“I am extremely honored and excited to be invited to the awards ceremony on April 12th in my new hometown of Toronto,” says director Jim Donovan. “I am especially proud to accompany Carinne, for whom this is a first film…” Quite right. Her performance is especially noteworthy.

Here’s more on the 2010 Genies in the Toronto Star.

Good luck and congrats, Jim and Carinne!

Here’s the pretty cool storyboard he made to prepare for the stop-motion Ninja Unboxing of Google’s Nexus One phone. When the process is this good…

In the interview, Patrick Boivin talks about how he came under the influence of moody French illustrator Moebius and, at age 16, began drawing cartoons.  He has since directed many TV shows and shorts.

These are the same shorts Patrick Boivin put on his YouTube channel. “They were not popular at all,” Boivin says. “The short dramas had plenty of poetry but not a lot of punch, garnering only 200 views after six months.”

So Boivin turned to stop motion.

His video game-inspired hit Street Fighter, his funny clip Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee and his recent martial arts spoof, Ninja’s Unboxing, commissioned by Google to promote its new cellphone, have all racked up millions of views on YouTube.

Patrick Boivin and his own brand of DIY has made him a Youtube success story. But uploading your work on YouTube is not everything. Users must respond to it. And in the case of Patrick Boivin they did by the millions. 56, in fact.

That’s when Hollywood came knocking.

Now, and we’ve said it here before, Circle of Confusion is the LA-based management team that is taking care of finding directing gigs for Patrick.

In the Wired piece, he cites the work of Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson as prime influences. But Duncan Jones’ Moon was the last movie he saw that really touched him. “This is the kind of picture I would like to make: it uses science fiction to talk about something else.”

It’s just a matter of time as Patrick is heading out west in a week…

The Wired article goes into some detail on how he made the Ninja video, but there’s more DIY stuff in the interview Patrick gave to YouTube’s Creator’s Corner.

Le magazine français Web-Culture “se balade entre photographie et performance afin de percevoir les chemins de l’intime dans des expressions artistiques.”

Dernièrement, cette balade les a amenés de ce côté-ci de l’Atlantique pour parler avec le réalisateur Jérémie Saindon.  Une fois de plus, il est question de sa signature visuelle, mais aussi l’interaction humaine dans ses réalisations, qu’il fait à partir d’un idéale bien campé : brouiller la ligne entre l’hyper réalisme et l’onirisme.

Dans cette entrevue, il parle de ses influences : Michel Houellebecq, Alejandro Jodorowsky et  Michael Haneke. Et la place que prend l’Internet dans son travail, qui d’ailleurs lui permet un rayonnement international, notamment en France où des milliers, pour ne pas dire des millions, de gens ont vu son clip « Ensemble »de Cœur de Pirate.

Pour l’avenir ? Son long métrage sur les gangs de rue haïtiens ici à Montréal dont la trame tourne autour d’une famille de trois frères et d’une mère monoparentale qui survit grâce au proxénétisme de jeunes adolescentes. Aussi, des clips pour Yelle et Islands.

Nous tenons à féliciter Laura Bari pour son documentaire Antoine qui part à la découverte de l’univers d’un jeune garçon aveugle de cinq ans. Antoine est primé partout où il passe.  26 février.

Nous adorons ce festival. Il porte trop bien son nom. Bon Rendez-vous à tous !

Et pour ceux qui ne l’ont pas encore vu, voici un extrait  de Tête blanche.

]]> http://woolflapin.com/2010/02/woolf-lapin-et-les-rendez-vous-du-cinema-quebecois/en/feed/en/ http://woolflapin.com/2010/02/woolf-lapin-welcomes-animation-director-paul-laberge/en/ http://woolflapin.com/2010/02/woolf-lapin-welcomes-animation-director-paul-laberge/en/#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:04:18 +0000 stephan http://woolflapin.com/?p=4386 We are very psyched about welcoming new talent Paul Laberge. He’s an animation director with some really fine work under his belt. He’s looking to break into fiction. And we are anxious to collaborate on unique projects with him.

Paul’s a wicked illustrator also. Check out the decks he’s designed for EXOshop.

Last week for Daily Miracle, David Sherman’s play, which is having a really good run at Infinitheatre.

“The men and women I worked with on the desk at The Gazette were almost all unsung heroes,” Sherman says. “They worked their hearts out under what has become impossible conditions for what I believed was a noble cause. Getting the paper out, every night, no matter what. The reporters got the credit. The deskers went bald and crazy.”

Arthur Holden in the role of Marty is simply irreverent.  Holden is a physical actor and it seems the role was written for him. He is the perfect incarnation of a disintegrating newspaper industry. He’s just back from sick leave and no matter how medicated, this news desk curmudgeon keeps firing his wit at what news has become while he was gone: non news. Papers are peddlers of sex and recipes, no more. And gone are the days of hard news and credible journalism.

As paperboys are falling by the wayside everywhere, putting the edition to bed, as it were, becomes the most important thing these deskers do.

James Lavoie’s set design is also noteworthy as Infinity is in an old public bath house.  David Sherman’s writing and Arthur Holden’s acting make this a must see.

Infinitheatre’s Director Guy Sprung tirelessly promotes Montreal writers. Do check it out. January 26th to February 14th, 2010 at the Bain St Michel 5300 St Dominique.

Bonzai Films is a Montreal animation studio. They’re behind this Blue Seeds’ video, Lost and Delirious. It’s moody and perfectly adapted to the song. It’s just awesome.

Bonzai founders Nicolas Martel and Paul Laberge like to work with different collaborators, but their creativity rests mainly on exploring and mixing different production techniques. Their body of work proves it.

By paring up with Woolf + Lapin, Bonzai is looking to break out into fiction animation. So expect more cool and inspiring work from this emerging animation studio in the year to come.

Tean Schultz is a great writer. Period.

But one thing that stands out with Tean is his great knack for pitching his ideas.

Woolf + Lapin likes talents that are different, that stand apart, that you can’t find just anywhere. And Tean fits that bill. He has a unique talent as well as being a notorious team player. He’s even got the band to prove it (The Gods of Now).

While animation is something that he knows inside and out, Tean has recently developed live-action projects for adults.  And believe us, they’re wicked. Namely Divorcing Jesus, which was picked up and optioned just this week.

A big welcome to Tean!

Contrairement à ce que nous avions écrit en septembre dernier, ce sera Karine Vanasse et Sébastien Huberdeau, les deux vedettes de Polytechnique de Denis Villeneuve, qui joueront dans «Angle mort», ce thriller à la Hitchcock de Martin Girard (Le Secret de ma mère, Ma fille mon ange, Pendant ce temps).

C’est l’histoire d’un couple qui part en voyage pour se ressourcer, mais ce plan est vite contrecarré quand ils rencontrent un tueur en série.

Le film sera tourné à Cuba sous peu.

It is the spectacular unboxing of Google’s Nexus One phone. The stop-motion is by none other than Patrick Boivin. In case you didn’t know, unboxing videos are quite the cult thing on the Internet.

Google hired Patrick Boivin to do something off the beaten track. And we say they were well served.

We’re biased of course, but we think it’s one of his best. And it’s gonna go viral like crazy!

UPDATE: as of this a.m. the clip is a few hits shy of half a million.