Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Tissa Memorial

photo by Mate Hidvegi

- As I recently wrote, John Canemaker and I are putting together a memorial for Tissa David. We have arranged to book a pretty large theater; we’ll ask specific speakers to talk about Tissa, and we’ll show several films and clips of Tissa’s brilliant art. At the moment we have no access to a space where we can have a wine and cheese offering, so come with plans to hook up with others if you want to go out afterward. If that should change I’ll let you know.

The event will take place on Tuesday, October 23rd at 7pm.

Until then, I’ll repost many of the Tissa pieces on Thursdays offering a lot of her drawings, interpretations of Hubley art and films she worked on otherwise. On Saturday posts I’ll bring you up to date on any further information about the event.
I’ll announce the place/the theater in a future post.

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Boing Boing

- I forgot to mention a couple of weeks back, the Splog made it to Boing Boing. In the earlier years I kept trying to get a mention on that site, but my fare never seemed to be what they were looking for. Eventually, I surrendered and stopped submitting posts.

Then I received an email from my friend, Mark Mayerson, congratulating me for making it. Wow!

I went to the link he gave me and found a YouTube transfer of one of my films there. This was a video I had made a million years ago (or maybe it was 1983) for a group I really enjoyed. Their song, Cavern, was long and sweet and minimalist, a movement I loved. (Give me Phillip Glass or early-John Adams over Chopin or Schumann any day of the week.)

The band, Liquid Liquid, was represented by 99 Records, a small record store in the Village. I went to the store and met with Ed Bahlman, the owner of the store and 99 Records. My offer was to do a music video. The agreement was that I could do what I wanted with no interference from anyone. We would jointly own the film. They could use it any time to promote the group, the song, the record company – in short anything to do with their company. I could use it however I wanted including all distribution rights that had nothing to do with the band.

I made the video. It’s an harangue against the unseen, daily bits of violence we all see in the world. Especially those who live in the city. Someone bumps into you on the street and keeps moving. Someone pushes you tight trying to get a subway seat. someone rushes to the front of the line in the supermarket oblivious to those who’ve waited. You know the stuff; the annoying bits of hurt people do while they listen to their I-phone, or while they’re texting and wouldn’t notice you even though you’re in their face. It’s my contention that these wee bits of violence ultimately turn into bigger, more hurtful turns. That’s where I aimed the video.

I wrote “video”, because that’s how I edited and finished the film. I wanted to teach myself how to use this new medium that was arising, and I edited at a major tape house in town. I was really into multiple and split screen film at the time, and I use this video to play with that. Lots of purposeful and planned repition on varied spli-screen setups. The band’s bassist, Richard McGuire, was always in touch, and I invited him to the edit, giving him a voice to make suggestions for the video. He came to the overnight session and we had a good time together pushing the piece to completion. Richard would later become a graphic designer, illustrator, and New Yorker cartoonist. He directed a segment of the French animation feature, Peur(s) du Noir.

The video quickly ended up on a couple of National, late night shows that broadcast new music videos. It also made its way to a few local shows. I sent it out to a small number of film festivals and had a modicum of success. It helped that the band was in a big law suit against a bigger group on a larger label. The contention was that the other group, Grand Master Flash, had stolen the group’s original riff. Liquid Liquid and 99 Records won that law suit and got some big PR. Of course, by that time the group had split up.

Terry Tolkin worked for 99 records. He would later become an Elektra Records vice president and No.6 Records label head. He was also my brother’s companion at the time. He helped in some of the early negotiating. Many years later, Terry contacted me asking if he could post the video on YouTube. (When we made the video there wasn’t much of an Internet, nevermind a YouTube.) I said sure, and it’s gotten a lot of hits (over 300 thousand.) The band has a big and well-deserved reputation. Terry put it up and a few years later Boing Boing noticed it.

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Toys

- Opening in theaters next Friday is a new animated feature. Toys In the Attic is a multimedia film combining 3D stop motion, 2D animation, pixillation and live action. The film stars the voices of Forest Whitaker, Joan Cusack and Cary Elwes in the English language version. The film was directed by Jiří Bárta, an interesting director working in the Czech Republic. The film will be in theaters on Friday, September 7th. I’ll have a review of it on Thursday.

After the fall of the Czech Republic, Bárta had the difficulty of being stuck in a country in which he wasn’t allowed to release any of his films. Through the 1990′s he pushed to do an animated feature called Golem. The film never found its financing, but a short trailer was made of the work he did on it. The trailer is predominantly live action setting up the story of the Golem. Bárta works in a very detailed multimedia look. Live action is partially animated, stop motion animation moves into live action or 2D. He works similarly in Toys in the Attic, a film that looks very different from the simulated (meaning cg) cartoon puppets that usually grace our screens. It also looks very different than Golem. Toys In the Attic is a children’s film.

Golem – a trailer

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Mickey Speaks (on Camera)

- This week, Hans Perk posted the animation drafts for the Disney short Mr Mouse Takes a Trip on his blog, A Film LA. This might be enough, except he also adds a YouTube video of Walt Disney doing the voice acting alongside Billy Bletcher (as Pegleg Pete) for this film. The video is obviously an extra on one of the Mouse DVDs, but I seem to have missed it. Regardless, even if you know this video, it’s worth seeing it again. How different the process of recording these days.

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Bear that Wasn’t

- Bill Benzon, just a step away from completing his thesis on Dumbo, takes a short break/post to write about the Chuck Jones film/Frank Tashlin story, The Bear That Wasn’t . . ..

Using Mike Barrier‘s incisive interview with Tashlin, as his back up material, Bill writes with some authority on this peculiar film from the oddball combination of Jones & Tashlin. Brains don’t always mix with blood, and from my vantage point the film doesn’t quite make it, though it’s interesting to read Benzon’s take on the WB cartoon. Not surprisingly there are some thoughts as to the similarities with Dumbo in its story. “In both cases we have animals imagined as ‘floating’ somewhere around and about and in-between the world of machines and men. That bear is mistaken for a man who hasn’t been broken to Fordist harness. . . . . . . And Dumbo’s problem is to find a way he can fit into the circus world as a performer.” In the end, we hear the simple yet complex reason, in Tashlin’s own words, why and how the story was destroyed by Jones.

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Brown Out

- It was a bit sad for me to see that Nickelodeon executive, Brown Johnson, had been ousted from her job. (Here’s Variety‘s take on it.) She truly created an excellent model for a children’s television network and helped form it into a real challenger to Disney’s channels. Brown Johnson pushed with a lot of original animation programming. Nick’s Dora the Explorer was developed under Ms. Johnson’s leadership; likewise the breakout show, Blue’s Clues. True, Nick hasn’t been all that recently. Where Disney changed and went with a lot of tweenies live action series, Nick tried to follow suit but not with confidence. They weren’t successful with that strategy. They should have just concentrated on better shows. Animated ones.

I guess networks only know from firing proven execs and hiring new, young, exciting turks. The first show announced by her West Coast replacement, Russell Hicks, is the yet-again-reworked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (Something tells me they haven’t found their way yet, and with a heavy dullard’s foot they plod forward with a loud thud.) Hopefully, Ms. Johnson will land elsewhere and bring her love of animation with her.

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Hubley Salute

- Finally, on Friday, Sept. 14th at 7:30pm the Motion Picture Academy will have a celebration of the work of John and Faith Hubley. The focus will be on their development as artists in animation with an ind-depth viewing of the artwork and films. Historian/animator, John Canemaker will host the talk and members of the family will be present.

Tickets are currently on sale: $3 for Academy members, $5 for general public.
I would buy tickets quickly if you plan to go; it will likely sell out soon.

Visit Oscars.org to purchase tickets or go to the boxoffice of the
Samuel Goldwyn Theater 8949 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills, Ca 90028.

