CG Penguins

I think the movie history of CG penguins is a mixed pedigree - on the one hand, a handful stole the show in the smoothly animated yet throughly anodine Madagascar; on the other, there's the radical lot in the shockingly stiff-looking but wittily conceived video for The Shins' So Says I. (It's a very good song, by the way, so do check the video out).

The penguin envelope is to get even more stuffed, and possibly even pushed, by the in-production Surf's Up. Voices will come courtesy of Shia LaBeouf, James Woods, Jeff Bridges, Jon Heder and Zooey Deschanel. And who just happens to be the co-director? Ash Brannon, who deputised John Lassetter on Toy Story 2 - at least until the whole thing was cut free of the Disney straight-to-DVD conveyor belt.

Michael Danna, lately responsible for the soundtracks of Where The Truth Lies and Tideland, is a very bold, clever choice of composer.

This could not only cleanse the palette after all that March of the Penguins fuss, it could also render Happy Feet utterly impotent at the box-office.