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After no small controversy and outcry, the Oscars have decided “Apollo 10 1/2” is an animated film, after all. Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped animated film has been declared eligible for nomination in the Best Animated Feature category, IndieWire has confirmed.

In addition, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ animation committee has confirmed that the A24 stop-motion film “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” and Canadian animated/live-action documentary hybrid “Eternal Spring” will also qualify for the animated feature award.

“Upon review of relevant background materials provided by the filmmakers, the Academy’s Short Films and Feature Animation Branch Executive Committee deemed ‘Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood,’ ‘Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,’ and ‘Eternal Spring’ eligible for consideration in the Animated Feature Film category for the 95th Academy Awards. The Academy is committed to recognizing the innovations within our industry,” an Academy spokesperson told IndieWire.

In October, IndieWire exclusively...

As we approach 2022’s halfway point it’s time to take a temperature of the finest cinematic thus far: we’ve rounded up our favorites from the first six months of the year, many of which have flown under the radar. Kindly note that this is based solely on U.S. theatrical and digital releases from 2022.

We should also note a number of films that premiered on the festival circuit last year also had an awards-qualifying run, thus making them 2021 films by our standards—including Memoria, Petite Maman, The Worst Person in the World, A Hero, and Cyrano. Check out our picks below, as organized alphabetically, followed by honorable mentions.

After Yang (kogonada)

Many artists strive to find meaning in their work, but for kogonada it’s the pursuit that provides the meaning. In a way, if he were to “find it” that wouldn’t be nearly as special as...

“Apollo 10 1/2” (currently streaming on Netflix) is the latest time machine from Richard Linklater.

Instead of traveling to the immediate past (like “Boyhood”) or the 1970s (like “Dazed and Confused” or “Everybody Wants Some!!”), Linklater instead sets his sights on a suburb of Houston, Texas, in the late 1960s. The space race is heating up, the Apollo missions are about to begin, but there’s one problem – they built the space capsule a little too small. That’s when some NASA guys (Glen Powell and Zachary Levi) enlist a kid named Stan (Milo Coy) to be the actual first man, er, child, on the moon. Lovingly narrated by Jack Black, it’s just as much a catalogue of the time as it is a pint-sized space odyssey – everything from what was running on television to the way people drank their beers is lovingly detailed.

And what makes it even...

The Houston of “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” premiering April 1 on Netflix, is both a loving depiction of the city as it once was and a vision of a place that never quite existed. Translating live-action elements into its animated scenes, the film, written and directed by Richard Linklater, explores the 1969 moon landing from the perspective of an ordinary kid, Stanley, played by Milo Coy, racing through vignette after vignette of life in the city with painstaking specificity. But the overall look is one of palpable nostalgia — that the viewer is watching Linklater’s wistful recollections of his own childhood.

“Memories can be deceiving,” says animation production designer Vincent Bisschop. “Certain parts can be crystal clear and other details get lost or twisted through the years.”

The majority of animation for “Apollo 10½” was done by the production company Submarine. According to Submarine co-founder and producer Femke Wolting, the...

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood"

Where You Can Stream It: Netflix

The Pitch: Stanley (Milo Coy) is a fourth-grader growing up in Houston in the late 1960s. Like the vast majority of his classmates, he's white, lives in the suburbs, and his father (Bill Wise) is employed by NASA. He's also the youngest child of a large family, which comes with both its benefits (free ice cream cones from...

The post The Daily Stream: Apollo 10 1/2 Is Yet Another Reminder That Animation Is Not A Genre appeared first on /Film.

This review of “Apollo 10 1/2” was first published on March 13, after its screening at SXSW.

Richard Linklater digs into his own salad days for “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood,” an animated feature that fondly recalls the NASA moment in a way that’s more reminiscent of “Amarcord” or “Crooklyn” than of “First Man.”

As a kid who was born in 1960 and grew up in the suburbs of Houston, like the film’s young hero, Linklater had a front-row seat to the race to the moon. In this delightfully evocative exercise in nostalgia, he captures the way that children will remember historic events in the context of what else was on TV, which siblings got to sit on the couch, and how your favorite song made you feel.