This show is a slightly different version of the program that John conducted in New York City at the Academy, here. It was covered in a large way by me on this Splog. Go here to see that post, which includes lots of pictures as well as the full contents of the event. The difference between this coming event and the NY one is that Faith Hubley was not part of the NY program. She and several of her films are included in the LA version.

Tissa’s Art Lessons

Tissa David‘s nephew, Mate Hidvegi, sent me a number of excellent photos of Tissa, which were shot in this past year. I’d like to share a couple of the pictures Mr. Hidvegi has shared with me.

Tissa, greeting visitors as they get off the elevator. May 2012
This is exactly how I remember and will remember her.
A perfect photo.

Tissa’s good friend, artist Judith Reigl, drew this portrait
of Tissa in 1942. (Owned by Tissa’s sister, Katalin David.)

Tissa, sitting in her living room, May 2012
This is an amazingly beautiful photo.
Enlarge it for the full picture which is exact and accurate in its colors.

Needless to say, Tissa had a strong effect on me and my animation career. She also had an effect on my character and thought process as I matured as a person. She was extremely opinionated, but I found that I agreed with her opinion just about 100% of the time. She taught me to have faith in my opinions.

Years ago, I remember sitting through Fantasia at a private screening in John Canemaker‘s apartment. This was before the days of home video or dvd. John had secured a beautiful 16mm print for the occasion. This film was seminal to John’s life and spirit; I knew that and I suspect that Tissa also knew it. I’d also seen the film about 20 times in the year prior to that screening; it had just been re-released in NY for the first time in many years. I felt that the film had some of the greatest work of the Disney artists, and I also felt that it had some enormous lows.

At the end of the film, Tissa immediately piped up and proclaimed it a horrible movie. (John used to impersonate Tissa’s comment for years after, and it always brought a laugh.) She was overstating her thoughts, obviously, but for comedic effect. She hated the Pastoral and other kitschy parts of the film, but she undoubtedly loved the brilliance of Bill Tytla‘s devil or the strength of Reitherman‘s dinosaurs. Even the excellence of Kimball’s Bacchus couldn’t be denied. However, the overall effect was questionable, especially in that apartment screening where it wasn’t the overblown big screen and stereophonic sound version, and its flaws were more obvious.

Tissa blew the same trumpet on many other Disney features. There was a Museum of Modern Art screening of Jungle Book with Eric Larson, Ken Anderson and Gilda Ratner present to talk. I had all I could do to stay awake during the film. (Those horrible voices – Phil Harris, please!) Finally, it ended, and Tissa whispered the opinion, “What a dreadful movie!” I could only laugh. I thought I was the only one with that opinion, and she was voicing my thoughts (and covering up the fact that I slept through it.) We laughed together.

She absolutely loved Frank Thomas’ squirrel sequence from Sword in the Stone.As a matter pf fact, she had a soft spot for a number of Thomas’ sequences.She also loved Marc Davis’ work. His Cruella de Ville certainly stood out. Tissa surprised me during Beauty and the Beast when she praised a half shot of Belle walking and said it was a good walk. (This was within the castle while a prisoner of the beast.) You couldn’t see Belle’s feet, but Tissa believed it. This was high praise from her. By then I’d been concentrating more on the direction than the animation, so I was glad she caught me not paying attention to the screen action. She woke me up again, in a different way this time.

There were many gems Tissa praised to the hilt. The first time we saw Caroline Leaf‘s film, The Street she was full of superlatives. Tissa was a judge in Ottawa when Norshtein‘s Tale of Tales won Best in Show, and it deserved it. We sat through that film many times together. We both loved it. The Quay Brothers confused much of the audience that year with their early film, Nocturna Artificialia, but she loved it. Sodid I, and we spent a lunch talking about it.

In 1974, she opted not to work on the Hubley film, Voyage to Next (she never told me the reason though I believe it was because John was lowering her salary considerably – he had so little money on this film – and she had to stand up for herself), but she praised, privately to me, the animation of Bill Littlejohn even though she wasn’t crazy about the final film.

She shared a long list of things she didn’t like in her own work on films like Eggs, and Raggedy Ann. She also loved working on both films, and loved working for both directors – John Hubley and Dick Williams. After working on animation for Candide for Bob Blechman – low salary long hours and difficult but beautiful work – she told me privately that she would not work on any more films for Bob. She hated how the studio had reworked her animation and changed the cutting. She felt all her hard work had been damaged.

In short, I learned from Tissa that I should trust my judgement. I also used judicious thought in airing my opinion; I was always concerned about hurting the feelings of others. Tissa showed me that I had a strong and contrary opinion, but really I was just looking for my idea of quality. It was easy to say how much I liked things I didn’t, but it was hard to speak the truth and tried to articulate why. It isn’t always easy, but it’s certainly necessary for me. I suppose that makes me not always liked within the community, but the art of animation is too important for me. If my honest opinion gets someone to do better, it’s worth it.

Not too long ago an award winner at an animation festival offended me. At the after party, I told the film maker that his half of a walk cycle was an unforgivable cheat. The budget was the excuse that didn’t sit with me, and I stupidly hurt the animator/director. He hasn’t done half a walk cycle again, and I think my rudeness paid off. Especially in that he’s a gifted artist, and his work was better than what he offered us – even winning an award.

Tissa’s unforgiving critiques of my work, and there were many of them – many – over the years was always helpful. Every single comment from her, whether about my work or other people’s work, taught me something. The positives meant so much more because the negatives were just as honest. I’ll miss her barbs and her lessons. However, I have to say my own opinion of my work is more critical than she ever could have been. I just don’t have a second voice to back me up anymore, and I seriously miss that.

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UPA Production Numbers

- Following in the lead of Thad Komorowski‘s listing of production numbers from M-G-M and Warner Bros cartoons, Adam Abraham has opted to add all Production Numbers, he has for the UPA films. This list is complete to about 1956 and includes all the Columbia shorts.

This site, When Magoo Flew, is not only a good companion to the book but is excellent and informative in its own rite. There’s plenty of information here that doesn’t even appear in the book.

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Paul Rand . . . I mean Ayn Ryan

- For all those psychotic Paul Ryan lovers, Ayn Rand‘s The Fountainhead will be broadcast on TCM on Sunday, August 26 at 02:30 AM.

This gave me one of my favorite moments as an Academy member. It was a memorial service for Gary Cooper, who had died way back in 1961. They had clips from a number of his great films and a number of speakers who were part of his life (or he was part of their lives.) It was moving smoothly when Patricia Neal came to the microphone, dressed in a bright, slinky, crimson dress. She gave a short-ish speec which started with,”

“Gary Cooper was the love of my life.”

She revealed something that was obvious to many at the time. She and Cooper, while filming The Fountainhead, fell in love. Cooper was married and loved his wife. He would not leave his wife and child for Patricia Neal on her first film. The affair turned to an end. Neal was brokenhearted and told us, many years after. She told us she still loved Gary Cooper. It was a very emotional speech.

They followed with a clip from The Fountainhead.

Maria Cooper, Gary Cooper’s daughter, followed the clip and didn’t talk about Patricia Neal.

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Olympiad Twenty

I’ve received a notice about the following animated short pieces geared to the Olympics. (Better late than never.) They’re very short animated clips that lead one into another. The note that came with the email read as follows:

We’ve just made a series of 7 x 20 second animations in just two weeks with
one animator, which is getting really good feedback.
Wondered if you might like to see our animation and share it if you like?

Any feedback you can offer is most appreciated.

Kath Shackleton, Producer
Fettle Animation

Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of the material, however, I thought many of you would like them. The punchlines are consistently nasty and unpleasant, making the stories not very interesting to me. The animation seems excellent for Flash type work. A lot of labor went into them; I wish the writing had been more creative rather than nasty.

