Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- It’s nice to see some local talent get good press for their animation work. Currently, The New York Observer has a solid article about Emily Hubley in conjunction with the screening of her feature film, Toe Tactic, at the New Directors/New Films festival held at MOMA and Lincoln Center.

Here’s a short quote from the informative article:
__ Originally, there wasn’t going to be any animation at all in the film. But Ms. Hubley hand-
__ drew the dogs (with some help from animator Jeremiah Dickey) to help shepherd the
__ short poems about love, life and mortality into the movie. “At the beginning [of the
__ process] the dogs are just a joke, but then they nosed their way into the rest of the
__ story,” she said. “Poetry is one thing that is very hard to put into movies… I just thought
__ that the only way to keep it fun, or keep people from glazing over, or I guess to keep it
__ from being too self-loving, would be turning it into something else completely.”

__ All together, the result is a highly emotional fable. “I want [the audience] to feel full
__ when they walk away,” she said. “It’s really about personal art; it’s not a factory
__ product.”

As I reported last week the film’s stars include: Lily Rabe, John Sayles, Marian Seldes, Eli Wallach, Andrea Martin, and Mary Kay Place. Ms. Place and Ms.Martin are two of my favorite performers; John Sayles is the father of Independent Cinema, and I love Eli Wallach. Lily Rabe was brilliant when I saw her in the play, Crimes of the Heart, now playing in New York. What more is there to say.

The film is scheduled to play:
__ Sat Mar 29: 6:00pm (Walter Reade Theater)
__ Mon Mar 31: 9:00pm (MoMA)

- I received some information from the Hiroshima 08 Festival, and was pleased to note that two ASIFA East members are featured.

Ray Kosarin is among the International Selection Committee Members. Along with Rao Heidmets from Estonia, Elena Chernova from Russia, Sophie Lodge of the UK, and Kiyoshi Nishimoto of Japan, Ray will represent the US in the selection of films for the festival to be held August 7-11. Add to that information, David Ehrlich, also of ASIFA East, will have a special exhibition and performance for his art. With Paul Driessen as the International Honorary President, the Festival sounds like a big one this year.

Congrats to Ray Kosarin and David Ehrlich.

- My favorite post of the last 24 hours has got to be the photo set on Michael Barrier‘s site. These are part of a series Mike calls, “A Day In The Life” in which he posts a number of photos all taken around the same time.

Here it is early 1930, and the animators at the studio are gathering in odd positions. I guess they needed some publicity photos, so they cranked them out. Who would have guessed that some of the expressions would be so hilarious. I couldn’t help but frame two images of Walt Disney in these group photos.

1 2

In the first he’s singing as is everyone else in the first photo as they’ve gathered around Carl Stalling playing at the piano. A group sing for animators! Huh!

In the second Disney’s obviously just broken up as the camera clicked. I doubt this photo ever saw publication prior to Mike’s posting. I have to admit, again, I love his site. There’s just always so much to take in.

- Speaking of Disney, thanks to Alan Cook‘s excellent site, I found myself led to a great French site: The Art of Disney Animation. There you’ll find a lot of Disney production art. Plenty of pre production art, designs and models. It’s an enjoyable side trip with lots to view.

- And speaking of Dalmatians, the crème de la crème in the blogosphere, at least for me right now, has to be Hans Perk’s A Film LA. There at the moment, you’ll find a complete set of drafts for 101 Dalmatians. Hans is quickly posting all of these pages, and he has me studying this film, yet again. However, now I know who did what, and I don’t have to guess.

The great news is that as with the posted drafts for Pinocchio, Mark Mayerson will build on Hans’ drafts for 101 Dalmatians by creating Mosaics for this entire feature. It hasn’t begun on Mark’s site, but there’s something worth waiting for. Mark’s commentary is even more valuable than his extraordinary photo mosaics.

For the moment, Mark has an excellent essay on adapting children’s picture books into animated features. It’s another sharply written piece that you should check out, if you haven’t already.

- To take a completely different turn, let me say that I have become so involved in this Democratic race that it’s become officially an addiction for me. It’s so enormously entertaining, how could I not.

This past Thursday night, I came home a bit late from a movie. Prior to the film, I’d been completely absorbed in the events of the day – the back and forth of the mudslinging fired at Obama for having a pastor (or maybe because he is black.) In the two hours I was gone, all this news was reported:

- There was a break in at the State Dept where several people checked out Obama’s passport data. Of course, they fired the two guys who were involved, so that now they can’t now be interviewed to see what they were doing. A “low level” curiosity mission?

