This video is a lot of fun. It’s a 30 second spot for The Yellow Pages, circa 1971, featuring Bugs Bunny (animated by Robert McKimson?), actress Rose Marie and Laugh-In’s Johnny Brown.

(via the best place on the net for oddball Looney Tunes stuff, Mice-Looney-Ous)

The Chuck Jones Tom & Jerry cartoons of the 1960s are a mixed bag. There are a couple of good ones (I really like The Cat Above, The Mouse Below and The Cat’s Me-Ouch for example) and a whole bunch of mediocre ones. But one thing that most agree is that the films themselves look great thanks to Maurice Noble’s layouts, Jones character designs and the first rate professionalism of his crew. MGM/UA released a laser disc boxed set of these back in the 1990s (which was marred by awful DVNR clean-up technology, which essentially ruined the cartoons one redeeming value: the animation). Now Warner Bros. is making up for that with two-disc DVD collection of digitally remastered cartoons. Tom & Jerry: Chuck Jones Collection features 34 Tom & Jerry shorts and two bonus documentaries: Peggy Stern’s Chuck Jones: Memories of A Childhood (which airs March 24th at 8pm on TCM) and an original doc, produced by our friends at New Wave Entertainment: Tom and Jerry… and Chuck. It goes on sale June 23rd.

For more information on Chuck Jones check out the new blog devoted to the director, by his grandson Craig Kausen: Chuck Redux blog

(Thanks, Dave Lambert and Larry Levine)

A visually impressive Space Invaders-themed music video directed by Reuben Sutherland of Joyrider Films for Röyksopp’s new single “Happy Up Here.” At first glance, I thought it was a mix of live and CG, but upon closer examination, it appears to be almost entirely CG. It’s a fun piece in which the visual elements and cutting perfectly match the energy of song’s beats.

Director Fred Olen Ray:

“So I’m sitting in this movie theater one day and I’m watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit and I see Jessica Rabbit come on and all the guys are going, ‘Va-va-va-voom, I’d have sex with that,’ and I said, ‘You know, I bet that somebody’d pay money to see a cartoon character rip a girl’s clothes off.’”

And with that bit of insight, Ray produced the adult live-action/animated feature, Evil Toons, a 1992 production that I’d never heard of until yesterday when I read about it on Richard O’Connor’s blog. Interesting note for animation fans: the animation in the film was created by none other than Oscar-nominated John Dilworth (creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog and the director of Dirdy Birdy).

Here’s the trailer to whet your appetite:

And an 11-minute commentary from the director offering insights into how he created movie magic:

NY-based animator Lars Edwards was recently commissioned by McSweeney’s Quarterly to create an animated trailer promoting the release of Art Spiegelman’s collection of sketchbooks, “Be A Nose!”. He came up with an eye-catching and distinctive piece of line animation, which can be seen below. Edward’s writes, “After finding a narrative theme in the mayhem of Be A Nose!’s pages, I put together a small team of talented animators and we began recreating Art Spiegelman’s artwork. It was an amazing experience working with Art Spiegelman and McSweeney’s on this project.” The animators on the project were Aaron Hawkins, Hanna Bliss, Brian Ellis, Jason Schwartz and Edwards.

The cartoon below isn’t very good, but it’s been rarely seen — and that’s usually good enough for me. And it’s somewhat historically important, as it represents the last of a series of animated shorts that began in 1924 by Max Fleischer.

Fleischer began sing-along Song Cartunes in 1924 and it was an immediate success. His gimmick was a bouncing ball atop the lyrics on screen, to help audiences keep up with the song. In the sound era, Fleischer added popular singers and big bands (in live action). The original run ended in 1938. Famous Studios, Paramount’s successor to the Fleischer operation, revived the bouncing ball series in color, in a Noveltoon When G.I. Johnny Comes Marching Home in 1945. Paramount released bouncing ball cartoons through various Noveltoons, Kartunes and Screen Songs series for the next nine years (Candy Cabaret (1954) was the last).

In the 1960s, with Paramount having sold off their most well known creations to Harvey Comics, the studio was desperate for ideas. They began remaking earlier shorts; they tried adapting comedy records (”Abner The Baseball”), they even reinvented Casper as “Goodie The Gremlin”. Nothing caught on. The only thing they owned with audience recognition was “sing-along with the bouncing ball”.

Hobo’s Holiday (1963) was the last Paramount Bouncing Ball cartoon short. It was released in 1963 and hasn’t been seen since. Morey Reden, a Fleischer/Famous veteran animator, wrote and animated the film. He used The Big Rock Candy Mountain, a public domain song from the (1930s) Depression era, arranged here with a 1950s rock beat. It’s pretty lame. With references to “streams of alcohol” and “cigarette trees” the cartoon was naturally omitted from showing on Nickelodeon when the rest of the 1960s Paramount cartoons were shown on that network from 1989 through 1992.

So here it is. If you ever wanted to know what a Screen Song short might look like if they kept the series going into the TV era, here’s your answer:

I saw the Hungarian short KJFG No. 5 by Alexei Alexeev at Annecy last year. I didn’t laugh but lots of other people did. Perhaps you’ll laugh too. Brevity does work in its favor even if it’s not chuckle-worthy.

Spotted outside of an Asian grocery store in Queens, a cardboard box from a yam producer that uses an unauthorized rendition of Mulan as its logo. Here’s the original Disney coloring book page that they used for the swipe.