According to Variety, the L.A. Film Critics Association has done something they’ve never done in their 33 year history.  Critics chose an animated film, Pixar’s Wall-E, to take their top prize Best Film of the year.

While the L.A. critics have leaned toward specialty fare in recent years, such as “There Will Be Blood,” “American Splendor” and “About Schmidt,” they’ve honored mainstream crowd-pleasers before: “Star Wars” won best pic in 1977, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” in 1982.

The runner-up for Best Film was another huge blockbuster of the year, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.  Nolan was also the runner-up for Best Director against Danny Boyle who took the prize for Slumdog Millionaire.  Heath Ledger was given a post-humous nod for Best Supoprting Actor for his role as the Joker.

Since Wall-E was given Best Film of the Year overall, in the Animation category Waltz with Bashir took top honors.

The L.A. Film Critics Association Awards dinner will be held Jan. 12 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Beverly Hills.

According to Animation Magazine, two huge releases are coming to DVD today. 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios’ Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! and The Dark Knight.  The two films did exceedingly well at the box office and will no doubt take in big number on DVD as the holiday season approaches. Horton’s

two-disc special edition DVD lists for $34.98 and offers director commentary by Hayward, a veteran Pixar artist, and Martino, an Oscar-winning vfx director whose credits include Total Recall. The two met while working on the Fox/Bluesky toon feature Robots. Other DVD extras include commentary by Carrey and Carell, and the new Ice Age short Surviving Sid.

The Dark Knight also comes with a heap of extras including

two segments of Gotham Uncovered: Creation of a Scene—“The Evolution of the Knight” and “The Sound of Anarchy,” a look at the scenes director Christopher Nolan shot in the IMAX format and Gotham Tonight, a Gotham Cable News premier investigative news program presenting hard-hitting stories about Gotham and the influential people that make the headlines. The Blu-ray version adds Gotham Uncovered: Creation of a Scene, in which Nolan and visual effects and stunt artists offer a rare look at the detail and planning that went into creating in-camera stunts and effects for the film.

Cartoon Brew reports that Viacom made a massive staff cut of 850 people.  Among these was the entire Nickelodeon Digital Animation Studios in New York.  As of Wednesday, Viacom will be closing whole Nick Studio in New York for good.

…big blow to the New York animation community: Nick is not only one of the largest animation employers in the city but also the last network animation studio remaining on the East Coast.

Linda Beck, a Nickelodeon enployee, posted about the situation on ASIFA- East’s blog, “The End of an Era, Nickelodeon Digital Animation Studio Closes Shop”.

The crushing blow was that, after a long and difficult deliberation, the Network had made the decision not to rebuild the studio in a new location. After a decade of producing ground-breaking, award-winning pre-school animated television, an Era was given an end date.

Variety reports that “Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa” has made its release in the foreign market, dominating the weekend.  In 35 markets, the Dreamworks animated film made $50.2 mil, taking in more than the combined total of “Quantum of Solace,” “Twilight,” “Bolt” and “Wall-E.”

“Madagascar 2” corralled most of its offshore coin in a trio of socko European launches with $11 million in Germany, $9.8 million in France and $9.5 million in the U.K. It also opened impressively in first place in Mexico with $4.2 million, Belgium with $1.6 million, Argentina with $1.2 million and Austria and Peru with $1.1 million each.

The weekend pushed the foreign cume to $125 million for the sequel, which had been opening gradually over the past five frames. “With school holidays set to start in many markets, ‘Madagascar 2’ is set for a very strong run this holiday season,” said Andrew Cripps, president of Paramount Pictures Intl.

Openings in major markets were above “Ratatouille” and the original “Madagascar”.  Madagascar is already setting records in Russia and the Ukraine as the biggest financial foreign grosser of all time.   Other animated films in the foreign market right now include Pixar’s “Wall-E”, which now has a foreign cume of $271 mil, the 7th highest figure this year.  Disney’s “Bolt” will open in wide release at foreign theaters come January, but has made $9.5 mil in 9 territories so far.

IGN.com spoke with Frank Miller on the eve of his new film coming out, The Spirit, for the holidays.  During the interview they asked him how the Sin City sequel was coming along.

Much to our delight, the response was encouraging, with the writer-turned-director saying that Sin City 2 might be ready to shoot early next year.

“Sin City 2 is written,” he proclaimed. “It’s mainly a matter of working out the details of the production. I’m hoping to do it with Robert Rodriguez again in the same circumstances that we did the first one, and we could be shooting as soon as April.”

Miller didn’t give details of who would be returning from the original cast, but he did say it’s possilbe the film could be released by end of next year.

 Wallace and Gromit have decided to sign up for some promo deals after their recent fashion campaign success. With their upcoming short ‘A Matter of Loaf or Death’, the dynamic duo of British animation has teamed up with Kingsmill, BBC1, and Pyrex for some creative cross-promotion.  Animation Magazine reports:

Leading up to the broadcast, Wallace and Gromit will be the face of BBC One in a series of station idents, created and produced exclusively by Aardman at their studios in Bristol. The on-air campaign will run over the holiday period.

