Monthly Archives: June 2009

10 for Best Picture

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It was announced yesterday that the Academy will now nominate ten films for Best Picture. From their press release:

For more than a decade during the Academy’s earlier years, the Best Picture category welcomed more than five films; for nine years there were 10 nominees. The 16th Academy Awards (1943) was the last year to include a field of that size; “Casablanca” was named Best Picture. (In 1931/32, there were eight nominees and in 1934 and 1935 there were 12 nominees.) “Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize,” commented Ganis.

One might coin this “the Wall-E decision”, as there was much speculation and controversy last year over Pixar’s Wall-E — that it could (or should) have been nominated for Best Picture.

This move to include more movies as nominees will allow more commercially successful films (i.e. big budget Hollywood fantasies) to compete with the artier fare (Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader, Milk, etc.), no doubt to help increase the ratings for the Oscar broadcast. Ten nominees could also boost box office gross and DVD sales for twice as many films.

But how will this affect the animated features? Will Pixar’s Up have a shot to go one-on-nine against the likes of James Cameron’s Avatar, Michael Mann’s Public Enemies and Sam Mendes Away We Go? Industry pundit Jeffery Wells thinks not.

Hollywood still places animation in a ghetto and nothing is going to change that. I hope Up, Coraline, The Fantastic Mr. Fox or some animated film can somehow crack the Best Picture category – but I won’t bet on it. Until perceptions change, I’m just glad we have the Best Animated Short and Best Animated Feature categories.

Speaking of which, at the mid-way point it’s looking like a great year for the Animated Feature category. There are already 13 releases set for 2009 (14 if you count Jim Carrey’s mo-cap Christmas Carol – I don’t). If a few more “dark horse” foreign films get submitted, as they usually do at the end of the year, that could trigger five nominees (I’m rooting for Mary & Max and Secret of Kells to get a legitimate U.S. release). However, recall that last year three eligible studio films were not submitted to the Academy (Fox ignored Space Chimps, Warner Bros. withheld Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Universal omitted The Pirates That Don’t Do Anything), thus forcing the Academy to consider only three nominees. It just goes to show, the major studios still control the process no matter how you perceive the results.

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics

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Art of Harvey Kurtzman

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle easily ranks among my favorite cartoon/comic-related books of the past few years, if not all-time. How good is it? I was so anxious to get my hands on this book that I ended up buying a copy at the bookstore instead of ordering it from Amazon. The selection of artwork, the design of the book, and the print quality are all jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The text, which I’ve only begun to read, also appears to be top-notch. Kurtzman was the rare individual who was equally gifted as both an artist (Hey Look!, Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat) and editor (Mad, Help, Trump, and this volume lovingly acknowledges both sides of the man. The book was published by Abrams’ promising new ComicArts imprint and is an incredible value at $26.40 on Amazon.

UPDATE: Sherm Cohen made this video preview of the book:

Beany and Cecil DVD Vol. 2

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Here’s a DVD I’ve been waiting to see for over a decade – Beany & Cecil: The Special Edition Vol. 2.

Volume 1 is a must have for all fans of Bob Clampett. It was loaded with bonus material and rare footage we’d been dying to see for decades. Volume 2 promises to be more of the same: 11 classic Beany & Cecil cartoons, remastered from 35mm camera negatives, and several bonus features including rare Time for Beany kinescopes and an alternate version of Beanyland. It’ll be available September 8th from Hen’s Tooth Video.

Miyazaki in person in Los Angeles

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The annual Marc Davis Celebration of Animation continues with a second helping at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California. On July 28th, the Academy will honor Hayao Miyazaki in a special tribute which will include screening clips from his greatest films and an in-person conversation between Miyazaki and John Lasseter.

Need I say anymore? Tickets are on sale now. $5. for general public, $3. for Academy members. Seating is (ahem) limited. Go here now.

Jaime Diaz (1937-2009)

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Longtime animator and director Jaime Diaz passed away this past Saturday.

I met Jaime several times during 2005-6 when I was working at Nickelodeon on my Random Cartoon, Hornswiggle. Jaime was an amazing talent and generous with his memories of breaking into the animation scene during the 1960s. You’ll see his credit on some of the last Warner Bros. cartoons of the late 1960s. From there, he worked mainly on Saturday morning shows for Hanna Barbera and Filmation in a variety of roles, from storyboard to character designer. He became a director on Duckman and on later Frederator shows like ChalkZone and Fairly Odd Parents. I really enjoyed his designs from his Random short Dr. Froyd’s Funny Farm (Diaz, pictured below left with Froyd co-creator Bill Burnett).

