I’ve been a fan of Blue Sky Studios since Bunny so it was a great thrill to score tickets to the premiere of their latest: Ice Age 3. But that thrill came with a certain amount of fear. After all, the last film in the series is easily the team’s worst and the first Ice Age, while a great introduction to a promising new studio, didn’t quite live up to their Academy Award winning roots.

So when the first act of Dawn of the Dinosaurs threatened to feature Sid (the Ice Age equivalent of Jar Jar Binks) prominently, I got worried. But here’s the thing: this time I didn’t hate him. And as soon as Simon Pegg’s deranged Buck hits the screen, IA3 never looks back — the trip he leads into the dinosaur underground zips from one rollicking action set piece to the next, with just enough character and story to hold it all together. And some of his key character sequences (take the map drawing in the sand) give goosebumps. Then it hit me: with its newest feature, Blue Sky has found its voice.

That’s why saying IA3 is no Pixar film is a compliment. The reason Dawn of the Dinosaurs feels so self assured is (save a few plot points that read like focus group requirements) it doesn’t try to be anything more than what it is. And that’s a fabulous update of the classic Looney Tune, with a level of cleverness to which other studios (coughDreamworkscough) can only aspire. That’s Blue Sky’s strike zone, and it seems like they know it.

It was with a bit of irony that I dressed up to go see Scrat, but in a way it makes sense. After all, as Scrat goes so does Blue Sky, and suffice to say his IA3 bookends don’t disappoint. Plus it was great fun to ride the waves of giddy enthusiasm as the folks who made the movie saw it end to end for the first time. Let’s hope the box office rewards them.

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Love this concept art from Pixar’s fabulous Up. And there’s more where those came from. Heck, MoMA had a whole exhibit of Pixar concepts.

Which begs the question: why don’t other studios put their formative art on display? They certainly have work worth sharing, but it typically trickles out through less than official channels. (Jake Parker has some great stuff from Horton Hears A Who, for example.) Perhaps that says something about the origins of each studio. Pixar, after all, was started by artists, while most of the others were started by suits or engineers. That’s not good or bad, it’s just different. And it’s interesting to see how the genesis of a studio can impact how they work, even so many years later.

Find more Pixar concepts at Sanders Art Studio and did you know the next their next three flicks will be sequels? I’d be worried but their only sequel to date (Toy Story 2) is their best film yet.

We last wrote about Pixar in Pixar Models Ratatouille

Update: Don’t miss the gorgeous Up color scripts. I’ve got some from The Incredibles in my office, but these beat ‘em!

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Guilty as charged. The ridiculous haircuts, the ludicrously huge glasses, the ancient headphones, the thousand yard stare. It’s all true. No matter! Nothing focuses you like Combat, Atari 2600 style. It’s the young heyday of the videogame in full swing — my big cousin and I drinking from the firehose.

But what I love is watching my nephews doing the same thing. Except now the console is Wii, the closest thing to Combat is Wii Play Tanks (complete with co-op!), and they’ve traded the rotting yellow hand-me-down headphones for significantly cooler earbuds. And I’ve gone from the hopeless geek to the cool uncle who understands (well, until they see this photo).

Me and my cousin? We’ve both got PhDs. That’s right, here’s proof that violent videogames are the gateway drug to… higher learning. The horror.

Find more full-on immersion at That Looks Awesome! and Game Faces. And enjoy some game nostalgia with the Edge 200.

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Late last year, just after Hank Paulson gave his fireside chat on the implosion of the world economy, my wife began the search for a new job. For us, then, the continually gruesome economic news has carried something of a personal tone. It’s been a stressful few months to say the least.

So, it’s with great pleasure that I’m able to emerge from the financial fallout bunker to report that Q has not only found a job, but a fabulous one. In early March, she’ll will start work in the research & development division of Blue Sky — a AAA animation studio just north of NYC. They’re the folks who brought us gorgeous feature films like Ice Age and Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!

But my heart warms most to two of their bit players: Scrat and Bunny. Featured in enigmatic shorts full of spastic action in the best Tex Avery tradition, Scrat is lovable animated lunacy at its purest. You’ll find him in or around nearly every Blue Sky feature. Bunny, on the other hand, has only made one appearance. But that appearance, in a classic Tom Waits backed short, was enough to win Blue Sky an Academy Award. It’s a bittersweet tale that’s stuck with me since the film’s debut in 1998. Saying more would ruin it, but suffice to say missing Bunny is missing out.

What a relief and what an exciting new adventure. For Q, it’s a dream come true. Plus, I’ve been trying to finagle a visit to Blue Sky for some time, so here’s hoping my foot’s a little more firmly in the door now! Many thanks to Adam Christensen and Jake Parker for getting Q’s resume in front of the right people — that was tremendous.

Find more Scrat at Blue Sky Shorts. And see Bunny in her entirety at Yahoo! Movies.

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Whenever I go to Chelsea, I come away inspired. But absence makes the heart grow fonder and it’s been way too long. Then again, gallery season just started, so it’s a perfect time to reacquaint. And boy did this season start well. Just have a look at Calma up above. His Novo Mundo show at the Jonathan Levine is jaw dropping. Here are a few more December shows that remind me why I love Chelsea:

Zaha Hadid’s installations at 169 10th Ave and Sonnabend (respectively):

The Art of Babar at Mary Ryan ignites memories of the fabulous space elephants of childhood:

Peter Callesen’s “Folded Thoughts” paper sculptures:

Shag’s underwater room as part of his Voyeur show:

Perfect Strangers provides these “dare not go in” freakazoid human-headed beasts:

Hope to hit Chelsea a lot more often in the new year. Art inspiration can’t wait another 300 days (and neither can Billy’s). See you in 2009!

