Thank you to Warner Bros. who has sponsored our site for the past couple weeks. They are promoting The Jetsons Season 2 Volume 1 dvd. The company continues to be ambitious in making available the library of cartoons it owns. Recent releases include the Fleischer’s Superman shorts, Chuck Jones’s Tom & Jerry shorts, and a couple sets of Saturday morning cartoons from the Sixties and Seventies. For info about all of their video releases, visit the Warner Home Video website.

MGMT released a new music video tonight for their song “Kids” (directed by Ray Tintori). There’s only about a minute of animation in the video, but it’s one damn solid and creative minute. The animation was directed by Superjail co-creator Christy Karacas, and the animators on the piece were Karacas, Lizzi Akana and Henry Thurlow. The animation on the last shot is nuts! I want to frame-by-frame all that trippy goodness.

The Autumn Society is a group of artists who started in Philadelphia and are now expanding worldwide. Their 80s POP art exhibit premieres this Friday, June 5th in Philadelphia:

The 80s POP Show! is a collection of artwork inspired by movies, cartoons, and video games from the amazing and imaginary era of the 1980s. The opening party starts Friday at 6pm, at Brave New Worlds Comics. The show features the works of Alex Leighton from Mukpuddy Animation, as well as the talented character designers Brianne Drouhard and Tara Billinger.

Below (click thumbnails to enlarge) is some of the work on exhibit from Craig Parrillo (left), Brianne Drouhard, Guayapizco and Jessika von Innerebner.

Hayao Miyazaki will appear in person, accept a prize and participate in a Q & A on July 25th in Berkeley California. Miyazaki so rarely travels to the US, and even less so to make public appearances, we urge you to reserve your tickets NOW!

The Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley will award Miyazaki with the 2009 Berkeley Japan Prize, for a lifetime of influencing the world’s understanding of Japan. On July 12th, 14th, 19th, and 21st, the Pacific film Archive will host a A Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki. All films will be shown in the original Japanese 35mm prints with English subtitles.

Sunday, July 12, 4:00 PM - My Neighbor Totoro

Tuesday July 14, 7:00 PM - Porco Rosso

Sunday July 19, 2:30 PM - Laputa: Castle in the Sky

Tuesday July 21, 7:00 PM - Princess Mononoke

The Center for Japanese Studies, in conjunction with the Pacific Film Archive, is pleased to present the Northern California premiere of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film, Ponyo, to be screened at Wheeler Hall on Friday, July 24, 2009 at 6pm and 8pm. For tickets to this limited-seating engagement, please visit the UC Berkeley website

On Saturday, July 25, 2009, leading scholars of Japanese popular culture, literature, and film will discuss Hayao Miyazaki’s work and his international influence in a roundtable panel discussion, The Hayao Miyazaki Symposium. This will take place at 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor conference room from 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM. It’s Free and open to the public.

Later that day, from 6:00 PM to 7:45 PM in Zellerbach Auditorium, Hayao Miyazaki in Conversation. Miyazaki will be interviewed on stage, followed by a question and answer period with the audience. For tickets to this limited-seating engagement ($25.), please visit Zellerbach Hall website.

Why is it that the trailers for videogames excite me more than the trailers for any animated feature? Case in point is this trailer for The Last Guardian, a new PS3 title that was previewed at E3. The game is created by Fumito Ueda (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus). Brew reader B. Bolander, who sent me the link, writes: “Everything you see in that trailer—the griffin, the boy—has been animated. Fumito Ueda, the creator of the game and an ex-animator himself, doesn’t do motion capture. Every flick of an ear had to be done by hand, or at least by mouse.” There is more info about the game, including quotes from Ueda, in this article on 1UP.com

Animation is not strictly a kids medium, despite the general perception (here in the U.S.) that it is. Clearly - South Park, Adult Swim and Fox Sunday Nights aside - animation produced for television is still largely kid-driven and supports the industry, thanks to multi-million dollar merchandising and ancillary businesses.

