Today on Cartoon Brew TV we’re offering an exclusive excerpt from an animated feature that we’ve praised frequently over the past year: Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues. The film, which won the best feature prize at Annecy as well as a special mention at the Berlin Film Festival, is an exquisitely assembled mix of Indian mythology, contemporary heartbreak and 1920s American jazz. Watch the Sita Sings the Blues excerpt only on Cartoon Brew TV.

Appealing religion-oriented animation is hard to come by—Jot excepted—so I had to share this brief but well-done piece for the religious cartoon series TheoCartoons.com called “Falling Short of God’s Glory Through Sin.” It was created by Bob McKnight. When I used to live in LA, Bob was one of my favorite people to run into because he always had a million great stories to share. He’s had quite a career that includes everything from animating Sesame Street segments to the film titles for Who’s That Girl?, as well as working on revivals of classic animation characters like Blooper Bunny and House of Mouse.

(Thanks to Chogrin who pointed out this bit of animation to me.)

Rumors start making their way around the Internet last night, on websites like FirstShowing.net and the Animation Guild blog, that the LA animation studio Imagi was temporarily shutting down operations. As mentioned on the Brew last month, the studio has been experiencing a multitude of financial problems.

The Anime News Network has now confirmed with the president of Imagi, Erin Corbett, that only the animators of Astro Boy have been asked to stop coming to work, while the rest of the staff continues to develop other projects such as Gatchaman and Tusker. Additionally, nobody is working at Imagi’s Hong Kong facilities this week though they say that was already planned because of Chinese New Year’s holidays. Most of the studio’s animation staff is in Hong Kong so it is unclear how many artists were asked to stop coming to work at its LA branch. The studio expects more funding to come through this week so that everybody can return to work soon. The uncertainty about the studio’s future isn’t helped by the fact that their website has been taken down completely at the time of this writing.

UPDATE: Kevin Koch, president of the Animation Guild, posted in our comments with new information that says ALL of the artists at LA’s Imagi’s office have been told not to come to work this week. The studio’s president Corbett had previously told Anime News Network that only the “animation team” had been asked not to report to work. Here is the full text of Koch’s comment:

The Animation Guild office has received confirmation that everyone at Imagi in Los Angeles was told not to come in to work this week. The office also got a call from Imagi US president Erin Corbett, who told us that Imagi is in a “holding pattern” until Feb. 3, when they will find out about the next round of funding.

This looks like it could be a temporary hiccup, or a very bad thing. We’re holding our breath and hoping it is sorted out quickly.

As mentioned previously on the Brew, Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max opened the Sundance Festival this month. Collider.com has just posted four brief film clips from the film - and here’s the trailer:

I’d been forewarned that the art of book for Coraline was not very good, but that didn’t prepare me for the publishing disaster that is Coraline: A Visual Companion. After looking at it in the bookstore recently, I can say with some confidence that this is the single worst ‘art of’ book I’ve ever seen published in conjunction with a major animated release.

For beginners, all of the film stills in the book are pixelated and muddy. I’m not talking just about the full-page frame blowups, even regular-sized images that take up only a third or half of the page look like hell. Beyond the poor image reproduction, they also made an inexcusable editorial decision to print the visual development artwork of only two illustrators: Dave McKean and Tadahiro Uesugi. The book, in fact, neglects to showcase the work of any of the animation artists who worked on the film, including the people who actually designed the look and feel of the movie.

One of the film’s primary character designers Shane Prigmore recently did a post on his blog about working on the film. In that post, he mentions some of the artists whose work shaped the film visually, including visual development artists Dan Krall, Shannon Tindle, Chris Appelhans, Jon Klassen, Andy Schuhler, and Stef Choi, sculptors Kent Melton, Damon Bard, Leo Rijn, Tony Merrithew and Scott Foster, and story artist Chris Butler, Andy Schuhler, Vera Brosgol, Graham Annable and Mike Cachuella. Unbelievably not a single piece of artwork from any of these artists can be found in the book. Instead it is page after page of Tadahiro Uesugi’s work. A lot of it is repetitive because they are costume suggestions that he drew using characters that had already been designed by the artists listed above. The irony is that even fans of Uesugi’s work will be disappointed because of the small print size of his artwork.

For all I know, the writing in the book (and there is a lot of it) may be wonderful. The book, however, is called “A Visual Companion” and on that mark it is a complete and utter failure. I’ve never seen an ‘art of’ book that eliminates the work of every single artist who worked on the film save for one whose work wasn’t even a primary factor in the film’s final look.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing Coraline for a long time and I still am. Unfortunately, with tie-in books like this and the film’s lackluster marketing campaign (the subway and bus stop ads around NYC are a subject for another time), I may be watching the film in an empty movie theater.

(To see a representative sampling of artwork from this film, check out a discussion panel with the film’s key designers on Saturday February 7 at Gallery Nucleus.)

