Popeye authority Fred Grandinetti found this clipping in The Miami News (published on December 25th, 1936) in which Max Fleischer predicts a day when audiences will flock to theatres to see 3-dimensional cartoon feature films! Of course, Uncle Max was thinking more along the lines of his Stereo-Optical process, using three-dimensional sets and not computer graphics. Nor motion capture (despite his invention of the rotoscope). Still, Max was a visionary…
When an all-consuming city overwhelms you, remember music can set you free… Thomas Knowler’s post-grad thesis project for the School of Visual Arts, NYC has a Gahan Wilson meets Mobieus vibe. And I like it.
Since Gorge, Knowler has been working on a series of animated-illustrations for JG Ballard’s The Drowned World. Knowler says, “I think it’s evident that as technology provides more areas for animation to be displayed; illustrated books could well take advantage of using short animations as a form of illustration. You can find two I have completed (in serious detail) here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).”
Tim Razumovsky & Eyal Oren’s third year student film at the Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design/Israel, is an R-rated tribute to 70s trash films “a la Rodriguez & Tarantino”. Says Razumovsky:
“The film is a kind of short pilot episode which will hopefully become a series in the future. The main characters are a pair of twisted married assassins and the title “The Sleischers” is actually their family name. “The Sleischers” is a sort of a pun for the word “slashers” and a hint that both characters speak with heavy foreign accent and their origin remains unclear. The film is a marriage of various kinky B-Movies that we like. As for the plot, I’ve heard a couple of interesting theories about it – such as hidden religious or feminist messages in it.”
It’s Not Safe For Work, nor for the sweamish. Submitted for your approval, The Sleischers:
Still photos, shot on an iphone and edited together by Mike B. Anderson, showing a day in the life at Film Roman in Burbank and a crew hard at work on The Simpsons. Anderson is a long time director on the series. I’m a sucker for behind the scenes films; this is one of the best I’ve ever seen:
(Thanks, Jay Schuh)
I’ll be down in San Diego later this week, splitting my time six ways (and probably pulling my hair out) running all over Comic Con where I’ll be hanging at the ASIFA-Hollywood booth (#1534) when I’m not moderating a panel or a screening (see below), or taking meetings, looking for old comic books or crashing parties (I’ll happily accept any legitimate invites I can get – hint, hint). I’ll also be attending numerous panels – too numerous to list here – if I can get into them.
I’ll also be jumping across the street, to present films on behalf of Cartoon Brew at Tr!ckster, the alternative animation-artist con which we are co-sponsoring at the San Diego Wine and Culinary Center (across the street in the Gaslamp District). They got a nice write-up in Sunday’s L.A. Times. Check it out if you are down there.
As I said, there are too many animation industry panels at Comic Con of interest for me to list. Every current primetime, cable and kids animated series, theatrical feature and direct-to-video movie in production has a panel devoted to it. I highly recommend you consult the daily schedules posted online. Here are the ones I’m doing, as well as some I may attend and a couple I want to plug because they feature friends as panelists:
Thursday
10:00 -11:00am Cartoon Brew’s Festival of Student Animation, a celebration of student animated short films, curated by yours truly and Amid Amidi of “the phenomenal animation website Cartoon Brew”. At Tr!ckster (200 Harbor Drive, suite 120)
3:00-4:00pm Classic Warner Bros./Hanna-Barbera Cartoons Going Blu-ray – Yours truly Jerry Beck and Warner Archives’ George Feltenstein lead a panel of renowned animation creators, including directors Spike Brandt (The Looney Tunes Show), Tony Cervone (Duck Dodgers), and Paul Dini (Batman the Animated Series), in presenting and discussing selected vintage cartoons from Warner Home Video’s fall 2011 Blu-ray release of the newly remastered Tom and Jerry Golden Collection and Looney Tunes Platinum Collections. Don’t miss this panel – secrets will be revealed! Room 32AB
6:00-9:00pm – 3rd Annual Comic-Con Beer Bust – ASIFA-Hollywood, One Plus Hub, Technicolor, and The Producer’s Guild of America invite you to the 3rd Annual Beer Bust. Meet, connect, hang out with members of animation community that will come together for this fantastic event. No need to RSVP. Just show up! The first 400 beers are FREE! At The Yard House Keg Room (1023 4th Ave.)
