Portland represents at the Oscars once again this year. Last year we sent two directors: Gus Van Sant for Milk and Irene Taylor Brodsky for The Final Inch. This year we sent animators- lots of them. Coraline employed a small nation state of caffeine fueled Portland obsessives. As it happens, both Coraline and one of its competitors, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, showcase the stop motion work of graduates of Will Vinton Studios.

Top Photo: Travis Knight, lead animator on Coraline. Bottom photo: Mark Gustafson, working on The PJ’s at Will Vinton Studio. Gustafson is the animation director on The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Gee…..thanks, Will!

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute.

Cameron obviously intends Avatar to be a critique, however broad and simplistic, of American money and militarism—after all, his hero is an embittered veteran insurgent. But it’s hard to entertain seriously the proposition that the Most Expensive Movie Ever is on the side of the underdogs, let alone the angels. When judged against scrappier pictures like Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline, and their respective modest budgets, Avatar more closely resembles the unsavory, disproportionate strategies of Michael Bloomberg, our billionaire mayor who recently bought his own re-election, another king of the world. Benjamin Strong, in The L Magazine

When Benjamin Strong isn’t using James Cameron’s latest film to address the need for campaign finance reform in New York City,  he uses it to discuss CGI vs stop motion.

It’s worth noting, though, that 2009 has seen not one but two outstanding animated films—Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox and Henry Selick’s Coraline—both of which were made with stop motion, a technology that’s supposedly obsolete, at least as compared to what Cameron is doing. These two films—Fantastic Mr. Fox, in particular—have natural, fully immersive settings, material worlds that appear as if they were handmade in actual three-dimensional space (and not on a computer) for the reason that they were. Benjamin Strong, in The L Magazine

Thanks for the shout out, Benjamin! Readers of Oregon Movies A to Z instantly recognize that both the “scrappier” pictures he cites were made by animators – Travis Knight and Henry Selick for Coraline, and Mark Gustafson for  Fantastic Mr. Fox — who originally worked for Oregon born and raised Will Vinton, the godfather of feature length stop motion animation.

Oregon’s contribution to Avatar, however, is on the live action side of the equation.

Kristi Turnquist, an honorary research associate of Oregon Movies, A to Z, broke the big story: Joel David Moore, the actor who plays scientist Norm Spellman in Avatar, is from Portland.

That’s Moore, catching flies, to the right of Sigourney Weaver.

Avatar is James Cameron’s second Oregon film, after Point Break, which he executive produced.

Anyone seen this film?

I hereby claim Avatar as an Oregon film, on the basis of Oregonian Joel David Moore’s presence in the cast.

Child actress Fairuza Balk starred as Dorothy Gale in Return to Oz (1985), directed by Walter Murch. Murch tapped Will Vinton Studios here in Portland to animate the character of the Nome King for this combination live action and stop motion animation film. Murch is a much Oscared film editor and sound editor. Return to Oz was his only time out as a director.

Henry Selick worked as a storyboard artist on Return to Oz. Twenty four years later, he would direct Coraline.

If you weren’t scared enough by Coraline, move up to an even darker film which shares some of Coraline’s bloodlines.

Walter Murch directed Fairuza Balk as the lonely little girl who can’t get adjusted to life back in Kansas. Auntie Em decides she needs electric shock therapy.

And that’s just the first act. That’s before Dorothy arrives in a bombed out, deserted Emerald City ruled by a headless psycho, played by Jean Marsh, who also plays the psychiatric nurse, back in Kansas.

Will Vinton Studios here in Portland provided the clay animated part of Nicol Williamson’s Nome King, Dorothy’s ultimate antagonist.

Lavish production values cannot wallpaper over the deep sadness of the story of a little girl confronting total devastation with only a pet chicken to help her. Dorothy negotiates a minefield of formidably evil adults without the help of the Tin Woodsman, Cowardly Lion, or Scarecrow.

See this film for Fairuza Balk’s tremendous performance, if not for those given by her assorted costars, some of which are animatronic puppets created by Brian Henson, son of Jim Henson. Henry Selick drew storyboards for this dark, sumptuous fairy tale.

This gentle, sad, scary film rewards Dorothy in the end with triumph. Children can see it, mostly because they do not understand what electroshock treatment is.

I hereby claim Return to Oz as an Oregon film, based on the contribution of Oregonian Will Vinton, and Will Vinton Studios.

A lot of people are concerned that [Coraline] is too scary. I actually think back to the first Disney films that deal with this very effectively: Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, Fantasia. It’s Alice in Wonderland meets Grimms’ fairy tale and I think that it connects to this very long tradition of telling scary tales around the campfire and telling kids not to go out of the cave at night because they’re going to be eaten by a saber tooth tiger.

Henry Selick, in interview

Then there was another third were local artists and animators from Portland, Oregon. There’s a long tradition of stop-motion with Will Vinton’s company that specialize in claymation. Travis Knight, one of our lead animators, is one of the best animators in the world, in the top five or 10 that I’ve ever worked with, so he set the bar very high for the local talent.

Henry Selick, director of Coraline, in an Animation World magazine interview

Strange but true: Kenneth Kolb, born Portland, Oregon in 1926, wrote the screenplay for Ray “Harry” Harryhousen’s masterpiece, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, a film cited by Henry Selick (and many, many others) as inspiring him to enter the field of stop motion animation.

Kolb’s other movie credit: he wrote the novel Getting Straight, which was adapted for the big screen in 1970.