Lasseter and Co. Awarded Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival (Plus More Awards)

The Venice Film Festival‘s Golden Lion Award will be given to Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios chief-creative officer John Lasseter.

He will be accompanied by Pixar directors Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird and Lee Unkrich. The award is given to those who have contributed largely to cinema, as these men have. For example, this prize was previously given to Lasseter’s good friend and world renouned animation guru, Hayao Miyazaki. The festival runs from September 2-12 of this year but no date has been specified for John Lasseter and company’s ceremony. From Variety.

And: Jim Morris has won the "Producer of the Year Award in Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures" at the Producer’s Guild Awards for his amazing work on WALL•E. This is just another one of of WALL•E’s amazing achievements as of late and it just keeps getting better. See the rest of the winners here.

Also: Animated News named WALL•E the best movie of the year (out of all animation) and also ranked WALL•E (along with Kung Fu Panda) as the third best DVD this year. This is all part of A-N’s Best of 2008 list.

Congratulations to everyone at Pixar!