The 15th Annual Hollywood Film Festival and Hollywood Film Awards, presented by Starz Entertainment, have announced that “Rango” will receive this year’s Hollywood Animation Award at the festival’s gala ceremony on October 24, 2011, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

The announcement was made today by Carlos de Abreu, Founder and Executive Director of the Hollywood Film Festival. “It is a great pleasure to recognize “Rango” as the recipient of our animation award. This piece of cinematic treasure borders on surrealism and “Rango” will be a classic for generations to come.”
Past recipients of the Hollywood Animation Award include “Cars,” “Ratatouille,” “Toy Story 3,” “UP,” and “Wall-E.”

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Elektra Luxx, the follow-up to 2009’s Women In Trouble, has a plot that is a cross between a Werner Herzog film and soft core Skinemax. If that isn’t necessarily your thing, having a great ensemble cast featuring Carla Gugino, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Malin Ackerman, and Timothy Olyphant certainly helps. The film, about a pregnant ex-porn star who quits the business and meets a slew of outrageous characters, didn’t do so hot at the box office. So if it hasn’t been on your radar yet, don’t worry; Elektra Luxx will be hitting DVD on June 21.

Unfortunately, the DVD-only set won’t come with a whole lot of extras. The one feature buyers will get is deleted scenes. Since director Sebastian Gutierrez likes to employ loosely connected vignettes in his films, these deleted scenes should fall into place pretty well. Elektra Luxx will only run you $24.96 and is already available at a cheaper price on Amazon.

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Paramount has just officially announced plans to bring the hit 2011 Gore Verbinski directed, computer animated film “Rango” featuring the voices of Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher and Timothy Olyphant to Blu-ray Disc on July 15th. Tech specs for the release include full 1080p Hi-Def video and DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio sound. The title is not yet available for pre-order over at Amazon but stay tuned and we will keep you updated. The release will come in the form of a “combo pack” with the DVD and Digital Copy also included. The bonus materials set to be included are listed below.

Theatrical and Extended Version
Commentary—By director, story co-writer and producer Gore Verbinski, head of story James Ward Byrkit, production designer Mark “Crash” McCreery, animation director Hal Hickel and visual effects supervisor
Tim Alexander (on Extended Version only)
Breaking The Rules: Making Animation History— Discover how Gore Verbinski and Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) prepared for their first animated movie by following every step the filmmakers made to create this new kind of animated film.
The Stage Is Set (Part 1)
Now We Ride (Part 2)
Real Creatures of Dirt—In this fun and educational piece, animal experts talk about the real creatures that inspired the characters of Rango and the filmmakers explain why they chose specific animals to reflect certain personality traits.
Storyboard Reel Picture-In-Picture—Enhance your movie-viewing experience by watching the entire feature with picture-in-picture images of the storyboards (Theatrical Version only).
A Field Trip to Dirt—Using the technology and footage from ILM’s special camera, viewers are put in control of their own tour of Dirt. They can select the streets they want to explore and the characters they’d like to interact with, discovering trivia and other bonus footage along the way.
Deleted Scenes—Including a never-before-seen alternate ending
Theatrical Trailer

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We all know that Johnny Depp will be playing Tonto when Gore Verbinski shoots his adaptation of The Lone Ranger for Disney, but what we have yet to find out is who will play the popular cowboy riding side by side with Depp’s Tonto. Names that have been linked to the role are George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

Well now, The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Verbinski, fresh off of promoting Rango, mentioned Timothy Olyphant as a candidate to play his version of The Lone Ranger. Verbinski says Olyphant, who voices The Spirit of the West in the animated western, is “right” for the role of “The Lone Ranger” and it “sounds like a good idea”.

When pressed if he has made up his mind on getting Olyphant on board Verbinski said, “It’s an odd couple, the two of them together. Getting that tone right is going to be a blast.” Verbinski also mentioned that he envisions a different perspective of the story than the usual way most of us have seen The Lone Ranger and Tonto dynamic.

“The only version of Lone Ranger I’m interested in doing is ‘Don Quixote’ told from Sancho Panza’s point of view. And hence I was honest early on with Johnny that Tonto is the part. We’re not going to do it straight, everyone knows that story. I don’t want to tell that story. I want the version from the untrustworthy narrator who might be a little crazy – but somehow the question is, is he crazy or is the world crazy? That, I find fascinating. It’s just at the primordial stage. We’re working on the screenplay but if we can pull that off – find that story I want to tell – then it will be worth doing.”

Source: movies.ie