Just some of the stories you’ll find today on CB Biz:
* Dreamworks Animation Posts Profit in Q4 2010 Report
* Irish Film Board Announces Short Animation Funding Grant
* Nancy Kanter Named as Disney Junior Worldwide’s General Manager
* Fox Re-Ups Seth MacFarlane’s “American Dad” for 7th Season
* Disney Announces “Bambi” Diamond Edition
For all the latest CB Biz stories, look in the brown INDUSTRY HEADLINES box in the right column.
Your thoughts? I’ll comment at a later date…after I’ve stopped vomiting.
This is about as good as it’s going to get on a rainy Monday morning. Dog Skateboard is by Nate Milton of The Amigo Unit.
The winners of this years Academy Awards were announced tonight in Hollywood.
Toy Story 3 won for Best Animated Feature (Director Lee Unkrich, above).
Toy Story 3 also won Best Song, “We Belong Together” by Randy Newman.
Best Animated Short went to The Lost Thing by Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan.
Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland won for both Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.
A complete list of all nominees and winners is posted here.
(Pictured below, in size place, 24-hours before winning the Oscar, The Lost Thing’s director Shaun Tan, Brewmaster Jerry Beck and The Lost Thing’s key animator Leo Baker.)
Apparently the Fleischer estate has lost a court battle for the rights to Betty Boop, a character created by Grim Natwick at Max Fleischer’s studio in 1930. Fleischer Studios has been co-licensing (with King Features) the property (along with Pudgy, Grampy, Binmbo and Ko-Ko the Clown) for several decades now.
The Fleischer Studio tried to sue Avela Inc. over its licensing of public domain Betty Boop poster images (for handbags and T-shirts). The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (based in San Francisco) ruled against the Fleischers, saying in their decision, “If we ruled that AVELA’s depictions of Betty Boop infringed Fleischer’s trademarks, the Betty Boop character would essentially never enter the public domain.”
According to court documents, the Fleischer Studio originally assigned its rights to Betty Boop to Paramount Pictures on July 11, 1941. Paramount assigned those rights to Harvey Films, Inc on June 27th, 1958. Harvey actively licensed the character in the early 1960s. On May 15th 1980, Harvey Cartoons transferred “Betty Boop and her Gang” to Alfred Harvey and his brothers. Judge Susan Graber said there was no break in the chain of title.
So where does that leave Ms. Boop? No longer represented by the heirs of Max Fleischer and King Features Syndicate? Does this make Harvey Comics – or by extention, its current owner Classic Media – the owner of the property? Or is the character now in public domain.
For the record: The master film elements to original Fleischer Betty Boop cartoons are still owned by Paramount Pictures (and are maintained at the UCLA Film and Television Archive). Many of those films have legally entered the public domain, many others have not (they are still protected under copyrights held by Paramount/Viacom). We hope that someday the studio deems it fit to restore and release these classics on DVD.
UPDATE: Interesting analysis in the comments by animation historian David Gerstein:
Rough analysis (could be wrong):
The Betty Boop character is a Fleischer trademark.
But–Betty Boop 1930s movie posters were not copyrighted (or not renewed?) as standalone items, so are public domain.
Fleischer tried to use its active trademark on the character to stop a third party’s use of the ancient PD art. Judge said this was a no-go.What I take from the judge’s ruling is that the trademark only applies to new, modern uses of the character. It can’t be used to stop people from redistributing old PD Betty images/items. Fleischer tried to say trademark trumped copyright; the judge is saying that it doesn’t.
This is actually pretty major. In recent years, Warner has used the active trademarks on Looney Tunes characters to quash third parties’ reissues of PD 1930s/40s Looney Tunes content (of which there is a lot). If the Betty decision is not reversed on appeal, then Warner is stripped of its strongest weapon against the public domain.
It can use the trademark against those who would create new Bugs Bunny items, but not against those who would exploit old PD material that Warner failed to protect.The issue of whether Paramount legitimately sold the active Betty trademark to Harvey appears to be entirely separate, though very interesting.
Few people I know take the Oscars seriously as a barometer for what is state-of-the-art or innovative in animation, and looking at the long list of winners from years’ past, the awards have rarely reflected the development of animation as an art. Still, for one day every year, we pretend like the opinions of the Academy voters actually mean something to our community. That’s especially difficult during the years when the Academy’s choices have shown an even greater disconnect from animation than typical.
1. The Two Mouseketeers (1951) by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera
Between 1943 and 1952, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera won the Oscar for best animated short a remarkable seven times. Now you’re probably thinking, if the Academy deemed them worthy of recognition so many times, these guys must have been visionaries who were creating work that was truly different and interesting. And you’d be wrong. These guys made Tom and Jerry shorts, the most formulaic and workmanlike of any cartoon series produced during the Hollywood era of theatrical shorts.
