Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

To put it in a nutshell:

Back in the early ’60′s animation busted out of the studios. The Hubley surprise Tender Game of 1958 was followed by Moonbird in 1959. Suddenly people realized full well that they could use this medium to do more than make people laugh – and they could do it Independently and out of schools and on a shoestring. Annecy and Zagreb showed up to show the films, and a new world was born from the remains of UPA.

Dick Williams did The Little Island. George Dunning did The Flying Man. Borowczyk and Lenica did Dom. Fred Wolf did The Top. Bruno Bozzetto did The Two Castles. The Zagreb studios grew wildly and quickly and made exciting films.

– The first feature to capitalize on this 60′s renaissance of animation (excluding Hubley’s own feature Of Stars and Men) and rehash what had been done by the Independent crowd, was The Yellow Submarine.
The Beatles sponsored something just this side of daring. However, those of us in the know were aware that it had already been done in shorts. We’d seen it in festivals. We’d seen it at ASIFA. The modest success of that feature made it more mainstream, and it wasn’t long before Beavis and Butthead came along.

- I remember the streets of New York lined with cels from The Yellow Submarine. Every Manhattan stationery sold them. Marketing. Those cels stayed in store windows for years, it seemed. (click on image to enlarge.) For the most part, they were selling for $75.
I remember not thinking they were worth it.
Today, of course, they sell for $1000 and up, but then it’s probably the same difference given the value of money today.

- I’m glad to see that Bruno Bozzetto will have a retrospective in Ottawa. It was in Ottawa in 1978 that his feature Allegro Non Troppo was a surprise midnight screening. An instant hit with that crowd. No advance publicity had us all walking on heaven when that film ended. I can still remember the bubbling enthusiasm when we left the theater at 1:30am. It was an animator’s delight. It’ll be nice to see the return to Ottawa.

(New Yorkers will have a special ASIFA East meeting to honor Bozzetto and see his films just prior to Ottawa in September.)

- This is a short reminder that Turner Classic Movies airs some older animated shorts with excellent prints on Saturday mornings at 11:30am. (Naughty But Mice is Chuck Jones’ first short starring Sniffles.)

The schedule for April is as follows:

April 8 11:30 AM Cartoon Alley #13
Features three Sniffles the Mouse cartoons: Naughty But Mice (1939), Little Brother Rat (1939) and Sniffles and the Bookworm (1939).

April 15 11:30am Cartoon Alley #14
Features three Droopy Dog cartoons: Dumb Hounded (1943), Shooting of Dan McGoo (1945) and Wild and Woolfy (1945).

April 22 11:30am Cartoon Alley #15
Features three Tweety Bird cartoons: A Tale of Two Kitties (1942), Birdy and the Beast (1944) and A Gruesome Twosome (1945).

Apil 29 11:30am Cartoon Alley #16
Features three MGM Cinemascope Cartoons: Millionaire Droopy (1956), The Cat’s Meow (1957), Tops With Pops (1957).

- For those desperate for their monthly Miyazaki hit, May will offer a rerun of the Miyazaki films in the late night schedule on TCM (with dubbed English versions). The schedule is as follows:

May 5 – 2:00am Castle in the Sky (1986)
A boy and girl race pirates to find a legendary floating castle.
Cast: Voices of James Van Der Beek, Anna Paquin, Mark Hamill. Dir: Hayao Miyazaki

4:15am Porco Rosso (1992)
An airplane pilot with a pig’s head devotes his life to rescuing others.
Cast: Voices of Michael Keaton, Cary Elwes, Kimberly Williams. Dir: Hayao Miyazaki

May 12 - 2:00am Princess Mononoke (1999)
A woman raised by wolves leads forest animals in a fight to save their homes.
Cast: Voices of Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver. Dir: Hayao Miyazaki.

4:30am My Neighbor Totoro (1993)
Two girls with a sick mother find escape with the spirits of the forest.
Cast: Voices of Dakota Fanning, Timothy Daly, Lea Salonga. Dir: Hayao Miyazaki.