I’ve always been fascinated by TV shows with animated titles. I was planning to compile some of these off You Tube, but my ol’ pal Michael Pinto got there ahead of me. He’s posted on his Fanboy blog a mini-history of the genre, collecting several well known ones from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.

I’m not an expert on which studio did what - oh, it’s well known Hanna-Barbera did Bewitched, UPA The Twilight Zone, DePatie Freleng animated I Dream Of Jeannie, Ken Mundie The Wild Wild West, et al. - but if any experts out there want to chime in with their knowledge on the subject (such as who drew this terrific animatic-style Mr. Terrific open above), I welcome it.

(Thanks, Chris Pepin)

The image above is of Charlee, a fan of the Avatar series, who protested the live-action film’s racially questionable casting choices at an Avatar casting call in Philadelphia today. He writes about his experience in this blog comment.

Apparently part of Paramount’s marketing plan for Avatar is to alienate every Asian-American before the film is released. For example, listen to the film’s dimwitted casting director Deedee Rickets, who recently explained to a Pennsylvania newspaper how they wanted to cast ethnic extras: “We want you to dress in traditional cultural ethnic attire. If you’re Korean, wear a kimono. If you’re from Belgium, wear lederhosen.”

Apparently, nobody informed her that the kimono is not the national dress of Korea, but of Japan. The Angry Asian Man blog is rightfully angry. He writes:

“Right. Koreans, kimonos, funny Asian outfits… they’re all the same. It’s apparent that the people making this movie really don’t care about the kind of movie they’re making, as long as they get to use Asians (and their basket-weaving skills) as props.”

More links to disappointment:

A blog that explains how to protest Paramount and documents the growing chorus of discontent.

Avant Garde Retard reimagines Avatar director M. Night Shyamalan turned white.

Passionate outrage from Maykazine

A blog post by angered Chinese-American who laments “a great opportunity for aspiring young Asian actors that has been taken away.”

Well, Fuck You Too, Hollywood: Not eloquent but an honest sentiment from a fan.

And it’s not just Asians, even the Angry Black Woman is angry: “I’m holding out one hope — that this is some kind of messed-up viral marketing effort, maybe using reverse psychology to get people all riled up about the film so they’ll blog about it, etc. But if this is really the cast they’re planning to go with, I will definitely be boycotting this movie, and urging everyone I know to do the same.”

A lot of people online are talking about the forthcoming live-action adaptation of Nickelodeon’s animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender and nobody has a single nice thing to say. The source of controversy: the four lead actors cast in the live-action version are all white.

Comic book artist Derek Kirk Kim wrote an impassioned blog entry about the casting choices and explains succinctly why this is such a poor decision on Paramount’s part:

“[Avatar is] wholly and inarguably built around Asian (and Inuit) culture. Everything from to the costume designs, to the written language, to the landscapes, to martial arts, to philosophy, to spirituality, to eating utensils!—it’s all an evocative, but thinly veiled, re-imagining of ancient Asia. (In one episode, a region is shown where everyone is garbed in Korean hanboks—traditional Korean clothing—the design of which wasn’t even altered at all.) It would take a willful disregard of the show’s intentions and origins to think this wouldn’t extend to the race of the characters as well. You certainly don’t see any blonde people running around in Avatar. (I’m not saying that would have necessarily been a bad thing, I’m just stating the facts of the show and the world in which it is set.)”

To rub salt in the wound, this is what actor Jackson Rathbone told an interviewer about how he needs to prepare to play a role in Avatar: “I definitely need a tan.” Unbelievable.

Recently Madeline Ashby penned an excellent thought-provoking piece for FPS Magazine about the growing trend of live-action anime adaptations and the systematic exclusion of Asians from these films (the upcoming live versions of Akira and Cowboy Bebop also handed lead roles to white actors). She also ponders why movie studios don’t actually support the studios making the original works instead of trying to cash in with watered-down adaptations:

The anime industry is barely getting by, at a point in time when its global appeal is most highly recognized. As Roland Kelts points out in Japanamerica, people who believe that anime is a lucrative business for the animators or even directors are sadly deluded…But big names like DiCaprio and Reeves could give the industry a much-needed boost by following the Tarantino and Wachowski method: fund your own anime, rather than commissioning adaptations. For the cost of a Hollywood film, couldn’t you pay the people at Gonzo or Production IG or Bones to animate your own script? What if, instead of meatsack re-hashings of classic anime titles, we got fresh product done by professionals who know the medium inside and out?

Back to Avatar, an online letter-writing campaign has been launched encouraging people to write in about the film’s casting. Concerned fans are being asked to address their letters to Paramount’s head of production, Mark Bakshi, who, in an ironic twist, is the son of Ralph Bakshi, a filmmaker who always dealt frankly and openly with racial issues in his work. UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that though everybody is addressing their complaint letters to Bakshi, he was laid off from Paramount quite a few months ago.

(Thanks to Anson Jew who brought this story to my attention on Cartoon Brew’s Facebook page)