AWN Headline News

On Wednesday, February 23, 2000, the U.S. Recording Academy's premiere

recording awards, the Grammies, were presented, and a few toon-related

tunes took home golden statuettes. In the category Best Musical Album For

Children: "The Adventures Of Elmo In Grounchland" beat out "A Bug's Life

Song-Along" and Walt Disney's "Mannhein Steamroller Meet The Mouse." TARZAN

won for Best Soundtrack Album over THE PRINCE OF EGYPT and THE MATRIX.

Beating John Williams' score for THE PHANTOM MENACE, the award for

ADV Films brings more anime to VCRs and DVD players with the adult drama

SAKURA DIARIES VOLUME 1 on March 15, 2000. The story follows the main hero

Touma's mishaps in trying to court Meiko, who only dates college boys. The

flick is from famed manga creator Ujin. The suggested retail price for the

DVD is US$24.98 and for the VHS $19.98. The DVD features English, Japanese,

and Japanese with English subtitled versions.

Last week Alias|Wavefront unveiled a new upgrade to its powerful 3D

animation system Maya, an upgrade which will add a major new feature to the

software, particularly useful to games developers. Trax is a new non-linear

animation editing solution which will allow games developers to manipulate

extensive amounts of animation and blend it together in a way that can be

reproduced in the final game play. Trax features include reusable time

independent motion clips, blending of hand animation, data filtering and

On Tuesday, February 29, 2000, Shockwave and sponsor CYBERWORLD launched a

Stan Lee premiere, live on shockwave.com. The star-studded event was hosted

by Dick Clark. The celebrities on the attendee list were Tom Hanks, Keanu

Reeves, Michael Jackson, Richard Dreyfus, John Travolta, Quentin Tarantino

and Leonardo Dicaprio. Excerpts from the event will also be televised

internationally on ET and other entertainment news broadcasts. On

Wednesday, March 1, Stan Lee/CYBERWORLD content will launch on their site

The big snow ball of Paramount's SNOW DAY picked up momentum and rolled in

to #2 at the U.S. box office. In its second week in theatres, the kid-pic,

with special effects by Curious Pictures, grossed US$8.34 million bringing

its gross to $43.1 million. USA Films' ALIENS-like PITCH BLACK, with

primary visual effects by Double Negative Ltd. and The Chandler Group,

finished at #5 grossing $7.14 million raising its total gross to $22.9

million. THE TIGGER MOVIE finished the weekend in sixth place, making $6.31

On Wednesday, February 23, 2000, CINAR Corp., the creator of the Emmy

Award-winning ARTHUR, had a lawsuit filed against the company alleging they

artificially inflated its financial results by lying about the use of

Canadian tax credits. As reported [AF 10/19/99], allegations surfaced last

fall that CINAR only pretended to use Canadian authors for its scripts in

order to obtain tax credits. Canadian officials are investigating but no

charges have been filed. The early rumors sent CINAR stock plummeting to

Mainframe Entertainment, Inc. announced that it will produce 26 all-CGI

ACTION MAN half-hour television series episodes for Hasbro Properties

Group, a division of Hasbro, Inc. Before the series begins regularly

scheduled broadcasts on Fox Kids in September, a one-hour ACTION MAN

special will air on Fox Kids Network in May 2000. SABAN International N.V.

will handle international distribution for the series. The new TV show is

based on Hasbro's ACTION MAN brand, the number one boy's action brand in

FAT DOG MENDOZA co-produced by Sunbow Entertainment and Cartoon Network

Europe, is set to premiere in the U.K. Animated by TMO-Loonland's Peter

Volkle at his Hungarian studio, the first of the 26 completed episodes will

air on February 28, 2000. The series is based off of Scott Musgrove's cult

comic book. Fat Dog and his boy Little Costumed Buddy live in Neighbourhood

X, which seems normal until one notices that ancient Rome and the Himalayas