Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- It’s a busy month for John Canemaker.

Just a reminder that Marymount Manhattan College has on display some of the original hand-drawn, animation art from John Canemaker’s Academy Award-winning film The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation. This exhibit opened on Monday, April 16 and will run through May 23 in the school’s Hewitt Gallery of Art. The gallery/school is located at 221 East 71st Street.

The official opening of this show will be on Thursday, April 19, followed by a reception in the Hewitt Gallery of Art at Marymount Manhattan College.
The screening will begin at 5:30 p.m. sharp at the Beekman Theatre, which is located at 1271 Second Avenue between 66th and 67th Streets.
John & producer, Peggy Stern

This event is free of charge for all attendees. However, seats are filling up fast. Please RSVP to Laura Davis, Manager of Alumni Relations via e-mail at ldavis@mmm.edu or phone at (212) 517-0416.

. For those outside of New York who still haven’t seen John’s film, you can catch it on ITunes. Just enter “THE MOON AND THE SON” in the search box at the upper right corner of the iTunes Store home page to preview the film.
. The film will also air on Cinemax on April 22nd at 6:30am EST.

. John also will have a program of his films at the Tribeca Film Festival.

- Another reminder:

Tekkon Kinkreet will screen at the Museum of Modern Art next week. This is the anime feature that I saw and wrote about last week. The graphics are quite impressive, and it’s a film that’s well worth supporting. There currently is no distributor.

Screenig Schedule:
Wed 4/25 (T1), Thurs 4/26 (T2), Fri 4/27 (T2) – 8:30 pm
Sat 4/28 (T2), Sun 4/29 (T2) – 2:00 pm
Mon 4/30 (T2) – 8:30 pm

Happy Easter

Thanks to Steve Fisher for allowing me to post his photo.

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Congratulations
to South Park.

I give them the award for
Best Easter Show.

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They took the time to find the link between Jesus and the Easter Rabbit and colored Easter eggs.

A very informative show.
Funny, too, but that was expected.

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John Canemaker sent me this information about some upcoming shows of his work:

Tribeca Film Festival Salutes
John Canemaker The Animated World of John Canemaker, a program of shorts and documentaries spanning John Canemaker’s career as a filmmaker, will be presented at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. The program will be shown on the following dates:

Monday, April 30, 6:15 pm
Sunday, May 6, 10:30 am
AMC Kips Bay Theater 14
570 Second Avenue (at 32nd St.)

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

The Tribeca Film Festival’s continuing celebration of NYC-based independent animators features a program of the career work of John Canemaker, pre-eminent filmmaker, author, teacher and historian. Due to his longstanding, unflinching commitment to this particular moving image art form, Canemaker has been called “animation’s ambassador at large [who] has brought animation’s unsung heroes into the limelight, expanded the parameters of the medium, and inspired those who are embarking on careers in the industry.”

Films in the program include: Confessions of a Stardreamer; Bridgehampton; The Wizard’s Son; Bottom’s Dream; Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat; and the Academy Award-winning The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation.

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John Canemaker Art Work Exhibit

A display of hand-drawn, original animation art from John Canemaker’s Academy Award-winning film The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, will be on display from April 16 through May 23 in the Hewitt Gallery of Art at Marymount Manhattan College, located at 221 East 71st Street.

Next week we’ll have some more goodies to display from John’s collection of Disney material. The Wind In The Willows storyboards starting Monday.

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For the LA readers, ASIFA Hollywood is going to celebrate the work of Bill Plympton this coming Wednesday, April 11th. Check out the poster below:

- The Museum of Modern Art will premiere the screening of a new animated film that was directed by an American, Michael Arias (The Animatrix), designed by the Japanese artist, Shoujiro Nishimi(Steamboy), and adapted by an American, Anthony Weintraub, from a Japanese Manga by Taiyo Matsumoto. An Anime with lots of cross-cultural influences.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

I saw an advance screening of the film today and was quite impressed with the graphics and animation. Its stylization reminded me of the work of Igor Kovalyov (Milch and Duckman). The characters all have wide spaced, small eyes, and their bodies are oddly shaped – not unlike Prince of Egypt. Small feet and long, oddly shaped legs. In other ways, I was reminded of Bill Plympton‘s characters.

