It’s a shame that Yoji Kuri’s animated shorts aren’t more widely available in the West, especially considering that Kuri is one of the godfathers of indie Japanese animation. Below is his film Love from 1963. Kuri, who turned 80 this year, is the subject of a new documentary that premiered at the Hiroshima Animation Festival last month. Also worth a look is this article about his films.

This just in from The Onion:

(Thanks, Randall Kaplan)

We’re excited to bring you something new today - Cartoon Brew TV. The new site is available by clicking on the CBTV logo above our main site logo. We’ve been experimenting with broadcasting animated shorts since last year when we launched our film download site Cartoon Brew Films, and we’re really happy with the latest evolution that has come in the form of Cartoon Brew TV.

So what is Cartoon Brew TV?

Here are a few key elements of the project:

1.) New episodes premiere every week on Monday.

2.) Every short we present is an exclusive online premiere. We’re not looking to bring you the same films that are already available on every other video sharing website and podcast.

3.) We pay filmmakers. Online animation distribution can’t work unless filmmakers get paid for their efforts. This is something that we regularly preach on the site and we’re delighted that we can now put those words into practice and lead the way as an animation-specific film site and podcast that pays independent filmmakers.

4.) A broad view of animation art. Just as we love exploring all aspects of the art form on Cartoon Brew, we’ll be presenting an eclectic variety of programming on Cartoon Brew TV: hand-drawn cel, mixed-media, CG, experimental, stop-motion, pixilation…the element that connects all these varied approaches is the quality.

5.) Every third week, Brew TV will present a “historical” episode with original commentary by Brew co-founder and animation authority Jerry Beck. We’ll explore everything from the earliest theatrical animated shorts to TV specials and obscure bits of cartoon history.

6.) We’re just getting started. With your support, we have plans to grow this in every direction. More shorts, more guest commentaries, different types of content. Supporting this site is as simple as emailing a friend about it, embedding an episode, writing about a film on your blog, or simply watching the cartoons yourself. (Tech note: Ability to subscribe via iTunes will arrive shortly.)

7.) Here’s the link to our first episode:
Michael Langan’s award-winning short Doxology.

We hope you, the wonderful community of Cartoon Brew readers, enjoy watching these films and take the leap with us as viewers of Cartoon Brew TV.

Have you seen these Japanese super-deformed Felix mini PVC figures? These look way off model to me. The manufacturer, Organic Hobby, has created some fantastic Tezuka figures that respect the orginals… but these are painful.

(Thanks, Jupey Krusho)

Today is bad news if you work on Wall Street, but it’s good news for folks who want to watch cartoons about Wall Street. Animator Gary Leib just debuted a timely animated piece on the NY Times website: Unnatural History of Wall Street. It’s one minute of fun, loose and cartoony animation with a jazz score by Mike Hashim. This is Leib’s second piece for the Times website; his first was this history of the Meatpacking District.

Mickey Mouse is “one of Satan’s soldiers” and makes everything he touches impure… or so claims Sheikh Muhammad Munajid during a religious affairs program broadcast on al-Majd TV, as reported in today’s London Telegraph.

The Sheikh warned that depictions of the creature in cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, and Disney’s Mickey Mouse, have taught children that mice were, in fact, loveable. The cleric, a former diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington DC, said that under Islamic law, both household mice and their cartoon counterparts must be killed.

(Thanks, Doran Gaston)

This new Nike commercial featuring British sprinter Nicola Sanders is a real winner, particularly in its artful execution. The mixed-media approach combines stop-motion, CG and live-action in a surrealist rainbow-colored package. It’s out of Wieden+Kennedy (Amsterdam) with direction by Nieto, model-making and animation by Brice Lartigue and lead VFX by Damien Martin.

The director, Nieto, is better known as Luis Nieto, who broke onto the scene with his student film Carlitopolis (2006). His subsequent follow-up—Prof. Nieto Show—gave the impression that he might be a one-trick pony, but this commercial, along with others for Sprint and Peugeot, prove that Nieto has plenty of tricks up his sleeve.

Seth MacFarlane recently launched his new ad-supported animated shorts series “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy” through SethComedy.com. The show is structured through Google’s Content Network with sponsors such as Burger King. As you can tell by the embedded episode, the reason for discussing this on Cartoon Brew is clearly not because of the content (left-over Family Guy gags that demean both the terms “cartoon” and “comedy”) but because of its novel online distribution model, which could open doors for other filmmakers. According to Ars Technica, here is how money is made on the shorts:

The episodes are short, ranging from under a minute to no more than two, and so far, they only consist of a preroll sponsorship-type ad (which is animated in McFarlane’s style, so it’s not very jarring at all) before the actual video. For now, the two available shorts are sponsored by Burger King, and they are cross-posted to the “BK Channel” on YouTube…As with much web video these days, episodes of the Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy can be shared with friends and embedded onto blogs and websites. The interesting part of the deal, however, is the revenue distribution. The videos will be run on sites across the web, basically as both content and advertising. Each time a viewer clicks on a Cavalcade video or ad, advertisers will pay a fee that gets split between MacFarlane, Google, the production company partner Media Rights, and the site hosting the video.

No one has the solution yet for how filmmakers can consistently earn money by placing their work online and in fact there may be dozens of solutions. What’s not in doubt is that the integration of advertising and content has proven to be one driving factors behind the growth online short film distribution. Experiments like MacFarlane’s will only help everybody figure out the models.