Karey Kirkpatrick

**1/2 (out of four) Based on the jolly, jazzy score that keeps “From Up on Poppy Hill” lively, the latest from Studio Ghibli (“Howl’s Moving Castle”) appears to have missed its calling as a Broadway musical. Every 10...

Disney's "Wreck-It Ralph" was named best animated film of 2012 at the 40th Annie Awards on Saturday evening at UCLA's Royce Hall. Rich Moore also was named best director for the animated comedy about a video game villain who dreams of being a hero, and ...

"Brave," "Frankenweenie," "Hotel Transylvania," "ParaNorman," "Rise of the Guardians," "The Pirates! Band of Misfits," "The Rabbi's Cat" and "Wreck-It Ralph" have earned nominations for  animated film of the year for the Annie Awards. Notably missing...

Friday April 12, 1996      Stop-motion animation is an intricate, agonizing process, so slow to produce results it can take six days to turn out 12 seconds of usable screen time. Its latest application in "James and the Giant Peach" makes you wonder...

Wednesday June 21, 2000      As the owner and eminence grise of Tweedy's Egg Farm, the autocratic Mrs. Tweedy thinks she knows chickens. "They don't plot, they don't scheme, they are not organized," she tells her (inevitably) hen-pecked husband. "Apart...

Friday October 27, 2000      Poor child actors. They aren't allowed the same latitude for growth as regular kids. Where we find wonder in each developmental change in our own kids, we tend to be dismayed when we see a once-adorable child star advance...

There's not much of the blithe spirit in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" that made "Star Wars" and even old "Flash Gordon" serials such fun. Amid a stupefying barrage of fantastic images involving all manner of special effects, spectacular...

3 stars (out of 4) Taming author Douglas Adams' silly, sci-fi classic "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" into movie form is like training two schnauzers in petticoats to water ski. It's impossible. Even so, there's a lot to love about Garth...

A cocky race car that learns the wisdom of slowing down won the race for best animated feature Sunday at the 34th annual Annie Awards, honoring achievements in feature film and television animation. "Cars," from The Walt Disney Co. and Pixar Animation...

The new live-action rendering of E.B. White's perennial children's favorite, "Charlotte's Web," is so carefully spun that it's lifeless. Which is ironic because, since it was first published in 1952, the book the movie is based on has been a gentle...

Offering little in the way of sophistication or memorable characters, the disappointingly pedestrian computer-animated "Over the Hedge" will be more entertaining for little tykes than their older siblings and parents, and would not seem out of place on...

Pixar's "Cars" scored nine nominations for the International Animated Film Society's 24th annual Annie Awards, topping the field. While the Pixar's automotive comedy will face off with "Happy Feet," "Monster House" and "Open Season" in the best...