Aardman and bread company Kingsmill will launch a six week, instant-win Christmas campaign dubbed “Win a Prize of a Loaf Time.” The promotion will be featured on 29 million packs of Kingsmill bread.

In an additional tie-in, Wallace and Gromit will be featured in a new Pyrex promotion which offers exclusive collectables free with selected non-stick bakeware at Asda Living and Superstores and independent retailers.

In ‘A Matter of Loaf or Death’, Wallace’s new calling is a bakery called Top Bun complete with all the home-made gadgetry that Wallace is know for.  But when local bakers start disappearing, Gromit must turn sleuth to solve the mystery and save his master from the same fate.  Noting Aardman’s track record with Wallace and Gromit, it is sure to be a smashing good time.

For some unauthorized Wallace and Gromit fun, check out this mash-up trailer on YouTube called Quantum of Wallace.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ascent Media Group is merging two of its most notable brands, Method and Riot.  The VFX/post-production houses will now be under one roof and called Method, but will do business at Riot’s Santa Monica offices.  It will now offer visual effects services for feature, tv, and commercial projects.

Method, a boutique headquartered a few blocks from Riot, has always been a VFX house. Riot has offered VFX as well as digital intermediate/telecine services. Meanwhile, Ascent’s Company 3 brand also is headquartered in Santa Monica and focuses on DI/telecine.

With the change, Riot’s DI/telecine services move to the Company 3 umbrella.

Senior colorist and Company 3 president Stefan Sonnenfeld — who this year took over as head of Ascent Media Creative Services shortly after Jose Royo was named Ascent Media Group’s CEO — said that the previous setup was such that the two businesses often were bidding against each other for jobs. The goal of the change, he said, is to offer more streamlined services and support.

Method and Riot started out as private businesses but were bought up by Ascent Media Group in the 1990s.

The recession is now official, and according to Variety, some big players are making changes to their portfolio.  Sumner Redstone, the Viacom mogul who held 87% of the company Midway Games, has finally bailed and sold his stake.  The stake was sold to a private investor, Mark Thomas, for $100,000 plus assuming a debt around $150 million.

The move comes with less than three weeks left before a Dec. 19 deadline for Redstone’s holding company National Amusements to repay $800 million in debt. Redstone has been locked in negotiations with a syndicate of lenders led by Bank of America about how he plans to restructure a total of $1.6 billion in debt.

The Midway shares, valued at less than a penny apiece, yielded little actual revenue but will be used to offset taxable gains from the sale of other National Amusements assets.

Redstone has owned a stake in Midway for a decade, but in 2005 he bought enough to control the company, wanting to create a “top-tier publisher” out of it.  It is estimated he spent roughly $500 mill over the years.  Unfortunately, since Redstone’s grab for control Midway has only lost money.

With very little cash on hand, Midway execs admitted on their most recent conference call that they’ll have to resolve liquidity issues quickly in order to pay back debt and stay in business. Though recent release “Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe” was well received, company is expected to continue losing money for the foreseeable future.

It’s not clear how Thomas plans to keep Midway in business — whether he will invest new funds, take the company into bankruptcy or make another move.

AWN reports that Takashi Murakami, the Japanese pop artist that is touted as “Japan’s Andy Warhol”, is opening up a new animation studio in Los Angeles.  This new studio will be operated under Murakami’s production company Kaikai Kiki, after the cartoon characters of the same name. 

“Animation and film have always been among my greatest influences, ever since I first saw ‘Star Wars’ and Hayao Miyazaki’s films,” Murakami said in a statement. “This studio represents a great step in the evolution of Kaikai Kiki and gives me a closer proximity to the community of artists with whom I hope to collaborate as I continue my explorations of animated and live-action film.”

The new studio plans to open the doors next summer, yet they already have projects in the works; a feature based on Murakami’s shorts PLANTING THE SEEDS, and they have already finished work on ”Good Morning,” the music video by Kanye West.

According to Variety, ASIFA’s annual Annie Awards, celebrating the best of the animation industry, just announced its nominations.  “Kung Fu Panda” jetted to the top with 17 nominations.  Behind that are “Bolt”, “Wall-E”, “Waltz with Bashir”, and “9.99″ in the best feature category.

Nickelodeon nabbed the most nominations in the TV category with 12 noms total, including a duo of nods for best children’s animated series for “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and “The Mighty B!”

Contenders in the best animated productions for TV category include 20th Century Fox’s “King of the Hill,” ShadowMachine’s “Moral Orel” and “Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II,” Disney’s “Phineas and Ferb” and Gracie Films/Fox TV’s “The Simpsons.”

Electronic Arts “Dead Space,” Activision’s adaptation of “Kung Fu Panda” and Heavy Iron Studios’ gamer version of “Wall-E” were nominated in the vidgame category.

Mike Judge, John Lasseter and Nick Park are the 2008 Winsor McCay recipients, which honors career contributions to the art of animation.

The Annie Awards will be held on January 20th in UCLA’s Royce Hall.