May 19 - 2:00am Whisper of the Heart (1995)
A young girl goes looking for the boy who has checked out all the same library books as she.
Cast: Voices of Brittany Snow, Cary Elwes, Harold Gould. Dir: Yoshifumi Kondo.

4:00am Pom Poko (1994)
A group of magic raccoons use their shape shifting powers to save their forest home.
Cast: Voices of Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Clancy Brown, J.K. Simmons. Dir: Isao Takahata

– I thought about Michael Barrier’s argument supporting the notion that it would be best for one person to be the sole animator of a character throughout a film. On his excellent site, this argument has played out for at least several months. It’s a good one.

I thought about this when I read this week’s New Yorker Magazine review by Anthony Lane of the re-release of Kieslowski‘s The Double Life of Veronique. In that brilliant film, one actress plays two roles – they may be one character, East and West divided/together – but they’re played as if they were two. The characters are separated and move physically closer together throughout the film and even come close to passing each other.

In some ways this isn’t too far from the hackneyed TV cliché – the one actor plays both himself and his evil twin brother. However, in the Kieslowski film, it’s done very well and is germane to the film. Kieslowski isn’t the only one to do this. There were the evil/good twins played by Margot Kidder in Brian de Palma’s Sisters; there was Kim Novak’s dual/singular role in Hichcock’s Vertigo, and, of course, there were Hayley Mills and Lindsay Lohan in two separate versions of The Parent Trap.

What made me think about Barrier’s argument, was my reading some of the scene breakdowns for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. We all know that Marc Davis animated the evil queen, Maleficent. I was reminded, reading the breakdowns, that he also animated some of the virginal Aurora in the wooded scenes along with Hal Ambro.

Given the Barrier premise, that one animator should animate or supervise the same character, we have to ask what about the animator who animates two or more characters in the same film. (In the world in which I’ve been animating, this is the more likely.)

Bill Tytla and Fred Moore supervised most of the seven dwarfs. Here we have an animator animating seven principal and titular characters. How does this play into the theory? Is it obvious in that the animator would just follow through on all of her(his) characters and try to give different personalities to them?

(Click image to enlarge.)

Does asking this question preclude that the animator can create seven personalities in the same film? (Moore and Tytla did pretty well by their characters, although it was probably easier to vary the animation of characters named Sleepy and Happy than it would be to give personalities to two named Bill and Mark. There’s always the Lindsay Lohan/Hayley Mills route – give one a British accent the other an American.)

I ask it only because I’m curious to know how one would gauge this side of the same argument. And I wonder if any out there have thoughts on this? Or experiences?

Richard Linklater will be back this year with another animated film. Animators, at least the ones I spoke to, seemed to take offense at his last effort, Waking Life. (Somehow, I was told this was not an animated film – rotoscope. I was surprised when it wasn’t nominated for the Oscar over Jimmy Neutron!!! How embarassing.) I thought it quite an interesting effort. This, to me, is no less animation than Peter Jackson’s King Kong or 2/3 of the other cgi efforts being released with cartoony characters and motion captured animation. What was different for the animated Waking Life, was that it was somewhat intelligent and spoke on an adult level. We have to believe, given Linklater’s work, A Scanner Darkly will be more in that direction.

There are some interesting articles about this film, the problems and the history of its making.

Wired Magazine has the most up-to-date and extensive of these and makes for the best read.

The Austin Chronicle had a good article in January.

There are a couple of mixed pre-reviews on Ain’t It Cool News.

Personally, seeing an animated Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder is all I’ll need to get me to plunk down $12 when it opens on July 7th.

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- There’s an A P story in the NY Post detailing the Simpons trailer running with Ice Age 2 which announces the Simpsons feature for July 27, 2007.

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- The Drawing Center at 35 Wooster St. in NYC has an exhibition called Analog Animations running through April 15. It includes a number of animated pieces done by 18 emerging artists who animate their drawings largely with “old-fashioned,” hand-drawn animation techniques rather than digital media.

