Cartoon Brew

GENNDY INTERVIEW

Genndy Tartakovsky discusses his Emmy win, Samurai Jack, Clone Wars and his forthcoming ASTRO BOY feature with the Chicago Sun Times.

AN OPEN LETTER TO COMCAST

Sony officially announced it's intent to buy MGM this week. To raise the billion-dollar plus asking price needed to make the purchase, cable TV megacorp Comcast chipped in several hundred million to become a partner with Sony and three other companies to close the deal. John R. Alchin, vice president and treasurer of Comcast, said earlier this week the company is already "looking at possible new channels using material from MGM and Sony's film and television libraries".

Dear Comcast,
You've just bought into one of the greatest film libraries of all time. Over 8000 feature films, numerous classic television episodes, not to mention the short subjects (The Three Stooges), serials (The Iron Claw, The Lost Planet, etc.) and cartoons.

I have an idea for you. A suggestion for a new cable channel you could create, that would be an instant success. A classic cartoon channel aimed at adults. Sort of a TCM for animation. A home for classic cartoon stars.

Naturally the kids will love it - but you're smarter than that. You know that adults will tune in great numbers - to enjoy all the cartoon characters they grew up with. Characters no longer running on any television channel, and barely present on dvd.

The library you've just bought into gives you a head start: you now own cartoons starring The Pink Panther, Mr. Magoo, Li'l Abner, Gerald McBoing Boing, Krazy Kat, The Ant & The Aardvark, Scrappy and The Fox & Crow. You've got Oscar winning animation by Friz Freleng, John Hubley, Ernest Pintoff (1963's The Critic). You own early anime features like The Little Norse Prince, Jack And The Witch, Alakazam The Great, and The World Of Hans Christian Anderson. Your ties with Sony give you rights to recent anime features like Metropolis, Steamboy, Cowboy BeBop, Tokyo Godfathers and who knows what else from Sony's Animax anime channel. For late nights, you've got Fritz The Cat, Heavy Traffic, Heavy Metal and American Pop. You own TV series as diverse as Prince Planet, Super President, Jumanji, Hanna-Barbera's Jeannie (based on I Dream Of Jeannie), Super Six, The Real Ghostbusters and Dilbert.

And just think of the material you could acquire! Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda from Universal, Betty Boop and Little Lulu from Paramount, Casper and Baby Huey from Classic Media, and on and on.
Who knows, maybe Disney will license Mickey, Donald & Goofy, and Warner's will give you Popeye and Droopy - they don't run them on their cable channels anymore.

Please consider starting the Animation Station (clever title, eh?). I'd be happy to advise you further at this address.

Sincerely Yours,

Jerry Beck
www.Cartoon Brew.com

VAN BEUREN SCREENING

Reminder: Saturday afternoon (9/25) Mark Kausler and I are hosting an Asifa Hollywood screening of classic Van Beuren TOM & JERRY cartoons at the AFI in Hollywood. These are NOT the Cat & Mouse comedies made famous by Hanna Barbera at MGM. These are funky 1932-33 black & white, jazz hot cartoons - not available on 99¢ dvds - including: Wot A Night (the first in the series), Trouble, Joint Wipers, The Tuba Tooter, Jolly Fish, Barnyard Bunk Tight Rope Tricks, Happy Hoboes, Puzzled Pals, and The Phantom Rocket (The last in the series). Join us at 3pm for a good time.

NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT

Disney continues to do a good job of keeping Mickey Mouse present in modern merchandising - everything from personal computers to soft drinks is endorsed by the mouse these days. But I am particularly impressed with a new series of Kleenex tissue boxes (now on sale) celebrating Mickey's 75th anniversary - one of which features the earliest 1928 Mickey on one of its side panels. When was the last time you saw the black & white Mickey - limited editions and Disneyland merchandise excepted - promoted on such a mass market item?
Gesunteit!

ISSA

Animator Mike Nguyen (The Iron Giant, Beauty & The Beast), who has been toiling away of late on his own personal animated film (My Little World), recently collected his paintings devoted to his pet cat, created over a 15 year period, into a just-released self-published book, Issa.

Mike will be signing copies at the Brand Central Library in Glendale, CA on Thursday, October 28th, from 6:00pm - 8:30pm. Original artwork from the book will be on display, as well as trailers and clips from Mike's work-in-progress feature film. You can see pages from the book and purchase it online directly from Mike at Julysky.com

Amid in Ottawa

I'm off to the Ottawa Animation Festival, which starts this evening (it's going to be a mighty long day). There's an amazing line-up of programs scheduled for this year and I'm sure it'll be an excellent time. I'm especially excited because I'm hosting the Fred Crippen retrospective which will be showing on Thursday and Sunday. Fred is an amazing animator and director, and he's done it all over the course of the past fifty years from UPA and SESAME STREET to ROGER RAMJET and adult cartoons for HBO and The Playboy Channel. He even has a brand-new film, IMPROVING COMMUNICATIONS, premiering in Competition #1 and it's a real hoot. I'm also moderating a "Meet the Master" session with Fred on Saturday afternoon and will be speaking on the panel "Your Criticism Sucks!" alongside Chris "Animation Pimp" Robinson, Richard O'Connor, Mikhail Gurevich and ANIMATION MAGAZINE's Rita Street. There's going to be fireworks at this one folks...at least I'm hoping so. I'm not sure yet whether I'll be blogging from Ottawa or doing a wrap-up report after the festival, but if the parties are anything like Annecy and Zagreb, don't expect to hear from me until after the fest. If you see me up there, give me a shout. Here's what I look like.

