The new direct-to-video Tinker Bell feature will be playing exclusively at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, from September 19th through October 2nd.

The line is blurring as to what actually constitutes a theatrical release these days. This is clearly a promotional engagement for the DVD release on October 28th. But it’s being released with all the hoopla (and advertising) normally reserved for a kids event film (think Disney’s Miley Cyrus/Hanna Montana 3-D concert or that recent American Girl flick). So here’s my question: Does this qualify the film for Oscar eligibility?

(Thanks, Eric Graf)

Chuck Jones (1912-2002) sketches himself as a boy “conducting the ocean” in a new documentary short directed by Peggy Stern, Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood. This and other Jones drawings come to life in animated segments directed by John Canemaker. Stern and Canemaker captured one of Jones’ last filmed interviews a few years before his death and created a unique film around it. According to the press release:

In never-before-seen footage, the great cartoon director speaks candidly about his family’s experiences in 1920s Los Angeles, recalling events and personalities from his early life that shaped his creative spirit. The 26-minute documentary blends new animation - based on Jones’s spontaneous drawings made during the interview - with vintage Jones family photographs and clips from his classic Warner Bros. cartoons, to reveal Chuck Jones in a new light.

Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood will screen theatrically for Oscar qualification in Los Angeles Friday through Thursday, August 22-28. at 12:00 pm (noon) at the Laemmle Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood. The film is also scheduled be shown on TCM in October. Update: John Canemaker informs me that TCM will not air the film this year. This L.A. screening will be the only public performance for the time being.

Michael Eisner has launched a new animation company called Tornante Animation.

And he’s created his own animated series.

And Nickelodeon has picked it up for 20 episodes.

Boy, how’d we ever miss this story?

Eisner’s idea, Glenn Martin DDS, is a stop-motion series about a dentist who wants a change of pace and decides to go on a roadtrip. Sounds like a Gary and Mike for the PoliGrip crowd.

The LA Times article offers an insight into the creative process that Michael Eisner went through to arrive at this idea:

Eisner said he initially wanted to make a show that revolved around a dog like the one owned by his former colleague Tom Staggs, chief financial officer of Disney, “a giant Swiss army dog with a tail that stands straight up,” Eisner said. (According to Disney, the dog is a Swiss mountain dog.) But that idea evolved into the dentist with his family.

Thankfully for Eisner, his show is in good hands. The Times reports that he’s already hired ten writers to work on the series.

A heads-up for animation fans stuck in L.A. over Labor Day weekend. Bill Plympton will present The Best of The Best: An Animated Evening of Oscar Qualifying Shorts for three days only in Los Angeles. This special 35mm presentation of outstanding new shorts will screen from August 30th through September 1st at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood.

The program includes Doxology by Michael Langan, Veterinarian by Signe Baumane, Chainsaw by Dennis Tupicoff (above left), Hot Dog by Bill Plympton, A Letter to Colleen by Carolyn and Andy London (above right) and Berni’s Doll by Yann Jouette. Each film has been recognized as a standout in storytelling and technical expertise, entertaining audiences all over the world and receiving awards. Plympton himself booked the program into the Laemmle theatre to help qualify these films for Oscar consideration. The shorts in this lineup have, up till now, only been seen at festivals such as Slamdance, Annecy and the Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film, among many others.

Stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen doesn’t animate much himself nowadays, but he has a new production banner “Ray Harryhausen Presents” designed to promote talented filmmakers. The first short made under this banner, an adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, was completed a couple years ago and will be released onto DVD this week. The film was directed by stop-motion veteran Marc Lougee, who has also directed episodes of MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch and the BBC/Discovery series Dinosapien.

The DVD release also includes behind-the-scenes video depicting the production of the film, storyboards and concept art gallery, and interviews with director Lougee, writer Matt Taylor, composer Philip Stanger, and animator Mike Weiss.

The DVD will debut this week at the Festival of Fear in Toronto (booth #1216). For more info about the film including how to order the DVD, visit the film’s official website. There’s also a ‘making of’ article at CGSociety.org.

Oops, we forgot to mention that yesterday marked the centennial of animated film. The animated film that started it all: Emile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie, premiered on August 17, 1908. And just to recap, here’s where the art form currently stands after a hundred years of progress.

Perhaps the next hundred years will be kinder to the art form.

(Thanks, Craig Clark, for reminding us about the anniversary)

Co-director Fernando Sarmiento descibes ELA in Love at First Byte to me as, “A weird mix between She Ra, Tron and Flash Gordon.” It also happens to be a fun and graphically appealing piece of computer animation combined with live actors. It was produced by the Argentinian motion graphic studio PepperMelon. Check it out:

Try as he might, illustrator Jake Parker couldn’t make sense of the world that Pixar created for Cars. He writes:

And that leads me to the one thing that didn’t sit well with me: the strange machine/flesh hybrids Pixar came up with to populate this world. It’s as if a mad scientist enamored with automobiles terraformed Mars and furnished it with cyborg vehicles with engines of steel and minds of flesh. You have these cars, but with actual fleshy eyes, with irises, and mouths of teeth and tongues. Where does the machine end and the flesh begin? So, to make everything piece together a little better in my head I drew up what I think the internal structures of Lightning McQueen might look like.

This amusing illo is what he came up with (link to larger image).