Analog Animation artists include: Heather Boaz, Brett Budde, Deborah Davidovits, Almut Determeyer, John Dooley, Magdalena Fernandez, Mark Fox, Eunjung Hwang, Shin il Kim, Anna Kiraly, Kakyoung Lee, Jennifer Macdonald, Liza McConnell, Oscar Munoz, Serge Onnen, Hans Op de Beeck, Linda Pella, and David Virgien

Gallery hours:
Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 A.M.–6:00 P.M.
Saturday 11:00 A.M.–6:00 P.M.

Tel: 212-219-2166

– We’ve finally finished the “artwork” on Reading To Your Bunny (not my idea of a title), and I ‘m pleased – sort of.

The film is based on an idea of Rosemary Wells‘ loosely presented in one of her books, “Read To Your Bunny.” She’s done a script, reworking the material, and we did a film. It uses an amalgam of her style of characters culled from a number of books.

The principal idea behind the story is to teach parents to read to their children. By reading aloud to their children, the kid will then get the impulse to read to themselves. It’s been proven and has been recommended by child psychologists for years. It’s just that people don’t realize the facts behind it. We did a film for UNICEF years ago which revealed the same information in a more straightforward way. It’s even been found that reading to a child in the womb has cognitive effects on the child. There’s quite a bit of research to back it up.

Anyway, this film is done – or at least the artwork is done. We’ll have it edited, locked and ready to go to mix by Tuesday. However, the music won’t come in till Wednesday, so we’re certainly on a schedule – of sorts. Not a moment too soon.

The film is scheduled to appear at the Tribeca Film Festival in a couple of weeks. (See the Mar. 26 posting.) It’s also already being sold to schools and libraries, and they have to be shipped by the end of the month.

When I finish a film like this, there’s some relief that it’s done and out of my hands, but there’s also disappointment that I’m not still in the thick of it. Even though it’s obviously not a career highlight, it’s a project that I’ve put a lot of care into, and got some satisfaction in the work, itself. The characters usually, in an odd way, grow on you.

We don’t have another job backing into it, so I’m going back to the POE film and will work on one of the stories. Perhaps we’ll do that as a short and put it out before the whole film is complete.

-The Museum of Modern Art completes their tribute to current French animation this week. The schedule for the remainder of their film program is as follows:

Wednesday, March 1
6:00 The Dog, the General, and the Birds. 2003. France/Italy. Nielsen. 75 min. T1
2003. France/Italy. Directed by Francis Nielsen. Screenplay by Tonino Guerra, based on his book. With the voice of Philippe Noiret. Legendary Italian screenwriter Guerra—the author of films by Federico Fellini, Theo Angelopoulos, Vittorio De Sica, and Michelangelo Antonioni—tells the fantastic and brooding story of a Russian general who tries to thwart the advance of the Napoleonic forces on Moscow by using flocks of inflamed birds. As he lives out his last years in St. Petersburg, he is haunted by the memory of his barbarism toward the birds; aided by his faithful dog Napoleon, he tries to make peace with their brethren. 75 min.

also shown Sunday, March 5
1:00 The Dog, the General, and the Birds. 2003. France/Italy. Nielsen. 75 min. T1

Thursday, March 2
8:15 The Triplets of Belleville. 2003. France/Belgium/Canada/Great Britain. Chomet. 80 min. T1

Saturday, March 4
2:00 The King and the Mockingbird. 1980. France. Grimault. 85 min. T2
1979. France. Directed by Paul Grimault. Screenplay by Jacques Prévert, Grimault. Grimault was a major influence on Hayao Miyazaki and other contemporary Japanese animators, and his masterpiece is this adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s short story “The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep.” With dialogue by the celebrated poet Jacques Prévert, the film is a true marvel with all the requisite fairy tale tropes: a despotic king, a taunting bird, a beautiful shepherdess and a lowly chimney sweep, paintings come to life, and a retro-futurist underworld of sparkling caverns, Venetian canals, and roving bat-police. New 35mm print. 85 min.

