USA TODAY has an article in which Jerry Seinfeld discusses why he decided to make a live-action trailer for DreamWorks’s next CG feature BEE MOVIE. Dare I say, the trailer is the most entertaining piece of filmmaking that DreamWorks Animation has produced to date.

This Friday, November 10, marks the opening of F*CK: A DOCUMENTARY, which examines the origin and uses of a certain word. Besides interviews with numerous celebrities, the film also features animated sequences by Bill Plympton. Additionally, Plympton’s animated short, GUIDE DOG, will screen in front of the film, though a more appropriate animated short would have perhaps been Fred Crippen’s IMPROVING COMMUNICATIONS (2004), which is a comedic look at the many ways to use this particular word. The film is opening in LA and NY before expanding to other cities. In NY, it’ll play at the Quad Cinema (34 West 13th St., New York NY) while LA folks can check it out at Landmark’s NuArt Theatre (11272 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles CA). Upcoming cities and additional details can be found at the film’s website FourLetterFilm.com.

It’s coming! The holiest day of the year for cartoon buffs – the arrival of the annual LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION. And I’m lucky enough to be holding the latest volume in my hand right now.Under the shiny gold-leaf cover (bundled differently this year, thus the package is a bit thinner looking) are four discs loaded with pure cartoon joy (okay, there are a couple of lame late Speedy Gonzales cartoons on disc three, but I survived and you will too). Sixty more Warner Bros. cartoons to add to our personal archives, beautifully restored, with entertaining, informative bonus materials that add to our knowledge of how these classics were made.Of course, as a consulting producer on the set, I’m intimately involved and biased. But I love the Golden Collection series – and I’m happy to do whatever I can to spread the gospel of Looney Tunes. Volume 4 goes on sale next Tuesday (Nov. 14th). I urge you to buy it right away! Here’s a few good reasons to do so:

Rare trailers (at left) and restored original titles (at right). Nuff said!

90 Day Wondering: Cartoon Modern fans will love this lavishly restored, rarely seen 1956 Chuck Jones Army reenlistment film. You’ll also see Ralph Phillips as an adult!

Great menus! Can you spot the un-P.C. picture of Bugs on this menu from Disc 1?

In celebration of the Channel Frederator podcast’s first anniversary, Frederator Studios has created FredEx, an experimental animation jam. Frederator has assembled an international group of filmmakers seeking to answer an age-old question: What is it like to be a robot?

The Secret Life of Robots is the first installment of the FredEx series. Kicking off production in July, executive producers (and contributing animators) Dan Meth and Lee Rubenstein selected fifteen Channel Frederator alumni to animate on the project, randomly matching each of them with a single word. The filmmakers were given two months to produce 10-20 seconds of original content, using their appointed subject to depict a specific aspect of robot existence.

Premiering today, the cartoon is available for free download at ChannelFrederator.com. It’s funny stuff and absolutely worth a look.

It’s Election Day here in the US so it’s only fitting to mention a new politically-oriented Flash Webcartoon. The series, BROCK & THROCK WITH ANOTHER CROCK, was created by Oscar and Emmy-winning director John Korty, whose animated feature TWICE UPON A TIME (1983) is the subject of a huge piece in ANIMATION BLAST #9. New episodes of BROCK AND THROCK are being posted on Revver, and currently, the first two episodes are available for viewing HERE and HERE. The production values on the Flash leave something to be desired, but considering that Korty hasn’t produced much animation since TWICE UPON A TIME, it’s simply fascinating to see him return to action on the Internet.

Here’s more about the series from its press release:

Although best-known for serious drama, Korty actually started as an animator. “This summer, I found some sketches from my very first experiments. One in particular was perfect for a dialogue between two characters – a single zigzag line that can function as the profile for either face. I had put it away, waiting for the right subject matter. The wait was fifty years.”

The online series, intended to run parallel to the fall election campaigns, skewers the Bush Administration on various topics, failed legislation, wire-tapping, religion in politics, foreign relations, even their favorite news channel.