The story here is ostensibly about young Stan (voiced by Milo Coy), a schoolboy recruited by NASA (because of his...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Apollo 10 ½ A Space Age Childhood (Richard Linklater)

A delightful meditation on childhood in the summer of 1969 set literally in the shadows of NASA’s central operations in Houston, Richard Linklater’s contemplative and vividly animated Apollo 10 ½ A Space Age Childhood reflects on the filmmaker’s own experiences. It captures the joy and wonder of childhood through the eyes of Stan, a ten-year-old who fantasizes about being recruited for “space camp” by NASA. His father (Bill Wise), a frugal but caring man, has uprooted his family from the city to a newly built suburban development in the shadow of the Astrodome and Astroworld amusement parks. Black’s adult narrator fills in the blanks for us with whimsical, nostalgic details that highlight just how...

Nostalgia can be a curse, a poison, a mind-killer far worse than fear. Unless, of course, it’s your subjective nostalgia — then it’s a sentimental journey through the various signposts and miscellaneous debris that have made you the person you are today. Or: it’s nostalgia as filtered through the lens of Richard Linklater, who has a knack for making his wanderings down memory lane feel both remarkably specific and incredibly universal. You do not have to have been a would-be intellectual with a Eurail pass, waltzing through Vienna...

Richard Linklater combines his affinities for rotoscoping and depicting the quiet magic of childhood in a wonderful paean to late-60s idealism

Richard Linklater is looking back from outer space at childhood’s blue remembered hills in this intensely enjoyable and sweet family movie for Netflix. It’s a rotoscope animation digitally based on live action; in its way, it is every bit as cultish and hallucinatory as the ones that Linklater has made before, like Waking Life from 2001 and A Scanner Darkly from 2006.

A 10-year-old boy called Stan is growing up in a Houston suburb in the late 60s in a big family with a dad employed in a lowly admin job at Nasa. Stan is obsessed (like everyone) with the Apollo 11 moon mission, and has a vivid fantasy or hallucination that he has been picked by Nasa agents to be a test astronaut for a top-secret dummy-run moon landing,...

It’s another giant week of television, with many movies and TV sharing an overlapping space theme – Marvel Studios’ “Moon Knight” is about a superhero (Oscar Isaac) who transforms under the cover of darkness; Richard Linklater returns to his youth (and the initial United States space program) in “Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood;” and “Moonshot” features a YA romance that plays out via a voyage to the red planet.

On with the television! To infinity and beyond!

Marvel Studios

“Moon Knight”

Wednesday, March 30, Disney+

Marvel Studios’ latest Disney+ original series (its sixth) is a relatively deep cut character – Marc Spector (played by Oscar Isaac), a man who, depending on the comic book run, is truly inhabited by a deity from ancient Egypt or just deeply unhinged mentally. We are introduced to Spector via one of his alter egos, sheepish British museum employee Steven Grant (Isaac goes full Dick-Van-Dyke-in-“Mary...

A delightful meditation on childhood in the summer of 1969 set literally in the shadows of NASA’s central operations in Houston, Richard Linklater’s contemplative and vividly animated Apollo 10 ½ A Space Age Childhood reflects on the filmmaker’s own experiences. It captures the joy and wonder of childhood through the eyes of Stan, a ten-year-old who fantasizes about being recruited for “space camp” by NASA. His father (Bill Wise), a frugal but caring man, has uprooted his family from the city to a newly built suburban development in the shadow of the Astrodome and Astroworld amusement parks. Black’s adult narrator fills in the blanks for us with whimsical, nostalgic details that highlight just how dangerous childhood can be between abusive coaches, parents that thought nothing of allowing the kids to ride in the back of a pick-up truck at 70 miles an hour, and playing with explosives.

The first animated...

Richard Linklater’s periodic forays into animation have been distinctively imaginative, and that goes double for Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood. A nostalgic but not in the least sentimental look at Texas life when the American space program was at full thrust, this highly personal but entirely accessible account of growing up in a culture both historically momentous and banal has something to offer all audiences in terms of its vivid portrait of a very specific place and time. But most receptive of all will be viewers in their 60s and beyond who have personal memories of the July 20, 1969, moon landing and of a milieu both memorable and banal.