4:00 La Table tournante. 1988. France. Demy, Grimault. 80 min. T2
1988. France. Directed by Jacques Demy and Paul Grimault. With the voices of Grimault, Anouk Aimée, Mathieu Demy. Inspired by the success of his 1980 feature The King and the Mockingbird, veteran animator Grimault reedited some of his short films from the 1930s to the 1970s into this feature. Jacques Demy, the director of wonderfully fanciful live-action films like Donkey Skin and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, portrays a true poet at work: Grimault at his editing table, magically transforming paper and ink into flora and fauna. 78 min.

- Making good children’s films is difficult business – especially in feature films.

I’m not talking about the typically American way of doing business – all activity and loud, screaming nonsense for what feels like hours. It’s easy to take a children’s book classic that’s been treasured by generations of children; update and alter the artwork so it looks brighter and more in-your-face, get celebrity voices to ensure the cache of their names, then add a couple of fart jokes. It’s hard to make a good, intelligent children’s film.

Dumbo is a great children’s film; Spirited Away is a great children’s film. Bambi, Toy Story and My Life As A Dog are all exceptionally good children’s films.

Last night, I got to see Michel Ocelot’s Kirikou and the Wild Beasts. Michel’s first Kirikou feature, Kirikou and the Sorceress, was exceptionally well received in France. It has played continuously in France for the past seven years.

Michel was pushed into this sequel, which plays like an original. The film tells four stories of tiny Kirikou, an African child living in a small village and the difficulties he overcomes in the ever present struggle with a sorceress who tries to destroy his village. She represents natural disasters, and Kirikou, using his intelligence, fights back with things available to him. No loud violence, no screaming noises, no guns, no farts. Just humanity and intelligence.

And stunningly beautiful graphics remniscent of Matisse’s Ethiopian paintings. in other words, the art is inspired by the art of the film’s subject – African painting. The excellent musical tracks by Manu Dibango and songs by Youssou N’Dour are also inspired by African music.

Michel Ocelot has delivered a film that should be seen. Because of the nudity in the film, breasts in particular, it is doubtful that the film will receive proper distribution in America. It has played in every other country, though, and will undoubtedly be on dvd here. Please look for it. If you can see it on a big screen so much the better. It’s a beautiful children’s film, and that’s saying a lot for me.

– In a move aimed at nurturing their local animators, China has banned the import of foreign cartoons that combine live action and animation. Blue’s Clues and Roger Rabbit are out! China would like their animators to develop their own product rather than do only outsource work. Read full news article here.

- The NYTimes today has a review of the Oscar nominee showcase from Magnolia Pictures. John Canemaker wins this review hands down; sorry PIXAR.

- No reviews for Doogal yet. I guess they avoided giving a copy to reviewers; I wonder why.

This week the Museum of Modern Art will begin its celebration of French animation features. There will be the North American premiere of Michel Ocelot’s Kirikou and the Wild Beasts.

Directed by Michel Ocelot and Bénédicte Galup. Screenplay by Ocelot.
This film’s palette was inspired by African textiles of ambers, ochers, and bright colors, and the film’s lush soundtrack brings together acclaimed musicians Youssou N’Dour from Senegal, Rokia Traoré from Mali, and Manu Dibango from Cameroon.

The complete schedule of all the films to be show for the week will be as follows:

Thursday, February 23
6:30 – Kirikou and the Wild Beasts. 2005. France. Ocelot, Galup. 72 min. North American premiere. Introduced by Ocelot.

8:15 – Kirikou and the Sorceress. 1998. France. Ocelot. 74 min. Introduced by Ocelot.

Friday, February 24
6:30 – The Frog Prophecy. 2003. France. Girerd. 90 min.

8:15 – The Triplets of Belleville. 2003. France/Belgium/Canada/Great Britain. Chomet.

Saturday, February 25
2:00 Kirikou and the Sorceress. 1998. France. Ocelot. 74 min.

3:45 – Kirikou and the Wild Beasts. 2005. France. Ocelot, Galup. 72 min.

5:45 La Table tournante. 1988. France. Demy, Grimault. 78 min.