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Just hit the ground in Atlanta, where I’ll be speaking at Living Game Worlds 4 this week. It’s always great fun to hang out with folks like Raph Koster, T.L. Taylor, Randy Farmer, and Ian Bogost. My talk will focus on the design challenges we faced building games in virtual worlds — the Virtual Team Building Games project, which I lead at IBM Research. Looking forward to some good discussion. If you’re at LGW4, stop by and say hi!

Check out our notes on LGW3 at Inside Living Game Worlds. For more, see the Living Game Worlds site.

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Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire ain’t what you think. Brilliant and harsh, Boyle’s flicks tend to leave you feeling a bit damaged (see Trainspotting, 28 Days Later). And given that Slumdog focuses on India’s crushingly poor slum kids, you’d expect similar — particularly since films like Born into Brothels have calibrated expectations.

It’s anything but. There may be down moments, but the relentless pace hardly lets you linger. We meet gangsters, take kaleidoscopic trips down slum alleys, witness family trauma. But throughout it all there is a pervasive sense of hope. It’s clear that Danny fell in love with India; he captures it so well. In a recent interview, he put it this way:

You go there, and it’s buzzing. The extremes you get are incredible! You cannot believe what you’re getting on film because you don’t go anywhere that’s boring. The city’s just exploding somehow. Destroying itself and re-creating itself at the same moment—the buzz you get off it! (more)

And halfway through the flick I realized what had happened. Boyle hasn’t just fallen in love with India, he’s fallen in love with Indian cinema. When I’m on travel, I make sure to catch local cinema and India’s is special: Bollywood (the largest film industry in the world by ticket sales) is all about crowd pleasers. That means a whole lot of gangster flicks and love stories (often both together), punctuated by singing and dancing that puts western music videos to shame.

You mock it at first but it quickly becomes contagious. And I think fans of Boyle’s previous films might find Slumdog just the same. You start out hating it for what it isn’t, but end up loving it for what it is. I dare anyone not to smile at the closing credits (you’ll see what I mean). And in doing so, you aren’t just falling in love with Slumdog, you’re falling in love with Bollywood, too. More of that, please.

Find more Slumdog Millionaire at Fox Searchlight. Oh, and did I mention the Slumdog soundtrack is absolutely fantastic? Shimmering, pulsing beats match the hyperkinetic visuals blow for blow. It’s criminally absent from Amazon. That better get fixed soon.

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I didn’t vote. Why bother? Living in the deepest blue part of the bluest state, it’s pretty clear my vote will just be piling in with what will surely be a massive majority. As far as voting for change goes, New York’s ballot was in the box months ago.

Here’s the problem: “Dad, why didn’t you vote for the first black candidate for president?” Bit easier if I was at odds policy-wise (read Colin Powell). Lacking that, I’m left babbling electoral college math that sounds bogus even before it comes out my mouth. It’s a conversation I don’t know how to have. Okay, I voted after all.

It’s hard to believe we’re here — on the verge of electing the first black president. Our subway conductor on Halloween:

Barack Obama!
If you aren’t ready for change, get off the train
Next stop: first black president!

Let’s hope. But let’s also be clear on what it would say about the state of race in America. You need look no further than the current challenges in South Africa to see that electing a black president doesn’t magically generate the so-called post-racial society — particularly when your economy is in shambles.

Still, merely having a black presidential candidate has the nice byproduct of opening the floodgates for thoughtful reflection on race in the national press: places like The Atlantic and The Times. (Heck, even New York Magazine.) In the end, the piece that drives our continuing racial challenges home most clearly is a simple list contrasting Palin and Obama. A sample:

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay. (more)

So, it’s important to remember what it would mean to elect the first black president: it’s a statement on race, not a solution to racism. But what a fabulous way to make that statement. It would be a dream fulfilled. And I’ll be able to tell my kid I was part of making it happen. Vote!

We previously wrote about Obama in The Last Black Senator and The Obama Upset. We think these Shamans for Obama are awesome.

Update: And it’s done.

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You know it’s gallery season in New York when the parade of great shows just doesn’t stop. Banksy’s West Village takeover ends today, and Kehinde Wiley’s Soho invasion starts up tomorrow. Too good.

It’s double subversion. Where Banksy juxtaposes pet store and meat shop, highlighting the modern disconnect between our foods and their source (”mechanically retrieved meats”), Kehinde juxtaposes famous portraits and the urban everyman — begging the question: “Who defines heroism?” Both hijack long running cultural narratives to great effect.

And Kehinde’s new show Down threatens to go harder than usual, providing what looks like a direct rebuttal to negative views of young black men in American society, confronting urban crime through a lens of art history. I’m on it.

For more on Down, visit Deitch Galleries. Wiley’s work also appeared recently at the Harlem Studio Museum with the gorgeous, thoughtful The World Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar. And you never know where Banksy will pop up next.

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I suppose it’s fitting that during Bush’s last speech to the UN, it’s revealed that his speeches are written out in 36 point font like children’s books. And wth each and every word underlined, too — as if to remind that skipping words is not allowed. Is it all spelled out phonetically, too? I wouldn’t doubt it.

Considering the avalanche of disasters brought about by Bush’s reign, it figures that his outro would be nothing less than the collapse of the American empire. Okay, Ahmadinejad said that, but I think we can all agree that some radical readjustment is in the works.

And back in Washington, the representative from Ohio laid out quite nicely the precise nature of Bush’s final act. Thank God we’ve only 117 days until someone else is running this place. Assuming there’s anything left of it by then.

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