Linklater calls this project “a memory of a fantasy” as well as a mixture of fantasy and reality, and everyone who was around at the time will certainly have their own recollections of that unique...

“Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood” introduces itself as a fantastical adventure about a Houston fourth-grader who’s plucked out of school for a confidential NASA mission in the spring of 1969 (those wacky scientists accidentally built the lunar module too small for an adult), but Richard Linklater’s first animated feature since “A Scanner Darkly” isn’t really a story about a kid who secretly paved the way for Neil Armstrong, or even a story about a kid who had any special interest in the stars above. In fact, — the childhood of someone who was born in a place without any sense of yesterday, and came of age at a time that was obsessed with tomorrow.

“Apollo 10 ½” is less compelled by going to the Moon than by remembering what it was like to grow up in its shadow, and the nature of that mission clicks into place once you realize...

Everybody knows the name of the first man to step foot on the moon, but how many have heard the story of the kid who walked there before him? Richard Linklater’s “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood” reflects one of the director’s childhood fantasies, informed by growing up in South Texas, a stone’s throw from Johnson Space Center, at the time NASA was trying to do the impossible. “Houston, we have a problem,” he playfully imagines the organization’s top scientists saying, “We accidentally built a lunar module a little too small.” Ergo, they need a 10 1/2-year-old to go up in Neil Armstrong’s place.

As someone slightly younger than Linklater who also spent his formative years in Texas, I find it impossible to overstate how much I adore that premise and the collection of associations it brings up for the “Boyhood” director. It’s like...

From Los Angeles to Austin, and Mexico to the UK, there appears to be something in the water sipped on by major directors. How else do you explain so many respected auteurs getting nostalgic for their formative years, be it Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma or Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast—Spielberg even has one out later this year. Yet Richard Linklater’s newest entry in the emerging genre, Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, might be the most happily youthful of these to date. For here is a reverie that’s less concerned about how things really occurred than it is with capturing the exuberance of how they’re remembered.

With a dream logic that doesn’t bother to distinguish the facts from fiction, the reality from the flights of fancy, Linklater revisits his halcyon days by recollecting the simple joys (and tedium) that come with being a boy during a specific moment in history.

The official trailer for writer/director Richard Linklater’s new film Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood has just been released, and you can take a look at it right here.

Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood tells the story of the first moon landing in the summer of 1969 from two interwoven perspectives; the astronaut and mission control view of the triumphant moment, and through the eyes of a kid growing up in Houston, Texas who fosters intergalactic dreams of his own. Taking inspiration from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Richard Linklater’s own life, Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood is a snapshot of American life in the 1960s and the story is part coming of age, part societal commentary, and part out-of-this-world adventure.

“Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood” – Milo Coy as Stan. Cr: Netflix © 2022

Director, writer, and producer, Richard Linklater had the following to say about the film: “After...

After quite a mid-aughts with Before Midnight, Boyhood, and Everybody Wants Some!!, Richard Linklater has continued at near the same clip, despite less of an embrace from the audience after Last Flag Flying and Where’d You Go, Bernadette came and went. He’s now back with his next feature, Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, which arrives on Netflix on April 1 following a premiere at SXSW.

Following the story of the first moon landing seen through the eyes of a kid growing up in the 1960s in Houston, TX, the film features a mix of hand-drawn and computer-animated imagery, along with voice work by Milo Coy, Lee Eddy, Bill Wise, Natalie L’Amoreaux, Josh Wiggins, Sam Chipman, Jessica Brynn Cohen, Danielle Guilbot with Zachary Levi and Glen Powell and Jack Black.

“After the years of work on Apollo 10 1/2, I think everyone involved is excited to take folks on...

"This is a covert operation - that means it does not exist. No one can know about this." Netflix has unveiled an official trailer for the new Richard Linklater film, based on his own childhood, titled in full Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure. This one is premiering at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival coming up in a few weeks, then will be available on Netflix to watch at the beginning of April. A coming-of-age story set in the suburbs of Houston, Texas during the summer of '69, centered around the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. Presented as a rotoscope animation film, just like Linklater's A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life previously. The story follows a kid growing up in Texas who is recruited by NASA to help test an accidentally-smaller-than-planned lunar lander module, though that just seems to be his over-active imagination. Apollo 10½ stars Milo Coy, Lee Eddy, Bill Wise,...

