ASIFA-Hollywood has announced its Call for Entries for this year’s 37th Annual Annie Awards.

Annie Awards will be presented in 25 categories including best animated feature, home entertainment, television production, television commercial, short subject, video game, as well as individual achievements. Entries can be submitted for consideration from productions released in the United States between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009. The deadline to receive entries is Friday, October 16, 2009.

Some big changes to the voting rules have been instituted this year, most significantly that ASIFA-Hollywood members will vote only on the Production categories, and that a final election committee of animation professionals will determine the award recipients for all of the Individual Achievement categories.

This year’s ceremony will be held on Saturday, February 6, 2010 at Royce Hall on the campus of UCLA. The updated ‘Rules and Categories’ list, entry forms and more information can be found online at www.annieawards.org.

Among the many fine people I met at the Fredrikstad Animation Festival in Norway last year was stop motion artist Jan Rune Blom. He promised to send me a link to this music video for singer Helene Bøksle when he was done with it. He didn’t let me down.

After the singer was filmed, the stills were transferred onto paper, cut out, and shot as stop motion. He tells me:

There are no digital effects or digital post production on the piece. Everything was shot on a Canon 300D SLR camera, and all pictures were imported into Final Cut for editing.I really like working with a lot of analog details and solutions. And I like the “analog feeling” of the end product. My brother Tor Harald Blom made the original 2D illustrations of trees and animals. Everything else I did myself. I spent like seven to eight months working on this.

These behind-the-scene pics on Jan’s blog give a hint of the painstaking work that went into making this piece. The results are lovely.

It was bound to happen. Canadian TV execs greenlight a cartoon about… TV Execs!

Created by Kevin Gillis (Atomic Betty) and Laura Kosterski, Producing Parker looks rather attractive - art direction-wise. I hadn’t heard about this show until today; Wouldn’t mind seeing an episode if it ever makes it to the States. It’s currently airing in Canada on TVTropolis, and coming to GlobalTV later on this year.

Once again, a plug for my monthly comedy-and-cartoons craptacular: Cartoon Dump! MST3K’s Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank) and J. Elvis Weinstein (Dr. Erhardt & the original Tom Servo), Erica Doering and special guest star comedian/trickster Michael Rayner join me at the Steve Allen Theatre Tuesday September 22nd at 8pm. Comedy! Songs! Puppets! Magic! And God-awful cartoons from the wasteland of 50s and 60s Saturday morning television! Advanced tickets click here.

And on Friday September 25th, it’s Fleischer-palooza on Hollywood Boulevard! I’ll be introducing a double feature Max Fleischer’s two great animated features, Gulliver’s Travels (1939) and Mr. Bug Goes To Town (1941) at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Both will be presented in 35mm, with uncut IB Technicolor prints projected on the large screen, just as they were meant to be seen. And psssst! Surprise short subjects will be shown! More info here.

Painting by Bill Wray

Today, Nick is premiering the second season of The Mighty B! at 5:30 p.m (ET/PT). A new episode will debut everyday of this week. I’ll readily admit that I don’t understand the network’s logic of burning off five new episodes in a week, but that’s besides the point. Bill Wray, who is both painting backgrounds and co-directing episodes, tells me that he’s very proud of the second season and thinks they’ve made big strides with this current crop. He’s posting a lot of fantastic Mighty B! artwork on his blog. Bill’s enthusiasm, combined with all the funny stuff in the second season promo posted below, has convinced me that I need to check out a few episodes and see what it’s all about.

Chainsaw Maid has gotten a fair share of play this year, but I thought it deserved a bigger shout out here on Cartoon Brew. The idea to match up colorful plasticine with the zombie genre was a revelation for me—a perfect match. Show me a better use, or at least one that’s more fun, for plasticine.

The film is very well edited and shows a lot of directorial promise. The director, Takena Nagao, takes the zombie genre and replicates its idiosyncrasies flawlessly. The music is delightfully creepy, and works like a charm.  The candy-colored world is almost edible and had me wondering what purple brain blood tastes like. From a storytelling perspective, Chainsaw Maid mixes reaction shots, wide angles and close-ups better than some of the feature films I’ve seen recently.

Perhaps most impressive of all is Takena’s use of the moving camera: the quick zooms, the subtle pans and tilts, the lens recalibrating during a shot to find the action (e.g. 2:53-3:02). It takes confidence to move a camera like this, and even more confidence when you’re doing it in-camera without the aid of rigs/motion control. Takena uses it to add tension, believability, and dynamism to the film at just the right points—in other words, not just for the sake of moving a camera, as so many directors (amateur and professional alike) tend to do.

All in all, I find it super-refreshing to see a talented young filmmaker having so much fun and I can’t wait to see his future work.

PS. This is a link to Takena Nagao’s YouTube channel. And if you like Chainsaw Maid, check out Takena’s latest film, Pussycat.

Pa-NO-Rama is a delightful example of how a film can communicate a meaningful and funny message in one minute flat and leave the viewer wanting more. It’s by Italian animator Diego Zucchi.

Auctioneers Profiles In History are currently having an incredible entertainment memorabilia sale which is including a Lot of 100 puppets and pieces-of-puppets from the George Pal’s Jasper Puppetoons. The bids start at $8000. Here’s the link. There are also separate lots for puppets from individual non-Jasper films such as The Gay Knighties, Rhythm In The Ranks, Two-Gun Rusty, John Henry, Tubby The Tuba and on and on! This lot was part of the estate of William Nassour who, with his brother, produced several Hollywood movies and experimented in stop motion animation. Apparently they took over the Puppetoon shop when Pal moved on into feature production - and held onto these puppets until now!

If those prices are too steep, you can own one of Pal’s most iconic movie models for a more modest $35. Pegasus Hobbies, under license from Paramount Pictures, is exclusively selling reproductions of the Martian War Machines from War Of The Worlds. They sell them as either plastic model kits or pre-built and plated. I actually have one of the pre-built ones and it’s quite beautiful.

Mark Evanier also points out that the Hollywood auction above is also selling an astonishing collection of Walker Edminston’s Time For Beany Beany & Cecil puppets and memorabilia. Lot’s of jaw-dropping Clampett puppets and ephemera here.