Word is circulating around Hollywood today that Joe Barbera has passed away.

UPDATE (3:29 pm): The sad news has just been confirmed by the Associated Press.

The BBC reports that at DisneyWorld in Florida, park officials told a man that he would have to leave the park if he didn’t stop looking so much like Santa Claus. He was then told by a park official that, “Santa was considered a Disney character.” I love this part of the article:

Mr Worley took off his red hat and red shirt but said: “I look this way 24/7, 365 days a year. This is me.”

Even after bowing to the request to alter his appearance, Mr Worley,from Tampa, said children continued to ask if he was Santa.

The Internet started buzzing last Thursday when the blog Newlywed in Dubai reported that Chris Sanders (LILO AND STITCH) had been “fired” as director of Disney’s AMERICAN DOG (scheduled for release in 2008). Many people, myself included, have really been looking forward to this film, and it’s hard to believe that Disney, under the new enlightened leadership of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, would remove a talent like Sanders from his pet project. But that’s exactly what has happened and it may not be such a bad thing.

Last Wednesday, December 13, Disney’s feature animation division experienced layoffs that affected all departments from artistic to production support. That is not news. The announcement that the studio was laying off approximately 160 people had already been made a few weeks before. What surprised many though was that on the same day, Chris Sanders was relieved of directing duties on AMERICAN DOG.

Having spoken to some people who are close to the production, the decision to separate Sanders from his “baby” most likely came from John Lasseter and Ed Catmull. Even though MEET THE ROBINSONS (scheduled for release in March 07) will be the first film released during the the new Lasseter/Catmull era, it was in production long before they arrived and neither of the Pixar bosses will be under scrutiny for how it performs. AMERICAN DOG, on the other hand, has fallen clearly under their creative supervision, and they know that their first outing at Disney Feature Animation has to result in a high-quality, commercially successful product.

It’s unclear exactly why Sanders wasn’t allowed to stay on the picture. Last October, Jim Hill suggested on his site that Lasseter thought the film was “too quirky for its own good” and had asked Sanders to make significant story changes. Or perhaps the pre-Lasseter/Catmull management had fiddled around with it too much and the film had deviated from Sanders’s original vision. Whatever the reason, Lasseter and Catmull apparently felt that the best way to get the project back on track was to start with a clean slate, much like what happened with Pixar’s upcoming RATATOUILLE when Brad Bird took over directorial duties from Jan Pinkava.

One Disney artist I spoke to suggested that after everything Sanders has had to put up with on AMERICAN DOG, he may be feeling a bit of relief knowing that he no longer has to deal with this project. At this point, there’s still every reason to be hopeful for AMERICAN DOG. It’s unfortunate that it won’t be Chris Sanders’s original vision, but when Lasseter and Catmull remove an unquestionable talent like him, one has to assume that they are doing it in the film’s best interest. As for Sanders, I certainly don’t think he’ll have any difficulties getting a new project off the ground, whether it’s at Disney or elsewhere.

UPDATE: An individual who knows a lot about the situation wrote to take issue with the statement that Chris Sanders felt “relief” at being taken off AMERICAN DOG. Sanders had apparently been informed before last Wednesday that he was no longer going to be the director, and according to this source, was deeply disappointed, hurt and angered. The source also writes, “Chris felt like his heart had been ripped out, and he didn’t expect if from someone (Lasseter) who always talks about a director-driven studio model. This was totally Chris’ project from the start, he was pouring himself into it, and now he’s fired.”

UPDATE #2: Animation director Mark Mayerson writes on his BLOG about the AMERICAN DOG situation: “I do not expect Pixar to make any public statements about this, but I think they should. If they don’t, Pixar’s reputation within the business may be seriously damaged.”

I wrote about the charming pilot for the TV series MINUSCULE back in September. MINUSCULE is a new CG series from France created by Hélène Giraud and Thomas Szabo at Futurikon. The show is comprised of seventy-eight shorts chronicling various (mis)adventures in the insect kingdom. When I wrote about the first short, I said, “If the rest of the episodes hold up to the quality of this pilot, I think we’re in for something special.”

Well, two more of the shorts have been posted onto YouTube and I’m happy to report that they’re absolutely wonderful. The visual mixture of live-action backgrounds, semi-realistic characters and cartoony animation works flawlessly, and the storytelling and pacing of these shorts are things of beauty. In the “Catapult” short, the grasshopper’s snickering laugh seems like a tribute to Tex Avery’s bulldog character, which is only appropriate since these shorts remind me of Golden Age theatrical shorts more than anything else I’ve seen recently. The show is currently airing on the Disney Channel in the US, and if I read the schedule correctly, new shorts air Sunday nights at 7:55pm. The show’s official website is Minuscule.tv.

A Snail’s Dream

The Catapult

(Thanks, Graham Finch)

This is a nicely designed Flash holiday greeting from the British cg/vfx house Framestore CFC. Plus, at the end of the piece you can help Framestore CFC choose which charity they’ll donate money to.

(Thanks, Giannalberto Bendazzi)

Neal Gabler has an front page editorial in today’s LA TIMES on how Walt Disney represented the best and the worst of Amerian ideals, pop culture and patriotism.

Yet it is in Disney’s odd combination of libertarianism and liberalism, optimism and cynicism, nostalgia and futurism, faith and doubt that one may find not only the real man but the real America he represented.

(Image above, by David Gothard, illustrated Gabler’s piece on the front page of the CURRENT section. It was scanned from my copy of the paper. LA Times apparently does not have it on their website).

A four-and-a-half-minute compilation of every Ray Harryhausen creature in feature films, presented in chronological order. Pure 3D awesomeness!

(Thanks, Nathan)

ASIFA-East president David Levy has an interesting interview with fellow Brewer Jerry Beck in this month’s ASIFA-East newsletter. I particularly enjoyed reading Jerry’s answer to this question: “If you could only save one short from each vintage cartoon studio below, which would it be, and why?”