Bolt is a 2008 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, and is the 48th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon.
The film stars the voices of John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Malcolm McDowell, Claire Holt, Diedrich Bader, Nick Swardson, Greg Germann, Susie Essman and Mark Walton. The film’s plot centers around a small white dog named Bolt who, having spent his entire life on the set of a television series, thinks that he has super powers. When he believes that his human, Penny, has been kidnapped, he sets out on a cross-country journey to “rescue” her. The film is directed by Chris Williams, who previously worked on Mulan and The Emperor’s New Groove.
Bolt was released on November 21, 2008, and received an 85% “Certified Fresh” approval rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes [2] and was rated PG by the MPAA for some mild action and peril, and is Walt Disney Animation Studios’ first computer-animated film to be rated PG since 2000’s Dinosaur. As with earlier CGI Disney films, such as Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons, Bolt was also distributed in Disney Digital 3-D in the theaters equipped for it.
The film was released in the UK on February 6, 2009 in 3D format on approximately 100 screens, and will be widely released in 2D the following week.
The film’s producers wheeled out Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel to combat a growing campaign in Hollywood designed to deny Ms Winslet her first golden statuette as best actress.
As The Sunday Telegraph revealed in mid February, a covert campaign to rubbish the film began after prominent experts on Nazi Germany denounced the film for portraying Ms Winslet’s character, an illiterate and unrepentant concentration camp guard, as too sympathetic.
Ron Rosenbaum, author of the book Explaining Hitler, branded The Reader the worst Holocaust movie in history and complained that it falsely implies that Germans were ignorant of Hitler’s genocide.
Mark Weitzman, the New York head of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said The Reader was guilty of “Holocaust revisionism”.
The team spread word of Mr Wiesel’s support for The Reader before Oscar voting closed on Tuesday night.
Then on Friday, The Reader’s British director and screenwriter, Stephen Daldry and David Hare, joined forces with producers Harvey Weinstein and Donna Gigliotti, issuing a statement condemning the “mudslinging” against their movie.
“Slumdog Millionaire” was the big winner at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony. The rags-to-riches saga of the Mumbai slums picked up a total of eight Oscars, including best director for Danny Boyle and best picture. Going into the evening, the film seemed an absolute shoo-in, having picked up numerous critic and industry awards. Sunday night, it started winning early and didn’t stop, but alas, the predictable nature of it all made for a listless evening.
