Author Archives: Jerry Beck

Gerry Anderson (1929-2012)

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He wasn’t an animator – he was a pioneering television puppeteer – but he influenced everyone who grew up watching his unique TV productions. Gerry Anderson passed away yesterday at the age of 83.

Anderson was the creator of numerous hit sci-fi marionette-puppet shows including Supercar, Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet, not to mention the entirely live action series Space 1999 with Martin Landau.

Anderson began his career as a photographer, but apparently lucked into British children’s TV production which was emerging in 1956. His first puppet show was The Adventures of Twizzle in 1957. Twizzle was a little boy doll, who could stretch to great lengths to save the day.

Beginning with Supercar in 1961, Anderson’s “Supermarionation” sci-fi shows continued pratically into the 1980s without stop. Personally, I loved these shows as a kid. The opening titles and their jazzy soundtracks were cool. Usually they were syndicated to local channels in the US, but Fireball XL5 was telecast on NBC Saturday Mornings in 1963-65 – the only Anderson show to do so. I loved that show.

Anderson’s puppets were the inspiration for Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Team America: World Police (2004). Below is an excellent British documentary (from 2000) about Anderson’s career with some great clips from his various series:

More Cartoons for Victory!

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There are several areas of animation history which still need to be throughly researched – television commercials, industrial and educational films and World War propaganda (entertainment and military, foreign and domestic). Steve Stanchfield – a champion of among animation historians for his archaeological research in locating and restoring lost cartoon prints and forgotten films – is on the front lines of this research. And with this new release, he’s done it again.

Stanchfield, through his Thunderbean Animation label, has just released a second volume of rarely seen (and literally buried) animated films: More Cartoons For Victory! These films weren’t just lost – no one even knew of the existence of some of them until Steve found them!

thunder beanAmong the gems on this set, Steve has restored several of the A Few Quick Facts series, produced as part of the Army Navy Screen Magazine. Let me tell’ya – you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Private Snafu in A Few Quick Facts about Diarrhea and Dysentery. Steve has also located rare propaganda animation from Nazi Germany as well as Italy. Most of the films here have been transferred from the original master materials at the United States National Archives, many of these films have never been available in any format to the general public.

The highlight of this collection is the beautifully restored UPA Navy cartoon The Sailor and The Seagull, (1949) directed by John Hubley, which features some of the sexiest female character animation ever created. There are lost films (featuring incredible art) from Disney, MGM, Warner Bros. and the famed First Motion Picture Unit – and in fact there is a terrific 1943 documentary about this Army Air Force unit, included here, showing exactly how our animators did their bit for the war.

Other films included are Dr. Churhkill (Italy, 1942), Did you Buy that Bond Today? (USA, 1945), Tokio Jokio (1943, Warner Brothers), Criminal at Large (USA,1945), Another Chance (Disney, 1945), Six Legged Saboteurs (Cartoon Film Ltd, 1945) – and much much more. Special bonus features include a 4-page liner notes booklet and storyboard-to-film comparisons.

Here’s a link to the Amazon.com listing. And if you haven’t bought Thunderbean’s Private Snafu Classics and Cartoons For Victory Vol. 1 – what are you waiting for. This is must-have material.

Here is a special trailer (below) Steve prepared to show of some scenes from the DVD. This You Tube video does not do the quality of this release justice. The actual DVD looks ten times better:

“The Animation Show of Shows” on DVD

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Back in 2007 and again in 2010 I posted about Acme Filmworks’ incredible boxed sets of award winning animated shorts, The Animation Show of Shows. Today, I’m happy to report Acme has released a third set of three boxes (containing 18 more discs, an additional 54 shorts). And here is another unabashed plug:

First the basics: The animated shorts collected here are celebrated works of independent artists, every film carefully curated and lovingly presented – and in the case of several older films, beautifully restored. Each box set contains six DVDs, each disc containing three shorts, held in its own slip case illustrated with still art from the film and a bio of each director. In this day and age of You Tube, digital downloads and micro screens on hand-held devices, I believe it’s important to preserve the great films of our time on physical DVDs, in compilations such as this.

