Trick or treat? Here’s a peek at the direct-to-video sequel to Open Season:

There is a beautiful copy of George Pal’s advertising short Philips Broadast of 1938 currently available on the Europa Film Treasures site. It’s almost overwhelming to see animation that’s so fun, so colorful, so individualistic and so stylish. This was produced exactly seventy years ago, yes, SEVENTY years ago, and yet it feels as fresh and contemporary as anything being produced today. Case in point: a musician on YouTube put one of his tracks over the film. While the music isn’t timed to the animation beats, this simple experiment drives home how well the animation holds up in contemporary times.

What is most amazing is that George Pal managed to achieve these wondrous results through an archaic replacement animation technique that involved carving thousands of individuals puppets. One could well assume that today’s vastly superior and powerful technologies would be capable of producing even more spectacular imagery, and yet we end up swimming in gobs of the insipid and uninspired. At the end of the day, tools are besides the point. Animation such as Pal’s requires something more…it requires elements that have been largely absent from mainstream animation for many years: the imagination of an artist and an understanding of the possibilities of the medium.

(via Mark Mayerson)

The controversy over California’s Proposition 8 is nothing compared to one Japanese fanboy’s campaign to marry cartoon characters. To be specific, this is aimed more toward winning a manga girl, not an anime babe. A coo-coo otaku named Taichi Takashita has launched an online petition which he plans to present to his government to establish a law on marriages with cartoon characters. Within a week he has gathered more than 1,000 signatures through the Internet.

As a Comic Con veteran of over 30 years, none of this surprises me. If anything, I’m surprised how many news sources have posted this story.

(Thanks, Lev Polyakov)

The first volume in the Disney Archive Series is coming out in a few weeks. I saw the galleys for this a while back and it’s a real treat if you’re looking for a collection of beautiful story artwork. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon for $31.50. Here is the book description:

With an introduction by John Lasseter-and very little else in the way of words-this first book in The Artist Series lavishly showcases the most brilliant story artwork created by such luminaries as Bill Peet, Don DaGradi, Joe Rinaldi, Roy Williams, Ub Iwerks, Burny Mattinson, and Vance Gerry for such films as Steamboat Willie and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Alice in Wonderland and 101 Dalmatians. The art will be displayed in its full glory with all the notes, flaws, and hole punches that were so much a part of the story development process. Featuring the best examples-many never published before-as well as some pieces by unidentified artistsm, Story will be the must-have art book for collectors, artists, and Disney fans.

Need some last-minute costume suggestions? Here are some ideas from Ward and Betty Kimball:

Or why not just decorate a pumpkin?

Attack of the Giant Vegetable Monsters by Ken Turner.

(Thanks, Daikun)

Some of the most influential and popular TV commercials of the 1950s were the Bert and Harry Piels Beer spots created by UPA (and later on animated by Terrytoons). Much of their popularity was due to the great dialogue tracks provided by Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding (aka Bob and Ray) and the appealing animation directed by Gene Deitch. If you’ve been wondering where you could see these, Asifa-Hollywood has just posted a whole slew of the early ones on their Animation Archive blog. Go there now!

The documentary Walt & El Grupo, directed by Ted Thomas, son of animator Frank Thomas, now has a website at WaltandElGrupo.com. The film documents the goodwill tour of South America that Walt Disney and select members of his staff took during 1941. The trip was taken at a turbulent time in history, just as America was entering WWII and smack-dab in the middle of the infamous Disney studio strike. It ultimately helped inspire the studio’s Latin America compilation features: Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.

We’d previously posted a review of the film by Karl Cohen on Cartoon Brew. Yesterday, I ran across a new review by Scott Kirsner of the Cinematech blog. It’s a mixed critique: Kirsner appreciates the film’s “jaunty Latin American soundtrack and its sense of context” but says it ends up “feeling too much like an itinerary-based family slide show.” He adds that “the film suffers from a major personality void,” because none of the eighteen Disney personnel who went on the trip are interviewed in the film (owing to the fact that they’re all deceased). Needless to say, I’m still really looking forward to seeing the film.