Pixar's Growing Pains

Fascinating article (and delightfully grotesque editorial art) in the EAST BAY EXPRESS about Pixar's continuing battles with the city of Emeryville as they attempt to expand the size of their studio. The piece reports that there's now a measure opposing Pixar's architectural plans on the November Emeryville ballot. Regardless of the studio's expansion woes, after seeing this new INCREDIBLES trailer, I can assuredly say that Pixar has created the best American animated feature of 2004. Granted, when your competition is SHARK TALE and HOME ON THE RANGE, that's not saying much, but Brad Bird's latest looks truly sumptuous and certainly one of the most entertaining animated features in years.
(Thanks to Karl Cohen for the article link.)

Fafi Girls

Appealing graffiti art HERE. Fafi is a French artist who specializes in drawing cute girls. Her work reminds me a bit of Katie Nice and Junko Mizuno, and for the most part is solidly drawn with creative flourish to spare. Fafi will be having a gallery show in LA at four x four opening on Friday, November 12. (link via Jared Chapman)

Design Books Galore

Illustrator Mark Frauenfelder's recent post on Boing Boing about the forthcoming Jim Flora book is a reminder of what a wonderful time it is for aficionados of mid-century cartooning and animation. In the past couple years, there have been books dedicated to the work of Flora, Gene Deitch and Mary Blair, and there's still more to come. I've heard that a Maurice Noble coffeetable book is in the pipeline, and I'm personally working on a comprehensive volume about Fifties animation design which will be published by Chronicle Books in 2006.

MORE CHEAP CARTOON DVDS

This must be the golden age of cheap public domain cartoon dvds. ILM animation director Tom Bertino sent in this toon tip:

Your posting of the 99-cent TOM & JERRY DVD made me think I should tip you off to something, if you don't know about it already. There is a 12-disc box on the market with the woefully generic title "100 CARTOON CLASSICS". All PD stuff, and while the usual suspects are there (yet another repackaging of POPEYE FOR PRESIDENT) and there's a lot of odd as well (some of the most off-brand TV stuff imaginable), there are some really wonderful oddities lurking within. One whole disc (coincidence?) is devoted to Van Beuren T&Js, and scattered around are a number of VB Aesop's Fables... DIXIE DAYS, RED RIDING HOOD, things like that. There are also a few Ted Eshbaugh indies, including GOOFY GOAT ANTICS. There's even a Toby The Pup in there, for God's sake! I paid something like $26.00 for it at my local Borders, and felt like I sure got my money's worth.

ANIMAC

A few years ago I was invited to be a judge for the animation sidebar to the SITGES FANTASY FILM FESTIVAL in Spain. Animator Carolina Lopez ran an excellent mini animation festival there, which she dubbed Animac. Now the mini-fest has turned into it's own event run by Isabel Herguera. I've just recieved a very well designed entry form for ANIMAC '05 which will be held on February 24th through the 27th, 2005, in Lleida (Catalonia - Spain). Filmmakers wanting to have their films shown there have until Nov. 30th to enter their work. Visit their nifty Flash-enhanced website for more details.

Dun't Esk

Milt Gross's graphic novel HE DONE HER WRONG (1930) is examined in this ARTICLE at Indy Magazine. Somebody really needs to publish a good bio/art book documenting the vastly underrated work of Gross. For the time being, Shane Glines is posting a lot of Gross's finest cartooning on his subscription site CartoonRetro.com.

First Day at the Office

Thursday, July 15, 2004 (Part II)
_________________________

I arrive at the studio, where I'm issued an electronic badge with my picture on it. This will open locked doors and help the crew identify the New Guy, but how the hell am I supposed to learn a hundred new names, many of them with umlauts and ligatures and accents? The Ö's and Æ's and ß's are daunting to my fevered, jet-lagged brain, but fortunately I brought many high-tech recording devices with me from America. I set my trusty digital camera to "video" and greet every new face with a cheerful, "Hi! Can you tell me your name and how to spell it?" This breaks the ice, gives me some great audio and visual reference, and pegs me as a weirdo immediately.

After an intense day of writing, Mark Zaslove and I go out for a bite. Man, the chow is yummy here, and the coffee is the best I've ever tasted. I drink approximately one million cups of it a day. On the way back from the restaurant we pass a club called Sirkus, where a mob has gathered hoping to catch a glimpse of the Tom Selleck Competition. I make a note to check the place out later. Right now I'm beat.

I stumble home and get in bed, writing about pirates until I fall asleep with my computer on my chest. As I drift off the voices of invisible women whisper trivialities in my ears, jarring me awake. What in the world is going on inside my head? Or are the voices coming from outside my head? Am I going nuts? Probably.

Oh, well. Beautiful day for it.

Good night to all,
Ken Pontac, Iceland

DISNEY CELS

My buddy Arnold Leibovit (The Puppetoon Movie) has a nice website called Sci-Fi Station which is dedicated to the great fantasy filmmakers of the past: Walt Disney, George Pal, Ray Harryhausen and others. Arnie just uploaded images from a batch of vintage Disney cels for sale - great ones - consigned to him from several private collections. If classic Disney art is your thing, take a look. At these prices, I'll be content just to window shop (or the internet equivalent of that term) -- but what a nice group of images.