Attention all Angelenos: Tom Sito, Disney animator, former president of the Animation Guild, and now author of Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson will speak Thursday, December 14, 2006, 7:30 pm, at the Hollywood Heritage Museum. No one has collected more stories about the Golden Age of Hollywood animation than Tom, and his book is a must have. The Hollywood Heritage Museum is in the Lasky-DeMille Barn at 2100 North Highland Avenue (across the street from the Hollywood Bowl). Parking is free. Admission is $8 (Hollywood Heritage Members: $5) for this special event.

Animation director Matt Ferguson (Harold Rosenbaum Chartered Accountant and Grossology for Nelvana) has, over the past week, been posting clips and full versions of the 2006 Annie Award nominees on his new blog, The Living Animation Festival. Matt’s also been posting all kinds of great stuff he finds on YouTube, including early films of John Lasseter and Michael Dudok de Wit. Well worth a daily visit.

What are you doing on Pearl Harbor Day?This Thursday (tomorrow, Dec. 7th) John Canemaker will be in Hollywood, hosting a program to celebrate the DVD debut of DISNEY TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURES 1949 -1960. He’ll be screening highlights from the pioneering live action Disney film series, and lead a discussion with a panel of filmmakers, including Roy E. Disney. Paul Kenworthy, Bruce Reitherman, and David Bossert. At 7:30 p.m. in the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, CA.I myself will be half a mile away, running a fine selection of vintage animated cartoons at the Janet Klein concert at The Steve Allen Theatre. I do this every month, the first Thursday of each. It’s a great evening of fun which starts at 8:00pm. For more info go here.

The nominees for the 34th Annual Annie Awards have been announced. The complete list is posted here. Here’s a sampling of some of the nominees:Best Animated Feature
Cars – Pixar Animation Studios
Happy Feet – Warner Bros.
Monster House – Columbia Pictures/ImageMovers/Amblin Production
Open Season – Sony Pictures Animation/Columbia Pictures
Over The Hedge – DreamWorks AnimationBest Animated Short Subject
Adventure Time – Nickelodeon
Fumi and the Bad Luck Foot – Thunderbean Animation
No Time For Nuts – Blue Sky Studios
Weird Al Yankovic “Don’t Download This Song” – Acme FilmworksThe Awards will be presented Sunday February 11th at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, CA. For more information click here. Congratulations to all the nominees.

Mark Evanier is the first to note the passing of my friend Sid Raymond. Raymond was best known as the voice of Baby Huey and Katnip for Famous Studios during the 1950s. He also did voices for Terrytoons and radio, and appeared in many classic TV shows (including The Honeymooners) and movies. He made a fortune playing a bartender in a series of commercials for Schlitz Beer in the early 1960s.That’s a picture of Sid and I, above, taken in Vancouver during the voice recording sessions for the new Baby Huey cartoons produced by Carbunkle Cartoons for Harvey Entertainment in 1994. If you want to see a larger version of the photo click here. I not only spent a whole week with Sid that year, but subsequently met up with him in New York (where he took me to breakfast at the Friars Club, and to a party at Jackson Beck’s apartment!). If that weren’t enough, I visited with Sid and his lovely wife in Miami where he showed me several pieces of Famous Studios memorabilia. We kept in touch throughout the years – and Sid never stopped working! He was on The O.C. last year – that was his last appearence on screen. Say what you will about the Famous Studios cartoons, the voice work is teriffic. Stang, Mercer, Beck, Questel and Raymond are hilarious, and give classic vocal characterizations.Howard Weinberg made a documentary about Sid a few years ago, Sid At 90 which is well worth buying. Below is a brief clip from the film where Sid discusses voicing Baby Huey, his small part in The Prize (1963) and excerpts from his Schlitz Beer commercials.His niece wrote about him on my My Space. He will be missed.

Not my favorite decade for animation, but James Eatock of Busta Toons Productions (the folks behind the He Man/She Ra blog) is starting cereal:geek, a new magazine that focuses strictly on animation from the eighties and, he says, “challenges the perceptions of the reader”.Eatock envisions a glossy publication, published on a quarterly basis, with articles, illustrations, scripts, storyboards, “a wealth of unseen production materials from your favorite shows, and interviews with those individuals that helped shape this particular decade of animation history”. Visit the website and register your interest and you will receive updates about the magazine in preparation for its January 2007 debut.

Here is everything you ever wanted to know about BEWITCHED – the 1964-1972 ABC TV comedy series about a regular guy who marries to a immortal magical witch. This page has more than you ever thought possible about the show’s Hanna Barbera opening titles: frame grabs, audio, alternate titles, etc.(Thanks, Mike Owens)

Hmmm… the trade papers usually don’t post new stories over the weekend. Here’s one that popped up this morning in The Hollywood Reporter about Disney laying off 160 people in Feature Animation. It’s never a good sign when a company announces news late Friday so it appears in print Saturday (traditionally less people watch or read news on Saturday). The L.A. Times also has the report today:

“The management team at Walt Disney Animation has determined that each film will dictate its own appropriate production schedule,” Disney Studios spokeswoman Heidi Trotta said. “The result of this necessitated a reduction of staff.”