Back when the family vacation was a real trip: Steve Thompson has been posting brouchures from the 1972 and 1973 King’s Island Happy Land of Hanna Barbera theme park in Cincinnatti, Ohio.

Sting (at right) is featured
in THE SWEATBOX (2002)In all the delirium over the wonderful Disney-Pixar news this week, one burning question remains to be answered:Can Disney finally release THE SWEATBOX now?You’ve probably heard about THE SWEATBOX - some of us were lucky enough to see it at a film festival or during its Oscar-qualifying one week run in Los Angeles back in 2002. Filmmakers John-Paul Davidson and Trudie Styler were given unprecedented access to Disney Feature Animation to document the making, and ultimate meltdown, of the film KINGDOM OF THE SUN (which later evolved into THE EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE). Certain Disney execs did not come off looking too good in the final cut and the film - controled by Buena Vista - has been sitting on the shelf ever since. I know this won’t be Iger-Lasseter’s first priority, but we are hoping the film won’t be forgotten. It’s a great document of how mismanaged Disney animation was for the last half dozen years, and a permanent reminder of what happens when clueless Hollywood executives run amok over talented creatives.

Speaking of Pixar, as we’ve been doing all week long, Dan Caylor has posted a great 14-1/2 minute video clip on his site that features the following:

> an interview with Ralph Eggleston speaking about the genesis of his short FOR THE BIRDS

> an interview with Jan Pinkava speaking about the technical challenges of creating GERI’S GAME

> and WINTER, an amusing CalArts-era student film by MONSTERS INC. director Pete Docter

If that weren’t enough, there’s also an unintentionally hilarious interview with Polish animator Zbigniew Rybczynski and an early Norman McLaren film (with a swinging performance by Albert Ammons) tucked inbetween the Pixar segments.

Paul Briggs, a story artist at Disney Feature, shares on his blog the story of his first encounter with John Lasseter this week. An excerpt:

He chats with us for a while asking us where we’re from, where we went to school, what we’re working on right now. i was so nervous and wanted to joke around but kept answering everything like it was a pop quiz. what a great moment. they’re already behind schedule and don reminds john they’ve got a couple of more stops. we say bye and right before he walks away i turn to him and say with all honesty - “i’m glad you’re here.”

Paul also writes about the introduction of Catmull and Lasseter to the Disney artists, and he contrasts it with a David Stainton meeting at Disney Florida two years ago. His blog offers but a hint of the feelings of optimism and hopefulness that folks at Disney must be feeling right now. The good vibes certainly extend beyond Disney, and I’m sure many in the animation community, including myself, are now feeling very positive about this week’s developments. After decades of Katzenberg, Schneider, Schumacher and Stainton, it’s nothing short of a miracle that Disney is allowing an artist the caliber of Lasseter take charge of its studio. No doubt that this week will go down as a watershed moment in Disney and animation history.

Let the good times roll. According to the LA TIMES (reg. req’d or BugMeNot), TOY STORY 3 has been shelved. The announcement comes hardly as a surprise: Disney started the TOY STORY 3 unit primarily as a bargaining chip for these negotiations. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see, for once, an animated project that shouldn’t be made get dumped. Here’s the TIMES:

In remarks made during a Tuesday conference call with analysts, Iger and Pixar Chief Executive Steve Jobs implied what other sources confirmed Wednesday: that Disney’s 150-plus-person Pixar sequels unit - which is housed in a Glendale warehouse and is already at work on “Toy Story 3″ - will soon be no more.

“We feel very strongly that if the sequels are going to be made, we want the people who were involved in the original films involved in the sequels,” Jobs said.

Iger sounded the same note.

“It was really important to me that the people who made the films originally, who had the vision, who knew the characters and the essence of these films get a shot at making any films that were derivative,” the Disney chief said.

“While Disney might have been able to make them, Pixar making them is just so much different,” Iger added. “Not to take away from the talent of other people who might have been picked to make them.”

ASIFA-Hollywood’s Archive Blog has started posting images from Mary Blair’s long-out-of-print Golden Book of Little Verses and archivist Steve Worth promises to post more Blair artwork later this week. Worth has also posted an endorsement letter from June Foray about the goals of the ASIFA Archive.

Miayazki is the talk of several websites right now (due to his films being showcased this month on TCM), but another international filmmaker equally worthy of such praise is France’s Michel Ocelot. His features and shorts are rarely shown in the U.S., but next month Ocelot will be on hand at the Museum of Modern Art to introduce his latest feature Kirikou and The Wild Beasts. The screening is part of a MoMA series called Grand Illusions: The Best of Recent French Animation, which will be presented February 23-March 6, 2006.

This primer on contemporary French animation will showcase: a Ruritanian romance (Paul Grimault’s marvelous The King and the Mockingbird), a swashbuckling adventure (Jean-François Laguionie’s Island of Black Mor), an ecological parable (Jacques-Rémy Girerd’s Raining Cats and Frogs), an African folktale (Michel Ocelot’s Kirikou and the Sorceress), a dark Russian fable (Francis Nielsen’s The Dog, the General, and the Birds), and a film that defies all pigeonholing (Sylvain Chomet’s Triplets of Belleville).

Excellent films, historically significant and highly entertaining. Go.

Good stuff worth checking out.

Nate Pacheco: Talented artist and Flash technical guru who has worked on Renegade’s HI HI PUFFY AMI YUMI and ELMO AARDVARK Web cartoons, among many other things.

Brandon Scott: A student at Sheridan whose paintings have a distinctive sense of color and design.

Miles Thompson, of animation and painting fame, has started his own blog.

Clarke Snyder has started a new blog, Inspiration Grab-bag, where he’s posting artwork that inspires him. So far, lots of terrific frame grabs from Disney’s PIGS IS PIGS and scans of Mel Crawford illustrations.