The Blackwing Diaries

Robert, Brad and George at ShoWest in 2005
Because it's always interesting to hear what's going on with him and because his name probably gets mentioned by someone in our industry 83.2 times a day in some context or other, I was very happy to read this exclusive by Nikki Finke at the head of her Deadline Hollywood blog tonight:

From Deadline.com/Hollywood by Nikki Finke: I hear that, after a hot pursuit by all the major Hollywood agencies, formerly rep-less Brad Bird has signed with UTA's Tracey Jacobs and David Kramer. The writer-director is currently prepping to helm Paramount's Mission: Impossible IV for producer J.J. Abrams, with Tom Cruise starring. But Deadline has reported previously that Paramount is currently rethinking MI4. I hear the script that came in is very good, but the studio is still trying to figure out the budget as well as Cruise's role in light of the lackluster Knight And Day grosses. There's talk that Tom's character will mentor a young operative this time out if the pic proceeds. I just hope Bird is pay or play.

He's also attached to direct 1906 for Warner Bros. Bird won two Academy Awards for directing the Pixar hits The Incredibles and Ratatouille, both of which he also wrote. Bird's first major animated feature came with Warner Bros' The Iron Giant, which he wrote and directed. In addition to working at Pixar, Bird has also had a prolific television career, having worked on shows such as The Simpsons, King Of The Hill, and The Critic. Bird will continue to be represented by attorney Jake Bloom.

Any news such as this is good news. Everyone I know wants to see whatever he does next as soon as may be.

I tend to avoid standard reviewing of contemporary animated films. In the first place there's plenty of that everywhere else. And more importantly I feel close enough to even those films and studios I personally have nothing to do with that I'm sure my reactions are skewed one way or another. There's aren't degrees of separation, plural, in the animation business. We're virtually all connected with every kind of tie and association, sometimes unwittingly. So it can get complicated. In any case I thought I'd post some random thoughts I had while watching "Up" in 3D a week after its opening:

I was struck by how beautiful I found the palette and textures to be. It looked painterly, roughly so in places, as with the side of a palette knife. There was a particularly delicate use of lighting in what seemed a great collaboration of the visdev(AD) and CG departments. It made such an impression on me that I I broke one of my cardinal rules and elbowed the person next to me, forcing him to lean in so I could hiss "I can't believe how great that lighting is!" and "Would you look at that fireplace!" in their ear. What you wish for as a toiler and as an audience member is that the story and visual beauty will both take you out of yourself and put you in that world, and I thought the entire opening succeeded brilliantly with it. I may sound as if I'm contradicting myself there, but it was a beat after being impacted by the beauty of the shot that I woke up to the extraordinary aspect of it. Eating one's cake and seeing it, too. The sets looked to me for all the world like a cozy Viewmaster setting from the early 60s, which I delighted in throughout.


I admired (as so many did) the storyboarding, particularly the "growing older together" montage early on. I reckoned it was done by head of story Ronnie del Carmen, and someone told me I was right.
There are a lot of ways to board anything, never one right way (the filmmakers hope it seems the only way), but the way that was done--the transitions, cuts, all the choices--were perfect. I arrived at that verdict because I felt exhilarated watching it. It had to be a tightrope walk to avoid slipping into bathos (some critics felt it did slip, but only a few; to achieve that is a feat with this material).

I felt as touched by the sweet comedy relief of Dug the dog as I did at Carl's running struggle with loss. That might seem a pretty odd thing to say-and I allude here with a virtual smile to my respected friend who may think I've regressed to an eight-year-old's perspective to claim it-but there it is.

"Dug" was a win for me because of this: one of my pet peeves is the lack of films that make use of plain old reality for comedy, for pathos, for appeal. Dug was in appearance a wildly caricatured canine, but his actions, movement and the clever way his thoughts were translated into dialogue were more real than real for any dog lovers in the audience--and judging from my audience there were a lot of us. The kids squeal and love him because he's friendly-looking, and funny. The adults laugh and respond because they consciously recognize Dogs They Have Known in this unlikely character--and here, by the way, is an illustration of the work methods of the filmmakers I was blogging about in an earlier post. I don't know which of those involved drove the character's handling-director, story people, producers,animators or as is likely a melange of all of them. But those people know dogs, and moreover have loved dogs--a special dog. And have a healthy amount of empathy and imagination and skill enough to make their experience translate to the screen. This is why I enjoyed Dug so much, and not because I'm wallowing in my childhood.

And this gives me an opportunity to say how really fine I thought the character animation was in "Up". I don't know who you are, but I want to find out-all of you: the crews who did Carl (young Carl and Ellie in particular-superb), Dug, Muntz, "Kevin"...all these characters had scenes where the movement and performance blended together in an idiosyncratic and beautiful way. It's a new high point for you guys-as every new film should be, ideally.

There were issues that I found myself thinking about while the film was running, things that I didn't understand, or that I would have done differently. It's a habitual story habit thing--an occupational hazard of the business. I could go into them but I won't, not even obliquely. Not because they're so harsh that I'm afraid to offend but because--on my blog or off--I'm wary of being taken out of context and let's face it, it does happen. It's all too easy to misread a written sentence. It's too black and white, and where some things are concerned my opinions and reactions are more fluid than that. I'm much more comfortable discussing anything I take issue with in person, where a conversation can be had rather than a one-sided speech made. And I'm not a professional critic besides.

