Sure the Oscars have come and gone, but a sweet tooth is never irrelevant. Bakerella — a site dedicated to fun and easy baking ideas — has showcased a line of goodies centering around the movie award season. The collection includes tributes to Coraline, The Princess and the Frog and Up.

Click through for full baking instructions.

Coraline Cookies

These bite-size peanut butter buttons are super easy to make and fun to eat. Keep your eyes on them, though. They’ll disappear quickly.

Ribbits & Royalty

Frog cake pops! Cute enough to kiss and sweet to eat.

Upcakes

These upcakes will put a smile on the young and old alike. They use miniature multicolored confetti sprinkles to represent balloons and buttercream frosting for clouds.

Button, button, who’s got the button!?  I happened upon an awesome Coraline-inspired costume project where a fan constructed ‘button eyes’ for her guise as the “Other Mother” character.  The awesomeness lies in the fact that the buttons are made using either prescription lenses or non-prescription resulting in fairly unobstructed vision.

The fan’s handy-work is a result of the following DIY instructions (make a mental note for Halloween 2010):

Coraline Button Eyes (see through and prescription)

Image via briemoo

With the various upcoming movie awards pomp and circumstance, relatively older movies such as Coraline are getting their second wind within the scope of entertainment relevancy.  Apple has released a brand new behind-the-scenes look at the Oscar-nominated fantasy/horror flick.

Among other topics, director Henry Selick discusses the “look” they were trying to accomplish with Coraline herself — as well as the supporting characters — and the amount of models and artists needed to create just the right expressions.  As is the case with most stop-motion productions, the statistics are staggering.

Source(s):
Behind the Scenes Look at Coraline [Movie Cultist]

The Producers Guild of America (PGA) has announced its 2010 award nominees and Disney/Pixar’s Up is nominated for Best Picture (period), while also represented in the Animated Motion Picture category along with 9, Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Princess and the Frog.

2009 has probably been the strongest year for animated feature films in terms of quality and the gaining of respect from the movie industry.  The PGA awards — which recognize the best film productions and producers — are often an indicator of which films will succeed at the Oscars.

The PGA Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year film award is a reliable bellwether for the Academy Award for best picture. Last year’s PGA winner, “Slumdog Millionaire,” went on to capture Oscar’s top prize. In fact, 13 PGA winners over the last two decades have gone on to win the Academy Award for best picture.

With so many great candidates in the animated category, it’s difficult to say which will come out on top.  Disney Pixar’s Up is gorgeous, hopeful and tugs at your heart strings.  9 goes against most tendencies with animation and ditches the blast of colorful images, instead opting for a dark post-apocalyptic tale — beautiful in its own right.  Coraline is an eery adventure which succeeds with a mixture of macabre and classic fairytale imagery.  Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox nails every single detail in it’s whimsical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book.  The Princess and the Frog breathes life into the stagnant Disney Princess while at the same time honoring its classics with good old fashioned hand-drawn storytelling. Certainly an exciting time for animation fans.

Which movie do you think deserves the PGA award and possibly an Oscar?  Do you think Up has a chance to walk away with “Best Picture?”

The 21st Annual PGA Awards takes place on January 24th at the Hollywood Palladium.

Source(s):
PGA Awards nominate ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Avatar’ for best picture [Gold Derby -- LA Times]

ASIFA has released their list of nominations for its February 6 Annual Annie Awards ceremony to be held in Los Angeles, CA.  Walt Disney Animation Studios leads the way by garnering 17 total nominations.

BURBANK, CA (December 1, 2009) – The International Animated Film
Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, announced nominations today for its 37th Annual Annie
Awards recognizing the year’s best animated features, television productions,
commercials, short subjects and outstanding individual achievements in the field of
animation. Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “The Princess and the Frog” received
eight nominations, including Best Animated Feature and individual nominations for
animated effects, character animation, production design and voice acting, while its
“Prep and Landing” received nine nominations including Best Animated Television
Production and individual nominations for character animation, character design, music,
production design, storyboarding and writing.

