This week on Cartoon Brew Films, we are happy to present another rare animated film long considered lost: The 3 Minnies: Sota, Tonka and Ha-Ha.

In 1949, Republic Pictures (best known for their B-Westerns and Saturday matinee serials) released a series of cartoons under the banner “Jerky Journeys”. These were low budget satires of travelogues, written by radio comedy writer Leonard Lewis Levinson, and narrated by Jack Benny Program regular Frank Nelson (”Yeeeeesss”). To keep costs down, Levinson wrote the films in such a way as to have as little animation as possible, and convinced Republic that this would be a perfect way to demonstrate the studio’s patented cut-rate “TruColor” (red & green) film process.

Financial restrictions, however, didn’t stop Levinson from hiring several of Hollywood’s best artists, including background painters and designers Art Heinemann, Pete Alvarado, Bob Gribbroek, Paul Julian and effects animator Miles Pike, to help bring these comedies to life. The resulting films are fascinating. An early example of what Chuck Jones might term “illustrated radio”, the “Jerky Journeys” give us a glimpse at a direction Hollywood animation did not go—or might have gone if UPA hadn’t come along. Like an animated version of an article from a ’50s issue of Mad Magazine, these are literate parodies of travel films familiar to audiences of the day.

Four Jerky Journeys were produced, but only two are known to exist and The 3 Minnies is the only surviving entry in color. Take a look at it here. I think you’ll agree this film is unique, original and in many ways, far ahead of its time.

New week, new film on CartoonBrewFilms. This week, it’s Vaudeville by Chansoo Kim. The film’s subject matter is heavy—the Japanese occupation of Korea—yet Kim manages to create a film of unexpected beauty with an abstract, highly personal approach to the material. The film, produced as a graduate thesis project at USC, has been extremely popular on the festival circuit over the past few years and for good reason: Vaudeville is easily one of the more fully realized student films I’ve run across in recent times and it represents the arrival of an important new voice in animation. Since graduation, Chansoo has been working at CG studios like Rhythm & Hues and ILM but tells me that he hopes to return to short filmmaking soon.

After a bit of an unexpected lag, we’ve debuted our latest film on CartoonBrewFilms: Safety Shoes (1965) directed and designed by Leonard Glasser. This film is part of our Rarities section and it is truly worthy of that distinction as it has rarely been seen since the early-’70s. It was commissioned by the Lehigh Safety Shoe Co. after the company’s first film about safety footwear flopped with audiences. Glasser decided that the only way to make a film about shoes watchable was to turn it into a loony non-narrative assortment of animated bits and live-action skits.

Working with a barebones budget but plenty of animation and acting talent, Glasser and his studio Stars and Stripes Productions Forever, turned out Safety Shoes which ranks as one of the most off-the-wall screwball advertising films in history. Preview clip, film history and purchase link can all be found here. And after you see the film be sure and submit questions; Len would love to hear from you.

As a sidenote, we’re going to be adding loads of new content to CartoonBrewFilms over the upcoming summer months with new films planned for every week. Some of our upcoming releases include Chansoo Kim’s Vaudeville (US), Eddie White and James Calvert’s Carnivore Reflux (Australia) and Joost van den Bosch and Erik Verkerk’s The Shoebox (The Netherlands). We’ll be posting a more complete release schedule on BrewFilms soon.

Look Who’s Driving: A super-rare UPA educational film from 1954 directed by Bill Hurtz (The Unicorn in the Garden) and designed by Bob Dranko. There’s nothing revolutionary about this short but it’s a superb bit of stylishly designed Fifties animation. Check it out at CartoonBrewFilms.com

What We Call The News, the latest JibJab effort, premiered last night at the Radio and TV Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C. and then later on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The short, which lampoons the inanities of contemporary TV journalism, can be viewed online at JibJab.com.

Now here’s what we call the news: normally JibJab charges $1.99 for a high-quality downloadable version of their films. However, this time around, JibJab studio founders Evan and Gregg Spiridellis have graciously given CartoonBrewFilms a 1-month exclusive on the high-quality download (640×480) of What We Call The News. And even better, they’re making it available for one cent to BrewFilms users. It’s a great way for everyone to sample how easy CartoonBrewFilms is to use—and to obtain the latest JibJab masterpiece for your iPod or to look at frame-by-frame on your PC/Mac.

Remember, this deal is only good through April. After that, you’ll have to fork over your hard-earned money at JibJab’s own website to get the downloadable version.

Today we are very proud to add a new title to the CartoonBrewFilms library. Mark Kausler’s engaging and heartfelt homage to 1930s Hollywood-style cartoons, It’s The Cat (2004).

Mark is not only one of the best animators in the business (Beauty & The Beast, Roger Rabbit, The Lion King, etc.), but one of its greatest historians. With this film he combined two great passions to create one remarkably entertaining film. We asked Mark himself to introduce the film. Here’s what he has to say:

You are invited to see and hear a miracle! A little film that took 15 years to complete, which was given up for dead quite a few times, but eventually decided to exist: It’s The Cat!

I love listening to dance band records of the 1920s, and when I heard the Harry Reser’s Syncopators’ 1927 recording, “The Cat,â€? it triggered a vision. A vision of a cat, not just any cat, but a feline spirit, wild, raucous, mischievous, yet sweet. The music literally wrote the story, not a note or a beat of the original recording was altered. Scenes sometimes had to be started, then torn up and re-done because they didn’t quite “syncâ€? right. Sometimes I would re-do a scene because the concept wasn’t funny enough, or the layout was wrong. I wound up doing all the drawings because there was no money to pay anyone else, and I was the only animator who really understood this cartoon. It’s doubly hard to do all the drawings in a scene yourself, then when the test is shot, step OUTSIDE yourself and become a tough director.