The animation is a combination of hand drawn 2D work combined with cgi art, made to look like 2D. The backgrounds were busy and dark with a look all-their-own. It was busy. Busy motion, busy backgrounds.

Unfortunately, the story was busy, too. It was adapted from a serialized Manga and felt like it. To be continued. Always fits and starts, climaxes coming and coming and coming. Don’t get me wrong, it was emotional, but that was too often the case, and you get to feel a sameness overall.

Perhaps, I’m the wrong person to give an opinion of this, because that could be the same review I’d give many an Anime. Akira filled that bill as did The Animatrix or Steamboy. It made for a very graphic and attractive film, scene for scene, but it didn’t build emotionally or feel like it was designed for a bigger feature.

Regardless, it was done for adults not children unlike every American animated feature done last year – other than Scanner Darkly.

I will say that it should be seen if you’re an animation fan.

But you judge for yourself.
MOMA’s schedule is slated for a premiere on Wednesday, April 25th at 8:30pm. Director, Michael Arias will be in attendance to introduce the film.

Other screenings are: April 26 at 8:30pm, April 28 at 2:00pm, April 29 at 2:00pm, and April 30 at 8:30pm. Plenty of opportunity.

– The Museum of Modern Art has a big schedule of films and artwork upcoming:

On Tuesday, Apr 17, 2007 at 6:30 PM, they will host an “Artists Speak” session:

Conversations on Contemporary Art with Laurie Anderson and William Kentridge as host by MOMA’s Glenn D. Lowry.
Performance artist Laurie Anderson and William Kentridge – director and scene designer for BAM’s spring production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute – discuss how they bring their creative process to performance.

To reserve tickets go here.

Kentridge‘s The Magic Flute will play at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for four performances beginning April 9th. Kentridge directed and designed it and has animated pieces in his signature style throughout the program.

To see a video trailer for the opera go here.

To buy tickets to the Opera go here.

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The Museum also has what it calls Projects 85. You can see Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi draw his “spontaneous” art on the walls of MOMA.

“For two weeks prior to the official opening, April 19, Perjovschi will draw on the wall during public hours, allowing visitors to observe the creation of the work.” This work will then be exhibited from May 2 thru August 27, 2007.

Of course, one of the earliest 20th Century quick-draw artists was Winsor McCay. He performed on Vaudeville stages with a large pad telling his stories which he illustrated live. Eventually, he added the animated backdrops of his cartoon characters.

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Finally, regarding MOMA, I wanted to point out that they’re just starting a complete retrospective of the films of Rainier Werner Fassbinder. If you don’t know his films, you should. If you do know his films, you get to see them again in excellent projected format. Check the museum schedule for times.

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– Enough about art. Let’s talk Popeye. Warner Home Video has announced a July 31st date for the Popeye dvd: Popeye the Sailor – Volume 1: 1933-1938.

The package will include 60 cartoons plus 5 hours of bonus material: retrospectives such as “The Story of Popeye the Sailor Man” and “The History of the Fleischer Studios”. There are also “behind-the-toons” featurettes, bonus shorts, and commentary tracks by animation historians and other experts. Greg Ford directed one of the documentaries. He spoke on camera with every notable animator in New York. As one of those interviewed, I have particular reason to be interested in seeing the docs.

The Popeye shorts, themselves, will be uncut, unedited cartoons that are authorized and come from the original masters. The fact that it’s labeled volume 1, gives us good hope that other volumes will follow.

Of course, real Popeye aficionados will go back to E.C. Segar’s original strip. There’s another Popeye there that is beyond even the Fleischer shorts.

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- While we wait for Satoshi Kon‘s most recent feature Paprika to open in theaters, (opens in NY May 25th/in LA June 1st) his last film Tokyo Godfathers was just released on dvd. His other features, Millenium Actress and Perfect Blue.

Tokyo Godfathers is another version of that John Ford classic, Three Godfathers. This same story was reworked to make Three Men and a Baby (both American and French versions) and Ice Age.

