In case you thought I forgot to plug this month’s performance of Cartoon Dump… you’re wrong! Here’s the plug!

This month we will have two surprise guest comedians joining Moodsy, Compost Brite, Cue Card Goddess and me tonight at 8 PM, for an evening of comedy, songs and really, really awful cartoons. Join us at the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. (two blocks west of Vermont). Map here, reserve tickets here. See you there!

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in association with Deutsches Filmmuseum in Franfurt Germany, will be presenting an exhibit of original anime art in their Beverly Hills HQ lobby and 4th Floor Gallery.

From May 15th through August 23th, the Academy will present ANIME! High Art - Pop Culture featuring collectors items and rare animation artwork seldom seen outside Japan. A portion of the exhibition is devoted to manga and its relationship to anime; the whole exhibit will provide a historical overview of the development of Japanese comic book and animation genres. Public viewing hours are Tuesday – Friday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday – Sunday: Noon to 6 p.m. Closed Mondays and May 23–24. Admission: Free. For more info, visit the Academy website.

The blurry image above is a frame from the “lost” ending to the early Bugs Bunny cartoon Hare-um Scare-um. David Gerstein found the missing sequence while researching this title recently at a major film archive — and now he’s written a post about how he discovered it on Ramapith: The Prehistoric Pop Culture Blog, his new website.

Gerstein, whose books include Mickey And The Gang and Nine Lives To Live: Classic Felix the Cat, is one of the most knowledgeable writers and historians of animation. His new blog will be worth checking on a regular basis.

Here’s a brief clip from the new Pixar short that will accompany Up in theatres:

(via Fire Wire)

It’s been acknowledged by the creators of The Simpsons that the blood-thirsty antics of Itchy and Scratchy were inspired less by Tom & Jerry and more by the violent situations of Herman and Katnip. By the 1950s, the writers at Paramount’s Famous Studios were suffering from cartoon fatigue — endlessly rewriting and redrawing the same tired stories for Popeye, Casper, Baby Huey et al. for years on end. The Herman and Katnip pictures were pure cat-chasing-mice opuses, which were by now running on auto-pilot, and got progressively more and more violent as the years went by.

The cartoons have what I call “Shemp syndrome” - it’s the same problem the Three Stooges shorts of the 50s had - they forgot what was funny about slapstick in the first place. The filmmakers just knew that “hurt gags” worked, so they upped the “hurt”, figuring it’ll be funnier. The results were less funny and more painful, and often in horrible taste.

Embedded below is the last 90 seconds from Mouseum (1956) which features my all-time favorite bad-taste ending. I love it. It makes me laugh because of how wrong it is. By this time, the animators had really lost all perspective. Here’s the set-up: Katnip is chasing Herman and his cousins through a natural history museum.

What follows next is pure genius: The cat chases the mouse into a stuffed elephant’s head. Katnip sticks a rifle into the elephant’s trunk and Herman, using super-human strength, bends the rifle to aim it back towards Katnip. His gunshot blast blows the elephant’s glass eyes into Katnip’s head! The eyes fall from his head and the cat thinks the eyeballs are his! He shoves them into his eye sockets making himself blind… he goes running into the street blindly, as Herman and the mice laugh at his handicap. Iris out.

Quentin Tarantino would be proud.

I’ve posted the last part of my 2009 animation and cartoon book sale. Rare goodies straight ahead on the book sale page.

This is from Tom Brazelton, who posts a new movie-themed webcomic three times a week at Theatre Hopper.com

(Thanks, Jerrett Zaroski)

Winnipeg animator Cordell Barker (The Cat Came Back, Strange Invaders) is back with a new film. Runaway will have its World Premiere at the 48th International Critics’ Week (May 14-22) in Cannes.

I’m a big fan of Barker’s cartoons. The NFB just post this promotional video (below) where he explains his latest film, and his creative process. More information and clips on Runaway, and downloads of his previous films are on posted here.