A reminder that tomorrow at UCLA is a screening of silent era cartoon rareties.On Sunday August 1st at 2pm: A TREASURY OF SILENT ANIMATION. This program will include rare animation by Hugh Harman and Ub Iwerks, Earl Hurd and Lyman Howe, and “lost” subjects by pioneers Emile Cohl and Max Fleischer as well as surviving fragments by Paul Terry and J. Stuart Blackton. A partial list of the program includes:

• THEATRE DE HULA HULA (1917)
• LES METAMORPHOSES COMIQUES (1912) Directed by Emile Cohl
• INDOOR SPORTS (1921) Animation: William C. Nolan.
• JOYS AND GLOOMS (1921) Animation: John C. Terry.
• FELIX THE CAT WEATHERS THE WEATHER (1926)
• SICK CYLINDERS (1926) An “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” cartoon.
• THE WANDERING TOY (1928) “Lyman H. Howe’s Hodge-Podge.”
• JIMMY GETS THE PENNANT (1917)
• KOKO PACKS UP (1925) Directed by Dave Fleischer
• DEEP SEA DIVING (1925) Red Seal Pictures.
• ANIMATED HAIR CARTOON, NO. 21 (1927) Directed by Sid Marcus.
• A MODERN MOTHER GOOSE (1924) Issue No. 1 of the Fleischer “Funshop” series.
• KOKO’S QUEST(1927) Directed by Dave Fleischer.• And surviving segments from films known and unknown, including early Vitagraph subjects, “Bobby Bumps,” “Aesop’s Film Fables,” “Mutt and Jeff” and other cartoon series.

This program is presented by Hugh M. Hefner and introduced by UCLA Archivist Jere Guldin. Also check out the entire schedule HERE.

Nobody should have this much free time to play with Legos.

After Fox passed on the BOONDOCKS pilot, it became unclear which channel would pick up the show. The HOLLYWOOD REPORTER confirms that the new home of the animated series will be Cartoon Network. It’s likely being slated for the “Adult Swim” block.

Radio talk show host Alex Bennett interviewed cartoon voice actor Billy West back in April on Sirius satellite radio - and now it’s on the web here.(Thanks to Ben Varkentine for the link)

Brew reader Dean Kendrick directed me to his website and his animation - and I feel it’s worth bringing to the attention to the rest of our readers.Kendrick has been creating award winning independent animation for over a decade now - short gag films, music videos, as well as experimental, avant garde, and non-narrative pieces that are fun to watch. Most are 2-D, but some employ live action pixilation with super 8 film or are made on “toys” like Fisher Price Pixelvision and Mattel’s Optigan. Dean is also behind the alternative musical group The Irritants. It’s good stuff.

Just a reminder that this Saturday afternoon I’ll be hosting a retrospective of Leonard Glasser’s animated films at the American Film Institute (2021 N. Western Ave, Hollywood, CA). All of the films we’ll be screening are extremely difficult to see nowadays so don’t miss this rare opportunity to experience Len’s distinctive and hilarious style of filmmaking. Len started in animation at Terrytoons working on TOM TERRIFIC, and shortly thereafter he designed Ernie Pintoff’s award-winning shorts THE OLD MAN AND THE FLOWER and THE INTERVIEW, both of which we’ll be showing on Saturday. In the early-’60s, he started his own studio, Stars & Stripes Productions Forever, where he produced some of the funniest and most imaginative animated commercials of the Sixties and Seventies. In addition to the Pintoff shorts, the screening will include a lot of TV commercials, Glasser’s own animated short HOWARD, the industrial film SAFETY SHOES which surely ranks as one of the goofiest industrials ever made, and the X-rated animation sequence from the 1971 cult classic THE TELEPHONE BOOK (”the unrecognized predecessor of the X-rated animations like HEAVY TRAFFIC and SINE” says SLEAZOID EXPRESS magazine). Len will be present at the screening for a Q-&-A following the films where he’ll talk about his cartoons and also discuss projects he’s working on nowadays. For more info, see the ASIFA-Hollywood website.

Jackson Beck (no relation to ye Brewmaster), the Voice of Bluto, Brutus, the narrator of radio’s (and Filmation’s) Superman, Buzzy the Crow, King Leonardo,and numerous voice overs in everything from TV commercials to Woody Allen’s Take The Money And Run has passed away at age 92.My favorite Jackson Beck performance is that of the suburbanite who brings home a man-eating cannibal from a jungle expedition in Famous Studio’s 1958 cartoon CHEW CHEW BABY. He narrates the entire cartoon as good ‘ol boy who shows “Chew Chew” all around Cincinnatti, blissfully unaware that the cannibal is eating all his friends around him. I also enjoyed Beck’s many roles on the Superman radio show - from narrator, to gangsters to office boy “Beanie”, Beck was the true star of that show.I met him once, in his apartment, where he threw a party for Sid Raymond (this was in 1995). Because we shared last names we discussed the possibility of being related, but I was happy just to meet the man and tell him how much I enjoyed his work. He was a gentleman and a wonderful guy.His Newsday obit

The BEANY AND CECIL SPECIAL EDITION DVD from a few years back is selling for the ridiculously low price of $3.99 on Amazon. No Clampett fan should be without this excellent volume, and at this price there’s no excuse for any animation fan not to have their own copy. [Updated 5:13 pm: Amazon has raised the price of the DVD back to $9.99. Still a good deal but it’s no $3.99.]

Less than a month ago I saw the two-reel Fleischer cartoon POPEYE THE SAILOR MEETS SINDBAD THE SAILOR (1936) for the first time. I didn’t think much of it upon this initial viewing, but now realize that may have had more to do with the faded, muddy public domain video copy I saw rather than the quality of the cartoon itself. That’s because a few nights ago I saw a restored 35mm print on the big screen of said cartoon and it was a radically different experience. The animation, the humor, the artwork, everything was pitch-perfect on this second viewing. The “3-D” sets, hardly distinguishable from the painted BGs on the videotape, were jaw-droppingly cool when seen on a grand scale, especially Sindbad’s cave, which radiated wicked fluorescent colors. This was the first public screening of the restored edition and hopefully it’ll receive many more screenings so audiences can enjoy this classic cartoon as it was meant to be seen. While on the subject of everybody’s preferred cartoon sailor, the prodigiously talented animation director Oscar Grillo has been emailing over some wild Popeye drawings during the past week and he’s agreed to let me share a few of them with Cartoon Brew readers. Click on each of the thumbnails for the larger version and enjoy!

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