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TAG FOR “Classic”July 10, 2008 12:21 am
Just out from Steve Stanchfield’s Thunderbean Animation is Cultoons 3, a new DVD set which continues his madness of releasing cartoons that only us die hards would care about. This set features all the uber-rare 1939 Gran’ Pop Monkey series as well as Boyd La Vero’s lost Marty the Monk cartoons. It also has the eccentric foreign-toon Mr. E from Tow City and the Walter Lantz wartime rarity, The Enemy Bacteria. Trust me, this is oddball material, expertly curated and lots of fun. Stanchfield is doing all of us a big favor - rounding up the odds and ends of cartoon history, using the best prints he can find of the most obscure cartoons ever made. Another new release of note, Grotesqueries: Ghosts, Goblins & Other Magical Moving Picture Illusions is from Blue Mouse Studio (Thunderbean will be distributing it). Chris Buchman and Rex Schneider (with some help from Stanchfield) produced this fantastic DVD featuring all sorts of goodies, both animated and otherwise (and a bunch of really great bonus features. They’ve done a really beautiful job with all the graphics and design… its been in progress for over 2 years! It’s a pretty unusual and cool DVD. It also features a restoration of A Night On Bald Mountain, the 1933 Pinscreen classic by Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker - the best it’s ever looked (restored and licensed from Cecile Starr). Highly recommended! July 1, 2008 6:30 am
This Wednesday, July 2nd, Stuart Shostack will broadcast a rare, new, interview with Max Fleischer’s nephew, Bernie Fleischer. Joined by Fleischer Studios historian Ray Pointer, Stu promises that the interview will cover everything from the invention of the Rotoscope and the Helen Kane lawsuit, to the 1937 strike, the move to Miami and the eventual Paramount takeover. Plus, Bernie will talk about visiting the studio during the 1930s and recording his voice tracks for the Fleischer’s 1940 two-reeler, Raggedy Ann and Andy (he was Andy). The show will be broadcast over internet radio live (which means no downloads), beginning Wednesday July 2 at 7pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific. It’ll be rebroadcast each day for the next six days at the the same time. Listen to it here. June 28, 2008 4:00 pm
Here’s a rare treat: El Mono Relojero (The Clockmaking Monkey - Argentina, 1938) is only surviving film by the creator of the first animated feature (El Apostol, 1917), Quirino Cristiani (who also created the world’s first animated sound feature, Peludópolis in 1931). The rest of his films perished in a fire in 1962. Oscar Grillo says the voice is by Pepe Iglesias (aka “El Zorro”), the actor who later dubbed into Spanish the voice of the fox in Disney’s Pinocchio. A few months ago Jorge Finkielman posted a rare cel from this film on the Animation Show forum. For more about Cristiani, read Giannalberto Bendazzi’s 1983 article on AWN. June 24, 2008 10:24 am
Cima Balser, the wife of animation director Bob Balser, has written a fantastic piece for AWN about the early years of the Annecy International Animation Festival. As much fun as it is to attend the festival nowadays, I can only imagine the excitement of those glory years when one could mingle lakeside with the likes of Bobe Cannon, Chuck Jones, John and Faith Hubley, Pete Burness, Bill Littlejohn, George Dunning, Peter Foldes, Yoji Kuri, and all the other greats of animation that I so admire. Cima’s article is one of my favorite historical reads in recent months, and she offers many wonderful stories about the festival that I’d never heard, such as this one about the Hubleys:
June 18, 2008 5:15 pm
Once again John McElwee, over at his Greenbriar Picture Shows blog, is waxing nostalgic about classic theatrical cartoons. McElwee also posts several vintage Looney Tunes cartoon posters, trade ads and publicity stills to illustrate how these shorts were once marketed. June 15, 2008 3:00 pm
Just spotted on ebay: a vintage publicity photo showing the producer of the Felix The Cat cartoons, Pat Sullivan, and his wife Marjorie, in Sullivan’s office with an avalanche of Felix drawings. They are apparently judging a “Draw Felix” contest, but of greater interest to me is the rare one-sheet poster (Gym Gems, 1926) tacked to the wall, the Felix doll in the corner, and the many framed, autographed photos of stars of the day. Nice find! June 11, 2008 3:50 pm
Good news: Popeye Vol. 3 goes on sale September 30th. Will contain all the rest of the black and white Popeye cartoons including all the wartime cartoons uncut, uncensored. June 9, 2008 5:26 pm
Animator and director Will Finn recently watched the entire Warner Bros. output of Chuck Jones and has composed a thoughtful blog post analyzing the work of Jones. Lots of good insights throughout, especially this spot-on comparison between the work of Jones and fellow WB director Bob Clampett:
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