Opening This week in the US is Sony's Monster House, done by those wonderful little Mo-Cap mavens who gave us Polar Express, and Richard Linkletters' Through a Scanner Darkly, adapted by still another Phillip K. Dick story. The creator the original stories Blade Runner, and Total Recall are based on, Phillip K. Dick died years ago. How many stories does this guy have left? Are they going to adapt his voicemail message into a script? "Hi, this is Phil, I can't come to the phone right now, but Keanu Reeeves is being motion captured to get back to you...etc."

The great news is this amazing year of animated releases keeps going. Hoodwinked,Ice Age the Meltdown, Dougal, Cars, Over the Hedge, The Wild and more.

Coming is Sony Animation's first release Open Season,IDT's Everybodies Hero, Dreamworks Flushed Away, That French Sin-City type noir film and George Miller ( Mad Max, Babe) all Aussie feature Happy Feet.

I was one of the Motion Picture Academy members who lobbied for the Feature Animation Oscar. One of the chief criticisms we had then was there was never enough films to warrant it's own category. Interesting that since the category began in 2001 (Shrek won the first feature Oscar) we've averaged about 8 animated feature releases a year. 2006 will see 14 releases. The Oscar voting this year will be particulary interesting to watch.