Please feel free to leave your comments for them; I’m sure many of you will like them more than I. It’s just my sentiment – my taste – in this period of world history.

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- I continue to weave through the boxes that make up the collection of animation art assembled by Vincent Cafarelli. This week I have anothe rmix of artwork; these pieces were all xerox copies (sometimes copies of copies.) I’ve tried to make them all presentable having to photoshop out some of the schmutz that came with old copiers. Since these are all models and pieces from the 30′s, I thought it worth the trouble.

Let’s start with the mix of models:

1
Gandy Goose a Terrytoon character. Not the best quality copy.

2
Cubby Bear, an early Van Buren character

3
Parrotville, another Van Buren product from their last years

4
Another Parrotville model sheet

5
I have no idea where this character was created,
though I’d bet on Van Buren.

6
A Fleischer character to play off Pudgy

7
Another kind of Fleischer dog.

8
A Fleischer chicken

9
A typically racist character from Fleischer’s ethnic types.

Here’s a copy of the program from the Paramount theater in New York on their premiere of Gulliver’s Travels.

First the outside pages (folded in the center)

Then the inside pages.

To add to the post, I thought I’d throw a random group of photos taken over the years with Vince and Candy at Perpetual Motion/Perpetual Animation or Buzzco.

Nick Tafuri’s party for animators
(LtoR) Jan Svochak, Candy Kugel, Vinnie Cafarelli,
And u-nion rep Gerard de Salvio.

Candy Kugel and Johnny Gentilella and Mrs. Tafuri

(LtoR) Howard and Iris Beckerman, Doug Crane, Candy Kugel and Ed Smith

Perpetual Motion Pictures:
(LtoR) Animators Vinnie Cafarelli, Jack Dazzo and Vinnie Bell

Buzzco: (LtoR) Candy Kugel, Lu Guarnier, Vinnie Cafarelli

Buzzco: (LtoR standing) Vince Cafarelli, Jack Dazzo, Vinnie Bell,
Jan Svochak, Arnie Levin, John Lopez, Max Seligman
(seated) Lu Guarnier, Bryon Moore

Some NY animation Academy members:
Vince Cafarelli, Candy Kugel, Jimmy Picker,
Frank Mouris, me and John Dilworth

My Politics

- Politics is starting to heat up, and I’m in heaven. I’ve got the Yankees doing great and have watched Mitt Romney on the run this past week. He’s pouting that the President hasn’t been fair when his campaign suggested that Romney may have committed a felony. Those papers said he was with Bain Capitol through 2001, and Romney said he was only the President, CEO and head of the company. He wasn’t running it for the last two of those years. Hard to imagine someone who was President, CEO and Head of the company but who had nothing to do with the company. He may have been flying East for two years to attend Board Meetings, but he wasn’t involved. This Presidential season is going to be a good one.

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Oskar Fischinger’s Raumlichtkunst

Images © 2012, Center for Visual Music
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- This past Wednesday I went to the Whitney Museum for the installation celebration of the show Oskar Fischinger’s Raumlichtkunst (Space Light Art – A Film Environment). This is a recreation of a multiple screen film event that Fischinger developed in Germany in 1926, where it was first shown. It was recently restored by the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles with Cindy Keefer acting as curator of the piece. Barbara Fischinger, the daughter of Oskar and Elfriede, was in attendance for the opening.

The exhibit features three full sized screens of abstract animation playing side by side by side. There are multiple media being utilized in the animation, and they all move with their own life. There is traditional cel animation, wax cutting, cut out animation and all done in multiple runs through the camera using bi-pack. The three films are looped, but they are not synchronized so that every showing is different. Working with Fischinger’s original 1920s nitrate film, the Center for Visual Music restored the 35mm film via traditional photochemical processes, then transferred them to HD, digitally restored the color, and mounted this 3 screen recreation. The music playing includes a piece by Varese and two by John Cage.

The film is screened in a small screening room with plenty of standing room and a long bench in the rear. Heidi and I had met John Canemaker and Joe Kennedy at the event, and we went in together. There were one or two people standing and about four on the bench. Just enough room for Heidi and me to squeeze onto the bench, and the woman next to me got up and left. This led to the others on the bench leaving. It left John, Joe, Heidi and me alone in the room sitting. A private screening. We were able to talk about the film as it ran and enjoyed discussing animation stuff (Ones or Fours; bi-pack; reuse working with the negative etc.) Of course, it didn’t take long for the room to take on many more people, and we quieted down. We sat through the whole thing at least twice, then went out to talk with Cindy Keefer once we saw here.

In these days when experimental film usually means representational pseudo-surrealist exercises, it’s nice to see true experimental animation. Thoughts of Hans Richter, Walter Ruttman, Viking Eggeling and other great experimenal filmmakers from the 20s in Germany run through your head and create a real desire to see more of it.

Cindy Keefer and the Center for Visual Music has to be commended for the restoration of thispiece. It feels every bit a part of the 21st Century even though it was created more than 80 years ago. It’s very much in keeping with other exhibits currently on view at the Whitney.

You can purchase some of Fischinger’s work on line – here.
And, by all means, if you’re in New York get to the Whitney to see this film. It will be there until October 28th.

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Blue Sky’s Continental Drift

- The next night, Thursday, I saw the latest installment of Ice Age in 3D. Talk about wanting experimental films back again. As a matter of fact, I really didn’t want to go to it, but went just the same. The crowd at the Academy screening room totalled no more than 10 people, maybe 4 members, 3 of us animators. (Where were the other dozen animation members?) I walked out of Ice Age 3 so expected I might do the same this time around. The story on that one was dreadful.

All the same, this film. Ice Age 4, was actually modestly entertaining with a hit and miss script loaded with many bad jokes. All of the film’s humor (except for the annoying Scrat character) were verbal jokes – not quite what I’d aim for in animation. There were spurts of good animation and excellent performances by some of the voice actors. Others like Ray Romano, Queen Latifah and Denis Leary aren’t actors, so the performances we get are not very good. John Leguizamo and Wanda Sykes are good, but Peter Dinklage gives the film’s best performance. As a matter of fact, whoever animated his character, the Pirate leader, does the film’s best animation as well. It made the film worth watching.

I’ve always liked the art direction of Blue Sky so had no problem settling in to that world, and John Powell‘s music was, as expected, first rate and professional. However, I do somehow wish that the Blue Sky films had more of a sense of lyricism, a tighter synch with the musical score. They never seem to quite get that part of the animation world, a part that can be the magic in a film if it’s done well.

I thought this was worth seeing, but not worth rushing to. It’s probably the same review I’d give Madagascar 3 if I’d seen it, and I’ll see it toward the end of the year when the Academy gets around to screening all the animated features for us.

The NYTimes starts with an extremely positive review, but that’s for a Simpsons short that plays with Ice Age 4. Then it turns quite negative with A.O. Scott‘s review disliking the feature.

“They come close to inspiring a new theory of prehistoric extinction: All those species clearly died from the hot air that gathered in the atmosphere as a result of their inability to shut up for even a minute.
“It may be too much to expect novelty — then again, why shouldn’t we? — but a little more conviction might be nice. “Continental Drift,” like its predecessors, is much too friendly to dislike, and its vision of interspecies multiculturalism is generous and appealing.”

And Elizabeth Weitzman in the NYDaily News also is down on the film:

Something has surely gone wrong when there is not a single moment in “Ice Age: Continental Drift” that equals the four-minute “Simpsons” short that precedes it.

Likewise Kyle Smith‘s negative review in the NYPost:

The best part of “Ice Age 4” happens before it begins, with a funny five-minute short featuring the Simpsons.

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Poe’s Stamp

- When you’re making a film called POE, people tend to give you Poe stuff. My sister, a while back, gave me the stamp pictured above when the US Post Office released it. I just thought I’d share it with you.