7:30 The King and the Mockingbird. 1979. France. Grimault. 85 min.

Sunday, February 26
5:30 The Island of Black Mor. 2004. France. Laguionie. 80 min.

Monday, February 27
6:00 – The Island of Black Mor. 2004. France. Laguionie. 80 min.

8:30 – The Frog Prophecy. 2003. France. Girerd. 90 min.

Also at MOMA this week:

William Kentridge‘s 9 Drawings for Projection

This feature-length 35mm film, composed of nine short animated films made between 1989 and 2003, traces the public and private life of Soho Eckstein, a mine owner, land developer, and cuckold, against the ever-changing social and political realities of South Africa. Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg) begins his films with a single drawing that he alters, adds to, and subtracts from, bit by bit, photographing each change. The process of transformation is at once evident and dynamic. Until this U.S. theatrical premiere at MoMA, Kentridge’s films have been shown in the same gallery as the drawings from which the film is photographed. Felix in Exile, the fifth work in 9 Drawings for Projection, can be viewed in this way in MoMA’s second floor Contemporary Galleries.

Saturday, February 18
6:00 – 9 Drawings for Projection. 2005. South Africa. Kentridge. 78 min. U.S. theatrical premiere. In the Film and Media exhibition William Kentridge’s 9 Drawings for Projection

Sunday, February 19
5:00 – 9 Drawings for Projection. 2005. South Africa. Kentridge. 78 min. U.S. theatrical premiere. T2
In the Film and Media exhibition William Kentridge’s 9 Drawings for Projection

Monday, February 20
8:00 – 9 Drawings for Projection. 2005. South Africa. Kentridge. 78 min. U.S. theatrical premiere. T2
In the Film and Media exhibition William Kentridge’s 9 Drawings for Projection

– Congratulations to Lisa Crafts on the success of her animated short film, The Flooded Playground, which just completed its run at the Slamdance Flm Festival at Suede in Park City, Utah. The film is a stunningly attractive piece combining drawn, digital and pixillated animation with photo-montage and sheer filmaking virtuoso. Done by hand and finished in photoshop and after-effects the film has a unique look typical of Lisa’s art.

It presents a dark, surreal world where a child is forced on the journey through the complexities of childhood. There’s a short clip featured on Lisa’s site and a review at AWN.

- Congratulations also to Don Hahn for his promotion to the interim head of Disney Feature Animation. He will supervise things until the Disney/Pixar merger is finalized and John Lasseter will move into that role. Don has been a prime mover there for years producing many of the studio’s recent animated successes from Beauty and The Beast to The Lion King to Lorenzo The Cat. Don also has an interesting book out: Animation Magic 2001, and The Lion King : A Giant Leap

-The most outrageous bit of news yesterday was the trade of sportscaster, Al Michaels, from ABC/ESPN to NBC/Universal for a package of golf programming through 2014 and exchange of the copyright to Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit to Disney. This reverts the rights of the Disney-developed cartoon character stolen under his nose by Charles Mintz (along with a number of his animators) in 1928.

Al Michaels has this in proper perspective when he said, “I’m going to be a trivia answer some day.” It is interesting to see animation discussed on the sports pages of our newspapers!

- Curious George opened today to reviews like this ** star comment by the NY Daily News: “‘Curious George’ has long been a bedtime staple, but this animated film version may be the first time his story puts parents to sleep.” Or a more positive one from The NY Times: “A Cartoon Monkey With No Aspirations to Cultural Commentary”.
I guess it’s a children’s film, so it doesn’t have to entertain the adults.

Jerry Beck emailed me this afternoon to tell me that Myron Waldman had died Saturday morning at age 97.

This is a blow to New York animation. Myron was seen as the wunderkind of the Fleischer studio, and he ends up being one of the longest lasting of the group. The best obituary posted at this point is on Mike Dobbs’ Out of the Inkwell blog. I urge you to go there and read about Myron’s productive and illustrative life.

There are some good photos of Myron on Mark Mayerson’s Al Eugster site. Worth visiting and revisiting.