Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– Congratulations to Marjane Satrapi and co-director Vincent Parranaud for winning the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for their film Persepolis. Read more about it here.

The stop motion film, Madame Tutli-Putli, by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski won the Petit Rail d’Or as Best Short. Congratulations to them as well.

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- We have a program of our films screening this coming week in Los Angeles.
The Redcat International Children’s Film Festival will present a program of our films on June 3, 9, 16, and 23.

Included in this program will be four of my favorites:

Dr. Desoto (1984)
The Red Shoes (1990)
Abel’s Island (1988)
The Man Who Walked Between . . . . the Towers (2005)

The program will screen in the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
It’s 70 mins. long and the admission is just $5.

I suggest you look into the overall program to see what other excellent children’s films are screening.

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- There are a couple of items on line that I wanted to point out. For animation readers there are the usual reg’lars:

- Michael Barrier has a stunning studio photograph of Harry Reichenbach on display. His timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I’ve been reading and rereading The Animated Man, Barrier’s biography of Disney, slowly – very slowly. He gives enormous detail to a lot of the key shorts and the workings behind them. We get detail such as the invention of the storyboard or the first use of moving holds as a matter of course. No fanfare is called to this information – information that doesn’t really appear elsewhere. It’s an enormous book which I can’t recommend too highly to anyone interested in animation and/or Disney.

Anyway, Reichenbach was the Press Agent running the Colony Theater which first screened Steamboat Willie for Disney and allowed the film to reap its success.
I had just devoured this section when the photo appeared on line, and I appreciated the timing.

Back in 1978, for the 50th Anniversary of Mickey’s first appearance, the Disney studio arranged a screening of Mickey in Steamboat Willie. It took place in that very same Colony Theater (which is now called the Broadway Theater, across the street from David Letterman’s theater) for all the geeks of the world who wanted to celebrate the date. I remember it clearly – of course, I was there to celebrate the event.

Barrier also has an extremely interesting essay on his site about the flypaper sequence Norm Ferguson animated in Playful Pluto.

- Mark Mayerson continues two important threads:

Pinocchio Part 10 has just gone up, and it’s a beauty. Forget the information these “Mosaics” relay; just look at the beauty of the images. It’s stunning. I almost wish Mark would take his time completing this survey of the Disney’s most stunning film; I want to treaure it for a long time, and the longer it takes to post, the longer I’ll have to look forward to it. Mark’s thoughts, of course, are the real treasure.

Mark is posting his thesis on animation acting in parts. It’s tremendously interesting reading, and a book in the making. Animators should always be thinking about this subject, and I’m not sure anyone has ever been more eloquent about it.

- Cartoon on Film, Tom Stathes’ site which gives a lot of attention to silent film animation (something which has always interested me), has an interesting post about some older silent film collections that were available on 8mm and 16mm.

For those just looking for something non-animation related but entertaining to read:

- Annulla at Blather from Brooklyn offfers a couple of great posts.

She gives a great account of visiting two television shows from an audience’s pov. The View and Montel Williams couldn’t be more different, and the differences couldn’t be more interesting. I caught myself smiling throughout this read. It comes complete with photos.

Then there’s the post of the pony rides offered to a bunch of rich kids on the Upper East Side on Manhattan. It’s amazing!

Two animated films are among the shorts in competition at Cannes. These are:

Spegelbarn (Looking Glass) is from Sweden/Finland/Denmark.

Swedish filmmaker, Erik Rosenlund is the Director/producer/animator
The synopsis reads: A dark stormy night. A little girl is home alone, but is she really?

The second film is
Ark from Poland.

Grzegorz Jonkajtys is the Polish Director of the film.
Synopsis: An unknown virus has destroyed almost the entire human population. Oblivious to the true nature of the disease, the only remaining survivors escape to the sea. In great ships, they set off in search of uninhabited land. So begins the exodus, led by one man. . .

Neither of these films is listed among those to be screened at Annecy.

The award ceremony at Cannes will be held tomorrow, Sunday.

