Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Dec 5th – Today is Walt Disney’s birthday. I’ll celebrate by seeing The Princess and the Frog. Nothing like 2D animation to celebrate the man. Maybe later I’ll also watch a couple of great Mickey shorts from the early thirties.
Today’s also the day that we start our fifth year working this blog. It doesn’t feel that long to me, and it still continues to be fun. Hopefully I’ll be able to say the same in another four years.

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Mary and Max
- I finally got to see Adam Eliot’s feature, Mary and Max. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, it’s an animated feature by the Australian creator of Harvie Krumpet, which won the Oscar for animated short in 2003. I won’t go into the story other than to say it’s a penpal tale between a girl in Australia and a Jewish man with Asperger’s Syndrome in NY.

Since I’ve only seen these two films, I can only judge one against the other – with no other references. These are the aspects both films have in common:
. They have excellent, picaresque stories that move forward through their characters’ lives.
. They are narrated rather than played out and have close to no dialogue spoken by the characters. The work is done in clay with very inventive scenes, but animated in a strongly limited way. (Eliot had once boasted that he’d never done a walk cycle in any of this three previous shorts. Indeed, Mary and Max mostly shows them walking from the waist up. There’s one excellent cycle of a very heavy character walking, so Eliot can do it. Or at least one of his animators can; I don’t know if there are any other animators since there’s no credit for animation on the film.)
. Lastly, the celebrity voices are bordering on brilliant. Geoffrey Rush was at least half the film in Harvie Krumpet. In this feature, Philip Seymour Hoffman gave one of the best animation vocal performances of the past several years.

This last bit counts for a lot. The narration can carry you draggingly through a half-hour short like Harvie Krumpet, but in a a feature like Mary and Max it gets a bit tedious regardless of how interesting the story. After a half hour of only three principal voices (narrator: Barrie Humphries/Dame Edna, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Toni Collette) you start looking for more, and the film does wear out its welcome a bit. (Eric Bana also has a small, underwritten part.)

I enjoyed this film somewhat, but it’s in a different league from The Fantastic Mr. Fox or Coraline.

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John R. Dilworth
- This coming Tuesday, Dec 8th, ASIFA-East will present an evening with John R. Dilworth. The program should promise to be an unforgettable evening of films, conversation . . . and surprises and comedy.
There will be a screening of a number of John’s films including the NY public premiere of John’s most recent short, “Rinky Dink.”

Tuesday Dec 8, 2009
SVA 209 E 23rd Street, 3rd floor amphitheatre
7 PM
Admission: FREE
By the way, ASIFA-East calenders will be on sale at the event ($10 each), as well as some Dilworth merchandise. Get Christmas shopping in while attending this event.

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Mad Monster Party

– Can’t get enough Stop-Motion Animation? Fantastic Mr. Fox, Mary and Max, and Coraline have just wet your appetite? Lert’s go back to the creators of the feast – Rankin-Bass. As part of its Tim Burton retrospective, the Museum of Modern Art will be screening today and tomorrow (Dec. 6th and 7th) Mad Monster Party. (I’d personaly prefer to see Daydreamer, The World of Hans Christian Andersen.) Dracula, the Mummy, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde plot to gain control of Baron von Frankenstein’s secret weapon during a monster convention. Featuring the voices of Boris Karloff, Phyllis Diller, the movie should be a trip down memory lane.

December 5, 2009, 5:45 p.m.
December 6, 2009, 5:30 p.m.

A drawing by Don Duga who storyboarded the film.

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UPA

-On December 14th, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences will have a program celebrating the short films of UPA. John Canemaker will host the event with a look back at the studio’s output. Eight rarely seen films will be screened in 35mm.
These will include:
_____GERALD MCBOING BOING
_____MISTER MAGOO’S PUDDLE JUMPER
_____ROOTY TOOT TOOT
_____MADELINE
_____THE TELL-TALE HEART
_____THE UNICORN IN THE GARDEN
_____FUDGET’S BUDGET
_____GEORGIE AND THE DRAGON

Take it from someone who knows, the collection of shorts couldn’t be better. Lots of Oscar winners and nominees among them. The 35mm prints from the UCLA Archives, will be immaculate. This show will be a treat.