An old man in a flying house heading for South America is not your everyday plot. Add a lot of visual beauty and some sincere heart and I want to see it. More than once.

"If you want to make a movie for children then make a movie for children. The experience for a parent or guardian is that they are spending time with their children at their child's level. The movie is not meant to satisfy an adult in the audience. You do not have to consider adults when creating content or story lines for "childrens" movies. Far to often mature content is blended into scripts only to promote the feature as "something for all to see". The marketing of this movie was selfishly aimed at drawing young children to the theatre. You call it "PG" but then you market it for a younger audience. Creating many 6, 7, 8 ,9 and 10 yr old Birthday parties/gatherings when this content is way too deep for them to handle and or enjoy. Pixar...Step back and really think about what you product is saying and who will be watching and effected by it. Two thumbs down from Daughter and Dad."
— ke flannigan, boston

-from the New York Times readers' responses to Manohla Dargis' review of "Up"

I finally saw "Up" last weekend, and I mean to write some of my first impressions in a future post. I'd avoided most of the reviews, wanting to see the film with as little baggage as possible, so I had to go back to see what was said about it including its review in the New York Times. Ms. Dargis' take was mostly positive, I think-albeit with some slightly schizophrenic and vague caveats. Her piece seemed possibly edited down.

What really caught my eye was the "Reader's Review" that I quoted above--a comment posted underneath the online version of Ms. Dargis' review. I thought it would be a good springboard for writing a bit about "Up" in particular and all animated films more generally.

So about the comment of "ke": what he writes is simply wrong.

Now, I'm of the opinion that very few if any reactions to a film are ever wrong. How could they be? All artistic experiences are subjective; one person's honest impression is as valid as another's, really, as far as it goes.

Obviously there are plenty of riders on that subjectivity: one person simply might have what I'd call better taste (more subjectivity at work there): they might be more educated about films, more experienced in life, awake, more receptive, generally appreciative of art and/or craftsmanship in all its forms(this can lead to a negative as well as a positive reaction, by the way). Another might have life experiences that drastically affect his or her judgement of a film, whether it's "The Sorrow and the Pity" they're watching or "Duck Soup".

All this might seem obvious, but I've read reviews from professionals that I admire-Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, et al-where once in a while they seem-to me at least-to be oblivious to some pretty extreme personal biases. But the bottom line whether professional or paying audience member is that each is entitled to their own opinion--it's the nature of the art.

In the comment above "ke" is taking another tack entirely. He's dead certain that the filmmakers of "Up" have made a cardinal error by misunderstanding who their audience is--children. He's actually dead wrong. Because children as some separate group are not who the film was made for. Certainly it was hoped they'd be part of the audience. Absolutely the reactions of children mattered to the crew, whether they happen to be parents themselves or not.
But so do the reactions of the dads in the audience--and the moms, teenagers, older people, and any other permutation. All of them make up the imagined audience. Yet even then, without forgetting or dismissing them, they aren't who the films are made for, it's who they are shown to--hopefully with the result of entertainment.

I'm going out on a bit of a limb here because I don't work at Pixar, I haven't spoken to the people who worked on this about it, and to date I haven't read any interviews specifically about its production. But I'm still sure I'm right.

"Up" was made for the same people it was made by. That isn't accusing the artists of solipsism-the inability to look beyond one's nose. It's about telling a story with a with a personal meaning, a personal intent. When you start with that, you-and eventually your coworkers-are the litmus test for whether your idea communicates. You know what you want to do, and then you proceed to do your best--everyone pitching in--to accomplish it.

Contrary to some reports Pixar's method isn't really a special secret, magic trick or rocket science. It also isn't easy. I'm sure sometimes it doesn't turn out films exactly as originally imagined. But it stems from individual imaginations: someone with an idea they're totally committed to doing. Other artists are brought on immediately to work on it if it's a go; they too put their stamp, their spin, their characters and their ideas into the mix. The film story usually begins to change, veering one way, then the other. There are peaks and valleys aplenty in the long years of production. There always are. I haven't read of any animated feature production anywhere that was entirely smooth sailing in the story process (well, maybe "Gulliver's Travels" at Fleischer's in 1938-enough said). So with all that work involved over a period of years, there has to be, hopefully, someone at the helm who knows what they want and why it should be there. To say a film is aimed "at children' is too vague, broad and vast a goal. But to please the child, young adult and grownup that the director has inside him or her is not only doable, it's imperative. Certainly the head of a production seeks out other eyes and ears and opinions, but the buck has to to stop somewhere and someone needs to know what the point of it all is.

It's long been a monkey on the backs of both animation lovers and professionals that "cartoons" have been so firmly fixed in many people's minds as primarily directed at children--often, small children. With every non-kid animation watershed in our generation--Roger Rabbit, Ren & Stimpy, The Simpsons, Beauty and the Beast, Shrek, anything produced by Tim Burton, anything written and directed by Brad Bird--it's been hoped that the old cliches about "animation is really the domain of wee ones" would finally be busted wide open--or at least dropped by the critics who really should know better by now.