In the meantime we’re working away at the opening. I’ve finally got a storyboard I like and we’re now finishing off the animatic and will begin animating it very soon. It’s got a tight deadline since we’d like to have it ready to go to Toronto to try selling at the film festival in September.

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Barrier’s Review and Interview

Mike Barrier gives us the second part of the Phil Monroe interview. A solid read. He also reviews Brave. Some things are worth waiting for.

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Giraf’s Fest

- The GIRAF Animation Festival has a final call out for submissions. The deadline for submission is August 1, 2012. I was curious about the Festival and when they asked that I try to help get the word out, I thought why not. I like that it’s in Calgary. Wasn’t that the place where they shot all those SCTV shows?

So here’s the info from their email:

The 8th annual GIRAF (or the Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival) is looking for Animation submissions, in all styles, genres, lengths, and mediums. Our programs are a strong eclectic mix of animation, representing the best of the medium from Claymation to CG. We focus on presenting indie, experimental, and underground animations that push boundaries through new techniques, unique visions, and stimulating subject matter. Our 2011 program featured visiting artist David O’Reilly, and 3 of the 5 Academy Award nominees for Best Short Animation!

We DO NOT CHARGE A SUBMISSION FEE, and encourage short and feature length local, national, international, and student submissions.

Animators can submit online at: www.giraffest.ca

- Back in February, I got a real kick when I found out that I’d won the NAACP Award for Outstanding Children’s Programming for my show, I Can Be President. HBO told me that they would get my award and send it to me. Great to have a big-sized advocate.

This past Monday, I suddenly remembered that award and emailed HBO about it. I wondered where it stood. They found it at HBO and said they’d send it to me. Since I live about a dozen blocks from HBO, I planned to pick it up, myself, from HBO. They said it might be better if I let them deliver it.

Turns out that the award weighs a ton, and is pretty big. I’ve taken a couple of pictures of the prize and am posting them here. I couldn’t be prouder. Yet, again I thank the artists that worked with me to get out this film: Matt Clinton and Katrina Gregorius. I also thank Christine O’Neill who did all the behind-the-scenes work to make the production possible.

The Award

1
It has to weigh somewhere between 25-30 pounds.

2

3

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- Congratulations to Emily Hubley who was just voted in as a member of the MP Academy. Another New Yorker in the group! If you ask me, it’s been a long time coming. She’s been making films longer than many of the other members, and is such a serious and devoted
animation artist. She’ll be a credit to the group.

I like the fact that there seems to be a large number of strong animated features coming out this year. Brave is the formidable release this year, and I expect it’ll be hard for other films to beat it. Madagascar 3 has gotten such positive attention that I’m almost encouraged to see it, myself. Ice Age 23 will be out mid July. Just in puppet animation we have Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, and Hotel Transylvania; all of which feature monsters. And there are many more a comin’ It’s a big year for animation.

Epic looks like the most interesting of them all, though shades of Arietty overshadow it for me. (Actually, Arietty has been my favorite release of this year.) Epic will be released by Fox in 2013. Maybe that’ll be a big year, too.

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- Bill Benzon has another excellent article on his site, New Savannah. This time he discusses the “metaphysical implications of animation as a medium, specifically, animation as opposed to live action film-making.” It’s a good read about animated elephants, particularly those in Dumbo.

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- And speaking of Miyazaki, the new movie, Beasts of the Southern Wild, features a few scenes right out of Princess Monokone. There’s a slew of enormous wild boar with tusks and temperament that torment the lead character, Hush Puppy. The confrontation scenes at the end of the film have almost as strong emotional weight and power as Miyazaki has brought to them, even though this seems to be live action (with cgi help). A.O.Scott of the Times said that “Beasts of the Southern Wild is a work of magic realism and, to some extent, an exercise in wishful thinking.” It’s a raw version of Terrence Malick, but that could just be the immaturity of the filmmaker. This is his first movie, and he’s only 29. But then his brilliant star is just six years old, and she gives the year’s best performance so far.

This was certainly the movie of the week, far better than To Rome With Love (even though I’m a Woody Allen junkie.) This film seemed miscast, poorly acted (Penelope Cruz just is wrong for the part and not trying to act in it) and sloppily written. I haven’t seen Ted, but I’ve enjoyed the trailers I’ve seen. I’d expect the worst from Seth MacFarlane, though I usually laugh at some of his stupid jokes. He’s, at least, sweeter than Adam Sandler.

There is another animated feature currently playing in New York. The Korean film, King of Pigs, will play at the Korean Film Festival at the Walter Reade theater in Lincoln Center Saturday & Sunday July 7th & 8th. The film has been compared to Lord of the Flies.

The film and the Festival were reviewed well in the NYTimes yesterday. There are also another two animated korean features in the Festival. There are also Asura Thursday, July 12th and Gyo Saturday, July 14th. Go to the schedule to read more about these films or to buy tickets in advance.

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Tomorrow, I have some old photographs of animators from days gone by (the 50s).
I like that post, and I think you will too.

Animation Interviews

- I don’t know about you, but I love to read interviews. The longer the better. When things go a while and there’s been nothing available, I’ll turn to Mike Barrier‘s site and find something in the archive to reread. For my money, the animation interviews he posts are by far the best available to me. There’s so much in his interview scripts that even rereading for the fifth or sixth time, there’s still plenty to be gleaned in them. I’ve certainly read the _________________Barrier & John McGrew
John Hubley, John McGrew and
David Hand interviews more than six times. You’d think I’d be taking notes, by now. No, I just enjoy them as reading material. It’s almost like rereading a Barbara Pym novel, I gobble them up and absorb the characters at play; I enjoy the thrust of the lives in discussion and it doesn’t matter that I know where the story is going. Of course, it helps a lot that I have a real interest in the players and what they’ve gone through, and, in fact, I’ve known a few of them. Many of the others, i feel as though I’ve known them from reading about them and/or studying their work.

Somehow it’s more fun to me to read them rather than listen to audio recordings of them. Especially if the interviewers are good. Michael Barrier and his coauthor, Milt Gray, are formidable at the job, and they seem to get so much out of even the quietest apple. The interview with Fred Kopietz is a fine example. He’s someone who didn’t dominate animation history, but the story he tells is enormous. We get such a good view and an understanding of some of the studios he attended. An interview like his doesn’t always happen; there are some who leave too many questions about what they’re remembering. Of course, the guide makes all the difference. Barrier so often gently coaxes the interviews onto a straight and arrow path. His mechanics in interviewing aren’t always evident, but one feels safe in his hands.

And then when a new interview is posited in the archive, it’s pure delight. This past week saw a very complex interview with Phil Monroe join the roster, and I’ve already read it three times. They’re too hard to read on line, so I usually print them out and have them in hand to read; That’s what I did with the Monroe interview. He had a lot to say about the organization of the Warner cartoon setup, and the material seemed relatively new for me. He had a lot to say about some curious characters – those directors, Jones, Clampett, Freleng and McKimson.

The audio interviews at the Animation Guild Blog are good examples of the usual audio interviews. Steve Hulett does the interviewing and posts the pieces on the site. For the most part, they’re the voices of the living artist who has had a major career behind them. They have full histories that is usually trippingly told. It’s nice to hear the characters’ voices and the sound of their speech, but often the interviews are halting or repetitious and cumbersome. Sometimes, the interviews feel as though they’re forced in the approach and the stories don’t unfold simply. The interviewer becomes a character in his own right, and you almost feel as though you’re listening to two people being interviewed at the same time. You can tell when Mr. Hulett is excited by the material, and you can also hear when he’s not so involved in his part of the interview. __ Steve Hulett
There are always two personalities to follow in every one
of the interviews. I always listen to those Mr. Hulett posts, but I usually approach it more as a chore than as a pleasure. There’s something more enjoyable about the written word, and I sure prefer those. But I still don’t miss Mr. Hulett’s audio posts; I just haven’t been inspired to go back to listen to any of them a second time.