At 7PM December 14, 2009 at the Lighthouse, 111 East 59th Street, between Park and Lexington avenues
$5.00 admission ($3.00 for members)

- Last night, the Paley Center (formerly known as the Museum of Broadcasting) hosted a program celebrating the first animated Christmas Special on TV, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. The program first aired in 1962 and was something of an instant success.

Present for the show were Judy and Roberta Levitow (the daughters of Abe Levitow, who directed the show), Darrell Van Citters (who’d written the recent, attractive book Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol: the Making of TV’s First Animated Special), and Marie Matthews (the voice of Young Scrooge) participated in a panel moderated by Jack Doulin (casting director – NY Theater Workshop).

The film looked glorous projected in High Def supplied by the DVD distributor, Classic Media. They also distributed free copies of the DVD to every member of the audience. What more could you ask for!

I was particularly taken with how beautiful some of the Backgrounds looked on the big screen; those in the last segment – ghost of the future, cemetary – were especially stunning. It was amazing to see the extraordinarily limited animation play so well with the brilliant soundtrack and the strong scenics. (It’s hard to believe the complete production for this show totaled just five months.)

The panel wasn’t particularly illuminating; I knew a good deal about the show having read Darrell Van Citters‘ amazingly informative book about the production. It seemed that was all the moderator really knew about the show; he’d read the book. Given the audience and the moderator’s theatrical background, there was a bit of a stronger focus on the Jule Styne and Bob Merrill songs, but, even there, the book offered so much more information. I wish Darrell had been the moderator. He’s so much more informed.

The program ended with Marie Matthews singing her song, “When You’re Alone in the World,” live to piano accompaniment. Nice.

Regardless, seeing the show projected and coming out into the lively Christmas world of Rockefeller Center left me in a good mood for the night. You should take another look at the show, even though on DVD.

There’s a screening upcoming in LA on Saturday, Dec. 19, 2009 at 4:00pm. It’ll take place at the Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Avenue at 14th Street in Santa Monica. That screening will also be followed by a panel and book signing.

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Another stop motion feature opening in NY:
A TOWN CALLED PANIC will have a 2-week run in New York at the Film Forum. The animated stop-motion film will screen December 16-29.

This seems to be an absurdist piece of animation wherein some small toys – a cowboy, an Indian, a horse, a dinosaur are animated shuffling about to a somewhat insane script. You can see a sample of the film here and you can see a short with the same characters here.

The Film Forum is located at West Houston Street (W. of 6th Avenue), with screenings daily at 1:00, 2:40, 4:15, 6:00, 8:00, and 10:00.

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- Finally, since we’re talking about Christmas, let me promote some excellent merchandise provided by John Schnall. He’s created some hilarious e-mail cards that are personalized for you. They’re inexpensive and worth every dime he’s asking. You can see what he’s offering here, and you can see a sample done for me here.
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The Fantastic Mr. Fox – Did I tell you often enough that I really like this movie? One director – one voice. Independent spirit. Relatively low budget – $40 million. See it for fun.

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- There’s a solid interview with Wes Anderson on the always enjoyable Onion’s AV CLub. His comments are worth reading, expecially if you’ve seen the film.

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- Rotten Tomatoes, on the arrival of Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, has created a listing of Disney animated features and organized them into a list of titles. The order of the list is determined by some shaky criteria. Per Rotten Tomatoes: We used a weighted formula that takes into account the Tomatometer, number of reviews, and release year of every film included. We excluded all Disney subsidiaries and companies through which Disney has distribution deals hence, no films from Pixar, Studio Ghibli, or DisneyToon Studios are on the list.

Here’s their listing. Each title is followed by the Tomatometer rating:

1. Pinocchio 100%
2. Snow White 98%
3. Fantasia (1940) 98%
4. 101 Dalmatians 97%
5. Dumbo 97%
6. Beauty & the Beast 93%
7. Lion King 92%
8. Aladdin 92%
9. Cinderella 92%
10. Sleeping Beauty 91%
11. The Little Mermaid 90%
12. Bambi 89%
13. The Jungle Book 89%
14. Bolt 88%
15. Tarzan 88%
16. Lady and the Tramp 87%
17. Mulan 86%
18. Emperor’s New Groove 85%
19. Lilo and Stitch 85%
20. The Rescuers 84%
21. Fantasia 2000 82%
22. Hercules 83%
23. Peter Pan 83%
24. Alice In Wonderland 81%
25. The Hunchback of Notre Dame 72%
26. The Sword in the Stone 73%
27. Treasure Planet 70%
28. Meet the Robinsons 66%
29. Dinosaur 65%
30. The Aristocats 65%
31. The 3 Caballeros 87%
32. The Fox and the Hound 71%
33. Pocahontas 56%
34. Home on the Range 55%
35. Robin Hood. 55%
36. The Black Cauldron 58%
37. Atlantis: the Lost Continent 46%
38. Oliver and Company 44%
39. The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad 89%
40. The Rescuers Down Under 60%
41. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh 91%
42. The Great Mouse Detective 79%
43. Brother Bear 38%
44. Chciken Little 36%
45. Saludos Amigos 70%
46. Melody Time 88%
47. Make Mine Music 67%
48. Fun and Fancy Free 67%

Just to amuse myself, I sought out all the Don Bluth films and compared their Tomatometer ratings to see which would be hightest. No surprises, except maybe that American Tale was rated so low. These aren’t graded the same way the Disney films were, above. Some of Bluth’s films weren’t rated:

The Secret of NIMH 94%
Anastasia 85%
An American Tale 63%
Titan AE 51%
All Dogs Go to Heaven 44%
The Pebble and the Penguin 36%
Thumbelina 25%
Rock-A-Doodle 20%

Continuing the process let’s look at Ralph Bakshi‘s films. He didn’t fare as well as Bluth; some of Bakshi’s films weren’t reviewed either:

Heavy Traffic 88%
American Pop 56%
Fritz the Cat 53%
Wizards 53%
The Lord of the Rings 47%
Cool World 6%

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- After posting Tom Hachtman’s Renaissance Masters the past four weeks, I’m sort of out of sorts to not have any more of it. Let me post a couple of Gertrude & Alice cartoons to fill the void:

This one could be a comment on the “Twilight” experience.

This week I heard about the after-show auction going on
at A Steady Rain‘s Broadway performances. Hugh Jackman &
Daniel Craig are raising cash for Broadway Cares by having
after-show auctions of their “sweaty” T-shirts.

Gert & Alice can do it for the environment.

And while I’m at it, let me post one of my favorite strips (which I’d posted once before.)

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Is there a more powerful god than the cartoonist?

- Today’s the day that The Princess and the Frog opens in two million theaters. It’s being called 2D animation’s last best chance of survival. Of course, that’s ridiculous; I don’t accept it for a minute. Just as I didn’t accept it when Eisner at Disney or Katzenberg at Dreamworks proclaimed 2D animation dead, several years ago.

But I’m conflicted.

Certainly, I want it to do well – extremely well; I’d like it to make the road easier for the next non-Winnie-the-Pooh feature at Disney. But I don’t think that this is going to be the best of the recent features – cgi, stop-motion OR hand drawn. I’m sure there’ll be a couple of tour de force animation sequences. Yet, there’s not much pulling me to any of those 2 million theaters.** I just don’t have the highest of expectations. Looking at the “Art” in the book, The Art of The Princess and the Frog didn’t warm me toward the film, either. There aren’t many pictures in the book that remotely represent “Art” to me.

Yet, I am looking forward to seeing it. Because it IS 2D animation drawn by some of the most acclaimed animators in the industry. I am anxious for them and want it to supersede my trepidations and be a positive for animation. The truth is that I don’t know what I’m going to see, and I want it to be better than the trailers and books promoting this film.

When I saw all the advance bits and pieces of The Fantastic Mr. Fox, I hated what I saw. I could imagine only negatives. The more I saw, however, the more I was being won over by the voice cast. When I saw the film, I loved it. I mean, I LOVED it. I’m looking forward to seeing it again . . . and again. Wes Anderson pulled together a brilliant film full of charm and wit and intelligence. It not only was one of my favorite animated films of the year, it was one of my favorite films . . . period.

Perhaps, that’s what’s in store for me with The Princess and the Frog. Perhaps the animators will overwhelm me, the directors will have a new vision, the artists will get to me. Perhaps, I’ll see everything I hope for. But I’ll have to wait.