DreamWorks Animation received 11 nominations, including Best Animated
Television Production for “Merry Madagascar.” Laika received a total of 10 nominations
including Best Animated Feature “Coraline” and Pixar Animation Studios received a
total of nine nominations including Best Animated Feature “Up.” Completing the list of
Best Animated Features nominated are: “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” Sony
Pictures Animation, “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” 20th Century Fox and “The Secret of Kells,”
Cartoon Saloon.

Nickelodeon leads the field in television with 12 nominations, including three
for Best Animated Television Production Produced for Children: “SpongeBob
SquarePants,” “The Mighty B!,” and “The Penguins of Madagascar.” Completing
the nominations in this category are Disney Television’s “Mickey Mouse
Clubhouse” and Cartoon Network Studio’s “The Marvelous Misadventures of
Flapjack.” Nominees for the Best Animated Television Production are “Glenn
Martin, DDS,” Torante, Cuppa Coffee Studios & Rogers Communications, “Merry
Madagascar,” DreamWorks Animation, “Prep and Landing,” ABC Family/Walt
Disney Animation Studios, and “The Simpsons,” Gracie Films.
Winners will be announced at the 37th Annual Annie Awards ceremony on Saturday,
February 6, 2010, at UCLA’s Royce Hall, in Los Angeles, CA. For a complete listing
of Annie Award nominations and event information, please go to
www.annieawards.org.

Special juried awards honoring career achievement and exceptional
contributions to animation will also be awarded: Winsor McCay award – Tim
Burton, Bruce Timm and Jeffrey Katzenberg for career contributions to the art of
animation; June Foray award – Tom Sito for significant and benevolent or
charitable impact on the art and industry of animation; Ub Iwerks award –
William T. Reeves for the development of particle systems for computer
animation. This system has led to the ability to simulate such effects as fire,
explosions, smoke, moving water, sparks, falling leaves, clouds, fog, snow, dust,
meteor trails, hair, fur, grass and abstract visual effects such as glowing trails
and magic spells; Special Achievement Annie award – Martin Meunier and
Brian McLean for the development and use of the Rapid Prototyping (RP)
process for stop motion animation. Starting with hand crafted sculpts as a guide,
CG artists built the characters in the computer and animate key expressions. The
RP system then builds 3-dimentional objects that are finished by hand and
placed on the stop motion figures; and Certificate of Merit award – Myles
Mikulic, Danny Young, Michael Woodside for their service to the art, craft and
industry of animation.

“I congratulate all of the 2009 Annie Award nominees and award recipients for
their outstanding work,” said ASIFA-Hollywood President Antran Manoogian.
“This has been an unprecedented year for animation and I look forward to an
exciting ceremony in February.”

The Annie Awards’ black-tie ceremony will feature a lively mix of animation
luminaries, celebrity presenters and comedic talent to celebrate this year’s best
of the best. A pre-reception begins at 5:00 pm with the awards ceremony
following 7:00 pm. A post-show celebration immediately follows at UCLA’s
Royce Hall. More than 1,500 entertainment industry insiders are expected to
attend the annual Annie Awards.

ASIFA-Hollywood is the largest of an international network of chapters and
supports a range of animation initiatives through its membership. Current
projects include an animation archive, library and museum, classes and
screenings, and animated film preservation efforts.

The industry’s oldest and most prestigious award, The Annie Award is
considered an important industry benchmark and an annual predictor of the
Academy Award for best animated feature.

Source(s):
The Annie Awards (Official Site) via StitchKingdom

Universal Home Video will be offering up yet another iteration of the critically acclaimed stop-motion animated 3-D fantasy, Coraline.  Following the film’s initial July releases of special edition DVD and Blu-ray packs, comes a new Limited Edition Gift Set available in both formats.  The new collection will be available beginning December 8 and will include the following:

• 4 pairs of 3-D glasses
• Limited Edition Coraline postcards
• Limited Edition Book: Getting Things Right

Other than the accompanying book, in which director Henry Selick writes about the creative process behind the film, I don’t believe there is enough incentive here for anyone who may have already purchased their copy of Coraline which also included a 3-D version with glasses.  However, this is certainly a no-brainer for any fan of the moody mis-adventure who had not yet sprung for the previous collector’s edition.

Source(s):
Universal reveals details and package artwork for a new limited edition giftset [dvdactive]