Hanna and Barbera explored less and pushed fewer boundaries than any other directors during this period, and they were rewarded for playing it safe. In the year they won for Two Mousketeers–their innovation here was adding a second mouse–John Hubley created Rooty Toot Toot, which ranks among the most groundbreaking and beautiful pieces of animation ever produced within the Hollywood studio system. The Academy stopped tossing off Bill and Joe long enough to nominate Hubley’s masterwork, and then promptly awarded Hanna and Barbera their sixth Oscar.
Continue reading
Anima Studios (Kung Fu Magoo) and Illusion Studios have been producing a hand drawn movie adaptation of Hanna Barbera’s Top Cat (we first reported about it here in June 2010), primarily aimed at the South American market where the character is still incredibly popular. Warner Bros will release the movie – in 3D – to Mexican theaters this September and here’s our first look at the posters (click to see enlarged versions):
(Thanks to BleedingCool)
A surprising number of cool visual ideas in this one-shot stop-motion short by Guy Verge Wallace. The floor that turns into a door around the :20 second mark and the neon firearms are my favorite parts.
(Thanks, Stieg Retlin)
David OReilly forwarded this useful image:
And while we’re on the subject, a shout-out to the heroic and courageous people of Libya, who are not only fighting the good fight to topple a dictatorship, but are also using the time-honored tradition of caricature to humiliate their crackpot leader. Below are some of the best examples I’ve seen so far from Libya. If you have your own Qaddafi caricatures, share them in the comments.
UPDATE: Some fantastic contributions from Brew readers. Share yours in the comments.
By “Ink Dipper”
By Ridd
By OtherDan
By Susette
Something we are not showing at the Rankin-Bass tribute on Tuesday is Thundercats, the studio’s 1985 response to Filmation’s He-Man. As you may know, Warner Bros. (who now own the property) is preparing an update for Cartoon Network. And from the look of things, they may have improved upon the premise:
Forget the Governor’s Ball and the Vanity Fair bash – I’m having two Post-Oscar parties next week in L.A. and mine feature cartoons!
CARTOON DUMP – Monday February 28th at 8pm
Our monthly live comedy/cartoon revue, Cartoon Dump, goes on as usual Monday evening at 8pm! Instead of honoring the Best Animation of the year, we take pride in ripping the Worst Cartoons Ever Made! Join me, Frank Conniff (MST3K), Erica Doering, J. Elvis Weinstein, Mighty Mr. Titan and special character guest Emo Philips (as our resident Cartoon Musicology Professor) and stand-up comedy guest Kyle Kinane at the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. • Free Parking! • Advanced Tickets here • Phone: (323) 666-9797 • Map & Directions. Tell us you’re coming on Facebook!
ANIMATION TUESDAYS – Tuesday March 1st at 8pm
This month we welcome guest curators Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh of Screen Novelties as they spotlight rare Rankin-Bass goodies from their collections, as well as highlight work from the studio’s unsung heroes: the Japanese animators who were responsible for much of their aesthetic. Capping off the evening is an incredibly rare screening of the studio’s first AniMagic feature Willy McBean and his Magic Machine (1965), which follows the rollicking adventures through time of a boy and his monkey pal. Join us as we pay much-due tribute to these godfathers of pop-culture!
At the Cinefamily @ The Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood, the films start up at 8pm. Buy Tickets here.
Walt Peregoy is best known as the color stylist of 101 Dalmatians and headed the background department at Hanna-Barbera in the late-1960s. The Animation Guild‘s business rep and intrepid interviewer Steve Hulett spoke recently with the 85-year-old Peregoy and their conversation can be heard below. If you’ve ever heard Walt speak before, then you know what to expect, but if you haven’t, be forewarned that there’s a lot of swearing and everyone he talks about is either a son of a bitch, a buttboy, a white supremacist or a motherf**r. Unlike Charlie Sheen though, Walt’s rants are actually pretty entertaining.
Above, left to right: Thelma Witmer, Eyvind Earle, Frank Armitage, Walt Peregoy. Below, a 101 Dalmatians key by Walt Peregoy to cleanse the palette.
Don’t mess with Trey Parker and Matt Stone because the simple act of threatening the creators of South Park will land you 25 years in prison. Our judicial system is more lenient with murderers and child rapists. Thankfully, we can still call Walt Disney a Jew-hating Nazi, too.
TV Ontario, a public broadcaster in Canada, has an amazing archive online and here’s one for us. It’s an episode of Talking Film (1980) which compiles two interviews, one with Chuck Jones, another with Friz Freleng, with interviewer Elwy Yost originally conducted for a series called Saturday Night at the Movies. Much of it we’ve heard before, but there are a few new nuggets of information and opinion – and its certainly worth a view to spend a few more minutes with Chuck and Friz:
(Thanks, Mark Conolly)
