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POSTS FOR “April, 2009“Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
April 11, 2009 12:05 am
Next Friday you can meet me at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City where I will speaking about the origins of Harvey Comics and its connection to Famous Studios. I’ll screen some cartoon clips and sign books – in particular the latest volume of Harvey Comics Classics: The Harvey Girls. The fun starts at 6:30pm. MoCCA is located at 594 Broadway, in Suite 401. More info online at the museum website. Come by and say hello. 8 Comments » posted in Comics, Events 
April 10, 2009 9:40 am
It was announced several months ago that Warner Bros. is developing a live action feature based on Hanna Barbera’s Jonny Quest, with Zac Efron as Jonny and Dwayne Johnson as Race Bannon. LA Times blogger Geoff Boucher reported this week that, possibly due to the failure of last years Speed Racer movie, Warners is now thinking of making the JQ film, but droppping the JQ name. Apparently the live action JQ script is so good that the studio wants to produce the film regardless of what the characters are called. But the failure of Speed Racer – another live action version of a 1960s cartoon series – still resonates with upper management. So the thinking is to just cut ties to the H-B series that inspired it. Personally, I think this is a good idea. Dear Warner Bros., 52 Comments » posted in Feature Film
April 9, 2009 5:00 pm
I couldn’t let the day pass without noting the announcement of The Simpsons U.S. postage stamps. I believe the rule is that something (a celebrity, an event, a landmark) must be 20 years old in order to rate the honor of being commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp – and The Simpsons have rightly earned this tribute. It’s kind of cool they are using Matt Groening designs over the more standardized “model sheet” look. Over at the Postal Service website you can vote for your favorite stamp or you can pre-order the set. There will be First-Day-of-Issue Dedication Ceremony at 20th Century-Fox Studios in Los Angeles at 11:15 a.m. PT on Thursday, May 7. Matt Groening, producer James L. Brooks and several of the actors are scheduled to attend. A limited number of seats are available to the public on a first-call, first-reserved basis. Those interested in attending should call 1-866-268-3243 beginning Friday, April 10th between noon and 5 p.m. ET. For more info click here. 25 Comments » posted in Cartoon Culture
April 9, 2009 12:15 am
. The Upstate Four (viewable in two parts above) is an eleven-minute Cartoon Network pilot created by brothers Fran Krause and Will Krause. When I first saw it last year, I was immediately taken by the quality of the production. Funny and fresh, energetic and entertaining, it looks and feels like nothing else currently out there. On top of that, the character animation is handled beautifully with none of the corner-cutting that has become an unfortunate hallmark of contemporary Flash TV animation. The pilot wasn’t picked up for series production and languished at Cartoon Network, but the brothers Krause received recognition for their efforts in the form of a top prize for Children’s Television Animation at the Ottawa International Animation Festival as well as an Excellence in Animation prize from the 2008 ASIFA-East Animation Festival. The Krause’s pilot for The Upstate Four raises the bar for TV animation everywhere, and proves that, with thoughtful planning and execution, top-grade TV animation is within reach. I wanted to learn how such an inspired and quality piece of work made it through the moribund development pipeline at Cartoon Network. The interview below was conducted via email, and in our far-ranging conversation, Fran and Will guide us through the tangled development process, their feelings about pitching, whether the type of quality they achieved in this pilot could be maintained in regular series production, and some of the lessons they learned from creating this pilot. 47 Comments » posted in Animators, Flash, TV, Fran Krause
April 9, 2009 12:05 am
Ger Apeldoorn has uncovered a real find. A set of obscure comic strips, created for a local California newspaper in 1950 (The Redwood Journal-Press-Dispatch in Ukiah), that were written and drawn by Hollywood animators! Art by Gil Turner, Ray Patin, Gus Jekel, Dick Moores, Jerry Hathcock, Tom Ray, James Will, Dave Mitchell, Jack King, Jack Bradbury and (maybe) Cal Dalton has been identified. Ger is looking to find more information on this batch of mysterious strips. Check it out here. No Comments » posted in Animators, Comics
April 8, 2009 12:00 pm