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Through Aug. 1, the Posteritati Movie Poster Gallery (239 Centre St.) lets New Yorkers escape into the past with a collection of art from fantasy films ranging from 1937′s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to modern-day favorites like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Incredibles.”

Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 6 p.m.

…. ….
The 1960 Czech poster (above left) for Dumbo (1941) and the original US poster (above right) for Snow White (1937).

>A 1955 Russian poster (above left) for Disney’s ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ (1937), the first animated feature released in the U.S. and a 1962 Polish poster (above right) for Disney’s ‘Pinocchio’ (1940).

We’re having a few problems with our server today, so I’m giving you a Polly & Her Pals strip I like. See you tomorrow.

– Well, Shrek 3 opened yesterday and is onto making a crop of cash for Dreamworks Animation. Good for them.

The reviews weren’t sterling. The most positive I saw in the NY papers came from AOScott of the NYTimes. He’s getting to be one of the reviewers I most enjoy reading for insightful, intelligent and creative writing.

This is how he ends his Shrek review:

“Shrek,” “Shrek 2” and “Shrek the Third,” by contrast, are flat and simple, hectic and amusing without being especially thrilling or complex. Their naughty insouciance makes their inevitable lapses into sentimental moralism all the more glaring. In this movie we hear some speeches about how it’s important not to care about what other people think of you, and to be yourself above all. Yeah, fine, whatever. This doesn’t strike me as necessarily good advice, and in any case today’s wised-up kids don’t need life lessons from an ogre. But then again, the kids are not the ones who identify with Shrek as he makes his grouchy way through the life cycle.

Dreamworks last year had a charming little short called “First Flight” which was light years better than Pixar’s “Lifted.” I hope they get away from the ugly Shrek graphics and into something a little more human like that short.

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- The feature I’m waiting to see is Persepolis. The film is directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud and is adapted from the her graphic novel.

This black-and-white animated feature recounts Satrapi’s experiences growing up in Iran after the fundamentalist revolution of 1979 created a more repressive nation and a climate of fear among educated Iranians. It features the voices of Gena Rowlands and Catherine Deneuve.

A number of clips have shown up on YouTube, and it looks as original as I hoped it will be. Unfortunately all of the clips are in French, but you can figure out what’s going on.
Teaser trailer
Clip 1
Clip 2
Clip 3

The film will premiere next Wednesday & Thursday in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

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– NY animator, Pat Smith has put together a collection of his animated shorts and calls the dvd Liquid Tales.

The collection sells for $25 from Smith’s Blend Films site or can be bought on Amazon or in storers everywhere.

The films included in the dvd are:
Drink Delivery
Moving Along
Handshake
Puppet.

It also comes with extras. Read reviews at Blend Films.

- Unfortunately, there’s been a lot of spam coming my way, and a lot of it gets to the blog. So for the moment, I’ve put all comments on moderation. Hopefully, I can change it back soon, but it’s smarter to handle things that way for now.

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– A short piece in yesterday’s NYTimes talked about Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson going digital to direct three “Tin Tin” animated features for Dreamworks. They’ll use the Supermarionation technique – no, I’m sorry, the “3D” Performance Capture technique (some call it animation) to craft their wizadry. Peter Jackson has already done a 20 minute test reel that all of the executives love.
I have to wonder if Andy Serkis is going to play the lead, Tin Tin.

Happy Birthday, Tin Tin – 100 years old on May 22nd.

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This coming Saturday, May 19th, NY animator JEFF SCHER will have a program of his films screened at the Millennium Film Workshop at 8PM.

Here’s a press piece about Jeff’s work and history:

Jeff Scher is a New York-based filmmaker, who defines himself not as an animator, but as a painter working in motion. He is fascinated by the human mind’s ability to create the illusion of movement from disparate images. His montages are dizzying arrays of color, light, figures and forms that flit about like unruly thoughts, tricking the
eye and revealing unexpected visual harmonies. Scher gave up his pre-med studies for film while at Bard College in the mid-1970s. He still makes use of rotoscoping, an old animation technique in which film frames are blown up and traced individually onto animation cels. In Scher’s case, he painstakingly hand paints and shoots each frame of film, sometimes substituting clay, paper models or found materials for his paintings.