Friday
10:00-11:00am Cartoon Brew’s Festival of Student Animation is a second screening of the same program curated by me and Amid. At Tr!ckster (200 Harbor Drive, suite 120)
12:00-1:00pm ASIFA-Hollywood’s State of the Animation Industry What do pros think of the animation scene today? Will it all go 3D? Is 2D dead? When is a hybrid VFX flick an animated flick? How do I get my first job? Join Tom Sito (Lion King, Hop), Ken Duncan (Tarzan), Allen Battino (The Smurfs), Sean Petrilak (Kung Fu Panda TV show), Kevin Grow (Resistance: Fall of Man), and Brittany Biggs (KFP II) and get in on the discussion! Room 32AB
9:00-10:00pm Worst Cartoons Ever! – Once again I compile a new selection of the most terribly written, ugliest drawn, and unintentionally funniest animated films ever made. Cartoons this year include The Cautious Twins, Paddy Pelican and of course, a fresh episode of Mighty Mr. Titan! Room 6BCF
Saturday
12:15-1:00pm The Futurama Panel with creator/executive producer Matt Groening, executive producer David X. Cohen, and stars Billy West (Fry, Professor Farnsworth, Dr. Zoidberg), Katey Sagal (Leela), John DiMaggio (Bender), and Maurice LaMarche (Kif Kroker, Calculon, Morbo). Get a sneak peek at never-before-seen footage of Futurama reincarnated as Japanese anime. Moderated by Bill Morrison. Ballroom 20
3:00-4:00pm Cartoon Network: Adventure Time See what’s in store for Finn, Jake, and all their friends from the mystical Land of Ooo with show creator Pendleton Ward, Jeremy Shada (Finn), Hynden Walch (Princess Bubblegum), Olivia Olson (Marceline the Vampire Queen), Kent Osborne (storyboard artist), and others. Room 6A
4:00-5:30pm Scott Shaw!’s Oddball Comics Scott brings back his ever-popular now-digital slide show featuring “the craziest comic books ever published!” Room 7AB
Sunday
11:00am-Noon IDW: Special Projects and Imprints Senior editor Scott Dunbier, designer Dean Mullaney (creative director of the Library of American Comics), comics historian Craig Yoe, and head of IDW’s prose line Jeff Conner present a revealing look at some of the upcoming additions to IDW’s superb archival comics collections. Room 24ABC
11:30am-12:45pm Cartoon Voices II – A panel full of those amazing folks who provide voices for animation. This one has Bill Farmer (Goofy), Laraine Newman (The Goode Family), Jason Marsden (The Fairly OddParents), Gregg Berger (The Garfield Show), Vanessa Marshall (The Avengers), and maybe a surprise or two. They’ll be questioned by moderators Mark Evanier (I recommend every panel moderated by Mark – these are the best at the convention) and Earl Kress. Room 6A
2:15-3:15 The Looney Tunes Show Screening and Q&A Following a special screening, supervising producers Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone, story editor Hugh Davidson, writer Rachel Ramras and other members of the creative team take the stage to answer your questions. Room 6A
3:45-4:45 The Holocaust Through the Eyes of a Child, Animated by a Child Bill Plympton along with 11-year-old prodigy animator Perry Chen, his mother Dr. Zhu Shen (producer), Karina Bessoudo (Toon Boom Animation, vice president), and Kevin Sean Michaels (director) share insight and a sneak preview of the film Ingrid Pitt: Beyond The Forest and the cross-generational collaboration that was formed to create it. The short animated film illustrates the miraculous true story of the late actress Ingrid Pitt (Where Eagles Dare) who, in 1945, escaped at age 8 from a Nazi concentration camp in Poland to later become one of the UK’s biggest movie stars. Moderated by Pat Swinney Kaufman (executive director for the New York State Governor’s Office for Motion Picture & Television Development) and Lloyd Kaufman (president/co-founder of Troma Entertainment). Room 5AB
Look forward to seeing you there – if you can find me!
