DREW CAREY’S GREEN SCREEN, a new series on the fall WB Network schedule, is essentially WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY? with animation added behind the live-action performers. The website doesn’t have much of anything on it yet, but I’ll take this as an opportunity to say that I’m looking forward to the show. Ron Diamond’s Acme Filmworks is producing the animation, and they’ve hired a whole slew of independent animators to contribute animated segments, including the likes of Patrick Smith, Bill Plympton and Seamus Walsh and Mark Caballero. It remains to be seen how well this concept will work, but at the very least, it’ll be fun to see animation in a variety of styles and techniques on primetime television.

I like the concept for Project Backpocket, in which eight Vinton Studios interns are given nine weeks to produce a short animated film using the studio’s resources. The interns are currently in week 7 of production, and the public can keep track of their progress at ProjectBackpocket.com where each of the interns is keeping their own personal production blog. A tip of the hat to Josh Parpan, one of the artists working on the film, for cluing me in to the proceedings. Josh is creating some really nice artwork for the hand-drawn sequence in the film, while the rest of the short is being produced in CG.

* A couple fine San Diego Comic-Con reports by Ronnie del Carmen and Scott Shaw!.

* It’s been a while since we’ve mentioned his name here, so let it be known that “America’s last untamed cartoonist” Milton Knight has updated his WEBSITE. And even if he hadn’t done that, it would still be worth a visit.

* GAPING VOID cartoonist Hugh Macleod has posted some eloquent MUSINGS on the nature of creativity and what it takes to achieve success as an artist. (via Boing Boing)

Nobody should have this much free time to play with Legos.

After Fox passed on the BOONDOCKS pilot, it became unclear which channel would pick up the show. The HOLLYWOOD REPORTER confirms that the new home of the animated series will be Cartoon Network. It’s likely being slated for the “Adult Swim” block.

Just a reminder that this Saturday afternoon I’ll be hosting a retrospective of Leonard Glasser’s animated films at the American Film Institute (2021 N. Western Ave, Hollywood, CA). All of the films we’ll be screening are extremely difficult to see nowadays so don’t miss this rare opportunity to experience Len’s distinctive and hilarious style of filmmaking. Len started in animation at Terrytoons working on TOM TERRIFIC, and shortly thereafter he designed Ernie Pintoff’s award-winning shorts THE OLD MAN AND THE FLOWER and THE INTERVIEW, both of which we’ll be showing on Saturday. In the early-’60s, he started his own studio, Stars & Stripes Productions Forever, where he produced some of the funniest and most imaginative animated commercials of the Sixties and Seventies. In addition to the Pintoff shorts, the screening will include a lot of TV commercials, Glasser’s own animated short HOWARD, the industrial film SAFETY SHOES which surely ranks as one of the goofiest industrials ever made, and the X-rated animation sequence from the 1971 cult classic THE TELEPHONE BOOK (”the unrecognized predecessor of the X-rated animations like HEAVY TRAFFIC and SINE” says SLEAZOID EXPRESS magazine). Len will be present at the screening for a Q-&-A following the films where he’ll talk about his cartoons and also discuss projects he’s working on nowadays. For more info, see the ASIFA-Hollywood website.

The BEANY AND CECIL SPECIAL EDITION DVD from a few years back is selling for the ridiculously low price of $3.99 on Amazon. No Clampett fan should be without this excellent volume, and at this price there’s no excuse for any animation fan not to have their own copy. [Updated 5:13 pm: Amazon has raised the price of the DVD back to $9.99. Still a good deal but it's no $3.99.]

Less than a month ago I saw the two-reel Fleischer cartoon POPEYE THE SAILOR MEETS SINDBAD THE SAILOR (1936) for the first time. I didn’t think much of it upon this initial viewing, but now realize that may have had more to do with the faded, muddy public domain video copy I saw rather than the quality of the cartoon itself. That’s because a few nights ago I saw a restored 35mm print on the big screen of said cartoon and it was a radically different experience. The animation, the humor, the artwork, everything was pitch-perfect on this second viewing. The “3-D” sets, hardly distinguishable from the painted BGs on the videotape, were jaw-droppingly cool when seen on a grand scale, especially Sindbad’s cave, which radiated wicked fluorescent colors. This was the first public screening of the restored edition and hopefully it’ll receive many more screenings so audiences can enjoy this classic cartoon as it was meant to be seen. While on the subject of everybody’s preferred cartoon sailor, the prodigiously talented animation director Oscar Grillo has been emailing over some wild Popeye drawings during the past week and he’s agreed to let me share a few of them with Cartoon Brew readers. Click on each of the thumbnails for the larger version and enjoy!