- John McCain has made an enormous number of gaffes in Iraq, England and Israel. He’s mixed up Sunni’s with Al Qaeda, and he’s called the Jewish holiday of Purim a “local version of Halloween.” He’d better pick Lieberman to run with him; he needs someone to hold him up. Then McCain fired someone for sharing an anti Obama/race YouTube video. No wait, he didn’t fire him. The person was suspended. McCain does have a semblance of dignity though, regardless of how war-crazy he is.

- Hillary continues to rant, attacking Obama for not making Michigan vote again, yet it was the Michigan legislature that didn’t make it work. She’s starting to sound like a spoil sport and a little too desperate.

This was all in a two hours of reportage. Since then, Richardson decided to endorse Obama, Bill Clinton said the two people in the race who honored their country were Hillary and McCain (can the former president do anything that isn’t devisive?). And now McCain and Hillary were also victims of investigation by contractors in the State Department.

Phew. it’s a great soap opera. We did get a brilliant speech this past week, and after eight years of a President who is not capable of pronouncing the word “nuclear,” I delight in these articulate speeches and hope for years more of them.

- The caricature above is by Barry Blitt, and it’s part of an excellent article that was in the NY Times this past week. The article discusses how cartoonists are caricaturing the
candidates. I have to admit I love Steve Brodner‘s work, so it was a pleasure to hear his thoughts.

If this interests you, you’ll also enjoy seeing the caricatures of other senators done by Barack Obama. It was part of National Doodle Day, a charity drive which sold on ebay this past week. The drawing went for $2075. Gillian Anderson had the second highest bid price of $700 for her doodle.
________________________________________________(Click on images to enlarge.)

- I recently received this email from my friend, Tom Hachtman (the cartoonist who draws Gertrude’s Follies, a strip I’ve featured):

Joey has taken over Three Designing Women. She employs two women and me.

“Three Designing Women. Who’s this guy?”
“Oh, that’s my husband Tom.”
I do get tired of hearing this.
This mural painting is a phenomena.

Joey just lined up some work in Florida. If I can find Joey’s folders, I will try to e-mail some recent work to you.

love,t

Joey, of course, is Tom’s wife. I’ve featured their mural work before, but thought it time for an update. Here are the photos sent me. The comments are Tom’s descriptions.

________(Click any image to enlarge.)

________These are bedrooms in Highland Park, NJ.

________They wanted the bed to look like a fort in the forest.

________The aquarium room

________Joey wanted the aquarium room to feel like you were inside a fish tank –
________I painted this boy on the ceiling feeding his fish.

________Sometimes I think the details are so beautiful – Chris painted these birds.

Take a look at the Three Designing Women site.

- Emily Hubley‘s first feature film has made it into the New Directors:New Films series at MOMA in conjunction with the Lincoln Center Film Society.

The Toe Tactic is 2/3 live action and 1/3 animation. Emily directed both parts of the film and wrote it as well.

The film’s stars include: John Sayles, Marian Seldes, Eli Wallach, Andrea Martin, and Mary Kay Place.

The short synopsis found on line is: In this hybrid of live-action and animation, a young woman grieves for her father while unaware of the magical world around her.

A review appeared in the Austin Chronicle when the film played as part of the South by Southwest Festival.

The film will play:
______Sat Mar 29: 6:00pm (Walter Reade Theater)
______Mon Mar 31: 9:00pm (MoMA)

- I was pleased to have received word that the great Gerald Potterton will be awarded the Pulcinella Lifetime Achievement Award from the 12th Annual Cartoons on the Bay International Festival of Television Animation in Salerno, Italy.

The award is presented each year to “a prestigious personality of the world of cinema and television animation,” will be given to Gerry during the awards ceremony on April 12th. Previous recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award include Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto, Roy E. Disney, and Bill Hanna & Joe Barbera.

I met Gerry on Raggedy Ann when I first started in a very big office with almost no one as yet hired. I spent a great Saturday with Gerry and Dick Williams coloring storyboard drawings mostly drawn by the brilliant Corny Cole. The drawings were being fed to, cameraman, Al Kouzel to shoot an animatic on 35mm film. It was a funny day, and I was in heaven working with Dick and Gerry for a solid Saturday.