For the record, I have read Didier Ghez‘s collection of animation interviews, Walt’s People, and have gone through most of his books at least twice.
I’ve alslo enjoyed Don Peri‘s two books: Working with Walt and Workng with Disney. They’re both excellent books.

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Animated Features

- This coming Tuesday, the Academy is screening Pixar’s Brave. I’ll certainly see it, and I’ve invited a number of people to the screening. I want to make sure it has a good audience for that first screening. I wish I were a bit more excited about it, but I’m not and I don’t know why. I hope to enjoy it and will report on my thoughts next week.

Up to now, I’ve pushed to see any animated feature the Academy screens. Last year I had to sit through two full weeks of animated features to be able to vote for the Oscar nominees. It was a lot to take in, especially since most of the films aren’t great. So it’s better to take them on one-at-a-time during the actual year in order to assure I won’t have to cram them all in. I wish the Academy had screened Madagascar 3 for us, so that won’t be one of those many features I’ll be forced to absorb at the last minute.

Oh wait. I just remembered that the Academy isn’t going to let the NY contingent vote to select the animated feature nominees. Too few people showed up at last year’s event and the cost of shipping the films and screening them was prohibitive – given those who’d shown up. I have to admit I was disappointed that too few took part, but that’s the game.

Consequently, that means I’ll probably only see Madagascar 3 on DVD. And I guess I won’t get to see this year’s Whiskers or Chico & Rita unless I actually go to a theater to see them – if they become available. Whiskers still hasn’t played in NY. I could have seen it if I went, this year, to Annecy, but I didn’t.

Let’s face it, the animation members don’t all have the opportunity of voting on their category. This means that a few people in LA will control who gets nominated next year. The unfortunate thing is that it doesn’t make for the best for the category. The larger the vote, the better would be the outcome. The members, themselves, in NY are the problem, but what can be done. Personally, I think they should probably get rid of the category. Pixar will put a billion dollars into publicity to make sure the few in LA pick their movie, and it’ll probably win. It may even deserve it. But, to me, too few are selecting the sample, and the politics aren’t easy to overcome.

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Harvestworks

Harvestsworks is hosting an animation art program by artists, Gregory Barsamian, Emily Hubley, George Griffin, Holly Daggers and Jeff Scher. This art show and screening at Harvestworks is curated by Phyllis Bulkin-Lehrer. The works all explore the use of digital production in creating traditional projection methods. Whether using New Media or keeping it at arms length.

The show opened in New York this past Thursday and will continue thru until June 28th.
Location:
Harvestworks – www.harvestworks.org
596 Broadway, #602 | New York, NY 10012 | Phone: 212-431-1130
Subway: F/M/D/B to Broadway/Lafayette, R to Prince, 6 to Bleecker Street

The installation is open 1 – 6 pm Tuesdays – Saturdays and is FREE

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Storyboard Approach

- There’s an interesting post up at Signe Baumane‘s site. She does a video post of how she does storyboards for her in-progress feature, Rocks In My Pockets. She also posts a short video by Bill Plympton which explains how he does storyboards and how he uses them. The two have very contrasting methods.

Bill is an ex comic strip artist. To me, his storyboards are more comic strip than storyboard. They move from dynamic pose to dynamic pose without logically following the language of film. It tends to make for some uncomfortable cuts within his films but helps them appeal to the cartoonists out there. (I don’t think there’s a Plympton film that doesn’t have a cut where he crosses the 180, making it very frustrating to watch for people like me.)

Signe is a writer, so she doesn’t do storyboards. Or so she says. She starts each scene by going to the script and selecting text to illustrate/animate. Though she doesn’t properly board these scenes, she does a bevy of thumbnails for them. Then she plows into the animation and does the work. The interesting thing, to me, is that Signe DOES follow all the rules of filmmaking. My guess is that she does this instinctively from a long history of watching and absorbing film.

Two different approaches and unexpected results.

Take a look at the videos; they’re short.

Iris Beckerman

- For so many years I’ve known Howard and Iris Beckerman as the couple who had their own studio, did a few commercials a year and usually had a personal film in the ASIFA East Festival each year. They always seemed to be doing what I hoped for my future, a world of animation – a world of Independence. In the recent past, Iris disappeared from the pair. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease and needed help from a facility. Howard became more of a single at animation events, but he bore the pain of Iris’ illness well. He didn’t let on that there was any challenge in his life.

Iris died last Sunday, April 8th. She will be missed. Our thoughts are with Howard and their family, and all best wishes for them. There’s a wonderful obituary by Bill Lorenzo on the ASIFAEast site.

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More About UPA

- There have been a couple of good comments on the UPA videos since last week.
Mark Mayerson writes intelligently, as usual, about the bad cartoons on the 3 disc set. There’s a lot to say about them, and Mark cogently puts it all together.
Thad Komorowski also has some smart things to say on his blog. I don’t completely agree with some of his comments, but that’s irrelevant.

I just gave Tissa David a copy of the three disc set, and I’m looking to hear her comments. She probably hasn’t seen such good prints since they were originally screened in theaters. She’s also almost too candid in her thoughts about things she doesn’t like (maybe that’s where I got the bad habit of saying what I think without sparing the hurt.) When I get her comments, I’ll share them.

I hope to soon be doing some frame grab breakdowns of some of the films in the pack. I’ll enjoy studying them that way – especially the bad ones. It’ll be fun studying some of the Paul Julian backgrounds.

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David Levy

- David Levy sent me an email packed with information. The most immediately important concerns his short film, Turning the Corner, which is playing at the Tribeca Film Festival in NY. It’s part of a program called “Shorts in Competition” and is listed as a “documentary.” The film, if you haven’t seen it is about David’s father’s difficulty and path to get into Cooper U-nion School of Art. The film has a unique style combined with the typical looseness that is part of his approach. It’s a good film.

The times for the screenings are:
_____Fri 4/20 6:00PM AMC Loews Village 7 – 1
_____Sat 4/21 11:59PM AMC Loews Village 7 – 1
_____Mon 4/23 2:30PM AMC Loews Village 7 – 3
_____Sun 4/29 7:30PM Tribeca Cinemas Theater

Naturally, the film has its own Facebook page.

David also shared some personal information. I don’t think he’d mind my sharing the good news:

I think I’m done for blogging for the time being. I feel like I’ve said everything I wanted to and it’s not giving me pleasure to keep up with it anymore.

After five years and a good run, I closed out my home studio recently because I took an exec job at Disney. I’m the animation manager for their apps and ebooks. It’s really been a great opportunity, and forces me to stay relevant in producing animation for the newest media devices and platforms. Floyd Norman just contacted our group to rave about our Jungle Book app. That made us all really proud. I’m gonna have lots of travel to California, but my main job is based in White Plains. The long commute made me have to give up freelancing and teaching, but it feels like the right time to do so.

David, who was a smart, affable and organized President of ASIFA East for quite some time, has the good will and interest of all of us in the animation community on the East Coast. I’m sure we all wish him the best of luck in his transition to Disney and the “E” world.

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Consuming Spirits

This also gives me an opportunity of stating, once again, the Chicago filmmaker Chris Sullivan has his Independenty produced feature Consuming Spirits premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The Festival catalogue states:

Nearly 15 years in the making, Chris Sullivan’s Consuming Spirits is a meticulously constructed tour de force of experimental animation. . . The pacing of Consuming Spirits unfolds in a slow, deliberate fashion, akin to the work of such independent filmmakers as Dennis Potter, Terence Davies, Robert Altman, and John Cassavetes. Like these live-action filmmakers, every frame of Sullivan’s animation film is crafted with attention to intricate detail. The accumulation of these images builds to a great atmospheric effect, achieved through an adroit combination of inventive set design, ever-shifting visual perspectives, fluid camera movements, a vivid color palette, and a haunting music track. Sullivan succeeds in creating, with great artistry, a hermetic, self-contained world emanating from his own unique and vivid imagination.