I love 3D movies. Thanks to a pair of 3-D film festivals held in L.A. several years ago, I’ve been lucky enough to see perhaps 95% of all 3-D films ever made. On top of that, I think the use of 3-D in recent motion pictures (Coraline for example) is perhaps the best application of the format in film history. Digital technology has -at last- perfected the technique. I’m not crazy about having to wear the extra set of glasses… nevertheless, it’s a wonderful way to experience a movie. But it ain’t gonna last. The current preponderance of 3-D films that Hollywood is perpetuating is simply a business trend. The medium is not being revolutionized. It is not the second coming of The Jazz Singer. A front page article in Monday’s L.A. Times (“Taking Filmmaking To Another Dimension” 04/06/09) repeated all the hype, reported all the grosses and played up all the coming attractions that have been reported everywhere – from Variety to The Wall Street Journal – in recent weeks. It’s almost overkill. Yeah, yeah, we know… Katzenberg, Lasseter, Cameron, Zemeckis, everyone in Hollywood is on board. And they’ve declared Monsters Vs. Aliens as the watershed picture. Its opening grosses, in 3D venues, justify a sea change in production, distribution and exhibition. But it’s all B.S. First off, all this nonsense about how all the “old” 3D movies used red/blue anaglyph is a lie. Yes, prior to 1952 there were a few releases (like Pete Smith’s MGM “Metroscopiks” shorts) that used the technique (and don’t miss Albert Brooks’ hilarious faux anaglyph trailer for Real Life (1979) which perpetuates the myth), but all features made since the 50s use essentially the same polaroid system used today. The big difference, thanks to digital projection, is today’s 3D movies are easier to show and have perfect registration between the two images projected. Next, the current hype about the studios’ expectations of 3-D is a 55-year old rerun. As Leonard Maltin said in this Wall Street Journal article, it’s “an absolute replica of the pronouncements and interviews that came out in 1953.” This time, however, the pronouncements are bigger and louder. Director Patrick Lussier (of the recent 3-D slasher flick, My Bloody Valentine) is quoted in the L.A. Times piece saying, “You could do My Dinner With Andre in 3-D and it would be incredibly compelling.” Maybe so, but it would be because of the script and acting, not the “immersive 3D experience”. Lussier also claims that the 3-D format is “more than a fad.” Sorry… it’s a fad. A fad concocted and controlled by the major studios. The question is “why”? Here’s the answer: the studios are promoting 3-D films right now in an effort to convince the theaters to convert to digital projection. Once all theatres go digital, there will be no need for the studios to create expensive 35mm prints, they’ll be no more costs for reels and cans; the cost of transporting 100 pound film canisters coast to coast, the cost of storing prints in film depots and later, the cost of destroying worn prints will be eliminated. The savings to the studios will be enormous. The theaters have resisted the move to digital because it costs tens of thousands of dollars to replace the 35mm projectors and install the new equipment. Theaters contend there’s nothing wrong with 35mm film; that audiences can’t tell the difference, so why bother to convert. Thus the studios are gung-ho for 3-D in an effort to provide something that digital can do more effectively than traditional film equipment. There are other reasons as well: Digital distribution will cut down (or hopefully eliminate) film piracy; and 3-D films can attract people to theatres to experience a visual show they cannot (as of yet) get on cable TV, blu-ray discs or over the internet. BUT as soon as all theaters (or a majority of them) eliminate film and go completely digital, I predict the current 3-D fad will end. The recent 3-D propaganda, aimed at the general public and national movie chains, is really a push for digital conversion sooner rather than later. This is all well and good, but it has nothing to do with storytelling or good filmmaking. The 3-D gimmick didn’t last in the 1950s, nor the 80s. It wasn’t because the process was more primitive – it wasn’t. Animated films (or any films) today are going to be successful in 2D or 3D, hand drawn or CGI, due to one thing: story – not special effects or 3-D. Cinemas will all go digital eventually. 3-D itself is pretty cool. It just bothers me how it’s being sold to public. Wearing glasses to the movies is not the future. 94 Comments » posted in 3-D, Ideas/Commentary
April 8, 2009 12:45 am
Three months ago we mourned the end of the Warner Bros. animation mural at the intersection of Barham, Pass and Olive in Burbank. Tonight, Warners threw a party on the studio backlot to unveil the new cartoon billboard to replace it. Here it is. DC super heroes now take center stage, flying over the Hall of Justice (a nod to Hanna Barbera’s Super Friends), with Bugs, Daffy, Tweety and Sylvester lurking around the edges. Though I wish the Looney Tunes got a little more space, I’m grateful Scooby Doo has been downsized. One unique feature of the mural is that a group of super villains appear along the bottom – but are only visible at night. Peter Girardi designed the mural, Tommy Tejeda drew the superheroes with input from Bruce Timm, James Tucker and Glen Murakami. Other celebrities at the event included Julie Newmar (Catwoman) and Diedrich Bader (the current voice of Batman). 66 Comments » posted in Cartoon Culture
April 7, 2009 3:02 pm
SpongeBob SquarePants + Sir Mix-a-Lot + Burger King = The viral ad that everybody’s going to be linking to for the next week. Case in point: |
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