A release date has been announced for Walt and El Grupo, the new Ted Thomas documentary about Disney’s 1941 goodwill tour to South America - a journey which inspired the feature length Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros and several other animated films during the forties. The documentary opens September 11th in New York (The Quad Cinemas), Los Angeles (The Regent in Westwood and AMC Downtown Disney in Anaheim). The film will open September 25th in Seattle and in other cities nationwide in the weeks after that. I love the faux vintage one sheet poster (click image at left to enlarge) and am really looking forward to seeing this picture.

In 1984, Christie’s East held a pivotal auction from the John Basmajian Collection of Walt Disney Animation Art. No one had ever seen such an extensive collection of vintage Disney cels and assorted artwork assembled before - it was the first of many upscale animation art auctions to come.

Now, 25 years after that historic auction, the Basmajian family has launched JohnBasmajian.com which tells the story of how this former Disney animator amassed his collection, with exclusive interviews, articles, and animation art galleries. The website is still a work-in-progress, but there is a bio and video profile of Basmajian which tells his incredible story.

More heart-breaking than the first ten minutes of Up: this story from the Orange County Register.

A dying 10 year old with a rare form of cancer wanted to see Up. Her mother cold called Pixar and got through to the right person. The next day “a Pixar employee” came to the girl’s house with the DVD and a bag of stuffed animals of characters in the movie. “He shared some quirky background details of the movie and the group settled in to watch Up.”

There’s a lot of speculation as to who the “Pixar employee” is, but more important is that the act happened at all. Read the full story here.

Combining two iconic Hollywood stars, pop artist Ron English has created a limited edition “bust” of Marilyn Monroe (click on image above to see full sculpture). For more info on these works of art, see the Toys R Evil blog.

The infamous Lou Romano has been posting much inspirational art from Up on his blog. I don’t know if this is material featured in Chronicle’s Art of UP book, but no matter - here it is posted much larger, for closer study. Yesterday Lou posted his color script for the film. It’s absolutely gorgeous stuff.

This has to be the most trivial post I’ve ever written - and I’ve written some pretty trivial posts - but at least it gives me the chance to once again plug the latest Pixar Little Golden Book tie-in.

Animator Ken Priebe discovered on the first page (center image, click thumbnails below to enlarge) of the Golden Book adaptation of UP, if you look carefully at Carl’s scrapbook, spin it upside down (below right), you can see a microscopic image of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit! Those sly devils at Disney Publishing. Tried to pull a fast one on us, aye? Last year we found an Oswald “cameo” in the Wall-E Little Golden Book. Perhaps this is the beginning of a trend?

Kudos to designer Stuart Smith and illustrators Jean-Paul Orpinas and Scott Tilley. You keep making these books look cool, and I’ll keep buying ‘em!

What do you think?

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has put up video excerpts of the panel discussions from the infamous Milt Kahl Tribute in April. Great memories of Milt from John Musker, Brad Bird, Andreas Deja, Alice Davis, Richard Williams, etc. Check it out

(Thanks, David Nethery)