“Dennis Potter, Terence Davies, Robert Altman, and John Cassavetes” That’s a specific breed of filmmaker they’re comparing him to. This film should be good. I’ve seen about a half hour of it and enjoyed what I saw quite a bit.

The times for the screenings are:
_____Mon 4/23 6:00PM Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 7
_____Tue 4/24 4:00PM AMC Loews Village 7 – 2
_____Wed 4/25 7:00PM Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 5

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Gene Deitch and Crockett Johnson

- I’ve grown to love Gene Deitch‘s weekly posts to his website. They’re all stories focussing on a particular artist or person he worked with usually reporting the making of some film or project. Many of them are my heroes like Jiri Trnka and John Hubley.

This week he talks about working with Crockett Johnson on Harold and the Purple Crayon. I’ve been a fan of Johnson’s work since I was a child. I’d already animated The Carrot Seed for HBO years ago when I’d pitched adapting Barnaby as a series. It just so happens that Sony was also pitching Harold and the Purple Crayon as a series at the same time. Guess which series they went for. However, they demanded that I represent HBO as a pair of eyes to keep abreast of what Sony was up to. So, I entered as a consultant (I can’t remember what my official title was on the films.) It meant that they sent me a lot of artwork and I say yes or no. I think my biggest contribution was in bringing Van Dyke Parks to the show as the composer of the many songs as well as the score for the series.

Needless to say, I never got to meet Crockett Johnson; he died in 1975. But it was fun to read Gene Deitch‘s report on making shorts of Harold for Weston Woods and his working with the author. As I say, these are all great stories worth reading.

- The Polish electronic jazz group Baaba will perform live to a selection of Polish classic animated films. The program includes Academy Award-winner Zbigniew Rybczynski‘s New Book, auteur Walerian Borowczyk & Jan Lenica‘s Banner of Youth, Miroslaw Kijowicz‘s Cages (Grand Prix at Annency, 1967), as well as the visually innovative Stairs by Stanislaw Schabenbeck and Chair by Daniel Szczechura.This compilation offers a chance to see examples of “The Polish School of Animation.”

Apr 18, 7 pm
NEW YORK – Part of UNSOUND Festival
BAMcinématek
ANIMATORS
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11217
Tel 718-636-4100
Tickets: $15 general public, $10 members

Apr 27, 7 pm & 8:30 pm
DETROIT
Detroit Institute of Arts
BAABA
5200 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI 48202
Tel 313-833-7900
Tickets: Free with museum admission.
$8 Adults, $6 Seniors, $5 Youth (6-17).
Free for children, members and Detroit residents.

Apr 29, 8 pm
LOS ANGELES – The Cinefamily
ANIMATION BREAKDOWN: Masters of Polish Animation
611 N. Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Tel 323-655-2510
Tickets: $14 / Free for members

Barrier Reading

- Last week I wrote about my reading Andrew Osmond‘s BFI monograph for the film Spirited Away. I quite enjoyed the short book and immediately read through it twice. Of course, I also enjoy Miyazaki’s film Spirited Away, so I had a lot to visit in the read.

In the rear of the book, there are notes and references for further reading. One of these was a commentary article by Michael Barrier which is still posted on his site, about Monsters Inc. and Pixar’s animation as well as mention of a couple of Miyazaki films, Princess Mononkone and Spirited Away.

My first thought on going back and rereading Mike’s article was in how much the comment and material holds up over the years. There’s some very specific arguments being made about the animation of all the films mentioned, and I can’t take issue with much of what he has to say.

I’d like to quote a few paragraphs from this article:

Computer animation’s technology has from all appearances advanced at an even faster rate than the techniques of the Disney animators in the thirties. It’s becoming clear, though, that, in contrast to what happened seventy years ago, there’s no necessary connection between mastering the technology and putting more convincing characters on the screen. When a character is covered with millions of precisely rendered hairs, and his on-screen environment is richly three-dimensional, it’s reasonable to expect him to move with a real creature’s subtlety. Sulley does not pass that test. He is less persuasive than many drawn characters whose caricatured movements are simpler and more direct. It is Sulley’s voice (by John Goodman) that brings him to life, far more than the animation; in that respect, the Pixar characters are indistinguishable from Homer Simpson or, for that matter, Huckleberry Hound.

And about Spirited Away:

Stylization, the ready answer, or excuse, for Japanese animators’ cavalier handling of their characters, doesn’t really serve in Miyazaki’s case, because he is so good at atmospherics—his settings seem real even when the characters don’t. To the extent that Chihiro, Miyazaki’s ten-year-old protagonist, wins our sympathy, it’s not because the animation brings her to life (except perhaps in fleeting moments when she slips into the paralysis of fear), it’s because Miyazaki places her in an environment as persuasively weird as those in the most obvious of his sources, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. But how much more powerful the film would be—how much more involving—if Chihiro had been animated so that she were wholly present on the screen . . .

Mike is definitely right. The animation of the early, pre-Brad Bird Pixar films is not quite sophisticated enough to take control of the well performed celebrity voices that dominate the characters. (Bird, I think, was able to coax bits of fine original animation out of the animators and the complex system of cgi animation.) Likewise, through Spirited Away, I see a simplicity in the animation of the characters. However, it is with this film that I believe some real animation starts to enter the Miyazaki films. The scene where Chihiro crosses a treacherous metal pipe outside the bath house. The character makes a strong change in personality with this animation, and it has to be taken note that this is not in the voice over but in the artwork. Miyazaki made the choice to change the personality here against the arguments of his animation director, and we can see that the character development has clearly stepped into the studio’s animation, no matter how slowly. From this point forward, Chahiro has a marked change in her character.

Yes, as Mike suggests, the atmospherics have strongly supported the obvious animation, up to this point, but I believe something stronger is entering the films.

This to me is quite clear in seeing The Secret World of Arrietty. Things have taken an enormous leap, and some of the animation is very personable, completely without artifice and wholly based on human action and interaction. Certainly, it still has many wooden scenes, but there is enough original work in there, that I have to have enormous pleasure in witnessing real 2D animation making its presence felt. This non-generic animation is hard to find in western work, and that’s almost inexplicable to me.

Mike Barrier in his commentary article on Disney’s Tangled has different thoughts about cgi animation. I have to say I don’t quite agree with him on this film, but I understand what he has to say.

Where CGI is concerned, it seems to me that a complete naturalness in the characters’ movements, like that in parts of Tangled, does not limit the animators to a deadening literalness. Instead, it creates the potential for more subtle and expressive animation of a distinctly non-literal kind, just as the Disney animators’ growing mastery of hand-drawn animation in the 1930s meant that cartoon characters like the Seven Dwarfs could be more insistently present on the screen than characters that were drawn with superficially greater realism.

Where Mike sees glimmers of a reality in the animation, I see it all ripped away by generic popping movements, oftentimes covered with blurred motions. What you get are the slow moving gestures immediately followed by popping cartoon-like actions. This goes for both Rapunzel and her Prince. The end result is that their motions, to me, are identical, and there is no personality shining through beyond the voice acting (which I don’t think is great. Mandy Moore couldn’t be more generic.) The realistic movements, to me, are with the witch/stepmother. Here, Donna Murphy‘s voice over has a lot to do with the character, but I don’t discount what the character, herself, is doing in the animation.

In short, I have to say that there’s a veritable treasure trove of material on Mike Barrier‘s site. Dig in and take a look at some of these articles. His is a singular, articulate voice, and there’re books worth of ideas and living commentary on this site. And it’s all for free. but then if you really love animation, you already know this.

