Shane Glines has posted an interesting historical artifact on his CartoonRetro.com message board - a comic strip from the publication FRIDAY drawn by striking artists during the infamous Disney Studios strike of 1941. I wonder if that's master animator Bill Tytla in the photo at right?
If they gave Clios for pretentiousness, then United Airlines' new animated ad campaign would be a shoo-in. I just saw their second of four one-minute TV spots, and this one makes almost as little sense as the first ad that's been playing all over TV these past few weeks.
Where will I be on Sunday?
I've been asked to join a number of authors who have written books on the subject of Disney (I guess a few entries in THE 50 GREATEST CARTOONS qualifies me) on "Disney Author Day" at Walt Disney’s Barn in Griffith Park on Sunday, March 21.
Scheduled to appear and sign are:
Michael Broggie, author of “Walt Disney’s Railroad Story”.
Peggy VanPelt, co-author (with the late John Hench) of “Designing Disney: Imagineering and the Art of the Show”
Buzz Price, author of “Walt’s Revolution by the Numbers”
Kendra Trahan, author of the newly published “Disneyland Detective”.
Jeff Kurtti, author of "The Art of Mulan" and "The Art and Making of A Bug's Life"
Bill Cotter, author of "The Wonderful World of Disney Television"
And me.
It's at Walt’s Barn on Sunday, March 21, from 11:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
For more details follow this link.
Ward Kimball (1914-2002) was a great animator, but the reason he's my personal favorite of Disney's Nine Old Men reaches far beyond his animation work. Peter Adamakos nails it when he writes in this REMEMBRANCE of Kimball, "In a way, it seemed there were Eight Old Men and then there was Ward Kimball." Ward, like his Old Men counterparts, was a fine draftsman and animator, but it's his singular sense of humor and subversive imagination that distinguishes him from the pack and for which I appreciate him most. These elements are evident not only in his animation, but throughout his career in the arts. I was reminded of this yesterday when a friend gave me a videotape copy of a Kimball film I'd never seen before, DAD, CAN I BORROW THE CAR?, a 47-minute live-action episode of THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY from the early-Seventies. The special does not by any stretch of the imagination qualify as a masterpiece of 20th century American cinema, but it is enjoyable to watch and filled with delightfully silly and inventive bits as only Kimball could conjure.
DAD, CAN I BORROW THE CAR? takes a hackneyed concept: our fascination with cars from the time we're born through our teen years, and uses it as an excuse for a variety of absurd montages and sequences: a breakneck-paced spoof of used car TV commercials, a musical segment that involves driving an open-top convertible through a car wash, and a sequence about the incredible frustrations of going to the DMV (the California Department of Motor Vehicles is thanked in the credits for their cooperation, although it's hard to imagine they'd have agreed to participate in this had they been aware of Ward's intentions). There are also bits and pieces of animation interspersed throughout - a bit of pixellation here, some cut-out there, and an abstract cel animated sequence that follows two speeding paint stripes around a car. There is nothing particularly ambitious animation-wise, probably due to the budgets, but the cartoon pieces are effective and work nicely within the context of the film. The animation is credited to Art Stevens, who was an animator at Disney since the early-Forties and one of Ward's main animators beginning in the early-Fifties with MELODY and TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK & BOOM. I'm pleased to report that Stevens is among the few legendary Disney animators who is still with us today.
It's hard to describe the appeal of this film. There are plenty of wry little touches throughout, like when the live-action kid requires his father's signature on a driving form, a clawed monster hand comes into frame and marks the paper with an "X" or when a newborn baby is slapped at birth by a doctor, the accompanying sound effect is a car horn. Perhaps in the mundaneness of everyday routine, it's simply inspiring to see a film by somebody whose outlook on life was so drastically different from the vast majority of the populace. Or maybe it's the brief shot of Ward Kimball eating a toy car. Cartoonists eating cars is not something you see everday.
They're finally washing Cartman's mouth out with soap. Just as Congress is slamming broadcasters over foul language, producers are squeezing more money out of cable's most risqué shows by selling them in syndication to broadcast stations and tamer cable networks. A sanitized version of Comedy Central's South Park, slated to bow on broadcast TV stations in fall 2005, has been created by a syndicator who is taking it to stations to demonstrate they'll work on broadcast TV.
Here's a link to an article which explains all the editing they have to do (Warning: Article contains naughty words).
On behalf of Jerry Beck and myself, Amid Amidi, I'd like to welcome everybody to our new home on the Web, CartoonBrew.com. The news and commentary that was found previously on our own websites, CartoonResearch.com and AnimationBlast.com respectively, will now be housed exclusively at CartoonBrew.com. Our old sites will both remain active and will serve other purposes, but CartoonBrew.com is the page to bookmark for your daily dose of intelligent animation commentary.
Our plans for CartoonBrew do not end with what you see here today. Over the coming months, we're going to be introducing a number of other features to this site including the addition of guest bloggers. We look forward to having artists and historians from around the industry join us on the Brew to share their own thoughts on the art form of animation.
Please be patient with us as we try to work out the various technical kinks of this site over the coming weeks. If the site is showing up oddly on your browser, please drop me a line at amid(at)animationblast(dot)com with details of what's wrong. And if anybody is proficient with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), please feel free to offer solutions to any problems that you encounter. Jerry and I welcome and appreciate any such help. Finally, a shout-out to Leslie Cabarga who designed the various Cartoon Brew logos that we're using on this site. Thanks Leslie!