Both Gerry and Dick were part of the Grasshopper Group in England back in the 50′s (along with the likes of Bob Godfrey, George Dunning and Stan Hayward. They’d known each other for quite some time and were close. I was the odd man out, but couldn’t have enjoyed the company more – with questions aplenty that I snuck in during the day.

During Raggedy Ann, I’d let Gerry know that I wanted desperately to see a film he’d done in 1969, Pinter People. This was a documentary about Harold Pinter and his characters, showing the varied places that his characters inhabited: the parks, the pubs, the places. The films includes Pinter talking about these characters and includes five animated segments (about 45 mins of animation) from Pinter’s short plays. It is truly one of the first adult animated films built around words. Gerry brought me a 16mm copy to view, and I returned it immediately.

I couldn’t be more pleased to see him receive this award, and I don’t think there is anyone more deserving. Congratulations, Gerry.

Here’s the part of the press release that was sent which includes Gerry’s bio, for those who are unfamiliar with Mr. Potterton’s distinguished career.

Few Canadian film careers have been as colorful as that of British-born writer, director, producer and animator Gerald Potterton. In a career spanning over fifty years, he has worked on dozens of live action and animated films, including the classic British animated feature Animal Farm and the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. He left the National Film Board to start up Potterton Productions, the largest film production house in Canada at the time, but he is best known as the director of the cult classic, Columbia Pictures release Heavy Metal, which was released in 1980. He directed the great American silent film comedian Buster Keaton in a National Film Board live-action short, The Railrodder, for which he was awarded a Buster for “film excellence in the Buster Keaton tradition” in 2002 at the annual Buster Keaton Celebration in Iola, Kansas.

In 1998, Potterton was selected as one of the “Ten Men Who Rocked the Animation World” at the first World Animation Celebration in Pasadena, California. His prolific career has been honored with retrospectives at North American film festivals from Ottawa to Seattle.

- There’s a brand new site debuting today, and I’m pleased to say that my studio had a small part in seeing it off and running. Abe Levitow was an animator and director whose work I’ve long admired. I met his daughter, Judy Levitow, during the production of Raggedy Ann and Andy, and I really enjoyed her friendship. So many years later, she contacted me to ask about our sites and their design and told me that her family was hoping to put up a site to honor her father. The end result was that Matthew Clinton, a key animator in my studio, worked with Roberta Levitow in putting together the new site www.abelevitow.com, ______________ Chuck Jones and Abe Levitow
for the family, Judy, Roberta and Jon Levitow.
Darrell Van Citters was principal in organizing the archival material. As of today the site’s operational and in full swing.

The site includes lots of photos, artwork and information about Abe Levitow’s life and career.

For those of you who are not familiar with his work, Abe Levitow started at Leon Schlesinger’s studio where he worked for years, breaking only for work in the Signal Corps during World War II. He animated key sequences of What’s Opera Doc, Robin Hood Daffy and Broom-stick Bunny. He joined UPA where he was an animation director on 1001 Arabian Nights with Magoo, and he directed Magoo’s Christmas Carol and the feature Gay Purr-ee.

He worked with Chuck Jones at MGM where he directed a number of the Tom & Jerry shorts as well as co directing The Phantom Tollbooth with Jones.

Abe Levitow’s animation for Richard Williams was key to Dick’s films. On The Christmas Carol his animation of the ghost of Christmas Present revealing the two waifs “want” and “ignorance” under his robe is the finest scene in that fine film. (I suddenly realize that he is probably the only artist to have worked on both the Magoo Christmas Carol and Williams’ Christmas Carol.)
He died in 1975 at age 53.

This new site also announces the soon-to-be-published book by Darrell Van Citters about the making of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.

- A couple of events passed through New York in the last couple of days, and I’m sad to say that I missed them all. If anyone out there attended any of these, please feel free to let us know what you thought.

- Last night, there was a panel discussion at the Jewish Museum re the art of William Steig. Participating in this panel were:

- Leonard Marcus who discussed Steig’s career as a
__ children’s book illustrator and author.
- Jeffrey Katzenberg, Chief Executive Officer of
__ DreamWorks Animation, discussed bringing the
__ character of Shrek to life on film.
- Chris Miller, director of the Shrek the Third film,
__ offered a movie director’s take on Shrek.
- Jason Moore, director of the forthcoming SHREK THE MUSICAL
- David Lindsay-Abaire, book and lyrics for SHREK THE MUSICAL, spoke about
__ the creative process that is driving the musical stage production.