Jeff was one of the final judges at last year’s Ottawa Animation Festival. Some of you may have met him there.

This Saturday’s program is the following:

LIGHTTIDE (12 min.-1974)
GARDEN OF REGRETS (8 min.-1994)
WARREN (3 min.-1995)
POSTCARDS FROM WARREN (1 min.-1995)
NERVE TONIC (3 min.-1995)
YOURS (4 min.-1997)
GRAND CENTRAL (15 min.-1999)
THE JACOBSONS (3 min.-2000)
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING (3 min.-2001)
LOST AND FOUND (3 min.-2004)
YOU WON’T REMEMBER THIS (2 min.-2005)
DOUBLE PLAYDATE (2 min.-2007)
OXYGEN (3 min.-2007)

Millennium Film Workshop Personal Cinema Program MAY 19 (Sat.) 8 pm
66 East 4th Street, NY NY 10003

Here’s a great article by Stephen Heller in EYE Magazine about Jeff.

Leo The Late Bloomer was adapted from the book by Robert Kraus and Jose Aruego. It was the first co-production between Weston Woods and Pat Sajac‘s company. More attention was given to the work since there were now more eyes watching and commenting on things. A lot of hands were in the broth, but it worked out surprisingly well. Mary Beth Hurt narrated it.

Ernest gave me a score that was the height of my hopes. Its delicate South American rhythms made the film. It was a bit of a complicated film. The story was very delicate yet had a lot of repetition. One didn’t want to call attention to that repetition, and yet the film had to keep that drive – always moving forward. Keep the kids into the story; it needed music that would have that hook.

Here are four cues that give you an indication of how Ernest pulled it off.

-This is the main theme of the film. It establishes Leo’s problem: he’s a slow learner:——–Leo’s theme

- Dad worries about Leo and follows his every move:—Dad’s theme

- When the Spring comes, Leo starts to get it. He begins to keep up with the others:———–Spring

- This is the end of the film, including final credits:—–Leo Bloom’s mix

On Sunday ASIFA East
The annual ASIFA-East Festival awards and party will take place at the New School.

A lot of filmmakers will be awarded prizes and their films will be shown starting (dare I say) punctually at 6PM.

It’s the annual program of the best 2007 animated films (commercials, sponsored, student and independent films) as judged by our democratic list of judges (all the members who wanted to vote.)

Following the films and awards ceremony there will be the usual party (wine and cheese) and big schmooze. As always, it promises to be fun.
(Tape The Sopranos, and come.)

It’s FREE as usual.

Sunday, May 6th, 6 pm
The New School, Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th street

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On Monday at MOMA
- An Evening with Andreas Hykade (Germany) and Mariusz Wilczynski (Poland) will be celebrated at the Museum of Modern Art on Monday, May 7th at 8PM.

For this special program Andreas Hykade introduces his trilogy of “country films,” which have won top prizes at the prestigious Hiroshima and Ottawa animation festivals: the mythic We Lived in Grass (1995), the raunchy, honky-tonk Ring of Fire (2000), and the trilogy’s disturbing coda, The Runt (2006).

Mariusz Wilczynski presents a range of work from the Chaplinesque Times Have Passed (1998) to Unfortunately (2004), a twilight journey set to a haunting score by Polish jazz trumpeter Tomasz Stanko. The artist describes his newest work, Kizi Mizi (2007), as “a tough love story between a cat and a mouse…a film about loneliness, betrayal, and revenge.”

The program is presented in conjunction with Goethe-Institut New York and the Polish Cultural Institute.

– Monday night was the first screening at the Tribeca Film Festival of a program honoring John Canemaker‘s Independent films. There will be two more screenings with tickets still available.

Per the Program Notes:

Continuing Tribeca’s celebration of New York-based independent animators, this program features the work of John Canemaker, a preeminent animation teacher, filmmaker, author and historian, who won an Oscar® for his animated short The Moon and the Son in 2006.