But weirdly, with all those successes and very un-totlike films' releases--even with a studio or two whose entire output is well-known and successful for more adult oriented comedies--it still hasn't happened, and each time a film is released there are always too many writers who scratch their heads about why on earth something not specifically focused on preschoolers found its way into an animated film.

They forgot, if they ever knew, that even the very first, most famous commercial animated feature had adult thrills, action, and moments of beauty that were aimed at everyone: the grand premiere of "Snow White" had virtually no children present at all (exceptions being perhaps Shirley Temple, or Wallace Beery or Eddie Cantor taking a daughter). No, the stamping, shrieking, laughing and applauding audience was made up of all of the adult producers, directors and actors of Hollywood--everyone from Zanuck to Dietrich. A film made by adults, for adults-and for everyone else who could enjoy it, whatever their age. Why has this been so completely forgotten? Why is it a forgetting that recurs over and over again?

The agenda or template "ke" thinks Pixar should be following is a harrowing one. I've read enough to know that not everyone in animation fandom is pleased with "Up", but I can't believe that anyone, no matter what their take, would believe the answer is Pixar gearing their features for small children.

Why is this father so annoyed that the filmmakers of "Up"--a fable about an elderly man at the end of his life that includes a little boy but has much more, plainly, to do with the elderly man--didn't aim it at a "child's level" in any case? Which world does his daughter live in? Does it have old people and adults in it? Has his little girl ever felt sorry for someone(or herself), or had any sort of loss--even if it was only, say, a balloon she let go of? Does she like to play pretend? Does she like animals and stories?

If the answer to any of those questions is "yes" than she's got a lot in common with the filmmakers, and she's just as much a part of the potential audience as "ke".

Or "jl" for that matter.

A great artist has died: Jack Cardiff was 94, a cinematographer of genius and a notable director. Perhaps the most brilliant "painter of light" with Technicolor that the movies have had--I certainly would given him that title without any hesitation. He worked with Hitchcock, Olivier, and John Huston("The African Queen") to name a few highlights, but for me it was his collaboration on the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, "The Archers", that seals it.

Kim Hunter in the opening minutes of "A Matter of Life and Death", one of my favorite films. It was the first Powell & Pressburger film I saw, and its color took my breath away. Id never seen anything like it before.

Obviously this isn't about "animation", but animation is filmmaking, and this is filmmaking of the highest standard-and also, the most imaginative and artistic. Thankfully not "artistic" in the usual way it's used for film-something noncommercial, or worse, dull-but in the very same sense as it's applied to the best of animation. I've always felt that animation has as much to teach live action film as the other way round, and I've been pleased to find that some of the top talents in live action today agree. Yet so much of what could be done with design, color and every other aspect of assembling a film shot by shot, scene by scene seems to make no use of the extra-ordinary applications that animation can produce so brilliantly.

In Jack Cardiff live action had a man who thought out of the box, and the results are obvious. Each of the shots reproduced here is a screen capture from his films. I could and should add more, but these are what I found from some of the DVD review sites on the net. One of those has a terrific review of AMOLAD, great reading for anyone, which is here. If it doesn't make you want to see it, nothing will. I've seen it myself several times with an audience(Martin Scorcese, a huge P&P fan, was responsible for its rerelease some years ago), and it's a wonderful experience, but it's on DVD as well. However you watch any of these films, turn off the phone, sit yourself down and don't do anything but give them your full attention for their running time. I'm sure it will take only the first few minutes to see why..




from "Black Narcissus", another masterpiece

So here's to the life work of a very important figure in our shared industry-film. Hail and farewell, Jack Cardiff.

I apologize for posting such a lengthy clip-the scene I had on my mind is a couple of minutes in, and until someone gives me a tutorial in excerpting my own DVDs to youtube this'll have to do.

What hasn't already been said of "Some Like It Hot"? Brilliant film; great director, great script, great cast. Take the little musical interlude of Sweet Sue's blondes rehearsing "Running Wild": what particularly strikes me is how such a simple scene manages to be so infectious and feel so totally uncontrived--even though Jack Lemmon is playing a dead ringer for Daffy Duck and Tony Curtis is in the most grotesque drag since...well, perhaps ever.

Even with all the broad, Wilderian goofiness they seem real. They genuinely enjoy their jazz playing, "Sugar"(Marilyn)has a ball shaking the lead vocal and strumming her ukelele, and it all results in making you feel like you're not only sharing the ride on a Florida-bound train in the 1920s, you are a part of the relationship between the characters, however improbable they are.

If there's one thing that doesn't get enough attention in many animated films it's the character relationships. It doesn't matter how they're related--whether on the surface the relationship is what we'd call conventional--what matters is that we really buy that these characters believe in each other. I don't mean "believe in" in a sentimental "I have faith in you" way (not that there's anything wrong with that-that certainly has its place in the right narrative), but rather that one character clearly knows and has real feelings towards another.

