A beautiful example of pure visual storytelling. Gobelins students Chloé Nicolay, Manddy Wyckens, Anthony Lejeune, Gaspard Sumeireand Léa Justum animated this short during their summer internship at Cube Creative in Paris.

The final Cartoon Dump of 2011 is here! Your last chance this year to see some of the worst cartoons ever made, and also dive into the Dump’s mixture of sketches, songs and the stand up comedy of our special holiday guests Chris Hardwick, Wayne Federman and Jay London!

Join our regular cast: TV’s Frank Conniff as Moodsy, the Clinically Depressed Owl, Erica Doering as Compost Brite, J. Elvis Weinstein as Dumpster Diver Dan, Kristin Ariggo as Cue Card Goddess and me – your host, Jerry Beck – at the infamous Steve Allen Theatre – tonight at 8pm!

Where? The Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. • Free Parking! • Advanced Tickets here • Phone: (323) 666-9797 • Map & Directions

Barcelona based Nacho Rodríquez directed and animated in Flash this fast paced music video for (Lo:Muêso). Rodriquez is partnered with Gina Thorstenson creating imaginative videos, all worth a look, at ThorstensonCoo.

Above right is a photo of me in Paris some years ago standing besides the grave of French filmmaker and visual fx pioneer Georges Méliès. I’d heard that Martin Scorsese’s new film Hugo incorporated the character of Méliès (portrayed by Ben Kingsley in the left-hand photo above), but I didn’t anticipate that the entire film would be essentially about him. More broadly, Hugo, which I saw in 3-D last night, is a celebration of filmmaking magic, the medium’s dreamlike possibilities, and true to Scorsese’s personal passions, the importance of film preservation. That Scorsese was able to package these themes into an entertaining family film is nothing short of miraculous.

The film’s strength is its visuals. I got a real kick out of the imagery, from the main setting of the train station and its cogs-and-gears innards to the intricate mechanics of the automaton who figured prominently in the film. The 1930s train station, which provides a warm and intriguing setting for the film, is almost a character in itself, but like most of the film’s characters, it suffers from broad caricature. In this case, it’s the cliched and tiresome American view of Paris, which was also seen in Woody Allen’s recent Midnight in Paris. The film’s freshest visual spectacles were the scenes that recreated Méliès’ films, appropriately so since the film was a celebration of his genius.

The 3-D must be mentioned. It was not offensive—an accomplishment in itself—but as usual, I’m left wondering how much it truly added. The opening shot of the film (was it all CG?), was contributed by ILM I think, and it was a fun use of 3-D in the roller coaster ride sense of the technology. In some of the early scenes, Scorsese showed motes of dust floating around the screen. The fact that I remember that, but not what was happening on the screen doesn’t speak well of the effect. To Scorsese’s credit, it appeared that he cut back on the 3-D trickery midway through the film, mostly recycling 3-D shots used earlier in the film or simply putting it aside in favor of more straightforward storytelling.

Final verdict: Hugo isn’t necessarily a classic, but it is a memorable children’s film with a refreshing lack of cynicism and lofty ideals.

A couple of animation-related notes:

* The film is an adaptation of Brian Selznick’s quasi-graphic novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret. A film based on the book was announced in May, 2008, and was slated to be the live-action directorial debut of Blue Sky co-founder and Ice Age director Chris Wedge. That version, for reasons unknown, was canned.

* A hand-tinted color version of Georges Méliès’s classic “A Trip to the Moon” (1902) was discovered in the 1990s and its restoration was recently completed by French film historian Serge Bromberg of Lobster Films. Bromberg is better known in the animation world as the artistic director of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

New Zealand based cartoonist, illustrator and animator Ned Wenlock created this stylish music video for an MGMT cover tune, from the album Late Night Tales. More info on the concept and his process on Wenlock’s blog.

CREDITS
Directed by Ned Wenlock
Character animation by Rodney Selby
Produced by Georgiana Taylor

Me & Mr. Wolf is the latest animated music video from The Real Tuesday Weld, a collaboration from the band’s Stephen Coates with George Fort and Monica Smith of Monkey Frog Media in Ecuador. Fort told The Huffington Post:

“My wife Monica and I moved from NY a year and a half ago to Ecuador where we opened our studio and did some production work for Superjail! season 2 and The Venture Brothers. The crew includes Artists from Ecuador, New York, Vermont and Canada. I wrote some of it on the beach in Ecuador and the rest at 8200ft in the Andes mountains. There were artists from Beavis and Butthead, Superjail!, The Venture Brothers, Ren and Stimpy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fast Forward, Celebrity Deathmatch, and Sesame Street to name a few. “Stephen gave me free range for the video, which left it wide open. I’ve always loved monster movies, so of course I took inspiration from The Wolfman (1941). I also looked at old classic noir, surrealist films and art to add interest and suspense. In addition, I tried to incorporate things from old ’30s cartoons, especially Fleischer. These are all things from the 30s and 40s which fits the feel of The Real Tuesday Weld’s music. I really wanted to make it exciting so I didn’t hold anything back.”

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I just received Profiles In History’s latest auction catalog: Icons of Animation and its pretty incredible. Above are a few of the offerings that caused me to do a Tex Avery double take: a rare cel from one of The Flintstones sponsor bumper for Winston cigarettes; pencil animation from MGM’s Bosko and The Pirates (1937); and a cache of production photos from the Kinex stop motion studio – the one above from The Cannibal Isle (1927). Priceless stuff!

The Icons of Animation auction takes place on Saturday December 17th at The Paley Center in Beverly Hills. Van Eaton Galleries will be displaying the material in advance preview, December 9th through 16th (10am to 6pm each day). Their are literally hundreds of Disney items ranging from cels from The Band Concert (1935) to Mary Blair originals from Alice in Wonderland (1951). Lots of stuff for every taste, from Gulliver’s Travels cels to Leon Schlesinger Bugs Bunny comic strips… check out the entire catalog online here.

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Click thumbnails below to enlarge images – L to R: a pan cel from Tezuka’s Astro Boy; The Icons of Animation catalog with the earliest surviving color Mickey Mouse Cel on the cover (note the green trunks!); and an incredibly rare cel set up from Iwerks’ Balloonland (1934):

Opening today is Aardman/Sony Animation’s Arthur Christmas and so far, the critics like it. Michael Phillips in The Los Angeles Times calls it “manic, but charming”. Neil Genzlinger writing in The New York Times says, “The plot may be a little too cluttered for the toddler crowd to follow, but the next age group up should be amused.”

Were you amused? Let us know in the comments below (and you know the rules: only those who have seen the film can post below).