Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Last night ASIFA East held its shindig at the New School. There was a screening of the award winners which lasted about 2½ hours but generally moved quickly. A quiet gathering in the garden followed the screening.

My favorite of all the films screened was MILCH, Igor Kovalyov‘s beautiful film. It won 2nd Best Independent Film. It was the third time I’d seen the film, and it’s just as powerful. It takes a bit of thought. I also love the United Airlines commercial by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis. I don’t remember what prize that spot took, but it’s a beauty of a film that I’ve seen many times and still enjoy.

When I get a complete list of winners and don’t have to depend on my memory, I’ll post them.

Old friends and new who I met at the after party included: ASIFA East’s current president, David Levy, its last president, Linda Simensky, as well as AWN’s Ron Diamond, Jason McDonald, Adrian Urquidez, Yvette Kaplan, Deborah Solomon, Ray Kosarin, Candy Kugel, Heather Kenyon, Biljana Lubovic, Willy Hartland, Bill Plympton, John Dilworth, Masako Kanayama, Janet Benn and Skip Battaglia.

There were plenty of others there, but my memory is fading fast. Too many people at too many parties this past weekend.

My sadness at this version of this Festival is that there was no Charles Samu Award offered or given (I thought MILCH would have been perfect for it). This, I thought, was going to be an award in honor of the most enthusiastic animation devotee I’d ever met. It was created after Charles’ death in 1989 in conjunction with the Leo Dratfield Fund and Robert Flaherty Film Seminars. This award was a link to the past and a link to the rest of the world of film and animation. But then when I realized last night that there was to be no such award, I also realized that most of those newer folk in the audience wouldn’t remember who Charles was or care. Without the award, they never will.

Somehow, to me, the ASIFA East Awards ended up getting smaller by dropping at least the mention of his name on this prize.

- Wednesday there’s the program at The Film Forum, CARTOONS: No Laughing Matter?, which I’m looking forward to. It’ll be nice to meet up with some animators from the more experimental world that ASIFA tends to ignore.

- Last night The Tribeca Film Festival closed out with their award show. (Actually it didn’t quite end – I have another screening of my film this morning.) It was held in a large Chinese restaurant called The Golden Bridge (nowhere near San Francisco but just across the street from the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge). It was one of the largest restaurants I’ve ever been in. We were seated at a table near the entrance where we could easily view most of the celebs as they entered. However, like most Chinatown restaurants, there was the constant banging into you as waiters and others squeezed by to get to another place. The food kept coming, and it was mostly good, but no one knew what it was we were eating, and the waiters couldn’t speak English.

Once the food was done, the awards began. This is the only festival I’ve encountered that gives out actual art as the award. I won’t always hang my certificates, but I will hang an Alex Katz or a Jeff Koons. (To see what the awards look like go here.)

They didn’t give an award for animation (most of the animated films were out of competition) but did for short – narrative and documentary. It totally confused the film makers sitting alongside us when they were named winners for “best documentary narrative”. They hadn’t realized they’d made a documentary. It turns out it was just the person calling out the winner who’d made a mistake. (“The Shovel” by Nick Childs – Director, Writer, Producer and Steve Hardwick – Producer.)

As a matter of fact the real best documentary winners sat on the other side of us. (“Native New Yorker” by William Susman – Producer/Composer and Steve Bilich – director.) A lucky table.
We’d spent a couple of hours talking to these guys on both sides of us, so when they’d won we couldn’t have been happier.

After the awards, they shuffled everyone into the open-bar room (a large but not-as-large) room where everyone was comfortably but tightly packed. They cleared the tables out of the larger room, but, of course, most stayed in the back room. Heidi was spotted by a friend she hadn’t seen in the last five years, and the two of them caught up. Her husband, it turns out, was the audio mixer for Dreamworks’ Over The Hedge, so the two of us chatted for a bit. Small world – no matter how far you run away from the animation, it’s always catching up with you.

- Tonight we’ll really catch up with animation as ASIFA East hosts their festival. It’ll be interesting to see who shows up at this event; usually most of the town’s animation types make an appearance. Certainly it’ll be fun.

– In the what took so long category is the new, fabulous blog Mark Mayerson has put together. It’s clean, direct, accurate, and informative. Mark is far and away one of the finest historians out there, and it only enriches us all to have his thoughts on line regularly.

For quite some time, Mark’s site dedicated to the work of animator Al Eugster has been one of the benchmarks of animation history on line. This older site features some very valuable photos and archival material on one of the great animators.

I’m sure I’ll often be pointing out a lot of the valuable material he offers on this new, welcome site. For now … visit Mayerson On Animation.

- There’s a lot of animation in NYC this weekend. Of course, the ASIFA East celebration/party/Awards presentation is Sunday at 6PM at the New School Auditoruium, 66 East 12th Street.

Tonight, the Tribeca Film Festival comes to a close with their awards presentation and party. I’ll be rooting for Emily Hubley’s short to win a prize there.

– This Sunday, May 7th, ASIFA East is having their 37th Animation Festival. The screening starts at 6pm at the New School Tishman Auditorium 66 West 12th Street Between 6th and 7th.

It’s always a great affair where students mix with pros, all the studios come out, and award winners flash their certificates. This acts as the central gathering for the NY animation community. If you’re in NY, you gotta go.

- There’s a lot happening in animation in NY this month, between ASIFA East, Tribeca and the upcoming Film Forum program. There are also a lot of local colleges having their graduate screenings.

- Yesterday, the Tribeca Film Festival had their Directors’ luncheon. It was held at a restaurant called Ono in the meatmarket section of NY, 9th Ave. & 13th St. I saw Jeff Garlin and Robert Wuhl there. Jane Rosenthal and Robert DeNiro made short speeches, and a number of animators were in attendance: Emily Hubley, Bill Plympton, Alex Budovsky and Patrick Smith.

