Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- This is a short reminder that Turner Classic Movies airs some older animated shorts with excellent prints on Saturday mornings at 11:30am. (Naughty But Mice is Chuck Jones’ first short starring Sniffles.)

The schedule for April is as follows:

April 8 11:30 AM Cartoon Alley #13
Features three Sniffles the Mouse cartoons: Naughty But Mice (1939), Little Brother Rat (1939) and Sniffles and the Bookworm (1939).

April 15 11:30am Cartoon Alley #14
Features three Droopy Dog cartoons: Dumb Hounded (1943), Shooting of Dan McGoo (1945) and Wild and Woolfy (1945).

April 22 11:30am Cartoon Alley #15
Features three Tweety Bird cartoons: A Tale of Two Kitties (1942), Birdy and the Beast (1944) and A Gruesome Twosome (1945).

Apil 29 11:30am Cartoon Alley #16
Features three MGM Cinemascope Cartoons: Millionaire Droopy (1956), The Cat’s Meow (1957), Tops With Pops (1957).

- For those desperate for their monthly Miyazaki hit, May will offer a rerun of the Miyazaki films in the late night schedule on TCM (with dubbed English versions). The schedule is as follows:

May 5 – 2:00am Castle in the Sky (1986)
A boy and girl race pirates to find a legendary floating castle.
Cast: Voices of James Van Der Beek, Anna Paquin, Mark Hamill. Dir: Hayao Miyazaki

4:15am Porco Rosso (1992)
An airplane pilot with a pig’s head devotes his life to rescuing others.
Cast: Voices of Michael Keaton, Cary Elwes, Kimberly Williams. Dir: Hayao Miyazaki

May 12 - 2:00am Princess Mononoke (1999)
A woman raised by wolves leads forest animals in a fight to save their homes.
Cast: Voices of Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver. Dir: Hayao Miyazaki.

4:30am My Neighbor Totoro (1993)
Two girls with a sick mother find escape with the spirits of the forest.
Cast: Voices of Dakota Fanning, Timothy Daly, Lea Salonga. Dir: Hayao Miyazaki.

May 19 - 2:00am Whisper of the Heart (1995)
A young girl goes looking for the boy who has checked out all the same library books as she.
Cast: Voices of Brittany Snow, Cary Elwes, Harold Gould. Dir: Yoshifumi Kondo.

4:00am Pom Poko (1994)
A group of magic raccoons use their shape shifting powers to save their forest home.
Cast: Voices of Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Clancy Brown, J.K. Simmons. Dir: Isao Takahata

– If there was one injustice in this year’s Oscar nominations, it was the absence of Werner Herzog‘s film, Grizzly Man in the Documentary Feature category. Herzog has been, for me, the finest documaentary film maker in the past thirty years. This was not only the best documentary last year, it was one of the best films.

Herzog has completely changed and challenged the form, and the Academy continues to ignore him. Despite the success of this latest film, it somehow didn’t even make the shortlist for Oscar’s documentary contenders, but the cartoonish, March of the Penguins, will probably win! It’s confusing when art is ignored.

Grizzly Man is about a confused man who lives with bears. He photographed most of this documentary himself, before being killed, and Herzog assembles it. This continues Herzog‘s fascination with people on the fringe who are dedicated to their visions.

The film premieres tonight on the Discovery Channel at 8pm. Set your vcr’s.

After you watch that, go out and rent LA SOUFRIÈRE. It’s a longish short film, and will change what you think about documentaries.

– Here’s another posting from the Fleischer Animated News, - the in-house organ of the Fleischer studio. (Sorry, but this paper is entertaining me just now!) It’s from 1939.*

This is a notice that Max Fleischer is teaching classes in the studio. (I like that it indicates that there is no charge.)

It’s accompanied, here, by a Hal Seeger cartoon about the classes. The same cartoon comments on a parking ticket Dave must’ve received. Presumably, Hal Seeger was close enough with the brothers that he felt it was ok to jibe them.

click on these images to enlarge them.

*Corrected by Jerry Beck (see comments) as Oct 1935.

Peter Bart’s editorial in Variety re the mergers of Pixar/Disney and WB/UPN is entertaining and worth a look.

- Likewise, Michael Barrier, today, has posted a serious look at the business side of the buyout/merger.

- More of the same: if you haven’t seen this post yet, at O-Meon.com, it’s a report on the work John Lasseter will have in front of him as the Principal Creative Advisor at Disney Imagineering. (Looks like Cars will be the last film Lasseter directs.)

- It shouldn’t be such a surprise that the Golden Globes have announced the creation of a new catergory for the Best Animated Feature. The question, really, is why have they waited so long? Is this part of the outcome of Disney folding Pixar into its web? Another question is why do the SAG Awards feature so many cute clips of actors doing Voice-Overs, when they offer no Voice-Over category awards? Don’t these actors deserve honor too?

- A lot of unsung people make the movies we see and go without enormous accolades. That’s one of the nice things about the Annie Awards. Merits are rewarded.

- To that end, I’ve decided to post the following pages from the Fleischer’s Animated News, their monthly newsletter. It includes a lot of cartoons, poems and miscellaneous information by and about the studio’s talent. (I believe it’s a 1939 issue, but I can’t find a date.) Mariana Johnson was a longtime fixture in NYC animation. She worked in the I&P departments of a number of studios. I met her at the Raggedy Ann studio in 1977. In this piece she and her husband, animator Tom Johnson, are featured in the “Tintypes” column. I thought it worth posting. Tomorrow I’ll add the page about Tom.

Click the images to enlarge them.

Turner Classic Movies continues to support quality in animation by showing some beautifully restored MGM cartoons on a program they call, Cartoon Alley. It airs, primarily, on Saturday mornings. For January, they have the following cartoons scheduled:

Cartoon Alley #1
07 Saturday 11:30 AM & 12 Thursday 5:30 AM
Features three Clark Gable caricatures: CooCoo Nut Grove (1936), Malibu Beach Party (1940), Hollywood Steps Out (1941).

Cartoon Alley #5 14 Saturday 11:30 AM
Features three Tex Avery Cartoons: Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), Batty Baseball (1944) and Swingshift Cinderella (1945).

Cartoon Alley #6 21 Saturday 11:30 AM
Features three early color shorts from Warner Bros: Honeymoon Hotel (1934), Beauty and the Beast (1934), I Haven’t Got a Hat (1935).

Cartoon Alley #7 28 Saturday 11:30 AM
Features three MGM shorts from The Captain and the Kids series: Cleaning House (1938), Petunia National Park (1939), Mama’s New Hat (1939).