This sounds pretty elementary--a no-brainer--but oftimes in the midst of getting the plot moving along, throwing in a gag here or there(or taking one out), and making the nominal plot exciting or whatever the characters can lose their realness. I'm sure everyone has expereinced the sinking feeling in a theater when you disconnect from the characters...and then the action on the screen; the next step is checking your watch and after that--planning where you're going for dinner. Uh-oh.

"Some Like it Hot" has some ludicrous characters in silly, totally implausible situations--but we're with Joe and Jerry all the way. They argue, laugh, get furious and concerned with each other as believably as if they were in an Elia Kazan film, not a farce by Wilder and Diamond....but then, all of Wilder's best films manage to sell some pretty messed-up plots and seriously compromised characters by making the audience empathise with them, like them ,and just plain buy them.

it's been argued that animation filmmakers have their work cut out for them in the casting department: we can't rely on the human face to carry a scene, or the comes-equipped charm of an actress or actor to fill in the subtext; we have to build a real person(or animal)from scratch. But surely Wilder and Diamond had the same problem here: two goofball, skirt-chasing jazz age musician losers, dressed as women for the majority of the film, affecting silly voices and enduring ridiculous circumstances. I think the glue that holds their characters together--including Monroe's--are very clever and suprisingly subtle touches that add up to people we can relate to and believe in. The St. Valentine's Day massacre scene isn't played for laughs in this oh-so-broad comedy, and Lemmon's delivery of the line "I think I'm gonna be sick" after witnessing murder is as straight as if it were part of a hard core film noir. Monroe's Sugar has real poignancy along with her burlesque-style blonde goofiness...again, very careful nurturing of characters.

The film has so much bizarre action, broad characters and great lines that the characters might be presented a fraction as well and everyone would still laugh...but the way it turned out results in a flm that can be watched over and over again without too much fatigue. There's no reason the same can't be true of animated actors.

Slavko Vorkapich was a genius of film, little known today although he personally contributed to incredible sequences in many Hollywood films of the 1930s. The first I ever saw was a hallucinogenic dream sequence he designed for the Claude Rains film "Crime Without Passion" which has to be seen to be believed; if my memory's correct, it probably helped inspire some of the more bizarre imagery in Fantasia's Bald Mountain sequence. Vorkapich was practically unique in his freelancing just montages for so many large scale films for different studios-which gives an indication that the studio bosses knew greatness when they saw it.

The clip here is of course of Vorkapich's visualization of the Great 1906 earthquake in MGM's "San Francisco", directed in all but this montage by W.S, Van Dyke("The Thin Man", among many others). The rest of the film is fairly straightforward romantic drama with Clark Gable at his staccato angriest, tempted as he is to decency by lovely Jeanette MacDonald. Spencer Tracy plays his usual tough Irish priest, friend to both the leads. But all the melodramatic twists of the plot pale next to this incredible, impressionistic, utterly jaw-dropping piece of cinema that represents a staggering disaster--made in 1936.

See how the tension in the conventional plot builds with Gable's public embarrassment of Jeanette, and how a few disturbing quick cuts to the audience members create a sense of unease and disturbance(probably Van Dyke's)...then as Jeanette walks through the crowd the familiar rumble of the earthquake starts, resulting in the actress stopping abruptly and turning back with a muffled, panicked "What's that?"--so clipped it almost sounds like an ad lib(it surely wasn't). Then here we go...

There's no music. The shots are seemingly erratic: the ceiling, the slivers of plaster, the glasses, the roar of the earthquake, the screaming starting...the sound building to the wheel falling--and then a second or two of pure silence.

It's still got every bit of its impact today. The only pity is that this is humble YouTube quality, and doesn't do it full justice. But what a lesson in editing for impact. I think we have a lot to learn from this.

There's one little historic inaccuracy: the actual earthquake struck at 5:15 am, not many hour earlier as the film's plot indicates, but that's a small caveat. Everything else shown is based on a reality that was--hard to imagine--only thirty years in the past at the time this was made.

Allow me a bit of a ramble here.

The New York Times has been writing a lot of articles on animation recently on almost a weekly basis. Naturally, from my perspective this is a great and good thing to see.
Today's story--making the front page of the Sunday Arts section-- details the background of a new animated feature being made in France, "Persepolis". It's based on a series of graphic memoirs by by Iranian expat Marjane Satrapi. I haven't read the books, just thumbed through them, but I think it'll make an interesting film to say the least--especially if it closely follows the style of the original artwork. And Paris is full of skilled animators that could give it as distinctive a type of animation as the style suggests.

a page from the first volume of "Persepolis"
If done well, a feature like this will be a must-see--a completely serious, truly graphic story in feature form. I can't wait.

There are some statements in the piece that are somewhat odd to me, however. Here's one:

“Persepolis” is a rarity in France: an animated feature that was entirely produced here, rather than being farmed out to Asian animators. The filmmakers favored an artisanal approach that includes hand-tracing the images on paper, an art long lost to computer animation software.

Have there really been any feature films in France that have been "farmed out" to Asia? Surely the writer is confusing televison work with features?
And the strange arms-length description of the dominant form of animation for the last 100 years as "artisanal"--making it sound slightly quaint, like illuminating texts or writing on foolscap with a goose quill. Admittedly my knowlege of the current state of French feature animation production isn't extensive, but as far as I know the art of 2D animation is far from foreign to the many talented working artists there. Someone show this lady the Gobelins website, stat!