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The Animation Blog is Back

- I’m pleased to see that Ian Lumsden has returned to posting more videos on his blog, The Animation Blog. Ian’s taste is quite fine, and the work posted is always of a generally high caliber. Recently he posted Eugene Federenko and Rose Newlove‘s beauty of a film, The Village Idiots. Federenko is an artist of the most devoted kind, and to watch his films is always my pleasure. Believe me, I’ve seen many of them MANY times, and the welcome doesn’t wear thin for me.

Such films as Mr. Federenko’s makes me long for the National Film Board of even fifteen years ago when capital was a little more available, and the beautiful films
were plentiful. (I’m grateful for any short they’re still making and I wait for them at Festivals and Academy runoffs. This year’s Wild Life by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis and Dimanche by Patrick Doyon were both superb gems, and those filmmakers deserved the high praise they received in being nominated for the Oscar. I’d hoped for Wild Life to win, but am pleased they got as far as they did. It’s story is the best of those that were in the running.)

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Oscar Choices

- The Oscars came and went, and neither of my animation choices won, though I’m not ocmpletely dissatisfied with Rango‘s win. At least it was the more eccentric of the cgi films.

As for The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, I find the film completely opaque. It’s obviously and attractive and seems to think it’s about something, but I’ll be damned if I can understand it. Except that the guy likes books and doles them out from his ersatz library in the middle of nowhereland. Oh yes, he’s lonely. All he has is a Humpty Dumpty animated illustration book to keep him in good company.

This is one of those design-y stories where everything is built around conceit, and the audience is fed schmaltz about nothing. It’s a poor meal to swallow.

A film like Wild Life is about many things and told its story beautifully, graphically and was well animated.

Just the same, congratulations to William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg
I’m pleased that they’re onto other projects at Moonbot Studio.

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The Lorax

- Of the local critics, AO Scott of the NYTimes was particularly harsh on THE LORAX

Don’t be fooled. Despite its soft environmentalist message “The Lorax” is an example of what it pretends to oppose. Its relationship to Dr. Seuss’s book is precisely that of the synthetic trees that line the streets of Thneedville to the organic Truffulas they have displaced. The movie is a noisy, useless piece of junk, reverse-engineered into something resembling popular art in accordance with the reigning imperatives of marketing and brand extension.

and then later in the review . . .

In the film as in the book, the Once-ler ravages the landscape and destroys the Truffula trees to manufacture thneeds, knitted garments that have multiple uses but no real utility. Demand for them is insatiable for a while, and then, once the trees are gone, the thneeds are forgotten, partly because nobody really needed them in the first place. There is an obvious metaphor here, but the movie is blind to it, and to everything else that is interesting or true in the story it tries to tell.

It sounds like the trailer I saw for the film, as I waited patiently through many animated junk trailers, on the way to see The Secret World of Arrietty in a theater. The film screens for Academy members on this upcoming Thursday. Maybe I’ll muster the courage to sit through it.

But then, Eliabeth Weitzman in the NYDaily News seemed to enjoy the film calling it, “A Tree-mendous Animated Movie.”

While softening Geisel’s darker themes, they still meld a valuable message into catchy songs, bright images (nicely done in 3D) and funny characters.

Even adults are likely to walk out wondering how our own society has strayed so far from any sensible path … before hopping into their Lorax-approved Mazda and heading to IHOP for some Truffula Chip pancakes.

And, finally, the NYPost‘s Kyle Smith is merciless:

I am the critic, I speak to displease:
“The Lorax” is awful, like chronic disease.
There’s no fun in “The Lorax,” no joy in its theme;
It’s as boring as sales tax.
I’m ready to ream.

- The past week saw little Academy action. We’d seen the Documentary features last week. (Five films within six days.) I found none of them earth shattering. Two were very good:
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory by directors Joe Beringer and Bruce Sinfosky was one I’d expected to be a drag. I wasn’t interested in the subject. However, I found it absorbing and quick moving. The story of three men who’d been sent to prison for murder. This film, the last of a trio of films, proved the innocence of the three and ultimately got them released from prison after 17 years.
Pina is a 3D film about the work of the dancer/choreographer Pina Bausch by filmmaker Wim Wenders. I found it exciting and exhilarating.

This week, the Foreign films are screening. They started Thursday night, but that was Heidi’s birthday, and we weren’t about to take in a movie. I started viewing the films last night and will continue this afternoon with another. They’ll continue through Tuesday.

Heidi and I did go to see the play, Look Back in Anger. It was absolutely great. The best play I’d seen in the past couple of years. The director, Sam Gold, limited the stage. The actors have the length of the stage to move, but there’s a black wall cutting the width of the stage to about four feet. It really drives home the claustrophobic apartment the characters inhabit. The lead actors, Sarah Goldberg and Matthew Rhys are decidedly stars in the making. The show was just brilliant. I found the mostly negative reviews a bit puzzling. Michael Feingold, in the Village Voice, seems to explain the reasoning behind that mystery. He writes about the British scene coming upon this play back in 1956 and how it broke through their class system and marked the changes that they were facing in heir Country. The US had gone through something similar earlier marked by shows like Streetcar Named Desire. (“Stella!”)

Just the same, I got what this version of the show was doing and felt that Sam Gold had pulled John Osborne‘s play into the 21st Century taking the Kitchen-sink drama and dragging it through Beckett’s Theater of the Absurd. Great stuff and very inspiring. Just a bunch of actors and not much more. But very moving.

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- I love that the dimwitted Rick Santorum won the Republican caucuses/primary on Tuesday. (Boy is this guy a turkey; he’s still living in the 18th century.) The Republicans are just showing that they’re completely at odds with all of the candidates available to them. The clown show will continue until their convention this Summer, and, by then, we’ll all be exhausted with the incessant lies and vitriol these guys throw at each other.

Sorry, I’ll get back to writing about animation.

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- The Oscar nominated shorts are being shown at the IFC Center – as of now. They make for three good programs. (Actually, I think the animated shorts program is the best of the three.) Here’s a review from the Village Voice.
Info on the screenings:
Documentary Shorts
Live Action shorts
Animated Shorts

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- Bill Peckmann has been contributing artwork to other blogs. On Joakim Gunnarsson‘s great site Sekvenskonst there is a great piece featuring many self-caricatures of a lot of cartoon and comic strip artists. We used one of these self caricatures on our Thursday piece about Rowland B. Wilson. Everyone from Roy Doty to Chester Gould to Basil Wolverton to Mort Walker to Tom Morrison to Ernie Bushmiller is represented and plenty more.

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- Here is a well written paragraph from AO Scott‘s NYTimes generally positive review of Chico and Rita, which opened yesterday at the Angelika Film Center. (Directors Fernando Trueba & Javier Mariscal will be doing Q&A’s following the 7:40 PM shows Sat & Sun, Feb 11-12. )

“Chico & Rita,” nominated for an Academy Award as the best animated feature, is a reminder not only of the aesthetic vitality of hand-drawn, two-dimensional animation, but also of the form’s ability to provide entertainment and enlightenment for adults. A costume drama or a documentary would not have been as charming or as surprising. It would be hard to get cameo appearances from Charlie Parker or Marlon Brando, and the dutiful literalism of historical filmmaking would have dampened the vitality and killed the magic.

and here’s a couple of lines from Lou Leminick‘s NYPost review:

Complain all you want about the Oscars (I certainly do), but give the academy major props for bypassing a clunker like “Cars 2” and handing a Best Animated Feature Film nomination to something as wonderful as “Chico & Rita.”

“Chico and Rita’’ beguiles first and foremost as a bebop romance that evokes a bygone era as well as, or maybe even better than, “The Artist.”