The John Ford version was a remake of the Richard Boleslawski film of the same title done in 1936. That original film, Three Godfathers, got a lot of reworking.

If you haven’t seen the trailer for Paprika watch it here.

(This is the box for the Japanese dvd.
I like it more than I do the US version.)

I guess the big news today comes from a report in Variety that Chris Sanders who left (or was ousted) at Disney, a couple of months ago, has arrived at Dreamworks to direct “Crood Awakenings.” (You can’t invent a title like that, can you?) It’s a caveman story that was being developed with Aardman in mind – before Aardman broke with Dreamworks.
It’s all too incestuous. He’s directed one solid movie but makes the lead on the front page of Variety. Slow story day.
Let’s hope a good film develops out of it, but the title doesn’t give me a lot of hope. Check out the Reuters headline: “Lilo” director shooting “Crood” cartoon.

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– Here’s an I. Klein article published in the Dec. 73 issue of Cartoonist Profiles. Ostensibly, it tells how Izzy klein created Mighty Mouse without getting credit for it. However, more pertinent and interesting to me, and the reason I’m posting it, is that the article details how the Terry story team worked. (Not together, is the answer to that one.) It’s a wonder that their stories are so good.

Without the bangup sound effects their films just wouldn’t have been as good.

1 2
(Click any image to enlarge.)

I find it interesting that this story by Klein details how he created a super bug which Terry pushed to become a super mouse. It obviously took Terry a bit of time to mull the idea over before putting it into action.
Of course, the way Klein tells it there seems to be no doubt that he came up with the core idea, but he had no hand in developing it – even beyond its origin as a bug. He says that in this article.

Yet, if you look anywhere on the interenet, it’s Klein that gets all credit for the creation of Mighty Mouse. We talked once before about sloppy and slippery history appearing on the internet, and this seems to be another good case of it. Klein was a true talent whose work I respected enormously and who, as a person, was very genial and warm.
I also take on face value this story he tells. To be honest, I don’t much care who created Mighty Mouse (though I loved that character as a kid and still have a fondness for the shorts), but I find the heart of this article by Klein to be about the workings of the Terry story department, such that it was. It’s an interesting article that has a lot more than meets-the-eye within it.

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To continue this theme to a more modern era, check out today’s ASIFA Hollywood Animation Blog. Stephen Worth has posted a Yogi Bear storyboard by Warren Foster, the former Warner Bros. story writer.

– USA Today has an article about Song of the South and the difficulties they seem to be having in releasing a dvd of the film. Isn’t it a little pathetic that the Disney execs have to squirm this much over the release of this film? Yes, we appreciate the political-correctness scares them, but is this film any worse than Gone With the Wind?

Isn’t it time the Disney folk gave James Baskett his due? He was the first African-American male to be given an Oscar (albeit a special award; he wasn’t put in competition). Baskett and Ethel Waters (who won Best Supporting Actress for Pinky that year) didn’t sit among the other stars, but were placed to the rear during the ceremony. Isn’t that the same thing Disney is doing, now using their fear of political correctness?

To this day his is still probably the best performance by an actor working with animated characters. There were significantly more restrictions on the actors then than there were at the time of Roger Rabbit, or anything more current (and controlled by computer aids.) It was all in his acting. The focus in his eyes tells you this man sees those characters, and they became real for us. Check out the Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah segment and look at his eyes. It’s outstanding.

Read the Drafts for the film’s animation on Michael Barrier‘s site.

See some Mary Blair paintings done for this film on Amid Amidi‘s Cartoon Modern.

There’s a highly stylized Nash auto ad from the ’50′s on YouTube (in case you haven’t seen it) starring the three main characters from Song of the South.

Watch the Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah segment courtesy of Thad Komorowski.

The Asifa-Hollywood Animation Archive has some nice illustrations by Al Dempster and Bill Justice for a Little Golden Book version of the film.

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– Tom Sito had a nice little note on his blog today:
1952-U.P.A.’s cartoon Rooty-Toot-Toot premiered. Its music score was by jazzman Phil Moore, the first African American to receive a screen credit for scoring a movie.

