Rick and Morty will return on Sunday, July 26th. Additionally, Roiland and Harmon guest-wrote the couch gag for the upcoming season finale of The Simpsons, which you can watch below:

– Speaking of The Simpsons, yesterday saw the news that Harry Shearer, the longtime voice of characters like Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner, and many other members of the show’s rich world, would be parting ways with the series. According to some reports, there’s still a chance that Shearer may come to terms with the show’s producers, but the roles are expected to be recast at this point.

I haven’t watched The Simpsons in years, but I’m hoping this paves the way for a Spinal Tap reunion.

– From the set of Captain America: Civil War, via JustJared, here’s the first image of Crossbones’ costume:

– Seth Rogen tweeted out the first on-set image from AMC’s Preacher last night, which sees Dominic Cooper’s Jesse Custer talking with Ian Colletti’s Arseface:

– According to Collider, the sequel to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes now has a title: War of the Planet of the Apes. It’s a bit of a mouth-full, but I guess no one would go see a movie called “Monkey Fight”, which I was lobbying pretty hard for.

– Lastly, there’s a pretty great True Detective Season 2 teaser out now via HBO. I may be more excited about this premiere than any other show this year, even the Mad Men finale!

What if the animation Oscars were chosen by people who knew nothing about animation?

As per usual, the Entertainment side of things often seems to a be little slow post-New Comic Book Day, but a couple of headlines have hit the wire that are worth noting:

– It was probably an inevitability, but Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal announced that she will be stepping down from her post and taking on a production role within the studio. While this is surely in response to the devastating Sony hack (which unveiled some very candid emails between Pascal, producers, and top talent), Sony has been in need of a correction course given their struggles of late to launch big picture franchises and the mishandling of the Spider-Man films. Regardless, Pascal leaves a heck of a resume behind her, and I’m sad to see one of the top female creative forces in Hollywood vanish under these circumstances.

– Does the idea of a Robotech movie excite you? After about 8 years of development purgatory, the property may finally see the light of day again. Warner Bros has enlisted 300 screenwriter Michael Gordon to tackle the project and according to Deadline, they have their eyes set on Mama director Andy Muschietti.

– Or how about a live-action Astro Boy? Despite the fact that we had an animated feature in 2009 that barely made a dent in the box office, Animal Logic Entertainment is teaming up with Tezuka Productions to bring Osamu Tezuka‘s creation to life yet again. Here’s what producer Zareh Nalbandian said the studio is aiming for:

We’ve seen him as a manga, an anime and an animated movie but we’ve never seen him as a live-action movie or him as a superhero. We actually see him in the same league as an Iron Man.

– Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) had long wanted to cast Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) as Wonder Woman in a proposed adaptation of the DC Comics property. Obviously, Warner Bros went another direction entirely, but that hasn’t stopped Refn from working with the actress as he’s cast her in another of his films. This time they’ll be teaming up for The Neon Demon, his first outright horror film, and she’ll be joined by Keanu Reeves, Jena Malone, and Elle Fanning among others. Hopefully it’ll be more appealing to audiences than Only God Forgives, a film that I’m one of the lone defenders of.

– Last night, the Visual Effects Society held their big awards ceremony and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes took home the award for Outstanding Visual Effects while Birdman took home the award for Best Supporting Visual Effects. Big Hero 6 was the talk of the night though, taking 5 awards in total including the award for Outstanding Animation.

Disney's "Big Hero 6" was the big winner tonight at the 13th annual VES Awards, sweeping all five of the animated feature categories.

"Guardians of the Galaxy" is the film to beat this year in the visual effects category, according to the VFX Predictinator.

There’s quite a bit of discussion today regarding today’s Oscar nominations (I remain very sad for Ava DuVernay’s snub in the Best Director category), but let’s talk about the stuff that’s collectively of greater interest to the readership of The Beat, because there’s great work to celebrate there too!

Here are the nominations that include films that are based on comics, or have some kind of comics/cartooning based slant:

The lack of a nod for The Lego Movie is surprising given the critical and popular acclaim, but if I had to bet money on one, it’d be The Tale of Princess Kaguya. But, Big Hero 6 may surprise here, given that it was a huge hit and perhaps may have engendered more screener viewings from members of the Academy.

Best Short Film (Animated)
“The Bigger Picture”
“The Dam Keeper”
“Feast”
“Me and My Moulton”
“A Single Life”

And regarding this category, it’s sadly one of my big blind spots. Feast, being under the Disney brand, seems a likely choice as any.

Time to get your betting pools together, the 2015 Academy Awards will be held on February 22nd.

We present complete coverage of the animation-related Oscar nominees for the 87th annual Academy Awards.