They set us apart at tables built around our specific type of film. I got to sit with live-action film makers from Toronto, Australia, Germany and a Festival director from Georgia (the country set between Russia and Turkey not the one in the deep South). I loved it and had a great conversation with these guys about the problems of making films in the different countries. Not-too-oddly enough, they’re all the same – money. Though the woman from Georgia talked about the cut-off they’ve had from Russia, itself, which has caused severe problems to their economy. (A different kind of money problem.)

All in all it was entertaining, enjoyable conversation, and the food wasn’t bad either, though it arrived slowly.

- There’s a sneak peek at a Maurice Sendak book in progress. It’s a 3d pop-up book about monsters from the 30′s. Robert Sabuda is a pop-up book artist who is helping with the design.

- Yesterday, I went to a screening of my film, Reading To Your Bunny, at the Tribeca Film Festival. There are three more screenings to come in the next week.
I wasn’t quite into this film at first, but was somewhat pleased with how it turned out.

Last year’s screening was on a relatively small screen, but today we had an enormous screen. I actually was amazed at how well it played large, and it certainly was my favorite of the films screened. (Perhaps I’m biased.)

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Viewing it with the distance of two weeks, I thought Matt Clinton did some excellent, first rate animation in it – his animation has grown so enormously in the last two years here. Paul Carrillo’s editing of the final music video to the Beatle-like song sung by Mary Chapin Carpenter is hilarious, and the Bg styling done by Adrian Urquidez really solidified the piece.

It was a family program. It was a beautiful day in New York so I wasn’t surprised to see a relatively small audience of kids – about 20, with their parents. One thing I have to say is that the Tribeca Festival is treating me like royalty, and I love it.

– And then last night, what turned out to be the inspiration for the day was a fabulous play about to open on Broadway, Shining City. Performances by Oliver Platt, Brían F. O’Byrne, Martha Plimpton, Peter Scanavino could not have been better – all of them, and the direction by Robert Falls was superb and artful. They mined the show for every ounce it had, and I soaked it in.

It’s built around an extended monologue given brilliantly by Oliver Platt to his therapist, Brían F. O’Byrne. The play deals with that part of our lives where we’re searching for something outside of ourselves to make things better, more exciting. Whether it’s god or ghosts or just an erratic change, these extra ordinary bouts seem to make the ordinary more liveable.

It’s an excellent production, done under the best possible circumstances. I encourage anyone near New York to seek it out. (Certainly the TKTS Booth must be offering half-price seats; no one seems to have heard of the show.) Go.

- Today’s NYTimes features an article about a Jordanian animated cgi series. “Ben and Izzy,” is about the sometimes-rocky friendship between two 11-year-old boys — one American, one Arab, and it is being shopped to the world. The NYTimes, apparently, is helping out.

– For the second year in a row, I have a film in the Tribeca Film Festival.

The film, – rushing to completion – READING TO YOUR BUNNY – will be screened as part of Tribeca’s Family Film series.

Saturday April 29th, 10:45am & Sunday May 7th, 11:15am at The AMC 34th Street Theater and Sunday April 30th at 10:00am at AMC 68th Street.

The gatherings, attention, parties and goodies they hand out is certainly the best part of this festival. Film makers are really made to feel special.

- There’s also a program of Independent Animation at the festival with a lot of NYC animation involved. I’m somewhat surprised that two of NY’s most important independent film makers weren’t included as part of it. George Griffin and Lisa Crafts both have exciting new films, and I’m sorry their films aren’t in it.

- ASIFA Hollywood has posted some excellent photos and a few comments on the UPA screening held in Hollywood Sunday night. It’s nice to see photos of Willis Pyle again; I haven’t seen him since Raggedy Ann & Andy (30 years ago). Also nice to see Howard Beckerman there; I hope he’ll write a piece for ASIFA NY’s newsletter. I hope someone will do a more in-depth cover of the event. Jerry Beck also talks about it briefly on Cartoon Brew.

- Amid Amidi continues to post stunning UPA art on his site, Cartoon Modern. More of Rooty Toot Toot. (There’ll never be too much for me.)

- The Cannes Film Festival, which hasn’t completely selected its roster of films to unveil next month, will probably include a couple of animated films. French animator, Michel Ocelot’s medieval Arabian tale “Azur and Asmar” is a likely contender as is Belgian director Picha’s satirical teen/adult cartoon “Snow White”. Picha’s film “The Missing Link” screened in competition at Cannes in 1980.

- Meanwhile Pixar’s “Cars” will not be previewed in Cannes because Disney’s European junket for the film will take place at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona – the weekend before the Cannes festival begins.

- As posted yesterday, the winners of the BAFTA Award for excellence in film were announced yesterday. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit was given the Michael Korda Award for Best British Film. It was an important award considering the competition, all excellent live action films. Congratulations to all of those involved at Aardman. Oscar’s next.

- Edited out of the show on BBC America was the award for Best Animated Short. The nominees were:
FALLEN ART – Jarek Sawko/Piotr Sikora/Tomek Baginski
FILM NOIR – Osbert Parker
KAMIYA’S CORRESPONDENCE – Sumito Sakakibara
THE MYSTERIOUS GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORATIONS OF JASPER MORELLO – Anthony Lucas/Julia Lucas/Mark Shirrefs
RABBIT – Run Wrake

The winner was FALLEN ART, a Polish CG animated film.
An interview with the film makers can be found here.

A summary of all the nominees, including the live-action shorts, can be found here.

If you’re into awards shows, tonight at 8pm (repeated at 11pm), you can watch the BAFTA Awards live on tape. Handed out earlier today, Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit won as the Best British Film. Brokeback Mountain won many of the other awards.