But animated feature films have been appealing to adults for a while now - and yet with every success, it’s still a surprise to the mass media. As The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday:

“UP grabbed the attention of audiences of all ages in its first weekend, according to Disney officials. “It was as strong with kids aged two to 11 as it was with adults both under and over 25,” says Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Motion Picture Group.

Is this still news? Not to me. Every (or most) Pixar and Dreamworks film has opened at number #1 and gone on to gross well over $100 million dollars domestically. Mainstream reporting like this just shows that we still have a way to go to change the kiddie-show perception of animation.

Brooks Barnes wrote this in yesterday’s New York Times:

The medium is showing signs of expanding beyond the kiddie market. The success of video games has resulted in a generation of adults who are comfortable consuming animated entertainment, Hollywood executives say. One indication: “Coraline,” the sophisticated 3-D picture about an adventurous girl, found an adult audience, so far selling $85.2 million in tickets.

Disney will test this part of the market with “Ponyo” on Aug. 14. This Hayao Miyazaki film is centered on a 5-year-old boy’s friendship with a goldfish that wants to be human. “Sophisticated stories coupled with powerful imaginations and beautiful animation appeals to everyone,” said Kathleen Kennedy, who is co-producing the English version of the film.

I’m not sure Ponyo is the film to test the adult appetite for animation. I haven’t seen it yet, but it looks like one of Miyazaki’s more juvenile films (though personally, I can’t wait to see it). Barnes’ article notes the emerging competition to Disney and Dreamworks - a whole slew of forthcoming films films (Astro Boy, Planet 51, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) vying to compete for the “new” all-ages theatre going audience. While noting the failure of Battle For Terra and mild success of Igor, Barnes neglects to mention the true tests of his theory: Shane Acker’s 9, Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max and perhaps Wes Anderson’s the Fantastic Mr. Fox - all opening later this year, all with a more mature point of view.

As for The Princess and The Frog, Mr. Barnes (who is apparently the official NY Times animation reporter) wrote a separate article last Friday on the “controversy” (is there one?) over a black princess. This piece alone indicates that the mainstream media has a long way to go to catch up with what the rest of us has known all along: animation is for everyone.

Some disappointing news out of the Licensing Expo now going on in Las Vegas. Disney has officially announced their next hand-drawn animated theatrical: a new Winnie the Pooh movie. The new Pooh feature is planned for release in spring 2011.

This is a real let down for me. I was hoping the The Princess and the Frog was the starting point for a new era of original hand drawn masterpieces. Greenlighting a new Pooh is an understandable commercial business decision, but it only seems to reinforce the stereotype of what hand drawn cartoons have become: a babysitter - and it’s a regression of the medium’s true potential.

Disney needs not only to reclaim its mastery of this art form, but to push it forward. I fail to see how Pooh will accomplish this. However, if it keeps artists employed while more ambitious projects are developed, that could be a good thing. And who’s to say a good Winnie the Pooh film can’t be created?

The studio also announced today plans to “pump more enthusiasm into the world’s largest licensed character franchise: Mickey Mouse.”

“That effort, said consumer products chairman Andy Mooney, could include classic footage of an animated Mickey mashed up with contemporary Disney properties, with the resulting creations running on the Disney Channel. “Through extensive research with kids, we found they actually love the original Mickey Mouse property,” Mooney said.

Yeah, mashing classic Mickey cartoons into Hannah Montana is exactly what kids want. Hoo-boy!

The word genius is thrown around so loosely and frequently nowadays that it’s hard to discern who might actually be worthy of the distinction. David Daniels is, and his animation technique—Stratacut—is mind-boggling and beyond words. Yesterday, The Art of the Title Sequence posted an interview with David Daniels that is pure gold. In addition to the interview, there are hi-res examples of his animation, and most amazingly, a series of video demos documenting his Stratacut technique. Whether you’re already familiar with Daniels’ work or not, prepare to be blown away.