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Congratulations to SVA school grad, Dony Permedi for having won YouTube’s first ever award for the “Most Adorable” piece on the internet. His Kiwi was a Master’s thesis at SVA and has received over 6.5 million hits on the site. If you haven’t seen the Maya created video, check it out.

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Stop Mo Expo – On Sunday, April 21st ASIFA Hollywood is presenting a day of celebration of 3D puppet animation. There will be all day seminars and conferences (from 9am to 5pm), as well as a number of screenings (from 6pm to 10pm). Filmmakers represented include: Will Vinton, the Chiodo brothers, Mark Caballero, Corky Quackenbush, and Seamus Walsh among others.

It will take place at Woodbury University, 7500 Glenoaks Blvd. Burbank, CA.

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Vintage ToonCast is an entertaining site that includes a lot of public domain animated shorts such as Mel-O-Toons, Fleischer Superman,k Betty Boop and Popeye shorts, Daffy and the Dinosaur, A is for Atom (the John Sutherland film not the Disney “Our Friend the Atom”) and a lot more.

- So let’s talk about something boring. What I do everyday is walk to and from work. That’s about a two mile stretch from 30th Street on the East side of NY to the West Village. (And back.) Everytime I walk it I see a lot of the same things, but those things are always varied and interesting.

I see a lot of taxis. Taxis used to come in two forms:

the normal kind of everyday-looking-car type; and the Checker Cab.

These cabs were vehicles that could seat six people comfortably, or if there were just one or two of you, it left a lot of leg room. Somehow even the look of the bubbled Checker Cab was pleasant, and it was specific to NYC.

However, for some reason a couple of years back, the wise NYC officials decided to outlaw the Checker Cab. I suppose it was time for them (in their minds) to modernize the look of the NYC taxicab. So an institution left our city streets and was replaced by these:

This is all an attempt to turn New York City into the largest suburban shopping mall in the world. It’s working.

However, there is something else that is specific to New York (and probably Los Angeles).

Everyday – I mean it every single day – I come upon a block (always a different one on that two mile walk) that is “coned off,” meaning you’re not allowed to park there. Sometimes they even block off access to pedestrians. This can only mean one thing:

They’re shooting a movie.

There are always signs telling you what film or commercial they’re shooting and there are always bits of movie paraphernalia being set up.

Usually it stretches around a couple of blocks as guys unload trucks of equipment.

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This is New York, so you expect to see a lot of signage. I don’t mind that; I’ve always found it entertaining.

As a matter of fact, I’ve sometimes played a game (with myself) incorporating words in my sightline into conversations I’m having with people. I try to get away without their knowing it. As you may imagine this annoys some of those who know what nonsense I’m up to.

However, on their own, signs are interesting. They reveal a bit about the person who created them.

Many are unwittingly entertaining, others are tittering jokes.

Still others are just downright intellectually amusing. The book store, of course, pulls me in every time (it’s a great shop for remaindered books). Eisenberg’s Sandwiches makes me smile. Without my presence would Heisenberg’s Principle even exist?

As I get through Washington Square Park, my walk starts winding down. I’m getting closer to my studio.

Oh look, the storefront gypsy palmreader above me has gotten a cat. He’s a couple of years old. He reminds me a bit of Alex, my new boy, who’s almost a year old.

Enough with the photos; I’m at the studio. Oh, yeah, all of the pictures enlarge by clicking them.

- Before I get into anything else, something has been buzzzing on the top of my head these past few weeks. Disney has released another dvd version of Peter Pan. This one comes with even more extras and special games for kids to play and dvd coloring books etc.

First there was the Limited Issue Peter Pan; then there was the Special Edition Peter Pan, and now there’s the two-disc Platinum Edition version. And they’re all still available.

What’s up? Where’s Pinocchio? Where’s 101 Dalmatians? Forget about Song of the South. (If any movie wanted a rerelease with extras, that’s it!)
Peter Pan is good, but it’s no Pinocchio.

Did I say Pinocchio?

