Awards season rolls on, and it's looking more and more like Rango is going to take the cake in the animated feature category at the big show, the Oscar ceremony on February 26th.  The first animated feature for both director Gore Verbinski and legendary visual effects house Industrial Light & Magic just fairly well swept the feature categories at the 2012 Annie Awards, celebrating the very best of animation across different media.

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Opening in theaters on July 29th is the new 3D family film The Smurfs, which blends CGI animation with live-action to bring the classic '1980s Saturday Morning cartoon to the big screen. The movie features all your favorite Smurf characters including Papa Smurf, Smurfette, and Brainy as they leave their magical village to escape from the evil Gargamel and find refuge with a young married couple in present day New York City. The film stars Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother), and Jayma Mays (Glee) as expecting parents who help the little blue ones on their adventure, and comedian/actor Hank Azaria (The Simpsons) as the wizard Gargamel who is hot in pursuit of the tiny blue creatures. The film also boasts a who's who of talented performers that lend their voices to the animated characters including comedy legend Jonathan Winters as Papa Smurf, musical sensation Katy Perry as the beautiful Smurfette, Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) as Clumsy Smurf, Alan Cumming (X2: X-Men United) as Gutsy Smurf, George Lopez (Rio) as Grouchy Smurf, and Fred Armisen (Saturday Night Live) as Brainy Smurf.

IAR's very own Jenny Karakaya recently had a chance to sit down with several members of the cast in New York City including Neil Patrick Harris, Jayma Mays, and Hank Azaria to discuss the new film, their roles, acting opposite characters that are not actually there, Azaria's unbelievable transformation into Gargamel, and the legacy of The Smurfs. 

To watch our exclusive interview with Neil Patrick Harris, Jayma Mays, and Hank Azaria about The Smurfs, please click on the video player above. 

SYNOPSIS: 

In the Middle Ages, the evil wizard Gargamel (Azaria) discover the Smurf's village and chases them into a wooded area. The Smurfs get scattered and Clumsy Smurf (voiced by Yelchin) wanders into a "forbidden" grotto and some of the other Smurfs follow. Since it's a blue moon, a magical portal within the grotto transports them into present-day Central Park in New York City. They take shelter with married couple Patrick and Grace Winslow (Harris and Mays) and try to find a way back to their village before Gargamel finds them. 

The Smurfs "smurf' into theaters on July 29th!

From here, with days until Comic-Con International begins in sunny San Diego, it can be difficult to visual the close of the Con in a week.  Like children greedily eying and inventorying their carefully-wrapped Christmas presents, right now, the attention of genre fans the world over is resolutely fixed on all the hype-facilitating goodness to be unveiled regarding all our favorite comic books, film franchises, and video games.  Wednesday through Saturday nights will be a massive, orgiastic tearing into geeky presents, and by Sunday, Con attendees will be spent and disillusioned, lying sweaty in piles of decimated wrapping paper.  After days of frenzied activity, the biggest event in nerd culture wraps up Sunday on a more low-key note, but there are still plenty worthwhile panels and events for your perusal.  For your convenience, IAR humbly presents our selected roundup of panels closing out Comic-Con.

San Diego Comic-Con is an event of wholly unique pomp and circumstance, but our cherished holidays provide a convenient means to contextualize each individual day of the Con, which goes down next week.  In our last rundown of selected panels set for Friday, July 22nd, we likened the experience of a Comic-Con Friday to a child's enthusiastic examination of their booty on a lucrative Halloween.  For Saturday, we're moving on chronologically to Thanksgiving.  By midday Saturday, the average Con attendee is in danger of overeating, having thoroughly stuffed themselves on three courses of nerd fixings.  With pants in danger of splitting and a sudden urge to nap, it's more imperative than ever to prioritize which panels to attend, so once again, we've provided an overview of events that should prove appealing and informative on Saturday, the penultimate day of Comic-Con.

Danny Elfman is one of the few film composers who, like John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith, is actually a recognizable name to the general public.  The former Oingo Boingo frontman is known for his collaborations with Tim Burton, as well as scores for the likes of Spider-Man, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Chicago, as well as the main title theme from The Simpsons.  The inimitable Elfman spoke about his upcoming projects, revealing that he's in talks to score Gary Ross' The Hunger Games, and is set to compose for Sam Raimi's Oz The Great and Powerful, Men in Black III, and (unsurprisingly) Tim Burton's Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie.

What can't Conan O'Brien do?  According to the title of this documentary, he can't stop.  After the hugely publicized raw deal that ended O'Brien's seven-month stint at his dream job – hosting The Tonight Show on NBC – the erstwhile Late Night host's contract buyout expressly forebade him from appearing on television for a set amount of time.  So O'Brien went on the road with much of his Tonight Show staff, performing live shows around the nation for the righteous members of Team Coco.  Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, a documentary by Rodman Flenders chronicling the 'Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour', debuted at SXSW and earned a whole lot of praise.  This trailer for the film gives us a good idea why.  What are you waiting for?  Watch it.

Two time Oscar winner Elizabeth Taylor died early this morning from congestive heart failure at the age of 79.  Six weeks ago, Taylor was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles to treat congestive heart failure, and though her condition stabilized, she was unable to return home.  Her publicist, Sally Morrison said in a statement, "She was surrounded by her children: Michael Wilding, Christopher Wilding, Liza Todd and Maria Burton."

Just in case anyone watching Best Picture Oscar winner The King's Speech thought to themselves, "This is a really great, classy British movie and all, but it could definitely use more explicit sexuality," the universe has been balanced by the upcoming pornographic parody The King's Piece.  It's nice to see a pornographic interpretation that takes the effort to have a sort of-clever title, unlike This Ain't Ghostbusters XXX, Superman XXX: A Porn Parody, or Simpsons: The XXX Parody.  You could probably guess the parody's plot fairly accurately, but if not, then there's a more or less safe-for-work trailer:

The Simpsons has been on television since 1989. That is truly beyond impressive, it’s downright unbelievable. And while for many, the show isn’t quite as clever as it used to be, we are talking twenty-two episodes a year for the past twenty-one years. It would be impossible to keep things completely fresh. And with the recently released “Thirteenth Season” on Blu-ray, you can see that it started to lose some of its edge as some of the episodes are not what they used to be.