Yesterday, there was a NYTimes article about Steig and the exhibit. It was obviously also in anticipation of the discussion.

- On Saturday night, as part of the the “Rendez-Vous With French Cinema” – a short series of new French films playing at several venues aroung town – there was a single screening of Fear(s) of the Dark played at the IFC center.

This is the animated feature directed by six different animators, including Charles Burns, Blutch, Marie Caillou and Richard McGuire. The film has been playing at a number of festivals recently, including Cinequest in San Jose, and Brussels’ Anima International Festival.

Fear(s) of the Dark was produced in France by Prima Linea Productions. Their site describes the film with a lot of stills (appropriately enough) and these words:

Six of the worlds hottest graphic artists and cartoonists have breathed life into their
nightmares, bleeding away colour only to retain the starkness of light and the pitch black of shadows.
Their intertwined stories make up an unprecedented epic where phobias, disgust and nightmares come to life and reveal Fear at its most naked and intense…

Variety reviewed the film positively at Sundance. They had glowing things to say about Richard McGuire‘s segment. I report this because McGuire, a New Yorker, introduced the film this past Saturday. It’s unfortunate that there was relatively little press about it, and that there was only the one screening. it conflicted with other plans I’d made, and I learned too late to alter my plans.

Postscript: Commentor Masako Kanayama left the information that the film will be screened again this Sunday March 9, at 1:30pm, at the Walter Reade Theater (Lincoln Center). You can buy advanced tickets online: www.filmlinc.com or at the box office.

- Something I have not missed lately is Chris Rushworth’s web site,
Animal Farm World.
Chris is an ardent fan of the Halas and Batchelor feature, Animal Farm. As such he has collected quite a few drawings and cels from the 1955 feature. He also has many editions of the novel featuring work from different illustrators.

I first learned of this site when Chris responded to a post I’d written about the illustrations by Joy Batchelor for a tie-in edition of the book released in 1955. I’ve written more than a few pieces about this book and film to give you a good indication that I’m a fan as well.

Harvey Deneroff has an excellent article on his site about the history of the multiplane camera. He tries to track Willis O’Brien’s rear screen projection developments and the influence that may have had on the three studios that developed their cameras: Ub Iwerks, Max Fleischer or Disney.

He also details a bit about the multiplane setup developed by Lotte Reiniger utilized in producing Prince Achmed.
The connection between stop motion animation and the machinery is interesting. Given that both Iwerks and Fleischer used horizontal animation stands, it seems a natural that 3D animation was an obvious by product. Indeed, the little sets that Fleischer’s studio created are virtually 3D animation sets.

It’s a good article with excellent observations.

Lotte Reiniger pictured to the left.

- Opening in New York this friday is the documentary Chicago 10. This film has been in the air for the last year and a half, and it finally makes it to NY theaters this week. The film opened the Sundance Film Festival in 2007.

The NYTimes published an article this past Sunday about the film. It says the animation is motion capture, but to me it looks strikingly similar to the work of Bob Sabistan, who directed the animation for Richard Linklater: Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.

Brett Morgen produced and directed this docu-mentary which includes film clips and lots of animation to tell the story of the Chicago 10. Morgen’s prior work includes The Kid Stays in the Picture, the successful documentary biography of producer Robert Evans. You’ll remember that film was half After Effects effx.

Since footage wasn’t readily available of the court trial (among other things) the animation stands in for that footage. It’s acted and voiced by the likes of Hank Azaria (as Abbie Hoffman and Alan Ginsberg), Mark Ruffalo (as Jerry Rubin), Jeffrey Wright (as the Black Panther Bobby Seale) and Liev Schreiber (as defense lawyer William Kunstler).

J. Hoberman has a review worth reading in the current Village Voice.

The NYTimes has a couple of video clips here.

There are several clips on YouTube here and here and a trailer here.

Larry Ruppel did some non-rotoscoped animation, and he has some of the drawings on his site; there’s also a rough pencil test of the sequence. He worked with Asterisk Pictures and the director, Brett Morgen.

The NYTimes also had an article about the filim in 2006.

Curious Pictures, NY, (Richard Winkler, prod.) supervised the MoCap animation for this film. The traditional animation was done by Asterisk Pictures in NY (Richard O’Connor and Brian O’Connell prod); they did about 10 minutes of film. Dan Haskett had a hand in the character design.