I was set to see a screening on Dec 1st. But I can’t. There’s another more important event that evening. (Anytime live people are involved it wins hands-down over a filmed event.)

There’s the celebration at the Paley center of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, complete with a panel consisting of Darrell Van Citters, Animator and Author of Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol: The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special, Judy Levitow, Daughter of Magoo Director Abe Levitow and Marie Matthews, Voice of “Young Scrooge”. I’ll be at the Paley Center.

I’ve arranged to see The Princess and the Frog on Dec. 5th. That’s Walt’s birthday, so it seemed appropriate. It’s two weeks after the opening, but I’ll manage. Or if not, I’ll do like everyone else and pay to see the film. The problem is that I’ve been seeing about five films a week (it’s Academy screening time), and sticking another one in there is difficult. We’ll see. Consequently, if I do give honest comments on this film (not that anyone is waiting) it’ll have to hold until then.

** Jerry Beck in the comment section wrote: that the film opens in “one or two theatres today in NY and LA. It opens in “two million theatres” on December 11th.” My mistake.

Regardless, the film got reviewed today. The race issue presented problems for some:

Manohla Dargis’ NYTimes: Not quite glowing, she says the “. . . finale, like the story itself, represents progress of a kind, I suppose, even if this princess spends an uncommonly long time splashing around as a frog. A frog whose green hue suggests that, if nothing else, Disney finally recognizes that every little girl, no matter her color, represents a new marketing opportunity.”
The NYDaily News: (3 stars)”The good news is that “P&F” quickly cruises past the fact that Tiana is Disney’s first African-American heroine. Unfortunately, the story that surrounds her often finds itself stuck in the swamp.”
The NYPost 3 stars) A generally positive review but says that the film isn’t up to “Alladin”, “The Little Mermaid” or Pixar.
The Village Voice: A not enthusiastic review: “Much ballyhooed as Disney’s return to its tradition of 2-D “cel” animation after a five-year hiatus, The Princess and the Frog is pleasantly, if unmemorably, drawn. But the movie as a whole never approaches the wit, cleverness, and storytelling brio of the studio’s early-1990s animation renaissance . . .”

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- Today’s also the day that The Fantastic Mr. Fox opens wide. Prior to this it played only four theaters in the US: two in NY and two in LA. It did exceptionally well at those four theaters; let’s hope it continues at a couple of thousand.

Go see it. That’s all I can say. This is a great film. Go see it.

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- Let’s back up a bit and talk about that book – The Art of The Princess and the Frog. This is only one of about 16 books Disney’s releasing on the film. I’ve read that they’ve been very successful with any merchandise featuring Princess Tiana. Everything from the Little Golden Book to a cookbook. The one that intrigues me most is the Learn to Draw The Princess and the Frog. (In the past, they would have called it “How to draw . . .”)

But back to the one Chronicle sent me hoping for a review. I’ve been a fan of Chronicle’s animation books. Amid Amidi‘s exceptionally well designed book, Cartoon Modern, was the first book of theirs that grabbed my attention. It did what other Art/Animation books should have imitated. Amid’s follow-up, The Art of Pixar Short Films was equally attractive, though I didn’t have much interest in the subject.

The book, The Art of the Princess and the Frog is also well designed, graphically, but the material is, for me, less than thrilling. I’m not sure I am in tune with writer, Jeff Kurtti‘s approach to structuring the book.

The book, itself, seems less about animation than about how to display the artwork offered. It breaks chapters into characters or settings and gives lots of models, storyboards and Bg examples. It makes for a very different format in the book and makes for a new way of organizing the material.

There are plenty of storyboard selections to view.
This sequence by Jeremy Spears..
There are a lot of quotes from many of the principal artists and animators involved, and the book plays out from those quotes. There are a lot of characters analyzed in the book, so I’m curious to see how they play in the film and how much screen time any of them get.

The end result, for me, is that there doesn’t seem to be a strong focus in the book. I’m not sure what I should be looking for. Is it just a big scrapbook of artwork promoting the film? Or is there a larger focus that I missed? But then I get the feeling that the film is a mish-mash of styles, itself. The book doesn’t help in this regard, but, of course, it’s a gathering of a lot of preliminary art, so it’s hard to tell.