Both fictional characters are staff members, but the conversations are not the type ever made public. Brock is a hardened veteran, while Throckie got an entry-level job because of his rich uncle. He is a less-than-bright neophyte. He can’t understand the furor about domestic wire-tapping, for instance. “Who cares what domestics are saying to each other anyway?”

For his voice talent, Korty drew upon the resources of San Francisco’s improv humor community. Bill Bonham and Jim Cranna, doing Brock and Throck respectively, have both performed for many years on radio spots and film soundtracks. Cranna, in fact, founded and taught at the Theatre of the Deranged, a hot house of zany improvisation.

(Thanks, Taylor Jessen)

Yesterday, Cartoon Network released the trailer for their first original live-action production RE-ANIMATED. We’ve already discussed this topic enough on the Brew so a simple link to the trailer should suffice. The movie premieres on CN in December.

Below is an excerpt from an ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE article about the new Cartoon Network series CLASS OF 3000. In it, the show’s executive producer/co-creator, Tom Lynch, proudly talks about how ignorant he is of the animation process:

Lynch confesses to “making every mistake anybody could make, and adding some new ones” on his road to creating a 2D series. “I think my worst one was when the cut came back [from overseas animation]. I looked at it and said, ‘Okay, I have some rewrites.’ They said, ‘Uhhh, you get some retakes…’ I had thought retakes meant whole scenes, but it was only moments or close-ups. That was an education right there, because in live-action I rewrite all the way through post-production, I change everything all the time.”

Now, obviously, one would assume that a guy like Lynch, who is clueless about animation and art, couldn’t just walk into Cartoon Network and demand his own animated series, right? CN must surely have higher standards than that. Well, here’s how Lynch describes his pitch to Cartoon Network’s Mike Lazzo:

“Mike asked me what I wanted to do next. I told him I really wanted to do an animated show, and I want to have some music in it. He said, ‘great, you have a pilot with us – do what you want to do.’”

Nothing about this industry surprises me anymore, but I’d be lying if I said that reading things like this didn’t piss me off. How is that CN won’t greenlight a surefire quality cartoon series from Aaron Springer, one of the industry’s most talented creators, but they’ll offer a no-questions-asked pilot deal to an ’80s kiddie show producer who doesn’t understand the first thing about animation? Somehow, in its own twisted way, it makes sense though. In an industry where you don’t actually need any knowledge of the art form to become an executive, it would be hypocritical to require that show creators know anything about animation either.

UPDATE: A Brew reader who prefers to remain anonymous, but who I can assure you is an excellent artist, writes in with the following. I had to edit most of the email to preserve their anonymity though you’ll get the gist of the message, which is that non-artists have the freedom to create any piece of junk they want at CN while visual artists have to jump through an interminable amount of hoops to get anything on the air:

I just read your post about Class of 3000 and I would like to give you some additional info. Tommy Lynch was actually never required to produce a pilot before the show was greenlit. The show went straight to series without ever being tested! They poured buckets of money into the show before it was ever launched; Craig Kellman, Stef Choi and many others all took passes at designing the characters. As you can imagine, this has created a bit of a double standard at CN. People like Dan Krall and Derik Bachman, Thurop Van Orman, as well as myself, have projects that have languished through countless executive notes while crap like Class of the 3000 gets the red carpet treatment.

The new book I AM PLASTIC: THE DESIGNER TOY EXPLOSION, by Kidrobot founder Paul Budnitz, is a handsomely designed and fun-to-flip-through visual history of “designer toys.” For those who aren’t aware, designer toys are essentially Beanie Babies for urban hipsters. They’re like regular toys except they’re garishly-colored, a lot more expensive and they don’t have any functionality besides sitting pretty on shelves. One of the justifications for the high prices of these “toys” is because they’re produced in limited editions, but as this book makes clear, there’s thousands of “limited edition” toys on the market, and despite their superficial differences, most of them appear to be cut from the same cloth. If anything, seeing the toys collected in a book like this only emphasizes how visually unimaginative and inbred the whole movement is. It’s sure to make a fine Christmas present for your friends who just don’t know any better.