I’ll see the film in two weeks and will report what I see, then.

- I have a big interest in silent animated films and as a result have visited Tom Stathe‘s site frequently. Cartoons On Film regularly offers interesting information about those rare films.

Currently Tom has an interesting post about World War I film intertitles, and he offers quite a few examples. I don’t know where he finds these things, but it’s amazing. I’m glad to see someone is out there watching and reporting.

– Eddie Fitzgerald‘s blog, Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner, offers frame grabs from the rarely seen silent animation series, Mix Fleischman’s Out of the Ink Bottle.

This is definitive proof that Eddie has completely lost control. Or maybe he’s a genius. I’ve laughed each and every one of the many times I’ve returned to look at this post.
_

- Thanks to Tom Sito for listing on his site all of the artists to be eulogized this coming Saturday at the Animation Guild’s tribute, An Afternoon of Remembrance. The program is free of charge and is open to all. No RSVPs necessary. As Tom says, “You don’t have to be related to anyone to attend. It is about the animation industry remembering our friends and colleagues. I would like to be there.
1 pm Memoriams
Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn)
2100 N. Highland (across from Hollywood Bowl), Hollywood, California

- On Monday, March 3rd at 7 PM, at The Jewish Museum there will be a panel discussion entitled, Shrek: From Book to Film to Broadway.

Panelists will include:
____ Leonard Marcus, writer, historian and critic, who will discuss William Steig’s career
____ as a children’s book illustrator and author.
____ Jeffrey Katzenberg, Chief Executive Officer of DreamWorks Animation, will discuss
____ bringing the character of Shrek to life on film.
____ Chris Miller, director of the Shrek the Third film, will offer a movie director’s take on
____ the character of Shrek.
____ Jason Moore, director of the forthcoming SHREK THE MUSICAL
____ David Lindsay-Abaire, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, who is writing the book and
____ lyrics for SHREK THE MUSICAL, will speak about the creative process that is driving
____ the musical stage production.

copyright ©1990 William Steig
_
The program is being offered in conjunction with The Jewish Museum exhibition, From The New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig on view through March 16, 2008. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to view over 190 original drawings, many of which have never before been on display. If you haven’t seen the show, I encourage you to go. It’s free on Saturdays.

I’ve written a couple of past posts about the exhibition. You can view them here, here, and here.

The Jewish Museum is located at: Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, NYC. For box office info call: (212) 423 3337.
Tickets are $15.

There are a number of interesting sidebars to the Jewish Museum‘s site for Steig fans. For example, you can hear Meryl Streep reading Spinky Sulks. Naturally, it’s as brilliant as anything this actress has done.

- Oscar season is winding down as we approach the event next Sunday. Magnolia Pictures is distributing the live action and animated shorts to theaters across the country. In New York, the program opened yesterday at the IFC theater. The reviews in the local papers have been glowing. Stephen Holden‘s NY Times review places particular focus on Madame Tutli-Putli, as well as My Love and Peter and the Wolf. They deserve the attention. I look forward to seeing which film will win.

This past Wednesday, the Academy screened the four documentary short films nominated. They were an interesting and varied group and almost any of them might make for passable winners. I was taken, however, by one film called Sari’s Mother. It followed a mother living on a farm in Iraq trying to take care of a son who was infected with the AIDS virus. She had many other kids to attend to, and still had to follow through with all her attention given to Sari, trying desperately to get helpful medication that the boy wasn’t allergic to.

The film was different from the others screened in that it told its story without a narrator. There was little dialogue throughout the film, yet a complex story was told. Everything from the army of US soldiers everywhere in sight, including loud, roaring helicopters overhead, to many children playing. We were left to figure out the story for ourselves. There was never even a statement that the film took place in Iraq. (For a while, I actually thought it might have been Afghanistan.) I liked being given credit for using my own intelligence with the movie.

After the event, Shiela Nevins and HBO sponsored a post-screening dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel. All of the key documentarians in the City usually attend, and it’s a wonderful event that I look forward to annually. It always sort of marks the end of the Oscar run, for me. I was pleased to sit with John Canemaker and Joe Kennedy. I was able to pump John to tell me about the Annie Award ceremony and his trip to LA.

