Back in February, Amid post Einar Baldvin’s Cal Arts thesis film, Catatonic. Baldvin just completed a musical piece in collaboration with Icelandic Klezmer-and-Balkan band Varsjár Bandalagið (The Warsaw Pact). It’s much lighter fare than Catatonic but just as intense and interesting in its own way. Perfect viewing for an end-of-the-world weekend.

The world is ending on May 21st, so May 23rd is the perfect time for the apocalyptic hilarity of Cartoon Dump, with its rapturous mixture of sketches, songs, puppets, stand-up comedy and actual Saturday Morning Cartoons from the 50s, 60s and 70s that are so bad you’ll be praying for the destruction of the Earth.

I’ll be introducing Frank Conniff (MST3K), Erica Doering along with guest comedians Andy Kindler, Emo Phillips and our usual gang of Mighty Mr. Titan, Johnny Cypher and who knows what else…

Join us Monday (5/23), 8 PM at the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. (two blocks west of Vermont). Buy advance tickets here!

Been meaning to post this for months – a fun little animated promo for Australia’s Awesome Waste of Time contest website. If anyone knows who directed this – let me know.

(Thanks, Kent Osborne)

Though primarily live action, I had to post the phenomenal debut film by Toronto-based filmmaker Sol Friedman. Junko’s Shamisen, which played the festival circuit last year, was recently posted online. A visual tour-de-force, it combines live action with cel, stop motion (by Pete Levin) and computer animation.

Carlos Salgado, an illustrator, designer and director for Spanish production company User T38 sent us a note with a link to his beautifully stylized spot:

“I’ve been following Cartoon Brew for a long time and has been a web of reference and inspiration for my work. In the last year I’ve been directing and design 3 pieces of animation that will be seeing this year, the first of them (ironically the last one I made ​​but the first to be shown) is a 1 minute and 40 seconds long animation made ​​for an NGO (non governmental organization), África Directo (a humanitarian aid group), I invite you to see the animation we have done.”

Credits after the jump…
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Our first glimpse of Spielberg’s (and Jackson’s) mo-cap Tintin movie. They are still afraid to show us their faces – and I’m still not entirely sure why this film had to be motion capture – but it’s looking quite good nonetheless.

UPDATE: The Hi-Def Japanese trailer contains a few different shots

(Thanks, Chris Sobieniak)

Sensual rotoscope animation about “overcoming the fear of commitment”, Fear Me Not by Malika Whitaker:

Reader Andres Silva shared with me this photo he snapped at a children’s playground in Ecuador.

Nikki Finke is reporting that Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) is going to reboot The Flintstones for both television series and theatrical movies. Apparently this deal was long time in negotiation between 20th Century-Fox (MacFarlane’s home base) and Warner Bros. (who own The Flintstones).

On a related/unrelated matter, the 1966 Adam West Batman series has been held up for years due to legal wrangling between Fox and Warners… perhaps this MacFarlane deal could help untangle that impasse.

(Thanks, Greg Chenoweth)

If so, Huggies has some “training pants” for you.

Couldn’t let the weekend pass without sharing the latest episode of The Ambiguously Gay Duo from this week’s Saturday Night Live. This episode goes live-action with Steve Carell, Jon Hamm, Jimmy Fallon and Steven Colbert – never has a live action version of a cartoon been so accurate:

(Thanks, Ed Austin)

Here’s another of my favorites from this year’s Cal Arts Producer’s Show, held last Thursday in North Hollywood: Brian Carter’s sci-fi comedy, Give Me Space.