Despite some missteps on YouTube’s part, like the unnecessary removal of dozens of public domain cartoons from its site, I’m still a huge fan of the service. WALL STREET JOURNAL drama/art critic Terry Teachout recently wrote a must-read article that explains far better than I can why YouTube is such a revolutionary site. While Teachout’s piece focuses on the treasure trove of musical material that has popped up on the site, the same can be applied to animation. Over the past year on the Brew, we’ve linked to dozens of animated shorts on YouTube that would have otherwise been impossible to see by the average animation fan.

Just last month we linked to John and Faith Hubley’s classic MOONBIRD (1959) and I’d wager that more people saw that film on YouTube than have seen it in a theater in the past twenty years. The film, however, has already been removed from YouTube due to copyright violations. Teachout calls these YouTube-fearing companies “short-sighted” in his article, but as he makes clear, YouTube is the beginning of something far bigger. Says Teachout:

As any economist can tell you, supply creates its own demand. Disseminating high-culture TV and radio programming for free via the Web is among the simplest and most cost-effective ways to expand the audience for the fine arts. Every time a Web surfer in South Dakota or South Africa views a YouTube video by Louis Armstrong or Arturo Toscanini, he’s making a discovery that could change his life — not to mention his concert-going and record-buying habits. I can’t think of a better bargain.

The bottomline is that YouTube has proven that there is a market for quality entertainment, whether it be music performances or animated shorts. Now it’s only a matter of time before other companies start making legal, higher-quality copies of this material available for a few bucks per download. An exciting new world of animation is about to open up, and YouTube deserves a heap of credit for helping make that world possible.

Mark Mayerson did some number-crunching recently and came up with some fascinating figures for animated feature box office grosses during the last six years. He figures out yearly box office totals, annual average per-film gross and also breaks down the numbers by studio. Definitely worth a look.

We’ve known since April that Cartoon Network is abandoning its original programming charter and slowly moving into producing live-action instead of animation. This week they announced their first original live-action production - a movie called RE-ANIMATED. Here’s CN exec Michael Ouweleen’s take on the project:

“[E]ven though we are featuring live-action characters, it still had to be done the Cartoon Network way.”

Live-action done the “Cartoon Network way?” That might almost be funny if it weren’t for the sad fact that America’s only dedicated cartoon channel has decided that audiences no longer like cartoons and that it could better serve its audience by showing them the same live-action fare that’s already available on hundreds of other channels.

I’ve been complaining for years about the fact that very few of the animated features produced outside the U.S. ever get distribution (or even shown) in North America. One outlet, however, is The Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema (WFAC) - located in beautiful Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario Canada - a bona fide annual film festival dedicated to showing many of these inernational animated feature films in an actual theatrical setting - the way they’re supposed to be seen.This year the four day festival runs from November 16-19. The full program will be posted on November 1st, but already scheduled to screen are:

Fimfarum 2 (Jan Balej / Aurel Klimt / Bretislav Pojar / Vlasta Posp”�ilov�, Czech Republic, 2006). Four adaptations of Jan Werich’s stories “for small children and clever adults,” by four master Czech puppet animators of different generations. Fire Ball (Wang Toon, Taiwan, 2006). An animated telling of the Chinese classic “Journey to the West”. Gin-iro no Kami no Agito (”Origin: Spirits of the Past” - Sugiyama Keiichi, Japan, 2006). From Studio GONZO, set in a future world 300 years from now, in which nature has turned against man. Kirikou et les B’tes Sauvages (”Kirikou and the Wild Beasts” - Michel Ocelot, France, 2005). Sequel to the wonderful Kirikou and the Sorceress. (pictured above) Knyaz Vladimir (”Prince Vladimir” - Yuri Kulakov, Russia, 2006). The story of the rise of the historical figure Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavovich (960-1015 A.D.). Pettson and Findus: Pettson’s Promise (Anders S�rensen / J�rgen Lerdam, Denmark, 2005). The story of a Swedish Santa Claus. Princes et Princesses (”Princes and Princesses” - Michel Ocelot, France, 2000). A retrospective screening of one of Ocelot’s most beautiful and creative films, in silhouette animation. Princess (Anders Morgenthaler, Denmark, 2006). A clergyman returns home after years of missionary work abroad to take care of his orphaned niece when his sister, a porno star, dies from drug abuse. Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles (Dong-Wook Lee / Tommy Yune, U.S.A., 2006). A new film based on the anime TV series of the 1980’s that began modern anime fandom in North America. Shisha no Sho (”Book of the Dead” - Kawamoto Kihachiro, Japan, 2005). The spirit of a long-dead prince begins to haunt a young noblewoman whom it has mistaken for an ancestor.