A selection of short films spanning Canemaker’s career will be shown including Confessions of a Stardreamer, Bridgehampton, The Wizard’s Son, Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat, The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, and Bottom’s Dream.

The program will be shown again on the following dates:

Thursday, May 3, 11:59 pm
Tribeca Cinemas – Theater 2
54 Varick Street (Below Canal Street, at Laight Street)

Sunday, May 6, 10:30 am
AMC Kips Bay Theater 14
570 Second Avenue (at 32nd St.)

Trying to be the Alternative Tribeca Film Festival is
the BE Film Festival (formerly known as the Tribeca Underground Film Festival).
They’re screening a number of shorts – both live and animated.
These are the animated films scheduled:

Wednesday May 2
The Park Avenue Screening Room
7:00-9:00pm

Tony is stupid, animation (1:00), Dir. Dir.Sean Mc Bride
Loom, animation (5:00), Dir. Scott Kravitz
Tempolis, animation (10:00), Dir. Manu Gomez

Wednesday May 2
The Bryant Park Hotel Screening Room
7:00-9:00pm

Men, Women, & Capitalism, animation (7:00), Dir. Yuzuke Murakami
Sideshow, animation (5:00), Dir. Lisa LaBracio

Thursday May 3
The Park Avenue Screening Room
7:00-9:00 pm

Pilgrim, animation (3:00), Dir. Matthew Darragh
Road Test, animation (4:00), Dir. Matthew Lee

Thursday May 3
The Bryant Park Hotel Screening Room
7:00-9:00 pm

Apocalypse Cow, animation (3:00), Dir. Kartik Mohan

Friday May 4
The Park Avenue Screening Room
7:00-9:00 pm

The Country, animation (2:00), Dir. Brady Baltezore
The Mole, animation (13:00), Dir. Victric Thng
Koda, animation (6:00), Collective

Friday May 4
Bryant Park Hotel Screening Room
7:00-9:00 pm

Bones, animation (4:00), Dir. Shinsaku Hidaka
Reproduction 3075, animation (1:00), Dir. Ondrej Rudavsky
Teat Beat of Sex,animation (4:00), Dir. Signe Baumane
The Return of Sergeant Pecker, animation (3:00), Dir. Pierre Delarue
Missed Connection, animation (1:00), Dir. Paul Haber

Saturday May 5
Bryant Park Hotel Screening Room
7:00-9:00 pm

Hyacinthe, animation (4:00), Dir. Joann Sfar & Kerascoet
One D, animation (5:00), Dir. Mike Grimshaw

. . . . . . Images from The World Before The Deluge. (Thanks to Boing Boing)

Before I point you in the direction of the NFB, take a look at Mark Mayerson‘s continuation of his “Mosaic” of Pinocchio. Does it get any better than this? It’s like looking at a grand version of the director’s workbook. You get to see the cutting so front and center. It’s just beautiful. Thanks and great work, Mark! You’re a treasure.

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- The National Film Board of Canada has a program/project that’s designed to encourage new talent. It’s called Hothouse, and this is the program’s fourth year. Eight emerging filmmakers are spending twelve weeks at the NFB Animation studios in Montreal to create a 30-second film on the theme “A Chance Encounter.”

Torill Kove, whose NFB/Norway co-produced The Danish Poet received this year’s Oscar for Best Animated Short, is this year’s mentoring director. You can view the films in progress from this year’s Hothouse, and you can also view past years’ productions.

In case you didn’t know, you can also view quite a few of the Film Board’s greatest films on-line, for free. There are 50 films available here.

If you haven’t seen The Street or Two Sisters by Caroline Leaf, what are you waiting for?

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There’s an interesting article in today’s NYTimes about Ratatouille and Pixar’s work with Disney. It’s all about the marketing. (Especially with a title that’s confusing to pronounce for the “Freedom Fries” half of America.) I expect we’ll see quite a few more articles like this in coming weeks.

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Speaking of French, congratulations to Persepolis now in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s not often an animated film gets into competition there, and this one is 2D. Marjane Satrapi should be flying about now, and my kudos to her and her codirector, Vincent Paronnaud.

