Ryan Peterson, a student of Media Studies at Vassar College, created this mini-film (technically an animatic) about the Michael Eisner years and how Disney got to where it is today. A bit crudely assembled, but it sums it all up in a nice, concise way.

While DreamWorks debuted its umpteenth cookie-cutter ‘hip’ animal comedy, Kung Fu Panda, at the Cannes Film Festival this past week, it’s another animated feature that’s been making big waves at the French festival, one that actually uses to its advantage the art form’s vast potential. Waltz with Bashir is only the second animated feature ever produced in Israel. Directed and written by Ari Folman, it is a documentary about the 1982 massacre at the Shatila and Sabra Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, recounted through first-hand accounts from soldiers who participated in the war.

The film, which incorporates a medley of cel, Flash, CG and live-action, has been gaining raves since its debut including write-ups in Cinematical, NY Times and Time magazine. GreenCine also has a nice roundup of coverage for the film. What the film may lack in the animation quality and polish that we are accustomed to in stateside features, it seems to make up for with its ambition and dedication towards using the medium to create something that is actually meaningful and relevant to our times. Below is the film trailer followed by an excerpt from the film. (Thanks, Yoni Salmon, for the tip)

UPDATE: Just noticed that CHF also wrote about the film this morning. They have a link to the film’s official website which has production notes that say the film took four years to produce at a cost of $2 million.

I received the Fall/Winter 2008 Chronicle Books catalog yesterday, and there are a few animation-related books that should be of interest to Brew readers. The prelim cover to my book, the previously announced The Art of Pixar Short Films, is above. You can find out more about the book by clicking on this info sheet about the book. It’s slated now for a February 2009 release. Pre-order on Amazon.

I’ve also posted the info sheets below for two other cartoon entries from Chronicle (click for larger versions). Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts by Rob Smith is the first history of Lucas’s videogame division, which turned out classic games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. It’s coming out in December 08. Also notable, Disney Feature Animation is releasing its first ‘art of’ book through Chronicle. You guessed it…it’s The Art of Bolt by Mark Cotta Vaz, scheduled for release this November.

Forces of Good is a fun blog that I would plug even if its writer Stefan Blitz didn’t just post an interview with me.

Blitz has also interviewed many others including cartoonists Mark Newgarden and Fred Hembeck, screenwriters Larry Doyle and John August, and he blogs about other creative aspects of popular culture. Worth a look.

Talk about dedicated cartoon buffs. There’s a group of Pixar fanatics who are spending months building their own life-size replicas of Wall-E…and the film doesn’t even come out until next month. The results are impressive. Here’s a few of the vides showing different Wall-Es in various stages of progress.

It also looks like an official “real” version of Wall-E exists:

(click for full-size image)

The Hollywood Reporter notes that the first footage from Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist will debut this month at Cannes. The hand-drawn and CG feature, scheduled for release in the UK and France in 2009, is budgeted at $22 million, quite a bit heftier than Chomet’s earlier Triplets of Belleville which had a modest budget of $8 million. The story of the film, based on an unproduced script by French comic legend Jacques Tati, is described by the Reporter as the tale “of a dying breed of stage entertainer whose thunder is being stolen by emerging rock stars. Forced to accept increasingly obscure assignments in fringe theaters, garden parties and bars, he meets a young fan who changes his life forever.”

Speaking of Chomet, here’s an oldie but goodie: an article he wrote for the NY Times in 2004 about his time working at Disney, as well as the general lack of personal vision in contemporary animated features. The experience he describes of working at Disney Toronto is sadly one that is repeated far too frequently throughout the industry. Chomet writes:

“Once, my team in Canada was sent to Los Angeles to meet the people in charge of our project there. By this time we were on the sixth rewrite of the script, and we had a daylong brainstorming session in which we were locked in a big room with executives and so-called creatives. One executive suggested a rewrite incorporating an idea she had in the car that morning. Heads nodded, notes were scribbled and script No. 7 was born. It was like watching a runaway steam train being driven by a flock of headless chickens.”

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on my latest book Inside UPA but there’s a couple important reasons to write about it now. Firstly, of the fifty signed editions of the book, there are only six copies left. In other words, if you want a copy signed by the legendary likes of Millard Kaufman, Fred Crippen, Willis Pyle, Bob Dranko, Bob McIntosh, Erv Kaplan, Gene Deitch, Sam Clayberger, Dolores Cannata, Howard Beckerman, Joe Siracusa, David Weidman, Joe Messerli, Edna Jacobs, and Alan Zaslove, then now would be a good time to pick one up.

The other reason for mentioning the book is that Tee Bosustow, son of UPA co-founder Stephen Bosustow, will have the books available for sale this Saturday, May 17, at the Animation BookLook in LA. Only 1000 copies of this book were printed and I’d love to see them go into the hands of people who appreciate the accomplishments and legacy of the studio. Every sale also helps raise funds to help Tee continue his UPA research and film documentary efforts. If you want to enjoy a one-of-a-kind photographic tribute to animation’s greatest design-oriented studio, pick up a copy of Inside UPA from Tee this weekend or order one from the UPA website.

I’m fascinated by the continually emerging stories of women who worked in creative positions at Disney during its Golden Age. Women didn’t have it easy at the studio, but through sheer determination and dedication, a surprisingly large number of them managed to find their way into artistic positions, including Retta Scott, Bee Selck and Retta Davidson.

Didier Ghez just posted a May 1941 Glamour article that has photos of other creative women at the studio such as Ethel Kulsar, Mildred Rossi, Gyo Fujikawa and Sylvia Moberly-Holland.

Semi-related is this reprint of a Parents’ Magazine article from January 1949 in which Walt Disney describes everything that he’s learned about girls and women. The article is prefaced with new comments from Walt’s daughter Diane Disney Miller.

A book about the achievements (and struggles) of women artists at Disney would have been amazing, but sadly we’ve missed the boat on that one. Nearly everybody who should have been interviewed for such a book is now deceased. Through the Internet, however, we can begin to put together pieces of the puzzle and gain a better understanding of their role in creating the classic Disney films.