Monthly Archives: April 2008

Coloring Books

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Aaron Higgins of Toonarific has started a new website devoted to cataloging classic coloring books. As an art resource, it’s invaluable as the site is showcasing and preserving coloring book art since the 1930s. Higgins’ RetroReprints site is a guide to what books have been published over the years, and he is slowly adding images under the books themselves for users to download and color. He is also reformatting the images and creating complete ebooks, also available to download.

And in case you were wondering where you could buy vintage coloring books of your favorite characters, Aaron also has over 1000 coloring and activity books for sale here on ebay.

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New Book: Working for Disney

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Working for Disney

On his blog, Didier Ghez points out an interesting-sounding book that was self-published a few days ago: Working for Disney: 1936-1937, The Ingeborg Willy Scrapbook. This is the description of it:

Reproduction of a 1936 scrapbook made during Ingeborg Willy’s first year working as an inker for the Walt Disney Studios. The scrapbook contains numerous photos of other Disney employees, internal memos, production work sheets, and a large number of original pencil sketches from the first feature-length animated film, Snow White, and other early Disney cartoons.

I’m going to wait to hear more before recommending it though. As is often the case with self-published books like this, the quality of image reproduction and presentation could leave a lot to be desired. The amateurish cover design certainly doesn’t do much to inspire confidence. But it could potentially be a very cool book.

The Pixar Story on TV tonight!

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The television broadcast premiere of Leslie Iwerks documentary, The Pixar Story, will be on the STARZ cable channel tonight at 10pm EST/PST. It will be preceded by the feature presentations of Cars (6pm ET/PT) and Ratatouille (8pm ET/PT). Also visit starz.com for additional show times and two new Leslie Iwerks mini-docs, Emeryville Studio and the Love Lounge and Pixar University.

Drawing On the Future

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The 12th Marc Davis Celebration of Animation Drawing on the Future: Mentorship In Animation will feature (above L to R) Pete Docter (Monsters Inc), Eric Goldberg (Pocahontas), James Baxter (Enchanted) and Andreas Deja (Aladdin), in a panel moderated by animation critic Charles Solomon. The panelists will spotlight the mentors who fostered their professional development, as well as provide insights into their individual approaches to their art. The lecture will include clips from the animation that inspired each of the panelists, and from their own work reflecting that inspiration.

The Marc Davis Celebration of Animation will be held on Friday May 9th, 7:30pm, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, CA (Samuel Goldwyn Theater, 8949 Wilshire Blvd.). Tickets are $5.00 (Students $3) and available online at Oscars.org.

Bakshi — In the Gallery and On Radio

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Bakshi Painting

Folks in Manhattan may want to check out the Animazing Gallery in Soho (461 Broome St.) which has a show of new paintings by Ralph Bakshi. The work will only be on display through this weekend. I saw it a few nights ago and was impressed with Bakshi’s aggressive and loose painting style. His paintings tend to be ‘loud’, much like the man himself, but there’s also a great deal of sophistication in the draftsmanship and composition, and particularly, I felt, in his use of color. I certainly wouldn’t mind having a few of them hanging on my walls. For those who can’t make it, lo-rez versions of the paintings have been posted online.

Also, last week, Bakshi was interviewed on “The Leonard Lopate Show” on WNYC. It’s a delightful 17-minute chat with plenty of intelligent questions from the interviewer. Bakshi discusses his early Terrytoons career and also talks about the importance of honest expression in music and the arts in general. You can listen to a streaming version or download an MP3 on the WNYC website.

(Thanks, Chris Siemasko, for the WNYC link)

Trailers From Hell: Yellow Submarine

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One of my favorite non-animation websites is Trailers From Hell. This site archives various genre (mainly sci-fi/fantasy/horror) film trailers with commentary by noted directors (including Joe Dante, John Landis, Allan Arkush, etc.). I’ve been waiting for them to get around to doing an animation trailer and they finally have. Here’s documentary filmmaker (and childhood friend of Disney director, Kirk Wise) George Hickenlooper discussing his love of Yellow Submarine:

Rare Terrytoon photos

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That’s Gene Deitch (left) examining cels of Bert and Harry Piels (of the famed Piels Beer commercials) with director Connie Rasinski in 1957.