The style of the animation references altogether reminds me of articles I've read in the past often containing statements that sound much more like quotes from a press kit or offerings from publicists than definitive facts about animation production that would have come from an filmmaker--or are well understood by the reporter.

Perhaps this is all cavilling over nothing, as the real point of the entire piece is to feature the author/artist, Ms. Satrapi, and give the backstory of her autobiographical comic. But the hook it's hung on is the A word--animation--and there's to me little sense that that's what's of true interest to the reporter. It was ever thus...or was it? While the accepted wisdom is that Walt Disney, that most famous of all animation producers/studio heads, promoted himself over the acknowledgement of his artist's individual achievements, a suprising number of articles on the Disney studio in its heyday of the 30s-50s actually did make mention of individuals and emphasize their importance to production.

Given that, one would think that 50 years later a much savvier public might be expected to have an interest in what real animation artists actually do, and who they are. I think they would.

Animated films are like none other in the history of filmmaking: more collaborative and labor-intensive than any other form, requiring more people of as high a caliber as can be got. By necessity the end product is a puppet show, an amazing magic trick of behind the scenes manipulation--orchestrated most often by producers and directors, but implemented and very often strongly influenced by every artist involved along the way. And as far as 2D/3D goes, it would be great to have it made clear once and for all that no matter how a film is animated--that is to say, what tools are used to give the illusion of life on the screen--every one of those films involves drawing, by artists. The visual development is drawn and/or painted. Storyboards are drawn; via tablet or paper, it's the same process. If no other important fact is added to the press kit, that one should be.

The knowledge of any of this isn't necessary for the enjoyment of an animated movie, but when the time comes to give out information and write articles about "how it's done", it seems that that would be the right time to bring this sort of thing up. If anyone's interested. I know I was, back then, and I know many kids(and adults)are now. When the opportunity comes along to actually educate the public about just how amazing animated films are--beyond the money spent on them or the sheer numbers involved--it would be wonderful to see it grasped. Why should we insiders keep it all to ourselves?

I had missed any updates from Mike Barrier's site these last few months, but he's back at updating again, and his latest is a must-read--a review and musings on the recent Disney exhibition in Paris I noted a couple of posts ago:

"Once Upon a Time/Walt Disney".

I'm aware that there are those who find Barrier too pedantic, or his opinions just wrong here or there. Well, when it's artists and people who love and research animation and opine about it as we all do that's bound to be the case. Personally, even if and when I strongly disagree with a statement of his I never feel annoyance towards the author because he clearly arrives at his take through careful analysis and, most importantly, a genuine love of the art form--and he knows what he's taking about. Also, if he makes an error, he corrects it--and will even change his mind if presented with an angle he hadn't considered before. That's a rare thing.

Barrier's unique among the many as most of his research was done first hand--he interviewed Disney artists and Warner Bros. directors before virtually anyone else did, in many cases decades before. He published a magazine, Funnyworld(with not only his own articles but priceless pieces by the likes of Dick Huemer) and that magazine's focus on mainstream animation was a mind-boggling surprise in an era when almost all the writing one could find on animation dealt strictly with the "serious" stuff: from Fischinger to McLaren. If you could dredge up a brief piece on, say, such a pandering populist as John Hubley you'd almost faint from relief.

Now, I respect and have enjoyed many very abstract and non-cartoony pieces of animation, but I hate to see any art form described in such a way that it's dull to read about--and that was the slant most of the film studies crowd took towards Hollywood studio animation. Everything was semiotics: symbolism, Freudian, Jungian, Bettelheim stuff. Little or nothing about individual artists, what they contributed, an understanding of actual studio feature or short filmmaking--everything had to be psychoanaylzed to be worthy of discussion.

Barrier never thought this way. Neither did Leonard Maltin, another early adopter of a more pertinent understanding of Golden Age animation achievement. The third in this triumvirate was John Canemaker; an Oscar-winning instructor today, he was the first to publish a book that covers so much of the real animation experience it's still a must-read: "The Animated Raggedy Ann and Andy". His later works too are all essentials. Taking up where Maltin seemed to leave off is the youngest of the animation scholar/authors, Charles Solomon, who's also contributed titles that should be on everyone's shelf, most notably "Disney That Never Was".

So, I've wandered far from my original intent--to suggest you read Barrier's review of the Paris exhibition--but I'm currently reading yet another animation-related title, Neal Gabler's "authorized" biography of Walt Disney. So far I've been underwhelmed, but it's a big tome, and I'll wait until the finish. I will say this; I don't think that Michael Barrier's upcoming bio of Walt been trumped in any way by the existence of this title. Whatever else it turns out to be, it'll be a product of someone who knows and cares about the brilliance of the Disney's studio's achievements.

And I'll probably find much to debate in it as well, I'm sure.

