One of the most unique voices in animation, Marcell Jankovics, the Hungarian director of features like Fehérlófia and shorts like Sisyphus, has completed a new feature. And this is not any film, but a two-hour, forty-minute epic that was in production for nearly 25 years!

The film, Az ember tragédiája (The Tragedy of Man) was released in Hungary last December. It’s adapted from a famous Hungarian play of the same name written by Imre Madách. A film review by Vassilis Kroustallis suggests that it’s relentlessly bleak and somewhat repetitive, yet worth seeing:

Lucifer, the co-creator of the world (according to his statement) tests Adam and puts him to sleep to see his destiny through the ages. The trip is interesting, visually stimulating (but never pretty), and relentlessly repeating. Not a single note of happiness or laughter enters The Tragedy of Man, which proceeds from the Garden of Eden to Egypt and then to classical Greece, Rome, Christianity and beyond…The choice of the stories to tell is varied and remarkable. Along with the usual historical suspects (Danton and the French Revolution, Hitler and Stalin), the Miltiades story from Greece (a general who becomes a traitor), and the Tancred and Crusades segment—along with the battles on the Filioque—are a treat to watch in this context.

Jankovics’ work is always a unique visual experience, and one expects this to be no different. Aeon Flux creator Peter Chung described Jankovics’ style best when he wrote that Jankovics can “make the movement a primary aspect of the design. Every element—character & setting, foreground & background, color & shape, is integrated into a total composition in motion. It approaches the idea of animation as a visual equivalent to music, with analogs to melody, rhythm and harmony working in a non-literal evocation of ideas and feelings.”

Below are a few stills from The Tragedy of Man:

French newspaper Le Figaro confirms that Oscar-winning Dutch short filmmaker Michael Dudok de Wit (Father and Daughter, The Monk and the Fish) is directing his first feature film The Red Turtle. Dudok de Wit is long overdue for his shot at helming a feature, and whatever he comes up with, it’s surely guaranteed to be thoughtful, original, and high quality. More intriguingly, Studio Ghibli is co-producing the film, along with French companies Why Not Productions and Wild Bunch.

(Micahel Dudok de Wit photo by M. Hambledon; story via Catsuka)

A funny thing has happened: as hand-drawn studio-produced animated features have all but disappeared from the American animation scene, European and Asian studios are enjoying a mini-renaissance of drawn feature films. The latest example is Ernest et Célestine, adapted from a French children’s book series about the unlikely friendship between a gruff bear with artistic ambitions and an intelligent mouse who doesn’t want to become a dentist. The clip above gives a taste of the film’s breezy visual style that mixes broken-line characters with watercolor-style backgrounds—animated in Flash no less.

Directors are Benjamin Renner, Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, the latter two of whom directed the recent stop-motion feature A Town Called Panic. The 80-minute feature is a co-production between France (Les Armateurs, Maybe Movies, Studiocanal France), Belgium (La Parti) and Luxembourg (Mélusine Productions). Ernest et Célestine will have its world premiere this week at the Directors’ Fortnight, which takes place alongside the Cannes Film Festival.

Another extended film clip as well as a video showing the paperless production pipeline can be viewed after the jump. It’s all in French, but don’t let that stop you from taking a peek.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you ever hated (or loved) the Hanna Barbera feature length Charlotte’s Web (1973), you owe it to yourself read the latest two entries in Gene Deitch’s Roll The Credits blog. It’s the full heart-breaking account – throughly documented with personal letters between Deitch and author E.B. White – of how Hollywood producers went from John Hubley to Gene Deitch to ultimately using Hanna Barbera to bring this literary classic to life.

Read the full story here, then drool over the complete never-before seen 792-panel storyboard Deitch had drawn by the masterful Czech artist Mirko Hanák, who passed away shortly after creating it. Deitch says E.B. White was forbidden (by producers) to see his storyboard (though White died shortly after seeing the Hanna-Barberra version. Coincidence?). A must-read!

Apparently, somebody wasn’t having a good time on the production of Illumination Entertainment’s The Lorax.

(via Aryeh David Zucker on Cartoon Brew’s Facebook page)

Samuel L. Jackson leads a team of flying heroes in… no, not The Avengers… in South Africa’s first 3D animated feature Zambezia. Produced by Capetown-based Triggerfish Animation Studios, the film is scheduled for release this winter in Africa – and next year by Sony (according to this report in The Hollywood Reporter). The cast also includes Jeff Goldblum, Abagail Breslin and Leonard Nimoy. Here’s what it looks like:

From the moment Cartoon Brew was established, no film has gotten the coverage that Threshhold Entertainment’s ill-fated CG animation feature, Foodfight, has recieved.

To recap: In 2004, CG animation studio Threshold Entertainment and Motion Picture Magic (a product placement company in Encino) teamed up to produce a “food” version of Toy Story. Foodfight would team 80 name-brand products and their associated characters, including Mr. Clean, Cap’n Crunch, Charlie the Tuna, the Engergizer Bunny and the Brawny paper towel man, in an adventure set in a supermarket city – with a voice cast including Charlie Sheen, Eva Longoria, Ed Asner, Chris Kattan and Christopher Lloyd. In 2007, Lionsgate announced they were picking up the film – for a release that never happened. In 2010, a Brew reader spotted some licensed merchandise from the film. Last year, International Film Gauarantors auctioned the film to the highest bidder when Threshold defaulted on their loans.

The latest word is that England’s Boulevard Entertainment has picked up the rights for DVD – in Europe. At least (and at last) we are a step closer to seeing how terrible this thing is. I can sleep easier now, knowing that paying consumers will soon enjoy this lost masterpiece!

(Thanks, Dave Silva)

Why fight it? Go see The Avengers. Joss Whedon has made a film that justifies my childhood love of these TV cartoons (and the comics they are taken from). And stay for the best post-credit tag I’ve ever seen!