Richard Linklater puts a fantastical spin on the moon landing in the new trailer for his upcoming animated film, Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood, which is set to arrive on Netflix April 1.

Set in the summer of 1969, at the height of the space race, in Houston, Texas — near NASA’s Johnson Space Center — the film blends fact and fantasy as a young boy named Stan gets caught up in the impending Apollo 11 moon landing and finds himself at the center of his own space adventure. In the opening moments of the trailer,...

Richard Linklater’s latest film “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood” poses the question: what if the first person to walk on the moon wasn’t Neil Armstrong but was actually a kid from Houston leading a mission called Apollo 10 1/2 in secret because NASA accidentally built the space shuttle too small?

That amusing fantasy and twist on American history though is just the set up for Linklater’s latest and arguably most personal film, which just released its first trailer Monday. It’s one in which he explores the reality of what life was like in Houston, Texas in 1969 just before the moon landing, all seen through the eyes of a kid who lived right next door to all of it.

“Apollo 10 1/2” is a collection of comedic vignettes that show how rapidly the world seemed to be changing for those living at the heart of the space race,...

The SXSW Film Festival is returning to its in-person roots with a vengeance next month. After several years of going virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic, SXSW will be the year’s first major festival and conference event to return its focus to live festivities when it launches from March 11 to March 20. And with Wednesday’s reveal of its full film line-up, what a significant return that will be.

Previously, SXSW already announced the intriguing Everything Everywhere All at Once will be the opening night film. That A24 release looks to combine the recently popular sci-fi concept of “multiverse theory” with martial arts genre tropes as it follows Michelle Yeoh into parallel dimension madness. Now with the full line-up, we also know the Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, and Daniel Radcliffe-starring The Lost City will also be making its world premiere at SXSW, as will the meta comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,...

This year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, taking place March 11-20 in-person with select films available online, has unveiled its lineup. With 99 features, highlights include the world premieres of Richard Linklater’s Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood (pictured above), Ti West’s X, Gillian Jacobs’ More Than Robots, Michael Tully’s Lover, Beloved, Jeff Baena’s Spin Me Round, the meta Nicolas Cage movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, The Lost City of D, and more.

“The last two years have been complicated, and full of uncharted new waters for all of us. While there’s been innovation in building community in isolation and figuring out how to pivot, we’ve intensely missed being able to gather together,” said Janet Pierson, VP, Director of Film. “For our 29th edition of SXSW Film Festival, we are thrilled to share a bounty of creative work to experience together,...

The lineup for 2022’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival is here, and it’s headlined by world premieres of Richard Linklater’s “Apollo SXSW: ‘Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” the meta Nicolas Cage comedy “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” and the Sandra Bullock-Channing Tatum adventure comedy “The Lost City.”

Also set for the Austin, Texas, film festival are the world premieres of the third season of FX series “Atlanta,” “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” starring Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova and Pete Davidson, and the previously announced “Everything Everywhere All at Once” from directing duo The Daniels, which will be the opening night film.

This year’s SXSW is returning to an in-person format for the first time since 2019, following the festival’s cancellation in 2020 and the fest going virtual for 2021. Every film on the lineup this year will have an in-person premiere, as well as additional in-person screenings and Q&As for most films,...

We thought this might be ready on time for last year’s fest (it’s an animated film folks – always tough to predict) but Netflix do look to launch the now titled Apollo 10½ for the upcoming year ahead. Richard Linklater could easily grab a spot at either Park City or Austin or both. This stars Jack Black, Zachary Levi, Glen Powell, Josh Wiggins, Milo Coy, Lee Eddy, Bill Wise, Natalie L’Amoreaux, Jessica Brynn Cohen, Sam Chipman and Danielle Guilbot.

Gist: Set against the backdrop of the 1969 Apollo mission to the moon this is inspired by Linklater’s childhood in Houston, TX.…...