Screenings will be held November 16th-19th, 2006 at The Gig Theatre (the Hyland Cinema) in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. For more information contact program curator Joseph C. Chen via email wfac-at-wfac.ca or through the festival website.

FAST FILM (2003) by Virgil Widrich is one of those films that reminds me why I love animation in the first place: it’s a medium in which you can literally do anything you want. This film blew me away when I saw it at Annecy in ‘04 so I was excited to find that my friends at the Animation Show have discovered it on YouTube. Usually the things that make an animated film great are the story, characters and animation, but FAST FILM is one of the rare instances where a film is great primarily because of its technique. The visuals were achieved by printing out thousands of film frames (over 65,000 to be exact) and folding them into three-dimensional shapes. The paper-objects were then photographed and composited in After Effects. I can’t even imagine the effort it took to mash-up hundreds of live-action films, often times with three to four films in each scene, and make it all work in a narrative context. It’s an incredible creative achievement.

The film is unlikely to ever find release in the US due to the fact that it uses unlicensed imagery from over 300 live-action features. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying it online. There’s a lengthy interview with the director, Virgil Widrich, and details on how to purchase the dvd, at the film’s official website. Be sure to also check out the “making-of” video and photos for more fascinating insights into the production process.

Here’s the film on YouTube:

Five Pixar artists are currently working on a new hardcover art book called THE ANCIENT BOOK OF MYTH AND WAR. It’s scheduled for release in February 2007 under Scott Morse’s publishing imprint Red Window. Participating artists are Scott Morse, Don Shank, Ricky Nierva, Lou Romano and Nate Wragg. Some of them have started to post bits and pieces from the project on their blogs and it looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun.

One of the biggest film mysteries of 2006 still remains unanswered: Why did Fox bury the release of IDIOCRACY, the new live-action film by KING OF THE HILL and BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD creator Mike Judge? Today’s LA TIMES has an op-ed piece by Patt Morrison about this topic, though it doesn’t really offer much in the way of answers. I’m surprised that the LA TIMES didn’t treat this as a news story and interview people like Judge to get to the bottom of the story. A Fox spokesman says in the piece that the film was always planned as a “limited release” but limited releases rarely (if ever) get treated this poorly, especially for a well-reviewed film from an established filmmaker like Judge. I’m more inclined to agree with the line of reasoning presented by the TIMES’s Morrison:

Did Judge’s film, by sheer happenstance, mirror Rupert Murdoch’s blueprint for a Fox-fed nation of fat, dumb and happy? Is the problem a threatened lawsuit over the way “Idiocracy” treats corporate America? Starbucks in 2505 serves speedy sex acts with the coffee, and Carl’s Jr. and H&R Block get the same rough handling. But that’s why studios have lawyers, and that’s why we have the 1st Amendment.

Perhaps it’s been cast out of distribution Eden for the same reason that Newsweek made “Losing Afghanistan” its cover story last week in every country except the United States. We got a cover story about a celebrity photographer….And that would be because Americans are being mollycoddled and infantilized. If we’re not getting the truth - even delivered via satire - it might be because leaders think we can’t take it, or they may be afraid of what we might do if we did get it. President Bush dismissed leaked intelligence reports critical of the Iraq war because they could “create confusion in the minds of the American people.” Goodness no; don’t confuse us with information.

And since Fox won’t allow people see the film, you can download a PDF of the film script HERE and find out what you’re missing.

Previously on Cartoon Brew: Jerry Beck reviews IDIOCRACY

(Use BugMeNot if registration is required at the LA TIMES)

Johannes Nyholm is a fascinating visual artist, animator and filmmaker from Sweden. He’s currently working on a stop motion serial, and the first episode is now online. The Tale of Little Puppetboy, Chapter 1: A Lady Visitor is bizarre fun. And check out the rest of Nyholm’s work on his website, which offers many fine examples of his commercial music videos and personal short films.