Brooklyn’s homegrown cartoon festival Animation Block Party will return for its fifth edition from July 25-27. Over 100 animated shorts will screen during the three-day festival, chosen from 800 plus entries.The line-up of films and ticket info was officially announced today. If the event’s promotional materials (above) are any indicator, this is not to be confused with traditional festivals. It has an informal and indie spirit with plenty of opportunities for mingling and partying. I’ve heard positive things from everybody who has attended. Here are more details from their press release about the various festivities:

ABP opens on Friday July 25th at Rooftop Films, featuring live music from Plushgun, followed by a screening of ABP’s most fun and fan friendly cartoons. A party at Bar Matchless will follow ABP-Rooftop screenings with free beer from Radeberger.

ABP continues on Saturday July 26th at Bam Cinematek, with experimental works and music vids in Program One and a storytelling focus in Program Two. Screenings will be followed by an after party at Cherry Tree with free Newcastle courtesy of America’s Finest News Source, The Onion, Inc.

ABP closes on Sunday July 27th at Bam Cinematek, with top professional-independent works in Program Three and narrative local-international shorts in Program Four with an after party at Habana Outpost, featuring streaming toons, food specials and free beer courtesy of Autodesk.

Bonus Amid Geek-Note: The guy who did the drawing above is Doug Crane, who was the primary inker on the Terrytoons classics Flebus and The Juggler of Our Lady.

Kristen Morgan, an artist and professor at Cal State Long Beach, has a current installation in Hollywood which combines pop culture itself (mainly cartoon character comics, board games, coloring books and merchandising artifacts) with sculpture, using found objects to create statues of animation icons Mighty Mouse and Popeye. The show, Objects for Everyone I Have Ever Known, runs through August 16th at Marc Selwyn Fine Art Gallery on Wilshire Blvd. The L.A. Times reviewed the show in today’s Calendar section.

Heads up on yet another animation event at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The Sound Behind The Image II: Now Hear This! is an evening celebrating the art of sound in animated films. It will take place at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills on Friday August 8th. Hosted by sound editor Mark Mangini (Looney Tunes: Back In Action, Runaway Brain, Raiders of the Lost Ark, etc.), the presentation begins at 7:30. You can order tickets ($5./students $3) here.

John and Faith Hubley in Annecy

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:

“That was the year that John and Faith Hubley showed their Of Stars and Men. We had noticed that the French audiences were not restrained in any way from showing their regard for each film. As well as wild applause, there were equally loud boos, and worse yet, the sound of stomping feet walking out and slamming the door as loudly as possible.

“Each filmmaker, when their film was projected, was obliged to sit in the balcony box, which we all rapidly named “The Hot Box,” and take a bow — to either applause or boos, and in this case the boos were heartbreaking. John and Faith bowed and then exited as quickly as possible. I still firmly believe this is one of the most important and beautiful animated films ever made, and we tried to assuage their deep disappointment, and assure them this was a film for all time. Alas, it has been forgotten, which is a loss to all of us.”

Live comedy! Horrible animation! And the return of “Dumpster Diver Dan”!

In case you’ve forgotten, Cartoon Dump lives on, live in Los Angeles every 4th Tuesday of the month at the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. Read our press! LA Review, Peter Sanderson at Quick Stop Entertainment, An interview with Compost Brite.

Hope to see you on Tuesday June 24th when we welcome this month’s special guests: Dana Gould (Simpson’s producer writer and comedian), actor-comedian-cartoon voice actor Ron Lynch and the original Tom Servo, J. Elvis Weinstein, as “Dumpster Diver Dan” (pictured with me above). If you haven’t been to the show in a while, we’ve got lots of new material (both comedy and animated) - and the Steve Allen Theatre is air-conditioned! Buy advanced tickets here!

Steve Worth posts many worthwhile things on the Asifa Hollywood Animation Archive website, including Mary Blair paintings and Ren & Stimpy storyboards just in the past week. But when he posts a picture of me and Ralph Bakshi, that really gets my attention. Actually, he didn’t post this photo above, yet, he just sent it to me (that’s me on the right of Ralph, with Mighty Mouse producer Tom Klein on the left) - but he did post a bunch of others from the Ralph book party at Meltdown on Saturday night. Bakshi veterans Conrad Vernon, Tom McGrath, Kent Butterworth, John K., Eddie Fitzgerald, Steve Gordon, Tom Minton and Dave Spafford are pictured. The event was a blast, and others who attended (but not captured in a photo) included animators Milt Gray, Mike Kazaleh, George Maestri, Amanda Visell and Michelle Valigura. Go here and enjoy!

The prizes for the 2008 Annecy Animation Festival were announced last Saturday. The top prize for short film, The Annecy Cristal, went to La maison en petits cubes by Kunio Kato. He is only the second Japanese filmmaker to win the Cristal, following Koji Yamamura who received it in 2003 for Mt. Head. The top Cristal prize for animated feature was awarded to Nina Paley’s wonderful Sita Sings the Blues. It’s interesting to note that the major winners in both short and feature categories are 2-D works of animation. A complete list of winners can be found on the Annecy website.

Mark your calendars, clear the date… the all-new, craptacular 2008 edition of The Worst Cartoons Ever! - my annual report on the worst animated films in history - will take place on Friday night, July 25th at 9:30pm.

It will take place in Room CDEF in the San Diego Convention Center, as part of the packed-to-the-gills, almost-sold-out San Diego Comic Con. (Preceeding my program is a can’t-miss MST3K cast renuion at 7:15pm).

Previous Entries Next Entries