Opening next February in France, this hand drawn feature from filmmaker Remi Bezancon and animator Jean-Christophe Lie (Disney, Chomet, Dreamworks): Zarafa, “the story of a baby giraffe and the young boy who loves it”. Here’s the teaser:
(Thanks, Ben Price via Twitch)
The latest hand drawn viral spot from the Buck studio, created for sportswear apparel maker Umbro to promote their “Blackout” collection. It features New York Cosmos player Carlos Alberto Torres as narrator, telling the story of how the first day he arrived in the states to sign his contract with the soccer team.
CREDITS
Directed by: Buck
Creative Director: Orion Tait
Associate Creative Director: Thomas Schmid
Lead Designer: Chris Neal
Storyboards & Art Direction: Thomas Schmid
Producer: Melissa Johnson
Animation Lead: William Trebutien
Cel Animation: Harry Teitelman, Thomas Schmid, Maceo Frost, Efrain Clintron
2D Animation: Justin Lawes
3D Animation: Chris Phillips, Andreas Berglund
Is this the last stand of Disney hand drawn animation? Today sees the release of a new Winnie The Pooh feature film – the first Pooh film created by the Feature Animation team that includes veterans like Eric Goldberg, Andreas Deja, Dale Baer, Mark Henn, Bruce Smith and Burny Mattinson. Also on the the bill is the 2-D short, The Ballad of Nessie by Stevie Wermers-Skelton and Kevin Deters (How To Hook Up Your Home Theatre).
A.O. Scott in the New York Times praised it by saying: “It is not Cars 2.”
The Los Angeles Times was mixed, saying it’s an “awfully retro, fairly juiceless affair”, yet “a fitting tribute.”
Rogert Ebert says it’s “gentle and pleasing”. I saw Winnie last week and to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. If the goal was to recreate the feel of the late 1960s Disney features — the xerox line backgrounds, the sparse plot made up of random episodic sequences — they succeeded. It’s a sweet, fun little kiddie film, but ultimately an unnecessary addition to the Disney library.
The animation is what you’d expect and nothing more — though I did enjoy the acting of Dale Baer’s Owl a bit more than the others. Two special sequences liven things up: “The Backson Song” directed by Eric Goldberg, in which the characters describe the imaginary “monster”, visualized as colored-chalk stick-figures; and “Everything Is Honey” which imagines Pooh in a world of honey. The songs are nice, the voices are satisfactory. It’s a gentle little G-rated film and it’ll do fine on video. I just wonder if it will work as a theatrical. There are many like me who are rooting for it to succeed, including a Facebook group: Support Hand-Drawn Animation by Seeing Winnie the Pooh.
What did you think? Yay or nay? Go see the film and let’s discuss. Only those who have actually seen the film (and we can tell) may post in the comments below. All others will be deleted.
A funny thing happened on TCM last night. A scheduled broadcast of Popeye The Sailor Meets Ali Baba and his Forty Theieves (1937) didn’t air. An introduction discussing the racist aspects of the Arab caricatures in the cartoon preceded the scheduled showing with TCM host Robert Osborne and “Media Critic and Author” Dr. Jack Shaheen. “This cartoon probably did more to denigrate Arabs than any cartoon ever”, claimed Shaheen who, to be fair, went on to praise the Fleischer animation. “This one was particularly offensive in the manner in which Arabs are portrayed.”
Following this introduction (embed above) the channel ran 15 minutes of promotional filler, then a two-reel MGM Dogville comedy, Love Tails Of Morocco – which, despite its Middle Eastern title, had nothing to do with the Arab-based theme of the evening.
