Okay, so I haven’t been showing Crabapple Cove much love of late, but I’ve been feeling a little tired and uninspired. I’m sure you know the drill. There’s also another reason — I’ve been moonlighting. I ran across a solicitation for contributors from national site Examiner.com. I cycled through their wants, did not see a listing for a correspondent for cartoons and animation, and politely asked if they’d be interested in having one. Oddly enough, they were. After a surprisingly rigorous application process, they offered me the gig. Actually, I shouldn’t use the word “gig” since that implies there’s money to be had. While there is some compensation, it’s pretty minimal — but cash wasn’t really why I signed on. I’ve been doing the column for almost a month and, while I’m still finding my voice and drafting my long-term plan, I am rather enjoying the process.
By the by, here’s the trailer for The Princess and the Frog that’s currently showing with UP. “Princess ” is the first traditionally animated feature from the Disney Studio since the disastrous Home on the Range. For a while there, it looked as though there would be no more hand-drawn animation from the studio that Walt built, but Michael Eisner was finally deposed and the new CCO (John Lasseter) understands the studio’s roots better than any other executive could. In the wake of Pixar’s early successes, Eisner and other short-sighted executives decided that people didn’t want to see feature length cartoons done the old fashioned way anymore. The very notion that 2D animation was to blame (when, in fact, it was bad storytelling more than anything else) is ludicrous. I think that traditional animation still has a spark that’s lacking in CGI and I trust that the movie-going public will still embrace the format given a well-told tale.
That being said, I’m not sure The Princess and the Frog looks all that amazing based on this trailer, but I’m pulling for it nonetheless.
Unlike Sleeping Beauty, the first traditionally animated Disney feature to appear on blu-ray disc, thesecond, Pinocchio, earns the “classic” descriptor without qualifiers. Though both films are visually rich, Pinocchio represents the apex of what Walt and his animators were able to achieve — there is, quite simply, not a better looking animated feature in two-D or three. Another way in which Pinocchio trumps Sleeping Beauty is in raw appeal. When we watch “Beauty”, it is a mostly academic exercise — more than anything else, we are admiring the tremendous background paintings and wonderfully stylized character designs. When we watch Pinocchio, we are invested — we want to see if this little wooden kid makes it through okay because, by golly, we like the guy. Where “Beauty” has cardboard characters doing mostly uninteresting things, Pinocchio has uniformly interesting characters realized not only through sterling animation, but also through impeccable voice acting. Sure, the story’s a little episodic (and has a few too many coincidences), but the pacing — with its pitch-perfect blend of joy, melancholy and horror — is such that one tends to gloss right over the narrative gaffes. Rounding out this neat little package is a wonderful collection of songs with When You Wish Upon a Star being the clear standout. When you listen to Cliff Edwards’ rendition and you pay heed to the lyrics, it’s not hard to see why this song has remained the signature sound of the Disney company for nearly seventy years.
This new blu-ray set of Pinocchio is rounded out with a fine hour-long doc on the making of the picture, as well as a new commentary with Leonard Maltin, animator Eric Goldberg and author J.B. Kaufman. The commentary, while not exactly scintillating, gets the job done with several interesting anecdotes from the panel (although, if you’re a follower of Disney animation, many of them will probably be familiar to you). All in all, this is a terrific release from the good folks at Disney Home Video.
Here’s the latest trailer for Pixar’s spring release Up. I have to admit that the prior trailers and the things I was reading were leaving me a little cold, but this new preview makes the movie look like good fun.
For those of you keeping track at home, this is post number 501. We’re making history here, people. Can you feel it?
This morning, my bro directed my eyes to a Washington Post article on how Walt Disney is being neglected in current art circles (or, more specifically, in museums). I agree with absolutely everything columnist Paul Richard has to say. Click the pic below to see what I’m going on about…
As some of you may know, I spent several years as a character animator for video games. Recently, I’ve been polishing my old demo reel and so my head has been in a cartoony space — well, cartoonier than usual anyway. Apros pos of that mood, I recently went back and listened to all 28 episodes of Clay Kaytis’ Animation Podcast over again in order. Kaytis started doing the show back in 2005. He’s an animator at Disney and, as such, has access to some real heavyweights in the field. Past interviews have been with John Musker and Ron Clements (directors of The Little Mermaid and Aladdin), Glen Keane (the animator of Beast, Ariel and Tarzan), and James Baxter (the animator of Belle and the animation supervisor for Enchanted). Each of the episodes runs between 30 minutes and an hour with most of the guests appearing across multiple episodes. Kaytis’ interviewing style is laid-back and polite and his own expertise in the field doesn’t hurt one bit. Although this may raise the only red flag that I can think of — occasionally the talk can get a little nuts-and-bolts-y, but I for one don’t really consider that a deterrent. I can enjoy shows about doctors and lawyers without grasping all of the jargon. The hook with those programs is the window into another world. I think you get that exact same experience with the Animation Podcast: a glimpse into a professional realm outside your own. Besides, the vast majority of the material presented is anecdotal or philosophical. The animators and directors mostly talk about their personal histories, the political goings-on behind the scenes and their views on life and art.
Listening to the entire run of shows from start to finish was an absolute pleasure. My only complaint when I got to the end was the fact there were no more episodes (although that’ll change soon — Clay’s getting them out at a rate of about one a month now). Anyway, my gist here is that if you are an animator yourself, an animation fan or if you have just wondered what it might be like in the crazy world of animated film, you need to listen to the Animation Podcast. All of the episodes are available on iTunes. Go. Now.
[UPDATE: And so they did. Ratatouille won for best animated feature. I must confess to not having seen Persepolis yet, but I did enjoy Ratatouille enormously.]
[UPDATE 2: It would seem the videos linked in this post are no longer available. Oh, well.]
I’m not ashamed to admit it: I have a man-crush on John Lasseter. He’s the closest thing we have to Walt Disney today (and as far as I’m concerned Walt was the shit).
This recent article from USA Today brings together and confirms a lot of the current scuttlebutt regarding the Disney/Pixar merger. It’s a good piece.
The headline says it all. –It looks like Kricfalusi is having some trouble formatting his page (”Damn this new-fangled Internet!”) but he’ll get up to speed. Totally worth your time..
John Kricfalusi (aka “John K.”) can often be overly opinionated and (I feel) just flat-out wrong. His love of early Hanna Barbara TV fare and his denigration of the Disney acting style is baffling to me. On the other hand, the guy’s made some damn funny cartoons. I remember seeing Ren and Stimpy for the first time in the early 90s and being knocked on my ass by the sheer audacity of it. While it definitely had a signature style it was a throwback to the great zany cartoons of the 30s and 40s. In particular John is a huge fan of Robert Clampett. I can’t fault that sort of hero worship (and the influence is clear in K.’s own work). I don’t know why it is that Kricfalusi can’t keep a show on the air for more than six episodes (I suspect it’s because he’s a frickin’ handful) but when he does resurface every few years he always beings the funny.
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