Given the large number of art books on the subject of various animated films, I suppose there have to be other models for the “Artwork of . . .” series, but I’m not sure this is it.

There are some interesting bits about the film that were stated. For example, the chapter on Background design illustrates how the artists looked closely at Lady and the Tramp for “inspiration”. Here’s a breakdown in two illustrations that the book uses to discuss this inspiration.

“. . . We looked at Lady and the Tramp not so much for the “application
of paint,” but definitely the caricature of shapes, and the compositional
elements. Large foreground elements utilizing the screen shape, and then
space of depth, and pattern, and a nice balance and rhythm of light shapes.”
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I wonder what Disney film the Art Directors of Lady and the Tramp
studied when they were preparing to design their film?
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The Lady and the Tramp Bg as it appears in
Bob Thomas’ The Art of Animation.
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Bg for The Princess and the Frog by James Aaron Finch..
Should this be an inspiration for me or for future animation artists? The Thomas book was a model for me; for years I studied, memorized and pored over every picture of that book. I wonder how I would react to this if I were young and looking for something to keep me enthralled with the medium.

We need to redefine the art of “The Art of . . .” books. They have to be more than a promotional device> Throw enough pretty pictures at the audience and you’ll make enough sales to cover cost and bring people to the theaters. Some creativity might be required.

Like all scrapbooks, there are some illustrations that were interesting to me.
Here are a few of them.
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Two illustrations by James Aaron Finch. .”
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Something lost. Something gained?.”
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Bill Schwab on the left | Rik Maki on the right
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Eric Goldberg on the left | Bill Schwab on the right
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Bg by Doug Reggers. There are a lot of steamships in the book.

- Kino Video has an excellent DVD available of the work of Osamu Tezuka. Called The Astonishing Work of Osamu Tezuka, the disc covers a wide range of this truly experimental filmmaker’s films.

He was probably most famous for the Manga he created which became Astro Boy. The creator of the big-eyed cartoon character, he’s often credited as the father of Anime. This video contains none of that work.

What it does include, is a number of shorts – 15, to be exact, – which are always interesting, sometimes peculiar, and in a couple of cases great.

For me two films stand out: Jumping and Broken Down Film.

Jumping is a tour-de-force of animation. The camera acts as the eyes of a jumper, bouncing up and down and through an animated landscape. As the camera bounds up and down, higher and lower, more and more violently, everything animates in a wide perspective. It ends the way it starts; after the complete evolution and destruction of society, it returns to the beginning. The film is brilliantly animated by Junji Kobayashi.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Jumping (1984) is on YouTube, but the transfer is bad. Low Res and out of sync. It’s an excellent film, but this version becomes annoying quickly.

Broken Down Film is an exercise in recreating a horrible film experience – watching an old film that falls apart before our eyes. However, as if it were a Tex Avery cartoon, the dirty, scratchy print affects the characters as well.

Right from the title, we are treated to violent scratches in the film.

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A cowboy on his horse has to deal with the jumping film gate.
He corrects it by pushing the frame back in place.

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However, then there’s the lint at the bottom right.

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The film jumps again, but
he hears a damsel in distress.

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He moves in to help the girl but there’s too much snow.

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He wipes some away and pulls out his swiss army knife.
to cut the rope that binds her.

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An oncoming train.

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He takes the “Help” balloon . . .

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. . . and throws it in front of the train.

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After taking care of an oncoming train,
there’s the villain shooting at him.

The jumping frame knocks them both off their centers.

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Good guy traps the villain in the film frame
and goes back to the girl in the scratched frame.

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He truns his hat into an umbrella to clear the raining scratches,
and the image turns into a color musical.

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They dance.

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Until it suddenly goes back to B&W.

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They can’t even kiss. The china marker comes off
on his face. Annoyed, but the image splits to the End credit.

Broken Down Film (1985) on YouTube. It’s not a bad version.

The DVD is expectedly, excellent quality. It also includes a lengthy interview with Tezuka who goes through each of his films. His films are quirky, but I’m glad to have them in my collection.

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- Miyazaki has a brief chapter about Tezuka in his book, Starting Point: 1979-1996. He does not have very positive things to say about the older director, Tezuka.