This latest compilation contains new HD restorations of classic films like The Man Who Planted Trees, Crac!, Bitz Butz, Hot Stuff, Every Child, and The Street. There are multiple Academy Award Winners including La Maison en Petite Cubes, Logorama, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and The Lost Thing.

I am always struck by the the variety of styles included here. From the hand-drawn antics of Bill Plympton (The Cow Who Wanted To Be A Hamburger), and Geefwee Boedoe (Let’s Pollute), to the painterly wonders of Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby’s Wild Life and Jason Carpenter’s The Renter; along with the latest CG innovations (Till Nowaks’ The Centrifuge Brain Project, Damian Nenow’s incredible Paths of Hate, among others), there’s style and technique to spare. Unless you’ve attended the competitions at Ottawa or Annecy for the last ten or fifteen years you probably haven’t seen all of these before and I’ll tell ya, there isn’t a bad film in the bunch. Click here to read the entire content list.

To say this is an important compilation is an understatement. These are vital for any serious animation library and required viewing for students and all who want to see some of the best shorts ever made. Owning them on DVD is the way to go. As you can tell, I cannot praise Acme’s Animation Show of Shows DVDs highly enough. For complete contents and ordering information, visit filmporium.com. The dvds are very reasonably priced — 3 films on each DVD for $5 dollars. Each DVD is offered individually or available in the 6-DVD Box Sets for $30 each. Needless to say, I highly recommend.

Disney’s “Planes” going theatrical

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Look out Turbo, here comes Dusty!

Disney has decided to chase after Dreamworks’ Turbo next summer with its movie “Cars-inspired” movie: Planes. Disney has just announced it will release this film theatrically on August 9th, 2013. Originally designed to go direct-to-DVD, Planes will now play in theatres all over the U.S. with Jon Cryer is voicing the lead plane, “Dusty”; Klay Hall (Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure), an aviator himself, is directing.

We posted this teaser trailer over a year ago, here it is again to remind you what to expect.

“Dog In Heaven” (Hund i Himlen) by Jeanette Nørgaard

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Director Jeanette Nørgaard is posting her powerful award winning film, Hund i Himlen (Dog In Heaven) online today. I highly recommend you make time for it.

Hund i Himlen is a 25-minute animated short with stylized visuals and strong dramatic storytelling. It will be avaliable with subtitles on it’s own webpage (through Vimeo), along with a great behind the scenes page explaining the entire process of making the film. Nørgaard tells us about the film:

“It’s targeted at kids, but as any good fairy tale it also touches adults.Earlier this year it won the main prize at Denmarks biggest short film festival “Odense Film Festival”. It has been broadcast on Danish television and has toured festivals for the last half a year. I feel the time is right to make it available for everyone interested to enjoy it.”

Here’s the trailer (below) – check out the whole film here.

Animated Christmas Greetings (Part 2)

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I think we must be in the Golden Age of Animated Christmas Cards. We’ve gotten so many good ones, great ones – too many to post them all (check our Cartoon Brew Facebook page for more). Here’s a cross section of the crop we’ve received in just the last few days:

From New York/LA’s Curious Pictures

From Oregon animator Joel Brinkerhoff

The Bell Ringer by Royale (a motion graphics studio in LA)

From Australia’s Tilmann Vogt

From London’s Blue Zoo

From London’s Mummu studio

From Simpals in Russia (Moldova)

Berlin Runners by former Aardman animator Martin Rhys Davies:

From Jens and Anna

Best wishes and Season’s Greetings to all our readers!

A Last Minute Holiday Shopping List

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Christmas is next Tuesday, less than a week away. So here’s a few last minute gift-giving ideas for that cartoon-freak in your life – or for that special someone who still needs convincing that this animation obsession of yours isn’t just for weirdo’s.

spongebobIf you dug the recent Spongebob stop-motion Christmas Special as much as I did, you’ll love the just-as-cool soundtrack album by Tom Kenny & Andy Paley. The It’s A SpongeBob Christmas! Album is now on Amazon and iTunes. The songs are more than just fun – the lyrics are clever, the tunes are hummable and the vocal performances are hilarious. Don’t be a jerk – buy this album for Christmas!