Larry Huber has posted a wonderful heartfelt remembrance of Jaime on his website.

Tucky Tales

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Tucky Tales is a simple but inventive example of digital “cut-out” animation. The pre-school series for Baby TV was created by Israeli husband-and-wife animation team Eduard and Nurit Mitgartz. They’ve produced twenty 5-minute episodes at their studio Kipod Animation.

WALL·E End Credits

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Wall-E Credits

The Art of the Title Sequence interviews director Jim Capobianco and animator Alex Woo about the thoughtful end credit sequence of WALL·E. From the article intro:

Jim Capobianco’s end credits to Andrew Stanton’s “WALL·E” are essential; they are the actual ending of the film, a perfect and fantastically optimistic conclusion to a grand, if imperfect idea. Humanity’s past and future evolution viewed through unspooling schools of art. Frame after frame sinks in as you smile self-consciously. It isn’t supposed to be this good but there it is. This is art in its own right. Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman’s song, “Down to Earth” indulges you with some incredibly thoughtful lyrics and, from the Stone Age to the Impressionists to the wonderful 8-bit pixel sprites, you are in the midst of something special

The story behind Underdog

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If Jay Ward, Hanna Barbera and Rankin-Bass rate biographical tomes, certainly the output of Total Television deserves a historical overview. Sight unseen (except for its fabulous Mike Kazaleh cover – click thumbnail below to enlarge image) I am recommending this forthcoming book by Mark Arnold: Created and Produced by Total TeleVision Productions.

Frequently compared to and confused with Jay Ward Productions, this is the company that created such characters as Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo, Tooter Turtle, Commander McBragg, Go Go Gophers, King and Odie, The Hunter, and The Beagles. The history of Gamma Productions, the little Mexican animation studio that animated most of the Jay Ward Productions, is covered — and the book contains a complete episode listing of every known Total TeleVision production. Illustrated with storyboards and character merchandise, Arnold wrote the book using personal interviews with the four owners of TTV (Buck Biggers, Chet Stover, Tread Covington and Joe Harris) as well as voice artists Allen Swift (Simon Bar Sinister), Bradley Bolke (Chumley the Walrus), animators Frank Andrina of TV Spots and Roman Arambula of Gamma Productions. And the book promises to finally answer a question we’ve been asking ourselves for years: What the heck is The Colossal Show? Copies are now available from BearManor Media.

Chew Chew Baby (1958)

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There’s no debate that animator Irving Spector was, like John Dunn, an under appreciated cartoonist and storyman — working in animation at a time when the finished product didn’t do justice to the talents behind it. Thanks to Spector’s son, Irv’s work is getting some long overdue appreciation in a blog dedicated to his work.

Among the best of the late Paramount output, Chew Chew Baby was produced during a brief period when the studio put some actual effort behind its limited animation. This particular film is one of my favorites, and contains one of Jackson Beck’s (no relation) best performances. It’s also notable as one of the last cartoons to ignore political correctness and feature a pygmy cannibal – as well as one of the last cartoons credited to Isadore Sparber, released a few days before his death in August 1958.

This is also one of the “Harveytoons” not contained in Classic Media’s Complete Harveytoons DVD collection. Mike Van Eaton (of Van Eaton Gallery) recently unearthed a cache of original Spector storyboards from this film (click thumbnails below to enlarge). These drawings are a lot of fun – and this film may be the closest representation of Spector’s design style to make it faithfully to the screen.




OT: Will Friedwald donates his record collection

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Here’s an update on the doings of my old colleague and friend Will Friedwald (my co-author on Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide To the Warner Bros. Cartoons and Warner Bros. Animation Art). Will has gone on to become one of major authorities on vintage Jazz, Frank Sinatra, and American music in general — with numerous books to his credit. Most recently, he’s been writing a great series of columns on Jazz for The Wall Street Journal.

The latest news on Will is his donation of over 14,000 record albums, the largest personal Jazz collection in New York if not the United States, to two major music archives. The jazz albums are going to an archive in Washington, D.C. while the popular music and show tunes are going to the Michael Feinstein Foundation for the Preservation of the Great American Songbook.

Read more about it and see examples from the collection on this news report from NY1.