I found myself disgusted by the cheap pessimism of works like Ningyo (Mermaid), or Shizuku (The Drop), which showed a drop of water falling on a thirsty man adrift at sea. I felt that this pessimism was qualitatively different from the pessimism Tezuka used to have in the old days, as in the early days of Atom (Astro Boy), for example—but it also could have been that in the early days I felt great tragedy and trembled with excitement at Tezuka’s cheap pessimism precisely because I was so young.

And later in the essay he continues:

From a senior of mine in the industry, I once heard that when Tezuka was working on the production of the Saiyuki (Alakazam the Great) animation feature, he reportedly advocated inserting an episode showing the hero monkey, Songoku, coming back and finding his girlfriend (also a monkey) dead. But there was never any reason for the girl monkey to be dead. When I learned from other people that Tezuka had advocated this simply because “it would be more moving,” I fully realized that I could part ways with him.

Finally, he concludes this essay:

The end of the Showa period
(Dec 25 1926- Jan 7 1989 – The era of Emperor Hirohito)

Overall, my opinion of Tezuka is as follows: I appreciate him for being the person to pioneer story manga, and for having created the current of the times in which we work today. So when writing or speaking about him in public, I have always referred to him with respect as “Osamu Tezuka.” And this is because he was not just my rival, but also my predecessor. I have written about him exactly the same way I would write about some other famous historical figure from the past, like Hirobumi Ito. And I think I am correct to appreciate him in this way.

In terms of animation, however, I think I have the right and responsibility to say the following—everything that Mr. Tezuka talked about or emphasized was wrong.

Why did such an unfortunate state of affairs arise? I think, as can be seen from Tezuka’s early manga works, it is because his starting point was Disney. Because in Japan at the time there was no one who could be his teacher, no one he could emulate, Tezuka’s early works are almost all just imitations of Disney. To them he merely added his own narrative element. I say added, but his worlds continued to be created under huge influence from Disney. As a result, he always had an inferiority complex, a fear that he would never be able to surpass “the grand old man.” That’s why he always thought that he had to outdo Disney’s Fantasia, or Pinoc-chio, and why he was never able to overcome his compulsion to do so. At least that is my interpretation. It becomes understandable if you think of his work in animation as a hobby—something a rich man might do for a diversion.

When I heard that Tezuka had passed away, I truly felt that it was the end of the Showa era, even more so than when I heard that the Showa Emperor himself had passed away. Tezuka was a ferociously active person, and in his life he probably accomplished three times more than most people do. So given that he died at sixty, he really lived a hundred and eighty years’ worth. I think that he truly lived a full life.

- Three animated features in the past four days. That’s a lot – at least compared to what I see theatrically in the rest of the year. Only one was in the running for the Oscar, this year; all three were brilliant in their own ways. All three were directed by forceful directors with something on their minds.

- That one running for the Oscar was The Fantastic Mr. Fox. This is the work of a live-action director, Wes Anderson, who has built a personality for himself on film. All of his feature work has been eccentric, all have featured a cast of regulars; none of his films have been blockbuster success stories. But they’ve all done well and have their built-in-audience.

With The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson has built a studio in England staffing it with a supervising director from the staff of the Will Vinton Studio. Mark Gustafson had more than a little control over the making of The P.J.s and animated on Vinton’s Mark Twain feature. The animation for Mr. Fox wasn’t gloriously slick in the way Coraline or Up was; it looked as though someone’s fingerprints were all over the sets and dolls and frames of this film. That was part of the charm.

The rest of the secret of this film comes wholly out of Anderson’s way of working and directing. He was a country away from the set, yet he was able to communicate easily via the Internet and was able to review everything in production. He trusted Gustafson and gave him space to lead the crew – the way any good director would do.

I remember one day at the Hubley studio on a break. Crossing Park Avenue on my way to a store, I thought about how happy I was in this job. I thought about the work I was doing. Then, smack, I’d come to realize that I was drawing Hubley drawings. My artwork wasn’t as good, but it looked like a Hubley drawing – not a Sporn drawing. What I was doing had little to do with me and all to do with John Hubley. I don’t know how he got me to do that; I don’t know how he got all of us to do that – John was so hands off. Yet, there it was: a Hubley film! That was when I realized how a director had to work to get the most from the artists and creators involved in the film. I haven’t forgotten my lesson.