Craig Yoe’s latest compilation of old comics is his best. I know I’ve raved about his books before, but this one is special. Comics About Cartoonists is a collection of classic comic book stories about the cartoonists themselves – by some of the best artists in the field. I’m not even sure where to begin: Jack Kirby, Sheldon Mayer, Jack Cole, Al Capp, Siegel, Shuster, Ditko, Caniff, Bushmiller… on and on! Animators include Milt Gross, Al Stahl, Milt Stein and Winsor McCay. You will not put this one down and will be glad Yoe was crazy enough to spend years (decades, perhaps) locating this stuff. Even the end papers – made up of vintage ads for cartooning correspondence school courses – are a blast. I order you to pre-order this book TODAY!

This one is a must-have for your Mary Blair collection (you do have a Mary Blair collection, don’t you?). A Mary Blair Treasury of Golden Books is a compilation of the famed Disney inspiration artist’s greatest work for Western Publishing, primarily for their Golden Book series aimed at children. Reprinted beautifully and at large size, this volume includes the classic Baby’s House and I Can Fly (both 1950), The Golden Book of Little Verses (1953) and The Up and Down Book (1964) – and more. Blair not only inspired Disney, but a whole new generation of animators working today. John Canemaker’s informative Foreword tops it off perfectly. A classy package of visual treats for you – or your young ones.

King Features Holiday Greeting “Audition Reel”

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One of the cleverest animated Holiday Greetings I’ve seen this year came from King Features, the folks who manage the careers of Popeye, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, Flash Gordon, Dennis the Menace, The Phantom, Mutts, Mr. Bill, Blondie and Dagwood – among others…

King’s VP Creative Frank Caruso wrote and directed the piece working with Smiley Guy Studios (in Toronto) to do the animation. He told me, “I really wanted to take the characters out of their all too familiar environments and make them REAL for the ‘audition’…”

“Real” or not – its pretty good. Click here (or image above) to see it.

Terry Gilliam tribute on “Fringe”

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This week’s episode of Fox’s Fringe (Episode #96 Black Blotter) contained a pretty cool homage to Terry Gilliam’s animation on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The animation was used to represent an acid trip flashback. Here’s the clip:

The 75-second Gilliam tribute was produced by 6 Point Harness and directed by Greg Franklin. Producer Brendan Burch explained:

“The piece, which illustrates the hallucinatory visions of scientist Walter Bishop, was produced in less than two weeks. With such a compressed schedule, the characters (designed by Saharat Tantivaranyoo) and storyboards (created by Franklin and Anna Hollingsworth) needed to be locked the first week, while animators analyzed dozens and dozens of Gilliam’s cut-out cartoons from Monty Python’s Flying Circus in preparation for the final stretch of animation.

“Studio photographer Dave Vamos took production pictures of his own pudgy fingers, used to depict a giant hand plucking Dr. Bishop into a psychedelic dreamscape. The stomping foot, a direct homage to the famous Python title sequence, belongs to production coordinator Nick Butera. Butera’s foot was the perfect match to the original but required shaving and a little airbrushing work by animator John Dusenberry.

“The pictures were animated with painstaking attention to every Gilliam idiosyncracy, by the aforementioned Dusenberry and Hollingsworth, along with Frank Macchia and Kelly Turnbull. The final animation was edited and composited by Tony Christopherson, who added layers of digital paper, authentic film grain, projector gate jittering and blotches to replicate Walter’s stoned memories of watching Monty Python back in the 70′s.”

“Beluga” by Shin Hashimoto

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“A poor girl suffers even in her own dream.”

From animator Shin Hashimoto (previously represented on the Brew with his The Undertaker and the Dog), his latest film is a dark, disturbing NSFW retelling of The Little Match Girl. Not exactly appropriate for Christmas, but so fascinating I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

(Thanks, Mike Scott)

“A Little Christmas Miracle” by Llamallama

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Two garden leprechaun gnomes meet Santa who is suffering from a severe stomach ache. Entering his stomach, they meet Krampus, Santa’s demonic alter ego. Little do they know their lives would soon change forever.

Yannis Konstantinidis, of London-based animation studio NOMINT, started “Llamallama”, a creative collective (which includes Christos Lefakis and Ian Koons) to collaborate on non-commercial personal films. Their first short film, A Little Christmas Miracle, is the funniest one I’ve seen (so far) this year…

(Thanks Kiff Knight)