Finally, my congratulations to Tom Sito for his film Adventures in the National Palace Museum getting into the Cannes Film Festival.

That’s a coup!

– Last night we tried something different around here. I pulled out the old,
lo-tech 16mm projector and I dusted off some of my collection for a small gathering of friends. Pizza and cartoons always works.

It helps to put together an eccentric program sometimes. I let the music do the walking and put together a musical tour. (Some might say torture.)
The program was a loopy one:

. I have a scope section of Pencil Test from Raggedy Ann & Andy – Tissa David’s “Candy Hearts and Paper Flowers” section. We watched this first because it was the only scope film I was showing. There’s a whole big lens change for Cinemascope. So I was able to set it up before anyone came, and just pull off the lens after that film.

. From there we went back to the 1929 Mickey Mouse Club sing-a-long of “Minnie Yoo Hoo” which I have attached to a rare trailer for Snow White. I don’t think animation was done yet, because the entire trailer is in live action.

. Jumping to New York’s Fleischers I programmed “The Little Dutch Mill” since this has my favorite Fleischer 3D multiplane use. The cinecolor has faded from red and aqua blue to one color – magenta. Somehow, that didn’t hurt the film.

. Back to MGM, we saw “To Spring” with the multitudes of gnomes bringing on the spring (appropriately, it was a beautiful day – finally – in NY) and “Swing Wedding” which includes Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller as frogs performing in the swamp.

. Clair de Lune with the Debussy track. This was done for the proposed Fantasia 2 and included in a later feature compilation as Blue Bajou.

. George Dunning’s “The Tempest.” was for the art crowd in me.

. Leave ‘em with a laugh. You can’t go wrong with Tex Avery’s “King Sized Canary,” and I didn’t go wrong.

Basically, I let music guide the program moving from the Minnie’s Yoo Hoo chant to swing and classical through modern and gave it all up for a laugh. It made for a lot of fun. If you have a 16mm projector, I suggest you try it. So much more fun than dvd/video.

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- There are a couple of blogs/sites I rush to visit every day, and I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to tell you about them. There are those that I am religious about visiting, even if and though I suspect nothing’s changed. The four I’ve pointed to often enough include:

My favorite animation reading is still at Michael Barrier‘s site.

And I also look forward to reading what Mark Mayerson has to say about some of the classic works of animation art. His is an invaluable site.

Of course there’s also Cartoon Brew, Cartoon Modern (get there today to see Walt Peregoy designs), and Hans Perk’s A Film LA are immediate stops.

- However, after those four I jump to two favorites I haven’t given attention to.

Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner is right up at the pinnacle among the favorites. Time to lighten up. This guy is the funniest man out there (he should have his own TV series, animated or otherwise.) His drawings always on display – they change daily – is Don Martin on some kind of high. However, Eddie’s knowledge is enormous; it’s not just for laughs. There’s depth here.

Check out some of his posts about art here or cartoonists here or women here or comedy here or lots of other subjects.

It all seems scattered, except for two things. They all tie back to animation and how to do it well. And they all come out of the mind of Eddie Fitzgerald who has to be one of the most positive and original voices I look forward to reading every day. Even when he says he won’t be there for four days I go back to see if just maybe . . .

I love this site. (By the way, check out the Fry & Laurie films he’s posted today. Stephen Fry has always been a favorite of mine, and Eddie features him today.)

- Blather from Brooklyn is another one of my favorite visits, and it’s usually how I end my blog reading in the morning.

The site has nothing to do with animation, (unless you feel as I do that everything has to do with animation) but it gives an incredible view of the New York I love. Because of the title, I originally thought the site was Brooklyn-centric, but I was wrong. There are posts about artwork around town here, haiku created from gravestones here, or photos of the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue here. The site is by Annulla (not much more is revealed, but (s)he also has another blog called Annulla Cooks, and it’s great if you’re into recipes and cooking.
I used to visit Rachelle Bowden‘s blog for her travel around NY, but she now is in Chicago. Fortunately, I also like Chicago – though it’s no New York. And she’s also into food.