It’s obvious that Wes Anderson knows what he’s doing. Every inch of his film is fun and charming and delightful. Every frame of it is adult, yet kids can enjoy it as well (and they certainly did at the screening I attended.) [Richard O'Connor has a great review of this film. I suggest you read it.]

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- A second feature I’d seen was another eccentrically odd puppy of a film. My Dog Tulip was completely drawn, animated and colored by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger. Paul wrote the script from a British best seller by J.R. Ackerly.

The film told the story of a relationship between a man and his dog; it was a close bond between the two – a curmudgeon of a man and his overprotective dog. Within a short time, the film grew peculiar because it focussed on Ackerly’s concern for the urine, feces, other bodily effluvia of the dog, including its sexual needs. Having not read the book, actually, I’m not sure if these were so prominent in the original or if this was something Paul attended to in writing the screenplay. I assume the words were all Ackerly’s. They are the heart of the film, so Paul obviously wanted it this way, and it makes it somewhat off-putting to any general audience.

The film has had a hard time finding a distributor. I hope it does find a release. Much of the artwork is extraordinary. Paul animated completely within the computer using the TV Paint program. His wife, Sandra colored it all and painted the backgrounds, also in TV Paint. They used a sort-of watercolor technique with a color palette that felt as if it glowed, yet in reality was limited to soft grays and browns with spots of high color. It was very controlled in the digital copy I saw projected at the Film Forum. This is Karen Cooper‘s gem of a theater that is willing to trust and support artists in film.

The animated movement in the film was quite loose. It felt like a mix of James Stevenson and William Steig animated. I suspect that the completely digital drawing with TV Paint, as opposed to drawing on paper and scanning, has loosened Paul’s lines even more than it once did. There’s certainly been a gradual change in his work over the past few years. Different – not better or worse.

The celebrity actors include Christopher Plummer, Isabella Rosselini and Lynn Redgrave.

The film has received mixed reviews – that bodily fluid thing – and hopefully this will not hold it back in any way other than a small bump. So much work by these two artists went into this film; one wants the struggle to deservedly pay off.

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- The third and final feature seen this weekend was screened at the Museum of Modern Art on Sunday evening. Lotte Reiniger‘s The Adventures of Prince Achmed was the first animated feature, done in 1926. Made just steps from the Bauhaus, in the throes of German Expressionism, this film in some way set the way for all features to follow. A very strong director with pure impulses created a long film – the first. Done in her style of back-lit 2D silhouette puppets, the film blazed techniques that were truly innovative.

The film was done, of course, in B&W, yet the print screened was digitally colored, predominantly in pastels. The music was supplied by pianist, Ben Model. He did well by the film, but I suppose my feelings toward this movie were shaped by my initial viewing years ago – back in the 70′s.

It was a screening at the Galerie St. Etienne. They had set up a room that was long and narrow, two sets of folding chairs down each side with a 16mm projector in the rear. The projection was perfect, the film was colored optically (there was no digital anything back then), and the sound was a small orchestral accompaniment. This was a spanking new print.

Lotte Reiniger was in the house, and after the well-received film, she proceeded to give us a demonstration of how it was made. A very large lightbox was constructed on a primary stairwell, and we all gathered around. She cut out and constructed a puppet in front of us. Then she placed it on the light box and showed how she moved it. She told stories (which I’ll save for another post) which kept us smiling.

At one point, she looked up to those around the table and she was overtaken with emotion. She ran around the table and tightly embraced a very short, elderly woman. The demonstration was over. It was Lotte Lenya, standing only a couple of feet away from me. The two hadn’t seen each other in all those years.

Now I was taken with emotion. What an evening; what a delight.
Seeing the film again brings back memories. It’s a wonderful film, but the real life adventure which played out in front of me, back then, colored the film forever – more than even the computer would be able to do.

- One of things I love about New York is the number and excellence of the many parks throughout the City. It’s somewhat similar to London, except here the neighborhood parks are open to all.