I caught a tiny glimpse of this video(by one of France's most popular recording artists of the moment)last night, and thought it looked charming. It reminds me of the happy days when MTV was chock full of clever/cute/crude/odd videos like this with animation in them. Now it's all reality shows.
Anyway, the main reason for this posting is to inspire nostalgia in the rest of you--and make you think of chocolate.

I've subscribed to the New York Times for half a dozen years now, and in that time have been perpetually amazed at how much more local news I read in those pages than in my previous paper--especially as regards my own line of work, animation.
So yet again I've unflapped the hefty Sunday edition of the Manhattan daily to find an article written just for us: on the recently revived plan to make theatrical shorts at Disney. Charles Solomon is the author.
The Times has a registration website, so I've pasted it here for your enjoyment. Obviously my usual disclaimer about copyright doesn't apply to this post--it's all property of the New York Times. Here it is:


MOVIEGOERS who have become inured to pre-show car ads and trivia quizzes may soon get something old enough to seem new: cartoon shorts.

After a hiatus of nearly 50 years, Walt Disney Studios is getting back into the business of producing short cartoons, starting with a Goofy vehicle next year. The studio has released a few shorts in recent years — “Destino,” “Lorenzo” and “The Little Match Girl” — but those were more artistic exercise than commercial endeavor. The new cartoons, by contrast, are an effort by a new leadership team from Pixar Animation Studios, now a Disney unit, to put the Burbank company back at the forefront of animation with a form it once pioneered.

“The impetus comes from John Lasseter, who takes the idea from Walt Disney and 100 years of film history,” said Don Hahn, producer of “The Lion King” and “The Little Match Girl,” in a recent interview at his studio office. “Shorts have always been a wellspring of techniques, ideas and young talent. It’s exactly what Walt did, because it’s a new studio now, with new talent coming up — as it should. I think the shorts program can really grow this studio as it grew Pixar, as it grew Walt’s studio.”

Although audiences today are more familiar with his feature films, Walt Disney’s reputation was originally built on shorts. In the 1930s “A Mickey Mouse Cartoon” appeared on theater marquees with the titles of the features, and Disney won 10 Oscars for cartoon shorts between 1932 and 1942. He used the “Silly Symphonies” to train his artists as they geared up to create “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” But after World War II Disney phased out short cartoons because of rising production costs and the minimal amount theater owners would pay for them.

Mr. Hahn said the new shorts would be screened in theaters along with Disney films. “You pay your 10 bucks to see a movie,” he said, “and you get a surprise you hadn’t counted on.” The new shorts will be done in traditional 2-D animation, computer graphics or a combination of the two media, depending on the story and the visual style.

This is not the first attempt at such a revival. Warner Brothers, for example, tried to bring back the classic Looney Tunes characters in new shorts in 2003, but they proved unsuccessful and most of them were never screened theatrically.

Chuck Williams, a veteran story artist who will produce the new films for Disney, said they do not have to become a profit center in order to perform a real commercial function.

“They allow you to develop new talent,” Mr. Williams said in an interview at the Disney studios. “Shorts are your farm team, where the new directors and art directors are going to come from. Instead of taking a chance on an $80 million feature with a first-time director, art director or head of story, you can spend a fraction of that on a short and see what they can do.”

It is not surprising that Mr. Lasseter is using short films to train and test the artists: he and his fellow Pixar animators spent almost 10 years making shorts, learning how to use computer graphics effectively before they made “Toy Story” and the string of hits that followed. Pixar continues to produce a cartoon short every year, and has won Oscars for the shorts “Tin Toy,” “Geri’s Game” and “For the Birds.”

Four new shorts are in development at Disney: “The Ballad of Nessie,” a stylized account of the origin of the Loch Ness monster; “Golgo’s Guest,” about a meeting between a Russian frontier guard and an extraterrestrial; “Prep and Landing,” in which two inept elves ready a house for Santa’s visit; and “How to Install Your Home Theater,” the return of Goofy’s popular “How to” shorts of the ’40s and ’50s, in which a deadpan narrator explains how to play a sport or execute a task, while Goofy attempts to demonstrate — with disastrous results. The new Goofy short is slated to go into production early next year.

The idea for “Home Theater” came from the experience Kevin Deters, one of its two directors, had buying a large-screen TV. “For years I’ve been saying to my wife, let’s get a nice, large TV, because I’ve been suffering with a 30-inch screen,” he said. “She finally acquiesced around the time of the Super Bowl. When we went shopping, we discovered the stores had ‘Delivery in Time for the Big Game!’ and similar promotions, some of which appear in the film.”

Over the years the studio has tried unsuccessfully to update the classic characters. Mr. Deters and his co-director, Stevie Wermers, for instance, unhappily recalled “Disco Mickey,” the 1979 album that suggested the trademark mouse could boogie like John Travolta. The cover featured Mickey in a white suit and open shirt, swinging his hips.

“You don’t want to put Goofy on a skateboard,” Mr. Deters said. “There’s no reason to attempt to make him hip and cool. Goofy isn’t cool. He’s the ultimate domesticated man, as the ‘How to’ shorts showed. I relate very well to him as the guy who’s sort of a schlub on his couch.”

“How to Install Your Home Theater” will be made with a fairly small crew: despite the triumph of computer animation, Disney still has a number of talented traditional animators who are eager to draw again.

