Animator Bruce Woodside (Cool World, Space Jam, Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse, etc.) made this film on his own, and posted it on You Tube last week to get the message out.
Peak Oil
12
Monthly Archives: November 2007
The Pixar Story Hollywood Screening
We’ve plugged Leslie Iwerks’ new Pixar documentary on the Brew many times before. It’s a must see. I want to alert the Los Angeles area animation community to a special screening coming up on Tuesday December 11th at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.
The Pixar Story will screen at 7:30pm, with a Q&A following with Director/Producer Leslie Iwerks and special guest, Roy E. Disney. For ticket and addtional information visit The Egyptian Theatre website. For more info on The Pixar Story and national playdates, Click here.
Reminder: Hanna Barbera Book Signing
Join me this Saturday, December 1st at 1pm, at the Van Eaton Gallery where I’ll be signing my new book The Hanna Barbera Treasury. The book turned out rather well – but don’t take my word for it, read Sherm Cohen’s rave review and Leonard Maltin’s endorsement.
Please don’t be shy. We’ll be serving Cocoa Pebbles! I’ll be hanging out eager to talk Yogi, Huck, Quick Draw and Boo-Boo. I’ll even sign my other books (if you bring them). For more information: Van Eaton Gallery website.
Who Invented Motion Capture?
San Francisco commercial director Carl Willat has the shocking and hilarious answer.
(Thanks, Karl Cohen)
New Line’s First Animated Film?
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.
Christmas Nerds
Three nerds turn a nativity scene into a roleplaying battleground.
Matt Burnett and Ben Levin spent a year animating this entirely by hand, on paper with pencils, and fancied it up in Photoshop and After Effects. Here’s their studio website, where you can also find a Quicktime version.
Virgin America’s Flight Safety Film
Virgin America’s cool in-flight Safety Film has popped up on You Tube. This piece alone would sway me toward using the upscale, low-cost air carrier. It was produced by Anomaly, with animation by Wild Brain.
(Thanks, Chet Gulland)
Tack’s Cartoon Tips
Daily Show associate producer Dave Blog posted a flickr set scanned from an old cartooning manual he picked up at an estate sale.
Tack’s Cartoon Tips for the Aspiring Cartoonist (Devoe & Reynolds, 1923). If anyone has any further information on B. “Tack” Knight, please fill us in.
“Lollipop” by Bonzom
The music video “Lollipop” for musician Mika is a joyful if somewhat overproduced Seventies graphic pastiche. It is the promising debut work of the young French director’s collective Bonzom. Bonzom is comprised of five animators—Jack, Kalkair, Pozla, Waterlili and Moke—who are grads of various French animation schools like Les Gobelins, La Poudriere and L’ESAAT. They are repped by Passion Pictures Paris.
(via Feed)
Fernando Leal
There isn’t a whole lot of work on the site of London-based Brazilian illustrator and animator Fernando Leal but what is there shows a strong flair for design and concepts, and solid ability to translate those ideas into animation. I hope to see more from him in the future.
New York Anime Festival
Isn’t it ironic that the big New York Anime Festival, occurring next weekend at the Javitz Center, begins on Pearl Harbor Day (12/7)?
It’s a huge show, but the highlight for old fogeys like me is the appearence of the original U.S. dub voices for Speed Racer, Trixie, Spritle and Chim Chim – Peter Fernandez and Corrine Orr. This is the inaugural festival and it’s shaping up to be the biggest anime event in North America. For more information, go to the festival website.
(Thanks, Derek Tague)
Your Charm article about Disney
Below is an early-1940s article from a magazine called Your Charm, a young woman’s magazine alone the lines of Mademoiselle. Forgive the quality of the quick-and-dirty digital photo and the fact that the piece is incomplete. But I couldn’t resist documenting this sentence in the article: “By this same token you probably find more crabbing there than in any other business in town. It runs the gamut of from why is Fred the gardener planting all that alfalfa to what does Walt want to make that story for!” I guess some things in animation never change. This caption on the second page is also a classic: “Frequent sketching trips to the nearby zoos and the surrounding countryside are conducive to romance for young Disney artists.”
click for large view
It’s not easy being Jerry Beck
Off Topic: This is the real trailer for a Don Johnson movie, Dead Bang (1989). I’ve had to live with this for 18 years. It’s time to share the pain:
Enchanted weekend
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?
Matinee At The Bijou blog
My old pal Ron Hall has started writing a blog in conjunction with a revival of Matinee at the Bijou.
Apparently new episodes of this classic movie showcase, which was one of the most popular programs on PBS in the 1980s, are back in production – with a new celebrity host, Debbie Reynolds. Ron Hall, who runs Festival Films and was the publisher of the pioneering animation fanzine Mindrot, is actively involved with providing classic movie material for the show. On his new blog, he’s posting about the classic shorts and cartoons – his latest post promotes an upcoming Bijou program which features a bunch of vintage Paramount Screen Songs. I’m not sure what the status of the show is, but they’ve been feeding their content to You Tube, and set up a fun informative website worth checking out.