J.J. Sedelmaier recently unearthed several rare photographs depicting behind the scenes life at Terrytoons during the Deitch era (1955-57). They have been added to Deitch’s online book, How To Succeed in Animation. You can see these pictures in Chapter 15A (“Terrytoonery”) on Page 8 (shots of Vinnie Bell, Bob Kuwahara, and Connie Rasinski), page 10 (photo of background artist Bill Focht) and on page 11 (rare pictures of Jules Feiffer, Eli Bauer, Frank Schudde, a recording session of Tom Terrific with Lionel Wilson and Tommy Morrison, and the only known photo of “the Dark Lord”, Bill Weiss!).

An Open Letter to Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate

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It was announced today that Viacom and Paramount have teamed with MGM and Lionsgate to create a new cable channel to compete with HBO and Showtime (which is owned by CBS). The channel will be mainly showing new movies, and it is not yet clear whether this will be a basic cable or a premium pay channel, but the initial press release says “the new venture will have access to motion picture titles spanning the vast libraries of the five studios”. And they plan to push its video-on-demand capabilities.

I’ve posted open letters like this before (see here and here). It doesn’t do much good, but it makes me a whole lot feel better.

Dear Viacom/Paramount/M.G.M./Lionsgate,

The announcement of your new cable TV venture has me very excited. I especially like that you are going to use the “vast libraries” of the partner companies to create this new venue for programming. My only concern is that you might overlook the thousands of classic animation titles in your massive holdings.

Viacom/Paramount has rights to the Terrytoons library, hundreds of cartoons which include such rarely seen cartoon characters like Mighty Mouse, Heckle & Jeckle, Deputy Dawg and many others. Paramount also owns classic cartoon shorts of the 1960s. Lionsgate has licensed from you (and does nothing with) the pre-1950 Paramount cartoons which include Little Lulu, George Pal’s Academy Award winning Puppetoons, and the library of Betty Boop cartoons, amongst much else. Together, you can make these classics available for the first time in decades.

Additionally, MGM brings the DePatie-Freleng cartoons to the table. This library includes Oscar winning Pink Panther shorts, and numerous other cartoons featuring The Ant And the Aardvark, The Inspector and the Tijuana Toads.

And guess what? Your home video divisions have only released a fraction of the material you own. Making them available now on cable would provide you with unique, exclusive, entertaining fillers that people of all ages will enjoy. I know you aren’t starting a children’s channel, nor competing with Cartoon Network, but these classic animated shorts are a lot of fun, and deserve to be seen.

So unearth your old cartoons. Make them available as interstitials between programming or for video-on-demand purchase. Believe it or not, people really want to see them.

Best of luck,
Jerry Beck
CartoonBrew.com

Cartoon Dump: Tuesday in Los Angeles

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If you haven’t been to live performance of Cartoon Dump, my monthly live comedy show in Hollywood, this month’s program is a perfect one to sample. In addition to another fine selection of truly awful vintage animated cartoons and musical comedy skits from MST3K’s Frank Conniff (as Moodsy the Clinically Depressed Owl) and Erica Doering (as Compost Brite), our special guests include twin comedy stylings of The Sklar Brothers. The show starts at 8pm and we are expecting a big crowd this month – but you can reserve tickets online at the Steve Allen Theatre website.

Clokey-Orr-Lee

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The local monthly Shrine Auditorium Los Angeles Comic Con has three great guests lined up for the May 4th show. Trixie herself, Corrine Orr, will make a rare west coast appearance to sign autographs and answer questions. I’m a big fan of Orr’s voice – she was in Speed Racer, Marine Boy, Johnny Cypher in Dimension Zero and hundreds of Japanese monster movies. That’s her doing the female voices in Ralph Bakshi’s Marvin Digs.

She will be joined at the con by two other pop culture legends: Art Clokey, creator of Gumby and producer of Davey & Goliath, and Stan Lee creator of… Do I really have to tell you?

Nuff said! For more info on tickets and hours, check the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction website.

The Smurfs at Coachella

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The Smurfs are celebrating their 50th anniversary (and promoting their recent DVD release) with a party at Coachella, the big California desert music festival taking place on April 25th-27th. There will be a Smurfs Village set up, with Good Charlotte and “Vanity Smurf” (supposedly Paris Hilton) DJing the opening party. Local graffiti artists are drawing their own Smurfs for the party.

I will personally be nowhere near this. It sounds like my worst nightmare.

(Thanks, Faran Krentcil)