It’s back! Randy Haberkamps’s great series of Monday night screenings at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Great To Be Nominated (Part 3), resumes in April. Every Monday night starting April 10th, the Academy screens a Best Picture nominee from each year, along with nominated live action and animated short subjects, newsreels, outtakes and special in-person guests. The prints (including the cartoon titles pictured above) are the best ones available (usually studio vault prints), and the Academy’s Goldwyn Theatre is state-of-the-art. For a complete list of films, the schedule and directions, go to the Academy website for details. A pass for the entire 2006 series - 20 evenings - is $30. Tickets for individual evenings are $5 a piece. What a bargain!

If Michael Eisner talks and nobody listens, does he still have a talkshow? The debut of Eisner’s new series on CNBC tanked with a 0.0 Nielsen rating and a 0 share on Tuesday night, the lowest rating possible. CONVERSATIONS WITH MICHAEL EISNER lost 82% of the total viewers from its CNBC lead-in, a rerun of the gameshow DEAL OR NO DEAL, and ended up with 95,000 total viewers, including 39,000 adults 25-54 (the network’s desired demo). For the record, most of the show reviews haven’t been very positive. All I can say is that it’s incredibly refreshing to finally see Michael Eisner muck up something that isn’t related to Disney or animation.

UMB is a graduate film created by Israeli animation/broadcast design student Liron Damir at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. The film is set to the song “Flugufrelsarinn” by the Icelandic group Sigur Rós, and it does a commendable job of capturing the otherworldly vibe of the band’s music.
(via hydrocephalic bunny)

Maybe it’s me - or maybe I’m just nostalgic for an old fashioned hand drawn animated feature - but this Asterix and the Vikings looks pretty darn good. I’m really anxious to see it.We’ve mentioned this flick before. It has no planned U.S. distribution, despite a great English voice cast which includes Paul Giamatti (as Asterix), Brad Garrett (as Obelix), Sean Astin, Evan Rachel Wood and John (”Bender”) DiMaggio. A FILM in Denmark produced the animation, which looks great (see the teaser trailer on the official site). It opens over the next few months in Europe. I’m rooting for an American pick-up.

My friend Wayne Daigrepont has a cell phone and just found out he had Toonworld TV Classics. Here’s his email to me:

So here’s my cell phone, right?? It only has 5,000 gadgets I don’t know about yet. In my fiddling-faddling with it….I find I can (and do) get “tv” (images only in increments of “stills”)….It is via Sprint, and it is a download called MobiTV. The Channel is 28 (ToonWorld TV). They play such non-stop (& non-interrupted) toons as Roger Ramjet (!), all Harveytoons! (theatrical Caspers, Baby Huey, Herman & Katnip, etc.) & “The Dick Tracy Show,” (yes…. with allllll those “politically incorrect” characters”). The fee is $10 a month….and its image is pristine!!

Toonworld TV Classics launched in 2003 and mainly broadcasts public domain Popeye, Superman, Betty Boop, Gumby and The Three Stooges shorts. They have also partnered with Classic Media to show Mister Magoo TV cartoons and Rankin Bass holiday specials. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

Holy Animated Sound Effects! As a child of the 1960s, I was a huge fan of the 1966 BATMAN TV show. So I have to say I’m delighted with the uber-geekiness of this Argentinian website devoted to Adam West and the series. My favorite page here is a complete index to the animated sound effects that would cover every fight scene. There are also alphabetic and episode numeric indexes to where each sound effect was shown.

My new favorite blog of the moment is Thad Komorowski’s “Identifying Animators and Their Scenes.” The site has only been up for a few days and it’s already packed with excellent material. As the name of the blog implies, its concept is dead simple: post clips from Golden Age cartoons and identify who animated the scenes. For example, check out this great post about Walter Lantz shorts where Thad identifies scenes by Fred Moore, Ed Love, Pat Matthews and Grim Natwick. Absolutely incredible detective work. The site has plenty of other animation clips posted already, animated by the likes of Emery Hawkins, Virgil Ross and Manny Gould.

If there’s one thing that ties together the work of all of these distinctive animators, it’s how beautifully they communicate with cartoon imagery. I had the sound on my computer turned off when I first started viewing these clips, and I’d watched four or five clips before even realizing that there was no sound. There are significant lessons to be learned here about visual storytelling and clarity in staging and acting.

One more impressive thing worth pointing out: according to Thad’s Blogger profile, he’s only 16-years-old. These crazy animation historian types…they’re getting younger everyday.

Films by Jove, owners of the Russian Soyuzmultfilm Studios film library, has invested more than $3 million to digitally restore the 1,500 animated films in the collection to their original splendor. Now the company has opened a website, russiananimation.com, making this amazing library of rarely seen films available on DVD. Among the highlights: Animated Soviet Propaganda.

From 1924 to perestroika the USSR produced more than 4 dozen animated propaganda films. They weren’t for export. Their target was the new nation and their goal was to win over the hearts and minds of the Soviet people. Anti American, Anti Capitalist, Anti Fascist, some of these films are as artistically beautiful as the great political posters made after the 1917 revolution. A unique series. With a unique perspective. Includes commentary by a leading Soviet film scholar.

Also check out this collection by one of the world’s greatest animation artists: The Complete Works of Yuri Norstein. Great stuff.