The CG animated feature Delgo opened last weekend and nobody went to see it. According to Box Office Mojo, Delgo had the worst opening ever for a film that opened in more than 2,000 theaters earning just $511,290 or $237 per theater.

Moments like this really make one pause and reflect. What is the world coming to when an animated film with the voices of Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Chris Kattan, Anne Bancroft, Eric Idle, Val Kilmer, Lou Gossett Jr, Malcolm McDowell, Michael Clarke Duncan, Burt Reynolds and Kelly Ripa isn’t a box office blockbuster? A story that makes sense and visuals that don’t make you want to heave are quaint touches, but the filmmakers behind Delgo understood where it really counted: celebrity voice actors. They hired every B- and C-list actor this side of Dancing With the Stars and somehow still failed. You know the recession is affecting Americans deeply when they no longer want to see Chris Kattan and Kelly Ripa voicing their CG characters.

Here’s a little taste of what all of America missed last weekend.

When I seek out films for my Worst Cartoons Ever! screenings or Cartoon Dump I look for animation so bad it’s unintentionally funny. So when I came across a batch of old issues of My Weekly Reader I had in stashed my archives and found this comic strip - Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy - I felt I’d found a comics equivalent to Paddy The Pelican and Bucky and Pepito: the lamest comic strip ever created! Mesmerizingly so. I just had to share. Click on thumbnails below to read some samples.

Admittedly it’s aimed at children, and produced in the more innocent era of the early 50s. But the consistently corny gags, the awful stiff artwork… surely this takes the prize. Unless one considers the Weekly Reader’s back up strip: Loki, Your Fuzzy Forest Friend.

And here’s the newly released trailer for Disney’s Bolt.

The professional critics have had their say (a huge 98% positive on Rotten Tomatoes). Now it’s your turn to weigh in with an opinion of Pixar’s latest feature film and short subject.

The purpose of this post is to solicit readers opinions of Wall•E and Presto. Please respond below only if you’ve actually seen the film (we will not post comments here by those who have not).

Dan Harmon, one of the writers of Kung Pu Panda, has written an entertaingly long rant about how much he disliked working on the film and particularly how much he disliked working with Jeffrey Katzenberg. Actually I’m not sure what’s more amusing: that Harmon hated working with Katzenberg so much or that he’s so damn clueless about the animation process. To begin the piece, Harmon expresses incredulity that some animated films are written with storyboards and not scripts: “First they storyboard the entire film. That is the first step. Not kidding. No writers, no script, just a story, and an entire film drawn on pieces of paper.”

Here’s another choice excerpt:

“I came in about four writers into the process. It’s kind of hard to write a “better” scene than the last writer when the rules are that you can only change 30 percent of each scene or completely change 30 percent of the scenes, per Katzenberg screening. So, for instance, in this scene, the panda comes up a flight of stairs carrying a bucket of water, slips on a banana peel, says something to two geese and does an air guitar. The good news? There can be anything in the bucket. Your mission: make the movie better.

“It’s harder than it sounds. Especially when the larger “bucket” that the movie is contained in cannot change: the fact that the story has to be about a panda who is informed he is the chosen one, destined to …beat up… a guy who has escaped from prison and who is spending the entire movie walking to town, in order to…try to beat him up, because that’s the prophecy. And I won’t spoil the movie, but the bad guy doesn’t win. Because he’s not destined to. But just to make sure he doesn’t win, and because there’s 70 minutes of time to kill before he gets there on foot, the panda is trained in the martial arts. it’s kind of like Karate Kid, but if Mister Miyogi had long ago banished the Kobras and was running the karate tournament.”

(via Seward Street)

The end of an era.

The last of the Nine Old Men, Ollie Johnston, passed away today in Sequim, Washington at the age of 95. Jenny Lerew confirms it.

UPDATE (5:18pm): Brad Bird, the Oscar-winning director of Ratatouille and The Incredibles, remembers Ollie Johnston.