“The Goofy short will be very funny, but we won’t have to spend a lot of money and time on it, which won’t diminish it one bit,” Mr. Hahn said. “Obviously there’s a financial component to these films. We have to make them responsibly. But the big investment is for the long haul. We’re saying we believe in new talent and new techniques, and they’ll pay dividends in 10 to 20 years, just as we’re reaping the benefits now from the investment we made 25 years ago, training John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton and Tim Burton and John Musker and Ron Clemmons.”

Disney also intends the new talent to reflect an increasingly diverse work force. For most of its 100-year history American animation has been the creation of male artists, a situation that is slowly changing.

“It’s kind of shocking to realize that once the Goofy short gets made, I’ll officially be the first woman director at Disney Feature Animation,” Ms. Wermers said. “Considering that probably more than 50 percent of the audience for the short will be female, because of moms taking the kids, there should be more female voices out there.”

Ms. Wermers is not alone in her sense that Mr. Lasseter and his fellow Pixar alumni are already having an impact.

“I feel Disney is a very different place than it was a year ago,” said Chris Williams, a story artist who is developing “Golgo’s Guest” and “Prep and Landing,” “and the shorts program is just part of that. It’s become a very exciting place to work.”

Over on Cartoon Brew this morning Amid Amidi notes a prominent newspaper's review of "Monster House". It's a jaw-dropper.

The art of film writing and reviewing is obviously subjective, and I have no particular grievance with writers in general on film even if on occasion I might I violently disagree with their tastes or views. In the best of it I at least find something new to think about in a reviewer's points.
But the paragraph Amid excerpts has to read to be believed; the writer makes a mockery of 100 years of often beautiful, heartbreaking, breathtaking, real acting achievement in animated films. It's one thing to write about a "new" technique in film as the flavor of the month served up in a holy grail--it's another to backtrack and demean the plain fact of past successes as somehow terribly lacking, which is what this reviewer thinks of, well, basically all Disney animation output from 1937 until "Monster House" with its supposedly improved presentation of animated facial performances.

An excerpt:
"There was never any point to a close-up in an animated film -- there was never really anything to see[italics mine]."

Not really anything to see?
Methinks someone's been drinking much too deeply from the well of the presskit. This gentleman may think the fat kid's face in "House" is vastly superior in expression to, say, the kitten Figaro showing his annoyance at Gepetto's muttering in "Pinocchio"; I know where my vote lies.

You can come after all of us still working on our craft, fair enough; the book's still being written on everything we're currently doing in animation. But don't dare go after past giants whose work probably won't ever be equaled on its own terms--terms that were invented from scratch, that are the foundation of any techniques such as "Monster House" uses. Not only is it dead wrong on its face, with hundreds of examples that dispute it (and of course not just from Disney films, either), but the artists who achieved those triumphs are dead themselves and can't defend their work.
Maybe that's a blessing in this case.

a frame from "Emily & le hamsterosaurus-Rex", © Aurélie Blard-Quintard 2006

I'm staggered...can this cool little film really have been made by the quiet girl I sat in life drawing with today, Aurélie Blard-Quintard? I think so!
I could catch glimpses of her lovely life drawings, but little did I know she'd done this. Go have a look at her school end of term project:

Emily & le hamsterosaurus-Rex


A hamster-T-rex named Profiterole? What's not to love?
Click on it and watch it, you won't be sorry...I love her designs, her animation--there's wonderful, natural, expressive posing--in clay, no less...all her ideas are fun and it's paced just right. Terrific!
I had a celebrity in my car today--lucky for her I hadn't seen this yet or I'd have no doubt embarrassed her with gushing. à demain, eh?

And here's her blog with more goodies: Aurélie

NOT mediocre

I don't watch much television on a regularly scheduled basis, and almost no animated television at all.
Just a moment ago I happened to channel surf past an apparently new cartoon show. It looked astonishingly ugly, but art direction aside, what really struck me and had me zap the TV off in disgust was the scenario I was presented with: a dinner table scene. Yes, another one. Mom, Dad and sons are sitting at the table, having that sort of family time that makes me wonder who the writers and "creators" are. Did they grow up in the 1930s? Because the idea of presenting a modern "dad" in a tie at dinner, and "mom" in a flowery dress, batting her eyelashes, sporting a hairdo from approximately 1953 is so old it's dead, edges molding and about as funny as current events in the middle east.

When Brad Bird spoofed the nuclear family in the early 1980s with his "Family Dog", it was fresh and inventive, and most importantly it was funny. The audience--mere laymen along with we, the animation folk of the world, cheered and laughed our keesters off because it was so well observed. I'm not saying that it's impossible to continue to make comedy-animation hay out of the old paradigm of The American Family, but man, by now, 2006, it's got to be clever, it's got to be good--it's got to be real on some level. These aren't real in any way, shape or form, and they don't supply anything to fill the resulting gaps; no flights of weirdness that stems from anything approaching originality. Only a retread of a fantasy of a family experience that none of the creators actually had.

