Catnapped!Several more obscure Japanese anime features will be having rare theatrical showings in Los Angeles in the next couple of months. Laemmle Theatres is hosting the Chanoma Film Festival at the Fairfax Theatre in Hollywood one week each month. This series includes the best Japanese family films, with two films being showcased each month.JUNKERS COME HERE an excellent Miyazaki flavored fantasy from director Junichi Sato (Salior Moon) and producer Kazuo Komatsubara (Naussiaca) will play September 10th through 16th, each day at 3:10pm and 7:35pm.
CATNAPPED! a zany funny animal adventure written and directed by Takashi Nakamura, (animation director of “Akira”) will screen December 10th through December 16th daily at 1pm, 4:30pm & 8pm.
THE DAY THE EARTH MOVED from director Toshio Goto is (like Barefoot Gen) the story of survival of several children during the massive 1995 earthquake in Kobe City. December 10th through December 16th daily at 2:45pm, 6:15pm & 9:45pmMore information, images, and trailers can be seen at www.chanoma.org

I had a great time at a screening of the Korean animated SKY BLUE last night at the Egyptian Theatre.The visuals are incredible. The story was the usual post-apocalyptic haves versus have nots plot with pro-enviromental overtones, but unlike the recent and similiar all-cg KAENA, this film is always compelling, due to the director’s choices of shots, cutting and on screen action. I wasn’t bored for a moment.Producer & co-writer Sunmin Park was on hand for a Q&A, revealing that we had just watched an High-Def screening of the film (it was as good as any 35mm print I’ve ever seen - say goodbye to film). She said the film was composited in HD and is a combination of traditional hand drawn animation (quite good), CG, miniatures and live action… and it worked for me.She said they were in talks for U.S. distribution and hoped to get it released (for Oscar consideration) this year. The English dub was satisfactory, but not great - lip sync was off and some of the secondary actors were poor. All in all, I’d recommend seeing SKY BLUE, especially in a theatre, when it comes out.

To commemorate his 70th birthday, Donald Duck gets his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this Monday, August 9 at 10:30 am. The unveling will take place at 6840 Hollywood Blvd. in front of the Disney Store/El Capitan Theatre.

A Brew reader from Singapore writes the following note regarding MY COMMENTS on the new Lucasfilm animation studio in Singapore. I can’t confirm the validity of the info within, but for the sake of discussion, it’s worth posting the email here.

I am SO HAPPY that you saw that George Lucas’ attempt to set up a studio here had nothing to do with artistic conviction. Truth is that one of our businessmen, Sim Wong Hoo, owner of Creative Technology, is a shareholder in Lucas’s THX sound system. He called up the chairman of the Economic Development Board one day, asked him if “he’d like to contact Lucas,” and the Chairman agreed straight away. And that is how it all began.

BTW, there are good graphic novels made by Singaporean artists, like MALINKY ROBOT AND STINKY FISH BLUES. But then again, dude got his work started only via grant from the Xeric Foundation founded by Peter Laird, and was educated at Cambridge in Philosophy and the Rhode Island School of Design…so can you say we MADE him what he was?

Painter/designer Tim Biskup is on the cover of JUXTAPOZ magazine this month, and inside of the issue there’s a short but informative interview with him. Tim discusses a lot of familiar names - Blair, Oreb, Benedict, Flora - and recounts an important lesson he learned from John Kricfalusi: “He pointed out that Mary Blair, and all of the really good animation people, could draw really well…Then, when they abstracted the forms into cartoon characters, they were these amazingly balanced, beautifully formed creatures. They were flat, but the character had form.” Also in this same issue, there’s an ad for the Bispop Gallery: The Tim Biskup Store which opens next month inside of Johnson Motors Inc. (36 W. Colorado Blvd. #7, Pasadena, CA 91105). The all-Biskup store will feature original art, toys, apparel, books, ceramics and everything else Tim has ever done. Mark your calenders for the grand opening bash on Saturday, September 18 from 6-9 pm.

Animator Chris Romano has posted his work on a website, Toonlets, and came up with several clever audition pieces - including this one, FRANKENBERRY REDUX a CG remake of a classic 70s-era cereal commercial.

Under the radar - and with no U.S. release planned at all - is a full length CG feature based on the hippie-trippy 1960s British kids show The Magic Roundabout. This is the U.K. series that won a cult following among adults for its perceived drug references. You can catch the trailer here.

Since discovering his site a few weeks ago, Ben Ettinger’s AniPages Daily has become one of my favorite blogs around, which is perhaps notable because the primary focus of his journal is Japanese animation. What makes his writing unique is that he doesn’t approach anime from the conventional fanboy perspective with lots of long plot synopses and the like, but instead focuses on the actual animation and the individual animators who are responsible for the work. Ben writes effortlessly about classic Japanese animation as well as modern films, and recently he posted a comprehensive look at the animated features produced by Toei Doga from 1958-1972, which includes films such as LITTLE NORSE PRINCE, JACK AND THE WITCH and a local favorite among the LA crowd LITTLE PRINCE AND THE 8-HEADED DRAGON. When not writing about anime, he also finds the time to praise the works of great non-Japanese animators like Oskar Fischinger and Yuri Norstein.

One film that Ben has been tirelessly plugging for the past couple months is MIND GAME, which opens this weekend in Japan. I was unsure of what the hype was about until I saw the trailer, and now all I can say is WOW! This film looks to be a pure demented visual trip along the lines of YELLOW SUBMARINE, but many leaps beyond; a perfect melding of art and technology and an incredibly beautiful use of animation. The director is Masaaki Yuasa, whose short film SOUND INSECT NOISEMAN both impressed and confused me when I saw it a few years ago. Despite a limited release in theaters, MIND GAME is generating a lot of buzz in Japan’s animation community, and according to Ben’s latest update, the animation studio Madhouse has even started a cheerleading squad to promote the film in the streets of Tokyo. That’s rather amazing considering that Madhouse had nothing to do with the film’s production; the equivalent would be DreamWorks animators running around the streets of Burbank to promote the latest Disney feature.