- Premier NY artist Meryl Rosner has done an interesting exercise and posted it on her blog Zoopolis, Film Noir, Fractured Fairy Tales. She’s taken a sequence from The Big Sleep and has storyboarded it. What a great idea, not only as a way of studying a film, but as a way of learning how to storyboard. Taking an excellent film, as Meryl has done, gives you the chance to see and to try to understand why the cuts and transitions, the camera placement and the compositions are done as they are.

To boot, Meryl’s done a good job of it. Scrolling down through all these storyoard drawings is exciting in itself. If you visit, take a look at some of her other pieces as well.

- The NY Times, this week, has posted Jeff Scher‘s latest video for them on their editorial page. The Animated Life is a series he has been creating. Once a month a new film piece is place on the on-line editorial page.

Tulips is an animated study of kissing.

Take a look.

Michael Barrier has written a couple of times about this theatrical muscal. I saw a short review in the SF Weekly. The review’s almost too short to quote, so I include it all.

Disney & Deutschland
By Molly Rhodes

Imagining the details of a historically documented 1935 meeting between Walt Disney and Adolf Hitler is a great spark for a play, but playwright and director John J. Powers’ production never ignites. The 20-minute history lesson that starts the 90-minute play fails to build up the excitement before the big get-together. Once Disney and Hitler are in the same room, along with Hitler’s right-hand man, Joseph Goebbels; and his personal filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl; there is hardly any dramatic action to push the play along. There are occasionally tense moments, such as when Hitler wonders how much of a Jew-hater Disney really can be if he works in Hollywood. But most of the hour is spent sitting around a big oak table, drinking sherry, and swapping tales of German efficiency and American pluck. Powers teases us with some provocative themes, such as the true roots of Disney’s fantasy playland for children, but the tease never pays off.

Details:
Through Feb. 24 at the Garage, 975 Howard (at Fifth St.), S.F. Tickets are $10-$20; call 829-2301 or visit www.975howard.com.

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- There’s a comic book interview with Marjane Satrapi at Stripped Books. She shows herself to be a bright and articulate woman, even in English. No surprise in that.
_

- Karl Cohen writes to inform me that two animated short films that were screened at Sundance and were invited to be part of the festival’s online shorts program, have been censored. As Nancy Denney-Phelps reports on her blog Sprockets, Signe Bauman‘s Teat Beat of Sex and Because Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People, by Kenneth Ti and Kin Hung, were rejected by the online store for being, respectively, too sexually explicit and too political.

Director Baumane said about her film that it, “comes from corporations unwilling to take a risk. Corporations never push the envelope; it is individuals. It is remarkable that violence is OK, but not sex.”
Karl Cohen, president of ASIFA-SF, commented: “I see this as another stupid act of censorship that illustrates the dangers of having a few corporations in control of our media. TEAT BEAT OF SEX was commissioned for European television by a distributor and it is being shown there, but it’s considered too controversial to show on iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox. Isn’t something wrong with this picture?”

- This Sunday, Feb. 10th, the BAFTA awards will be held. You can watch them on BBC in America at 8PM EST and repeated at 10PM.

The Animated Shorts nominated are:

The PearceSisters – Jo Allen/Luis Cook
Head Over Heels – Osbert Parker/Fiona Pitkin/Ian Gouldstone
THE Crumblegiant – Pearse Moore/John McCloskey

I can’t help but note that The Pearce Sisters was nominated by BAFT for an award, this year, but it was skipped by the Oscars. Last year, the same was true of Dreams and Desires – Family Ties by Joanna Quinn. It’s a bit disturbing to me. Peter and the Wolf won the prize last year.

The nominations for the Best Animated Feature are:
Ratatouille – Brad Bird
Shrek The Third – Chris Miller
The Simpsons Movie – David Silverman

Not a good category. Ratatouille had best win.

By the way, in case you’re in London this Sunday and want to watch the red carpet in person check out this link for info.

- Mark Kausler has an excellent post giving us his thoughts on the Charles Schulz biography by David Michaelis. Mark includes a gem of a story about getting Schulz to sign a book. There’s something wonderful hearing about any small contact with greatness. See that autograph on his site.
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- Finally, I have to again point you in the direction of Mark Mayerson‘s great blog. He’s posted another mosaic. This time he’s not picking apart a film, but a scene. It’s a Bob Wickersham scene from Thru The Mirror. He couldn’t have started with a better scene from a better film. Rod Scribner, check it out. I can’t wait for Mark’s written analysis.