- Mark Mayerson, on his site, has an excellent column about the opening of Pinocchio. This is his commentary after producing the excellent Mosaic of the first few sequences in the film. The internet seems to have been designed specifically for posts such as Mark writes. There’s little likelihood a book would have been published detailing a film as elaborately as has been done here. It’s done specifically for animation enthusiasts, and there wouldn’t be a market. Mark’s comments are the gold here; this is real analysis on the go. It’s hard to believe the amount of work Mark has undertaken in choosing to break down this entire feature. I’m immensely grateful. On top of that his analysis points to what we should have noticed for ourselves – from that Mosaic and from Hans Perk ‘s publishing the drafts to this film.

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- Cartoon Brew, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed, has undergone some severe changes. This is obviously all to the better. They’ve had quite a few more posts (which will probably reduce in number as time moves on), but there have also been more links to art from the libraries of Jerry Beck & Amid Amidi. There’s gold in them thar hills.


Cartoon Brew Films is now up and running, and there’s no doubt that this will develop into an important site. Already they have some substantial films to view; the potential is enormous. It’s fun watching an enormous megalith of a site develop before our eyes.

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- Speaking of Peter Pan, there’s a good article detailing the history of the next bad movie off-shoot, the Tinkerbell epic. You can get all the history of this extravaganza detailed on Chuck Oberleitner‘s site, O-Meon. Information you don’t really need about a movie you don’t need to see (unless you have a 14 year old girl in the house.)

- There are some nice MGM drawings posted at the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive. I’m a sucker for Srewy Squirrel. I like seeing any art from those films.

- My last Peter Pan reference will be to the amazing story meeting notes you can read on Devyn Marseilles‘ site: The Sacred Tree of the Aracuan Bird. Pt 1 & Pt 2. She has also given an amazing storyboard to Didier Ghez available on his site: Disney History.

By the way, the drawing at the top comes from
Saul Steinberg’s book All In Line (1945).
I just put it there because I like it.

– I had initially planned to post some of the Bg art from Jason McDonald‘s work from our Nonsense & Lullabyes film. (I’d posted the storyboard yesterday.) However, I won’t get to that until tomorrow, Sunday; it’s taking longer than I expected to scan.

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- The NYTimes, this Sunday, features an article on John Lasseter and his role in running the animation division of Disney. Read the article here.

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- After my post of the Max Hare run from Disney’s 1935 Tortoise and the Hare, Keith Lango put together a couple of QT movies illustrating this run at a couple of different speeds. He did a great job of timing it.

- After Keith’s post, Jeff Watson sent us a QT movie of the actual frames from the Disney color short. Click here to view this movie.

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Michael Barrier continues to build on his comments about script writer/storyboard artists. With some insight, he uses an interview with Bill Scott conducted by Jim Korkis to get Scott’s thoughts. I enjoy reading anything Scott has to say about animation and appreciate Mike’s posting it.

Most of you already know that Bill Scott was the creative genius behind many of the scripts for The Bullwinkle Show. His career as an animation writer stretches back to Warner Bros and UPA in the 40′s. It’s all detailed well in Keith Scott‘s book The Moose That Roared (an excellent book if you’re at all interested in the animation and the animators behind Bullwinkle.)

Bill impacted my life in a big way. In 1984, I was nominated for an Oscar for my film, Dr. DeSoto. That was the year they started the nominee’s luncheon. All the nominees gathered together for a meal and to meet some of the others. I was seated with a number of the documentary filmmakers. The Academy had wisely placed a member from the different divisions to sit at the various tables to try to make us comfortable. Bill Scott sat alongside me. When he introduced himself I was astonished to meet him. I grew up as a Bullwinkle fanatic and knew he was the guy behind those shows.

He told me that he had requested to sit near me since he was a big fan of one of my films. It was a short I did for Reading Rainbow about going to the library. Without words I tried to illustrate the experience of a young child entering a library for the first time.
(Bill Scott from the book, The Moose That Roared.)
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I don’t know how or when Bill had seen that short, but he knew it and he knew me.
I couldn’t believe that I was in any way on HIS radar. That meant at least as much to me emotionally as the Oscar nomination.