This has to be one of the worst animated films I’ve ever seen.

Animal Soccer World is apparently a Sony PlayStation 2 game that liberally rips off character designs from various Disney films (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Lion King, Bambi, et al) and produced on zero budget. Does anyone have the scoop on who made this atrocity? The people behind the music, voices, drawing, and animation (check those walk cycles) deserve to be recognized for their contributions to the art. Check out part one (below), if you dare.

Not enough? Click here for Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.

(Thanks to Matt Wilson for pointing me toward this)

Persepolis, opening today in New York and Los Angeles, is as far from the Hollywood status quo as you can get. It’s an important film, not only for its brilliant presentation of an incredible true life memoir, but for its artistry and its courage to take animated features toward a new path of personal, autobiographical storytelling.

Autobio is common in alternative comics and animated shorts, but rarely at feature length. Bakshi’s Heavy Traffic certainly blazed this trail over 35 years ago, but that was then and this is now. If animated features are to progress, animators need to feel comfortable to tell stories beyond the commercial constraints required by the Hollywood motion picture industry. Stories must get deeper, visuals must evolve, and all the techniques available to animation artists should be used (let me note that Pixar stands unique among the major animation studios, artfully pushing the medium in a commercially entertaining way acceptable to both Hollywood and to mainstream audiences).

Sony Pictures Classics deserves kudos for taking a chance on releasing this (and The Triplettes of Belleville several years ago) in a country weary of cartoon features and less demanding of its motion picture entertainment. Already garnering rave reviews, Persepolis is positioned to influence the medium and may inspire further independent animated features.

But will it? I’m not sure. It’s not that I’m looking for more films to look or feel like Persepolis, rather, I’m hoping for more artists and cartoonists like Marjane Satrapi who will bring their passions to animated films. That’s how our artform will grow — and what I hope Persepolis will do.

Love it or hate it, I encourage you to see the film. Below is video of creator/co-director Satrapi discussing the influences of comic books on her life and work. Merry Christmas.

Our buddy Ward Jenkins has a holiday treat posted up at Drawn!

It’s a tiny mouth-watering clip from the new Henry Selick/Neil Gaiman stop motion film Coraline, now in production at Laika. The film is on track for release (in 3D) in late 2008 from Focus Features and should be one of the highlights of the year. Can’t wait!

The moody (and primarily CG) opening titles to Tim Burton’s latest film, Sweeney Todd, have been posted exclusively on Broadway World.com

FYI: Today’s Daily Variety has a special section focusing on animation. The print edition has a cool faux-celluloid cover advertising The Simpsons Movie. Among the articles within (all available online), “Why ‘Beowulf’ passed Oscar test but ‘Alvin’ didn’t,” Bill Plympton commentary on traditional hand drawn animation, and a piece on the Oscar chances of foreign animated features (namely Tekkonkinkreet and Persepolis) written by some guy named J. Beck.

Once I saw this image (above) of Spritle and Chim Chim, I had the feeling the filmmakers were on the right track (pun intended).

And then I saw the trailer - and I think the Wachowski’s have nailed it. I’m not a fan of live action versions of cartoon shows (think Underdog, Scooby Doo, Josie and the Pussycats, Dudley Do-Right, Mr. Magoo and on and on), but the Brothers Wachowski’s forthcoming live action Speed Racer movie is lookin’ very good to me. It’s the 60s Japanese cartoon come alive in a candy-colored, pop art way, not seen since Adam West’s Batman series from 1966. I’m sure there are some purists out there who will feel the subject isn’t being treated as seriously as they would like. To those people I say: Get over it. It’s not Jonny Quest or even 8th Man. It’s Speed Racer!

I have no idea if the film is any good. It’ll be out in May and we can all judge it then. In the meantime this looks like a lot of fun. And thank goodness Chim Chim is a real chimp, not a CG animated blob. Watch the trailer here and see more still images here.

UPI is reporting that for “the first time in its 40-year history, New Line will release an animated feature”.

That’s not quite true. New Line Cinema has previously released the animated features Hooray For Betty Boop (aka Betty Boop For President) in 1976, Nelvana’s Babar The Movie in 1989, and Richard Rich’s The Swan Princess in 1994. That’s one per decade. Perhaps they meant to say it’s the first animated film New Line will release in the 21st Century. Or maybe they mean it’s the first CG film the studio’s ever distributed.

However they meant it, it’s a slap in the face to the previous hand drawn cartoon films (admittedly a forgettable lot) that the studio had a hand in. The new film is Planet 51, written by Joe Stillman (Shrek), produced by Ilion Animation Studios in Spain and directed by Jorge Blanco and the team behind the video game Commando. It’ll be released in 2009.

Disney’s Enchanted is a blockbuster hit. The critics are raving and there is Oscar buzz swirling for its star, Amy Adams.

In addition to the film’s obvious tributes to Disney past, the film is loaded with hidden references that only the truly geeky - and readers of Cartoon Brew - would get. A whole list of the them (four pages) was post by Kansas City.com.

The film sends up Disney cliches, but does so with respect and class. What’s more, it’s reminding audiences of what Disney-style hand drawn animation looks like in movie theatre. I can only wonder, might the film’s accomplishments - along with success of The Simpsons Movie and the upcoming Persepolis - lead to an actual theatrical resurgence of traditional cartoon animation?