Made during their spare time at Pixar over the course of five years, animators Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj's "Borrowed Time," a tragic but poignant six-minute short, was just released to the public, and it is a heartbreaking piece that is decidedly for mature audiences only. "The goal for us was to create something that contested the notion of animation being a genre for children specifically," says Hamou-Lhadj in a making-of featurette that you can watch below. "[We wanted] to show that animation could be used as a medium to tell any sort of story."

The short film uses the iconography and landscape of the American West to tell the story of an aging sheriff returning to the scene of a violent and tragic moment in his childhood. Things get gruesome pretty fast, and as Coats, the piece's director, says, "There's expectations still of what animation is... [at festivals] the responses vary... And that's great because it means we're challenging people's expectations."

The film has already racked up about 50 festival prizes, and seems like a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination. It's only available for viewing via Vimeo for a limited time.

"Why We Made Borrowed Time" Featurette from Borrowed Time on Vimeo.

[h/t: SFGate]

Los Gatos-based Netflix announced today that they've just signed a deal with Dreamworks Animation for 300 hours of new original content based on Dreamworks characters. So, you can expect some spinoffs of Shrek, The Croods, Madagascar, and the rest to start appearing exclusively on Netflix in the coming years.

Dreamworks, which is based down in Glendale but has about 600 employees in the Bay Area in their new Redwood City campus, has worked with Netflix already on the kids show Turbo, based on the movie, which is set to premiere July 17.

The content deal is another big move for Netflix toward becoming a new model for on-demand streaming TV. The company, as we all know, has been trying to get out of the movies-by-mail business, even though that is still popular and many of us do not yet have devices attached to our TVs that are internet-enabled and allow us to play Netflix content, and even though the service requires a lot of bandwidth, and occasionally still implodes. The company still sees the future as lying in that streaming business, and is producing its own content now, like the recent revamp of Arrested Development, in order to gain respect and become a go-to source for streaming.

The deal also fills a hole for Netflix left by Nickelodeon, after the company did not renew a contract with Nickelodeon parent Viacom, which in turn took its children's program to Amazon streaming.

[SF Business Times]
[NYT]

Fascinating! Did you know that Dan Castellaneta's signature exclamation in the voice of Homer Simpson was derived from Laurel and Hardy? Listen and learn. [via WOW]

Swedish band Rymdreglage made a YouTube-popular, LEGO-based animated video in 2009 for their song "8-Bit Trip," which was a tribute to early 80s video games. That video has racked up over 12 million views in three years, so they thought they'd try again. But first they have to unbox and sort 65,000 LEGOs from 100 boxes, which they did over 71 hours in a small Swedish apartment. Luckily, they did some time-lapse video and condensed the process down to three minutes. But our eyes and fingers hurt and have glazed over just watching it. This is all in preparation for an upcoming new video which they're calling "8-Bit Trip 2." [Laughing Squid]

ANIMATION: The S.F. Film Society presents the return of The Best of Annecy, showcasing a dynamic and entertaining array of shorts that appeared in Europe's Annecy International Animated Film Festival this year. (5, 7 and 9 p.m., SF Film Society Cinema, 1746 Post Street)

COMEDY: Quick, RSVP soon to attend Radiostar Improv's free show (with an RSVP and a drink) at 50 Mason Social House, in which they'll be record improvised tales based on the audience's New Year's resolutions. As the group notes, 2012 is sure to be an interesting year, including the upcoming presidential election, "the return of Quetzalcoatl and the end of the world as we know it." (7:30 p.m., 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason Street)

FILM: Bad Movie Night continue their Summer Blockbuster series with a first-ever riffing of Harry Potter. Watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and help them figure out "how this can be the eighth part of a seven-part series." (8 p.m., Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission Street)

It's been quite some time since we posted a Taiwanese animation bit -- because, you know, it's getting extraordinarily old -- but we couldn't resist sharing with you Next Media Animation's harrowing take on the UC Berkeley republican's bake sale. If you recall, the controversial group offered white $2 for each baked good; Asians/Asian-Americans, $1.50; Latinos/Hispanics, $1; Blacks/African-Americans, 75 cents; Native Americans, 25 cents; women received 25 cents off the price.

The point, it seems, was to draw attention to Affirmative Action.

Monty Python animator and noted film director Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys) discusses his animation techniques on Bob Godfrey's Do-It-Yourself Animation Show in 1974. According to Cartoon Brew: "Godfrey’s show, which made animation accessible to the masses by taking the mystery out of the production process, was vastly influential and inspired an entire generation of kids in England, including Nick Park, who created Wallace & Gromit, Jan Pinkava, who directed the Pixar short Geri's Game, and Richard Bazley, an animator on Pocahontas, Hercules, and The Iron Giant."

Gilliam's advice in the '70s video still resonates today, suggesting: "The whole point of animation to me is to tell a story, make a joke, express an idea. The technique itself doesn't really matter. Whatever works is the thing to use."

Wonderful stuff.

Video: JoonaRuusuvuori / YouTube

FILM: Nine Nation Animation, a compilation of recent award-winning animated short films from the world’s most renowned festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Annecy, Clermont-Ferrand, and others, "proves that there’s a lot more to the animator’s art than either the cutting-edge ultra-realism of Pixar or the flat functionality of sitcoms like The Simpsons" (Village Voice).

6:30 and 8:10 p.m. // Roxie Theater (3117 16th St) // $6

FESTIVAL: As part of the Kanrin Maru 150th Anniversary Celebration, Japan Festival: Ishikawa Culture in San Francisco will showcase the art and culture of Ishikawa, which is located on the Sea of Japan coast of Japan's main island of Honshu, including shigin (poetry recital), kenshibu (sword and fan dance), taiko, shamisen, kimono, ikebana, calligraphy, rhythm dance, ballet, and choral singing.

6:30 p.m. // Davies Symphony Hall (201 Van Ness Ave) // $20

MUSIC: Epicsauce (aka SFist Kevin) presents a Pre-Thanksgiving Party, featuring the ethereal, psych lo-fi sound of Sister Crayon, the upbeat, poppy analog electro of Truckasaurus, and the trippy, fuzzed-out beats of Kites Sail High. Plus, the Epicsauce DJs will spin.

8 p.m. // Milk Bar (1840 Haight St) // $6