"Big Hero 6," "The Boxtrolls," "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" and the TV series "Game of Thrones" lead the VES Awards with five nominations apiece.

The nominees for the 2015 BAFTA Film Awards, the British equivalent of the Academy Awards, were announced yesterday.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this afternoon the 10 films that have ben shortlisted for the visual effects Oscar.

While the Academy still hasn't released a shortlist for the visual effects category, we identify the frontrunners in this year's Oscar race.

Like its predecessor, "Planes: Fire & Rescue" opened in third place at the U.S. box office. The new film, however, grossed only $18 million, or 19% less than the opening of the first "Planes."

Fox pictures have a number of exciting movies coming out this year, spanning a number of different audiences.

Guest moderator Ralph Garman introduced the first movie, How to Train Your Dragon 2. Director Dean DeBlois and surprisingly Jay Baruchel (voice of Hiccup) took to the stage. After showing a completed first five minutes of the movie (which looked fantastic by the way) DeBlois elaborated that this second film of what is to be a trilogy takes place five years after the first movie, showing how our characters and the village have both grown and learned to make living with dragons part of their daily lives. “We also see that Stoick (Hiccup’s father) has changed from seeing his son as an embarrassment, to becoming an overly proud dad that has high hopes for his son. Hiccup can’t deal with these aspirations.” And we’ll be introduced to a new villain, Drago Bludvist, and how he plans to put a permanent wedge between the humans and dragons. How to Train your Dragon is coming to theatres June 13th.

Following next, Ralph Garman introduced the cast of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes to the stage. Director Matt Reeves, Keri Russell, Gary Oldman, and Andy Serkis. “This movie follows years after the virus is released from the first movie and humans are extinct, or that they are thought to be,” says Matt. “We see that Caesar now is the leader of his tribe, and he has a family; a wife, one teenage son and a new baby.”

As it later introduced into the film that humans are still alive, it creates a conflict between the two species and inside Caesar himself. “Caesar is an ape, but he also had a human dad,” explained the director. “And he knows how it is to lose someone you love, so he’s empathetic to the survivors. He has to walk a fine line between his feelings and keeping his tribe together. And we see how there was a possibility that two could have lived together, but of course we all know what happens. That’s not a surprise.”

After watching the short movie clip they show us and listening to the discussion of the internal struggles on both the important parties of the movie, it’s difficult to decide who you want to root for. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will be seeing theatres this July 11th.
Based off the widely popular young adult book by the same name, Maze Runner is what I see as a futuristic Lord of the Flies. This movie adapted by James Dashner’s book has all the makings of the next Hunger Games, by which I mean futuristic technology set in a forest setting, and the murder of teenagers. The movie does have some exciting action shots for those who like to run and fight, thrown in with a lot of CGI.

Presenting the movie were the director Wes Ball, author James Dashner, actor Will Poulter, and actor Dylan O’Brien (made famous by the series Teen Wolf). The author confessed that for his book a number of influences were the book Ender’s Game, the book Lord of the Flies, the show Lost, and his fear of mazes. “Remember in the Shining with the maze scene? Mazes creep me out. If you’ve ever been in a corn maze then you know.” The anticipated Maze Runner will be out September 19th of this year.

Moderator Ralph Garman introduced a last minute addition into the screening lineup. Coming out this fall is a spy movie called Secret Service. Its notable actors are Colin Firth (famous for many things including his portrayal of Mister Darcy in a BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) and Samuel L. Jackson who will be playing the villain in this movie. Its setting is somewhere in the U.K., and the premise is that it deals with an organization that is funded by private investors as to not be hampered by politics and bureaucracy. The action sequences appear to be a faster paced Avengers, and technology stolen by Spykids. Still a work in progress.

And finally, what the Arena seemed to be waiting the most for, Ralph Garman introduced X-Men: Days of Future Past. The extended trailer and snippet of the movie looked beautiful and action packed. Unfortunately as a last minute change up, director Bryan Singer didn’t show (for reasons I’m sure we all know), but in his stead we had writer Simon Kinberg. He elaborated on things in the movie spanning from the politics in the 70’s, art styles of the bleak future and bright past, and as well as the convoluted concept of time travel. “Even though in the original comic that the movie is based off of they had Kitty go back in time, we decided that Wolverine worked better. James Cameron really helped us with the idea of time travel and how it scientifically would work, so you’ll see a lot of that in the film.”

In part of his final words, Simon Kinberg also added that he hopes this movie will make up for the failures of the 3rd X-Men movie, which was based off of the Dark Phoenix comic arc. X-Men: Days of Future Past will be out May 23rd; Not soon enough.