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Finally, I wanted to write a couple of notes about the Annie Awards ceremony.

For years I’d read about the awards, without having attended, and have only been able to think about it in comparison to the ASIFA East awards, which are a small celebration of animation by the local members of the NY chapter of ASIFA. Ours is almost clublike in its ceremony. Very non-formal people dressed in street clothes, which means predominantly jeans and dress-down wear. The shaggy student awards. The idea that ASIFA Hollywood dressed up for their event made me immediately put it on a higher pedestal. I hadn’t attended one of the Hollywood ceremonies, and only by seeing the streamed version of the awards could I get an inkling of what it was.

Having Patton Oswald host the event was only a positive in my mind. He’s such a quick-minded comic who would do well at the podium. A real professional. However, hearing no feed back of audience laughs (there obviously was no audience mike for the program), made it seem like all his jokes were falling flat. There were also plenty of flubs on the stage as presenters were presented with the wrong envelopes, and winners learned of their wins a full category before their turns.

From the home audience it seemed like a train wreck had been occurring in front of our noses. I honestly couldn’t imagine how tedious this must have seemed to the live viewers. But then they had a bar and drinks and friends to laugh with in the nearby seats. Very different than watching a show on a computer at midnight. Rooting for something like Phineas and Ferb over something else like Prep and Landing 2 at midnight on a Saturday night, just doesn’t quite make it.

The awards went to deserving people, I’m sure. I recognized many of the names, and it was nice to finally put some of the faces to those names I’d only known from credit rolls. And I congratulate them for their well-deserved awards. However, to most of the world these are unknown people. There was a limited audience for this program. Me and a couple hundred others who’d sit out the slow slog.

I suspect that until I can see the Hollywood awards live, I’ll sit out future streaming telecasts. But then, I’ll probably change my mind at the last minute next year and watch it again.

Chico & Rita in NYC & LA

- Thanks to its Oscar nomination, Chico & Rita, the 2D Spanish, animated feature film will play in New York & Los Angeles. The distributor, G Kids, will bring the film to the Angelika Film Center starting Friday, February 10th for a week.

Directors Fernando Trueba & Javier Mariscal will be doing Q&A’s following the 7:40 PM shows Sat & Sun, Feb 11-12.

Angelika Film Center (18 W. Houston Street, 212-995-2570)
Friday, February 10, daily at 11:00, 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, and 7:40.

Screenings in Los Angeles will be Mon, Feb 6 at 2 PM (Linwood Dunn Theater), and Mon, Feb 13 at 9:20 PM (Samuel Goldwyn Theater). These are designated as Official Academy Screenings.

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Annies Live

- The Annie Awards will take place tonight, Saturday, in Los Angeles starting at 7pm (Pacific Time) which is 10pm (Eastern). The awards will be available on line via streaming through a number of different sites. These include: Animation Guild site, Hans Perk’s A Film LA, Tee Bosustow’s Animazing site, and of course Cartoon Brew. If one has problems, go to the next.

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- The brilliant abstract animator, Paul Glabicki, is going to have an exhibition of his art March 15 to April 14th. I’d encourage you all to see this show; his work is always smart, exciting and worth the little effort it would take. He’s also an East coast animator and deserves our support. Here is the press release for the exhibition:

Paul Glabicki
ORDER

We are pleased to announce Paul Glabicki’s second solo exhibition at the Kim Foster Gallery. His new ORDER series explores expressions of “order” as image, concept, construct, and language – and the organization and potential ambiguity of information, communication, and language within complex and concurrent data systems.

Each drawing begins with an Internet search of the word “order.” Hundreds of images, interpretations, demonstrations, and associations are generated by each search, arranged in a hierarchy of relevance determined by the search engine. Each search becomes increasingly customized to the searcher, often branching off into intricate or obscure expressions of the word, its multiple meanings, or practice (specific arrangement, sequence, command, rank, importance, by discipline.) Each drawing is a selection and orchestration of these hierarchies of order systems and applications, filtered through the artist’s response to the information collected in each search.
The process engages the artist’s own creative compulsion to organize and compose images. The first element of each drawing is deliberately placed at random, initiating a process of response, modification, and overlay. New imagery/data is added in a sequential chain, and in response to the placement of each previous element. Each drawing is rotated as new imagery and information is considered and assigned to the developing space; with its final viewing orientation established as the accumulated imagery satisfies the artist’s own personal impulse to impose “order” and closure – but only momentarily, until the process is carried on to the next piece.
Each drawing is a result of a chain of events, choices, and decisions generated by the initial, specific, finite fragment of data. The process plays with notions of causality, the desire/impulse to find, recognize or impose organization, response to (and interpretations of) vast sources of available data, and the complex interactions of image, language, communication and meaning in the representation of information.

The work of Paul Glabicki continues to be involved with time and sequence, and an obsessive process of evolving images and complex compositions generated by an intimate examination of a finite word or found object.

All of the imagery in his work is drawn by hand (Graphite Pencil, Prismacolor Pencil, Ink, and Acrylic on Paper.)

Paul Glabicki is best known for his experimental film animations that have appeared at major film festivals, as well as national and international museum exhibitions. His animation work in film has been carefully crafted by means of thousands of hand-drawn images on paper – each drawing representing both a frame of film and a unique complete work on paper. His film works have been widely screened at such prestigious sites as the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, the Cannes Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of Art in New York (Whitney Biennial), and the Venice Biennale. He has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, and several grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

KIM FOSTER GALLERY
529 West 20th New York, NY 10011 212-229-0044
www.kimfostergallery.com
info@kimfostergallery.com

Paul Glabicki
ORDER
March 15 – April 14, 2012
( Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm)
Reception: Thursday, March 15, 6 to 8 pm

Just prior to the opening, I’ll remind you of the dates.

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Trnka Centennial

- Gene Deitch has hit another home run on his blog this week. He posts a piece about the great puppet animator and artist, Jiří Trnka. Deitch tells intimate stories that make me feel closer to the man, Trnka, than I’ve gotten from many other books about the master’s work. (Just look at the image to the left from Deitch’s site. We see not only that Trnka was left handed, but that he couldn’t stop smoking even in the middle of painting during a photo shoot!) We learn about an aborted collaboration between Deitch and Trnka and several of the drawings Trnka did are posted on the site.

Deitch also gives us a good report with photos on the recent memorial in Prague celebrating the 100th anniversary of Trnka’s birth. This is a fabulous read.

Of course, there are many other articles equally as good on this site. Another recent post is on the artist, Jiří Brdečka. He was just as great a force, in many ways, as was Trnka. This is a wonderful site and should be regularly followed.

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Robot Puppet Porn

Michael Sullivan photographed by Tom Hachtman

- Michael Sullivan is a New York animator/effects wizard/actor/artist who gets little attention.

He’s amassed years worth of puppets, dolls and small artifacts which he develops into his characters for the eccentric films he produces. Currently, he’s been making a film about robots – actually, a pornographic film about robots. This has been chronicled into a short film documentary that ran at the recently completed Sundance Film Festival. Titled, The Meaning of Robots, the doc is by filmmaker, Matt Lenski. There’s a trailer for the doc here and articles about the film here and here.
Watch part of Michael Sullivan’s work here.

Thanks to Tom Hachtman for the good word..

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- Finally, the news that Don Cornelius had died this week, as a result of suicide, made me want to take another look at the opening title animation to Soul Train. There are no good quality copies on YouTube, but I found this small sampling of the show and felt that something was better than nothing. The titles were produced by Jim Simon with his company, Wantu Animation. I think I remember Dan Haskett telling me that he had done some animation on it. He did do a lot of work for Jim Simon, so it’s likely. Regardless, the titles are worth a nod. I haven’t seen any other animation site point it out.

Jim Simon/Wantu Animation for Don Cornelius Productions