Netflix decided to completely forgo the film festival circuit around the midway mark this year and so the big mystery question at this point is the outfitters’ strategy for Sundance. Acquired back in July, the finicky nature of animation means that Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure could still have a lot more time to go until completion, but the good news is that the live action portion wrapped in this last March in Austin. Richard Linklater enlisted Jack Black, Zachary Levi, Glen Powell, Josh Wiggins, Milo Coy, Lee Eddy, Bill Wise, Natalie L’Amoreaux, Jessica Brynn Cohen, Sam Chipman and Danielle Guilbot for the 1969 Apollo mission to the moon – here’s a set pic.…...

Last year, I spoke to Richard Linklater about his planned Houston-set film about the 1969 moon landing, and he revealed it had stalled. “It was kind of bittersweet for me. I did have this project, and I think I will get to do it eventually, but no one took the small step–or the great leap–at that time for me to have it out by the anniversary,” he said. “No one cared enough. I didn’t get to get the project off the ground… but someday!”

That someday is now today as Netflix has announced they’ve picked up the project, which is titled Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Adventure. A secret live-action shoot was completed in March in Houston, Texas and the rest of the production will consist of an innovative hybrid of hand drawn and computer animated imagery. Featuring the cast of Jack Black, Zachary Levi, Glen Powell,...

Netflix will release the next film from director Richard Linklater, his latest foray into animation called “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure” that stars Jack Black and Zachary Levi and documents the 1969 mission to the moon.

Linklater wrote and directed the film that his Detour FilmProductions will produce with Submarine, and like his films “Waking Life” or “A Scanner Darkly,” it’s a hybrid live-action and animated film the blends CGI imagery with live cinematography.

Linklater wrapped the live-action shoot this March in Austin, and the animation work will be completed at Minnow Mountain in Austin and Submarine in the Netherlands.

Also Read: Richard Linklater to Executive Produce Animal Rescue Docuseries for CBS All Access

“Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure” is set in Linklater’s childhood home of Houston, Texas and is set against the backdrop of the 1969 Apollo mission to the moon, which celebrates its 51st anniversary on Thursday.

Netflix has added two animated features to its slate: “Bombay Rose,” the Indian drama from director Gitanjali Rao about the disparity between romanticized Bollywood and society’s ruthless truth, and Richard Linklater’s “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure,” inspired by his childhood growing up in Houston during the eventful 1969 Apollo mission to the moon (which celebrates its 51st anniversary today).

“Bombay Rose,” which streams in the fall, and played last year at Hollywood’s Animation Is Film Festival, ushers in the Netflix India deal involving several new projects made in India. Inspired by true events, the hand-painted feature explores how a red rose brings together three tales of impossible love, delicately woven through music, between a Hindu dancer and a Muslim boy, two women, and an entire city for its Bollywood stars.

“I have always wanted to tell the stories about the unsung heroes who live and love in Bombay,...

Live-action shoot for innovative project to be followed by animation work in Texas, Netherlands.

Netflix has boarded Richard Linklater’s forthcoming animation/live action hybrid project Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Adventure and will release the film worldwide as a Netflix original.

The streamer is also believed to be planning a qualifying theatrical run for the film, which is being produced by Linklater’s Detour FilmProductions and Dutch company Submarine.

Inspired by Linklater’s childhood in Texas, Apollo 10 ½ tells the story of the first moon landing in the summer of 1969 from two perspectives: that of the astronauts and mission control...

Richard Linklater has a new animated movie in the works at Netflix, Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure.

The movie, directed and written by Linklater, is set against the backdrop of the 1969 Apollo mission to the moon, which launched 51 years ago today, and is inspired by Linklater’s childhood in Houston, TX. The live action shoot wrapped in March in Austin, and the innovative hybrid of hand drawn and computer animated imagery will be completed at Minnow Mountain in Austin and Submarine in the Netherlands.

Linklater previously made the Rotoscope-animated-live action hybrid A Scanner Darkly in 2006 based on the Philip K. Dick novel and starring Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey, Jr. and Woody Harrelson. Another all-star ensemble, Apollo 10 1/2 will feature Jack Black, Zachary Levi, Glen Powell, Josh Wiggins, Milo Coy, Lee Eddy, Bill Wise, Natalie L’Amoreaux, Jessica Brynn Cohen, Sam Chipman, and Danielle Guilbot.

Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age...