Greg Ford was the “Cat�’s angel, taking on the difficult task of inking and painting the cartoon. Greg worked hard to be invisible along with Kim Miskoe, color director, Rose Eng and “Igor�, two of the last cel inkers in the USA, artists both, and so many others. So step into my little world, the world of 1920s pop, and the free interpretation of it as seen by my “third eye.� It’s a dance band “fantasia,� made with nothing but love!

Mark and his producer Greg Ford have provided an extra incentive for viewers: anybody who purchases It’s the Cat through April 30 will automatically be entered into a drawing to win an original production cel from the film. We’ll keep you posted on that. In the meantime, take a look at It’s The Cat, a work of pure cartoon joy.

We’ve debuted a new film on CartoonBrewFilms. It’s John Hubley’s Flat Hatting, a rare 1946 US Navy training film produced at UPA (at the time, still called United Film Productions). I’ve watched and studied this film countless times and I never get tired of it. There is so much graphic daring in the artwork of this film, and it is a terrific example of how beautiful animation can be created with a limited budget and small crew.

My introduction to the film came eight or nine years ago while I was working at Spumco. I was watching Tex Avery’s Symphony in Slang when John K happened to walk into the room. He said, “If you like that, then check out this film,” and pulled out a copy of Flat Hatting from his personal collection. Both of us assumed the films had the same designer since the guy in Symphony in Slang (designed by Tom Oreb) looks somewhat similar to the lead character in Flat Hatting. Of course, I later found out that Flat Hatting was the genius of John Hubley. And now, you can find out too just how much of a genius Hubley was by picking up a copy of Flat Hatting on BrewFilms.

We are happy and excited to announce the launch of CartoonBrewFilms.com, a new site that makes the world’s finest animated shorts available for convenient download to your iPod and personal computer. Our three launch films are Teddy Newton and Bert Klein’s Boys Night Out, Frank Tashlin’s The Lady Said No and Grantray-Lawrence’s The Hope That Jack Built. Films, both classic and contemporary, will be added to the library every week.

Here’s a few brief thoughts from BrewFilms founders—Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi—which should offer a bit more insight into why we’re starting this company, and also explain what sets us apart from all the other animation download sites popping up nowadays.

Jerry Beck

I remember the first time I wanted to collect animated films, back in the 1970s, while I was still in high school. There was no Internet, no home video, no 24-hour cartoon cable channels. I had to find 16mm film prints, which cost a fortune and were technically illegal to own. Because I had such a hard time doing my cartoon research back then, I made it one of my goals in life to find ways to spread information about cartoons and to make available the hard-to-find films themselves.

To that end I created books like Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide and The Fifty Greatest Cartoons. I worked in film distribution, releasing independent and international shorts through the Tournee of Animation, and putting anime, like Akira, into movie theaters and onto home video. Websites like Cartoon Research and Cartoon Brew have been another avenue in my continuing mission to connect animated content with like-minded individuals. Today, we are starting a new venture, but the objective remains the same.

This blog is read by a diverse collection of individuals, from students to cartoon aficionados, from directors and animators at the largest animation studios to commercial directors and independent filmmakers. What binds us all is our passion for the art form, and our desire to discover new animated films of all stripes and colors. CartoonBrewFilms aims to make available the most interesting, highest quality and rarest pieces of animated filmmaking, to offer hand-picked animation not found anywhere else. These are films that are not readily available; they are films that deserve to be seen, enjoyed, studied, discussed.

Not everybody can attend animation festivals like Ottawa, Annecy, Zagreb or Hiroshima, but with BrewFilms, your personal and portable animation festival is just one mouse click away. More importantly, we’re determined to do this in a way that is fair and financially equitable to the animators who are producing these shorts. Filmmakers contributing to our site will be compensated for their films; older films are being licensed from their respective owners. Every purchase you make sends a clear and direct message to filmmakers that you appreciate their hard work and want to see more animated shorts.

We’ve come a long way since I first collecting animated shorts in the 1970s, but I can say with confidence that the best is yet to come.

Amid Amidi

If I had to single out one moment during the development of CartoonBrewFilms where I became confident that we were on the right track, it would be an evening in May about ten months ago. Jerry and I were meeting with our distinguished attorney Ken. The purpose of the meeting was to hammer out the terms of the contract which filmmakers would have to sign so we could sell their work. Seemingly, every time Ken would make a suggestion (the type of suggestions that all good lawyers are supposed to make), Jerry or I would object saying that that wouldn’t be the fairest deal for the filmmaker. In the cutthroat world of business, some might say our desire to create a fair deal for all parties is naive, that it dooms us to failure. That’s not how we look at it though.

We think it’s smart business to create relationships with filmmakers that benefit them financially as much as they do us. There’s enough exploitation of animation artists as it already is; we’re setting out to create something wholly different, a company that supports, promotes and respects filmmakers. Video has barely arrived on the Internet, and like clockwork, the opportunists have already begun exploiting artists through myriad ways: paying filmmakers pennies through ad-based revenue sharing schemes, running “contests” to cheaply acquire new content, and asking you to submit your work for free because it’s “user-generated content.” CartoonBrewFilms doesn’t play those type of games. We aim to become the alternative that everybody has always wanted and nobody has had the guts to create.

This blog, Cartoon Brew, has been a consistent voice in the animation community since 2004; Jerry and I have been in the industry far longer than that. We’re in this for the long haul and we’re committed to making CartoonBrewFilms work. The idea for CartoonBrewFilms will surely continue to evolve over the coming months and years, but what will not change is our commitment to treating filmmakers fairly and with respect. Together—filmmakers, animation lovers and BrewFilms—let’s build a new type of animation company that we can all be proud of.