UPDATE (5:05pm): A fun Ollie-related image I found in my files. It’s a drawing by Ward Kimball of the 1-D animation unit at Disney. Left to right: Ward Kimball, Clarke Mallery, Ollie Johnston, Mary Schuster and Al Bertino.

UPDATE (3:50pm): More good tributes to Ollie from:
Floyd Norman
Michael Barrier
Will Finn
Steve Hulett
Emru Townsend

UPDATE (12:20pm): The official statement from the Walt Disney Company about Johnston’s passing.

UPDATE (9:00am): Oscar-winning animator, animation historian and author of Disney’s Nine Old Men, John Canemaker, remembers Ollie Johnston.

UPDATE (5:42am): This morning, Hans Perk posted a brief video he took of Ollie Johnston on July 20, 2005. In it, Johnston eloquently explains the importance of creating believable animated characters that resonate with audiences. Hans also has some great Ollie-related posts on his blog here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE (4:54am): Tributes to Johnston, from people who knew him personally and others who simply admired his work, are appearing throughout the online community. Here are some of the better ones:
Pete Emslie
Rhett Wickham
Michael J. Ruocco
Floyd Bishop
Kate and Terry
Frank Dormer

UPDATE (10:17pm): A terrific video below in which Glen Keane examines the drawings and animation style of Ollie Johnston. Also be sure to see the three-part Disney “Family Album” documentary about Ollie.

UPDATE (9:35 pm): Howard Green sent us this quote from Roy Disney…

“Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today. One of Ollie’s strongest beliefs was that his characters should think first, then act…and they all did. He brought warmth and wit and sly humor and a wonderful gentleness to every character he animated. He brought all those same qualities to his life, and to all of our lives who knew him. We will miss him greatly, but we were all enormously enriched by him.”

UPDATE: Here are handy lists of all the characters that Ollie animated in the Disney features and shorts.

UPDATE: There are a couple of interviews with Ollie alone and a few of him and Frank, posted on the Disney Family Museum website, well worth reading.

UPDATE: Rebekah Mosely informs us that the Carolwood Pacific Historical Society has a previously planned event on Sunday May 18th at 2pm to dedicate Ollie Johnston’s Train Station at Griffith Park in LA. Their calendar and organization contact information can be found here.

The tortured history of the TMS feature film Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland (1992) could rival that of Richard Williams The Thief And The Cobbler. It was an American/Japanese joint project, with no less than Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata involved in the pre-production stage (1982-83).

George Lucas, Chuck Jones, Gary Kurtz, Ray Bradbury, Chris Columbus, Moebius, John Canemaker, Leo Salkin, Paul Julian, Ken Anderson, Frank Thomas and Brad Bird (who talks about his involvement in the comments below) were attached to this film at one time or another. Bill Hurtz (George of the Jungle, Unicorn In The Garden) and Masami Hata (Sea Prince and the Fire Child) ultimately directed the final release, admittedly a mixed bag.

The idea of making a fully animated adaptation of Winsor McCay’s comic strip masterpiece somehow seems like a good idea (McCay himself authorized a musical stage play based on the strip in 1908), and the names assembled (above) to tackle such a project were certainly capable doing so.

If you’re wondering what a Miyazaki version might’ve been like, check this out. Below I’ve posted a short test film dating from December 1984. Key Miyazaki animator/director Yoshifumi Kondo (Whisper Of The Heart) directed this test sequence, supposedly filmed in 70mm. The mind boggles as to what could have been.

Oh, and who authorized this?

Are you ready to put this in your “Bikini Bottom”?

I was shopping at the supermarket yesterday when I came upon a unique piece of Nickelodeon merchandising - a Spongebob Squarepants Musical Rectal Thermometer! Yes, it’s musical. And yes, it’s clearly marked for rectal use. It actually plays the Spongebob theme in your ass when your temperature is taken!

Spongebob is a huge success, and merchandise like this literally sticks it to the competition. But this product ranks with the infamous Mickey Mouse vibrator as one of the most miscast in cartoon licensing history! What were they thinking? Spongebob has enough trouble regarding his sexual identity. Ren & Stimpy may have been a better choice here… but Spongebob? Nah!