These shows, dozens of them, repeat and recycle the same dull old stereotypes, barely tweaking the "edgy" and utterly superficial design of the ciphers that stand in for characters. Watching it makes me feel faintly queasy--for the wasted talent I know is involved on the roster; for the disposability of such fare, filling up commercial time on the airwaves, all with a feeling of the old linguini-on-the-wall approach: let's see what sticks. Virtually none of it does.

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows I love good design and ideas, just like everyone else---and I'm no snob when it comes to where and how it presents itself. I've always believed a good show could be achieved with tongue depressors--those flat wooden sticks--as characters, with the right story and execution.
But why do so few animated TV shows of the last 3 decades have any staying power? Why has our generation so far produced not a single inarguable classic along the lines of those that crowded the holiday schedules of the early-to-mid 1960s? "The Grinch", "A Charlie Brown Christmas", "Rudolph", any of the Rankin-Bass output in 2D and 3D--hell, even the original "Fat Albert", which I remember watching with my mouth hanging open. That was something else again.

And in the last 25 years we've seen...."Family Dog". One producer took a chance on a relatively unknown team of artists...Spielberg. It was a cause celebre.

With the range of talent that's now at the peak of their game and experience there's really no excuse for yet more shows that reflect a supposed "parody" of a never-never land of 1950s family life. It's OVER. Dead! We're ALL hep to it now, people! Even the tiny little kids! It's lame, it doesn't reflect anyone's real lives and it's meaningless.

I don't blame artists for this. They don't wield the checkbook. I simply feel sad and(obviously) a little perturbed that there aren't people in charge with...different tastes. Perhaps it's the overall corporatization of all media that makes taking a flying chance on an individual's unique idea for a show impossible.

still aired and loved after 40 years

I did see a HBO special made for the holiday season some years back--a compilation of short musical pieces done by animation studios all over the world(it may have been titled "'Twas the Night")...it was beautiful, funny in the right places, and honest. There's one segment that has a rabbit sailing a boat in side a snowglobe, gorgeous animation done to the old soundtrack of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"; the damn thing made me cry. Obviously all shows can't be like that, certainly not all series television, but my god, let's please try for some change. Things have sailed so far over the edge of genuine, heartfelt, new ideas that it'll require a herculean effort to pull them back.

And someone with lots of cash.

Last night I was at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' theatre for a centenery celebration of director and producer Michael Powell, which included a rare appearance by one of his choicest collaborators, the 91-year-old master cinematographer Jack Cardiff.
Of all the films of Powell's to screen, they chose "Black Narcissus", a classic in every possible respect. Justly famous for its drama as well as its photography(which won Cardiff an Oscar), this typically unclassifiable film has to be seen on the big screen to be truly appreciated, although any screen will always do for Powell & Pressburger films in a pinch.
I discovered Michael Powell's genius on a 25" Magnavox: a CBS Late Movie presentation of "Stairway to Heaven"(real, and UK/original title "A Matter of Life and Death"). While innocently settling down for what I thought would be an average "Here Comes Mr. Jordan"-esque fantasy, I instead was immediately at the edge of the couch with my eyes wide open for the next 2 & 1/2 hours--even though I'd set the film to record via the VCR. I kept expecting to give it up and go to bed, as I was exhausted, but was up til 3:30am. It's that good.

Back to last night's screening.

I've seen "Black Narcissus" many, many times, and might shamefully have skipped this time if it weren't for the presence of Cardiff: 91, hale & fairly hearty, and all his faculties sharp as can be. including humor. He was interviewed by David Thompson, who also presented two video addresses, one by Martin Scorcese, the other by Scorcese's longtime editor and Michael Powell's widow, Thelma Schoonmaker. The combined effect of these two, each loving "Mickey" Powell in their own ways as well as sharing a passion for the films, had tears running down my face. I had the good luck to meet Michael Powell and Thelma in 1984 when they were here in Los Angeles for a LACMA tribute to Powell & Pressburger(Powell's longtime partner in their production entity The Archers, the screenwriter and sounding board for Powell's direction and co-producing duties).
How often is it in life that one finds oneself face to face with an icon, particularly one that is hugely, personally important to one's entire love of cinema? I'll tell the story some othe time to keep this entry a bit shorter, but suffice to say I let him know that I considered myself in the presence of a great, great man and artist. Of course, he was charming and dare I say, moved...it was an awfully long dry spell for him(as Thompson made very clear in his opening remarks); after his "Peeping Tom" in 1960--the "Psycho" of Britian--he was essentially vilified as a perv and a schlockmeister, and it was such a commercial catastrophe that his filmmaking career was over. This with over 20 years left to live. It wasn't until the mid-70s that such fans as Scorcese, Coppola, and Ian Christie(who wrote a wonderful monogram for the BFI away back in 1978 or so)revived general interest in Powell.

All of the films Michael Powell worked on have value, and many are astounding: "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" and "The Red Shoes" must be seen, also "I Know Where I'm Going!" and "A Canterbury Tale"...then there are the early, wartime action/thrillers with Conrad Veidt--and not forgetting the film Powell directed much of, Alexander Korda's "Thief of Bagdad". No animation artist should leave any of these titles off their list of must-sees. You won't be sorry.