So what happend? Did TCM get cold feet and have second thoughts about the Popeye short? Did the Hearst Corporation request TCM pull the film? We don’t know – but here is the film, courtesy of You Tube, that didn’t run last night:
UPDATE: This just in from TCM Content Manager (and regular Brew reader) John Miller:
“No, it wasn’t Cold Feet that caused a lack of POPEYE (and Looney Tunes, and 3 Stooges) on TCM last night, but a plain ol’ SNAFU. In the words of “tcmprogrammer” on the TCM Message Board today:
“You are correct, once again we made a mistake. There was a miscommunication about how the cartoons were to be scheduled (who, specifically, was supposed to enter them into the scheduling database) and so they were left off the schedule completely. Once again, this is emabarrassing for us, especially because we were excited to play these cartoons in this specific context. Mistakes like this happen, although I acknowledge it seems like they’ve happened too much lately. It is not unreasonable to want an explanation. I’m sorry.”
In what I’d like to think of as Pixar’s first live-action film, here’s the teaser for Andrew Stanton’s adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter (no longer called John Carter of Mars because, I assume, the marketing folks think we are too sophisticated these days to believe that the red planet is populated with scantily clad princesses and four-armed barbarians). Disney is releasing the film next spring.
(Thanks, Jakob Schuh)
Lest you think Aardman Animation is abandoning clay animation all together, here’s our first peek at their 2012 release, The Pirates! Band of Misfits:
This fall it’s Spielberg versus Aardman, Weta vs. Sony Animation, Tintin versus Arthur Christmas:
Product Alert: I was at the supermarket yesterday (the same one where I found the Spongebob Musical Rectal Thermometer) and I discovered these nifty retro Mickey Mouse Band-Aid brand bandages. I’m usually labeling oddball Disney merch as “Bad Ideas” but this is pretty cool.
I found out these came out a few months ago, but I hadn’t seen them till yesterday. The black box is very hip and the band-aids themselves use 1930s comic strip images – perfect if you cut your finger while reading David Gerstein’s new book. A bargain at $2.28 in the cardboard box. A package of Mickey Band-Aids in a special collectors tin costs $7.86 on amazon.com.
I’ll be in San Diego next week, lurking around Comic Con, hanging out at Tr!ckster, and showing The Worst Cartoons Ever.
If you’re going, you’ll be seeing a lot of people walking around with this bag (above) which will be handed to all attendees of Comic Con. It’s the official carry-bag of the Con, designed by Warner Bros. Worldwide TV Marketing. The bags feature artwork from 10 different Warner Bros. titles (TV series, video games, DC Comics) on one side, with official Comic-Con 2011 artwork (also designed by WB WW TV Mktg) on the other. For the first time, the giant-sized (24″x28″) bag converts into a backpack, making it more functional. And, yes, the protective poster tube remains intact.
I’ll be posting later this week about my panels and whereabouts. If you know of any parties, panels, things I should check out while there, let me know.
Sadly, Disney and Pixar are limiting their participation at next week’s San Diego Comic Con (they are saving their previews and scoops for the D23 event next month in Anaheim). However, if you are in L.A. and skipping the Con, you have a unique opportunity to see the latest short from Pixar ahead of everyone else.
On Thursday July 21st, the North American premiere of La Luna will screen as part of the opening night program at the LA Shorts Fest. A special presentation of “The Making of Pixar’s La Luna” by its director Enrico Casarosa will take place on Sunday July 24th at 12 noon. The presentation will be “loaded with original artwork and insightful looks into Pixar’s production process”. Casarosa will “discuss the journey that led him to create this very personal short, and demonstrate the singularly artistic style by which the film was crafted”. Tickets go on sale July 14th online, the screenings will take place at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 in West Hollywood. If you aren’t at Comic Con, I’d recommend checking this out.