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Where there are no parks, there are trees. I’m always fully aware of the many trees around
me on my way to or from work. At the moment, they’re all going through the final stage of Fall just prior to the barren winter upcoming. The reds are dark and the leaves fallen are everywhere. I’m particularly aware of this because of the small walkway in front of my studio’s door. There are trees all around us, and leaves have molted in this passageway for the past six weeks or so. I’ve had to sweep them frequently enough so that they don’t clog the drains and create problems. I have to say that I enjoy this chore. My cat romps about while I attend to the sweep-up.

To the right, you can see the barren trees above the outer wall which greets me when I leave my studio. The door is under the light bottom left of the photo. It’d been raining most of the day, yesterday, when this picture was taken, consequently there’ll be the last of the leaves on the wet, stony corridor.

The walk home lately is in the dark, thanks to Daylight Savings time. Fortunately, Houston Street, an eight-lane, major thoroughfare separating Greenwich Village from SoHo, is surrounded with trees, new and old.

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At night, the trees lurk in the street framing the shops and
street lamps which seem to play in and around those trees.

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The inner mass of the trees’ foliage is lit
by the street lights down below them.

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With pedestrians moving about the trees, there’s an
almost-festive mood about, thanks to the lighting.

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The lesser lit areas take on a moodier effect.
So quickly you travel from one emotion to another.

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Is it any wonder, then, that I enjoy living on 30th Street with
it’s abundant and spectacular foliage always lining the street.
The blue sky to the right, is actually a fogged mist. It’s covering
the Empire State Building which usually sticks out brightly.
Last night, it was like it wasn’t there. An odd sensation.

- This is my mid-November reminder that Dec. 1st The Paley Center will will host a screening of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. After the screening there will be a panel discussion which includes the following guests:
- Darrell Van Citters, Animator and Author of Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol: The Making ____of the First Animated Christmas Special,
- Judy Levitow, Daughter of Magoo Director Abe Levitow
- Marie Matthews, Voice of “Young Scrooge”
- Moderator: Jack Doulin, of the New York Theatre Workshop.

The program starts at 6pm and general admission is $20. All guests will receive a complimentary DVD of Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol. It’s a good antidote for the Robert Zemeckis version of Dickens’ story.

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May I also recommend, again, Darrel van Citters’ excellent book, Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol: The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special. I’ve long been a fan of the show (I collected reviews, promos anything prior to its initial airing) it was a treasure found when I got this excellent book. The head-to-head production, also directed by Abe Levitow, of Gay Purr-ee was strong material to read about. It’s a page turner of a book and filled with gorgeous illustrations.

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- As long as we’re promoting Christmas Carols, Richard Williams’ tightly strung version of the story is still available in old vhs copies. You can also find the entire film (in four parts) on The Thief Archives on YouTube.

I remember Dick having a conversation with me about the brilliant animation Abe Levitow did on this film, and, indeed, I agree. In a film filled with stunningly beautiful animated illustrations, the only real character animation I found belonged to Levitow. The sequence wherein the ghost of Christmas Past opens his robe to reveal “ignorance” and “want” is the capper of the show.

I find the show a little too rushed to properly tell the story emotionally, and it’s an emotional story. But what’s there is as brillinat as anything Dick had done. In some ways, the artwork reminds me of the cross-hatched animation his Soho Square studio did for The Charge of the Light Brigade. (In fact, when I first saw the show in 1971, I wondered whether some of the birds in Christmas Carol were reused from Charge. I never learned the answer.)

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The songs from Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol are principal in the success of that show.

When you’re alone, alone in the world
When you’re alone in the world
Blown-away leaves get blown in the world
Swirled-away leaves get swirled

And hand in each hand was made for the world
Where is the hand to reach for mine back
Where are the shoes that click to my clack
I’m all alone in the world

Millions of grains of sand in the world
Why such a lonely beach?

A hand for each hand was planned for the world
Why don’t my fingers reach?
Millions of grains of sand in the world
Why’s mine a lonely beach?

Where are the heels to click to my clack?
Where is the voice to answer mine back?
I’m all alone in the WOOOOORLD!!!

Happy Armistice Day

This is the day originally set aside to celebrate the signing of the Armistice ending World War I. In honor of this day, the Rauch brothers, Tim and Mike have placed their short film, Germans in the Woods, on Youtube. Take a look, if you haven’t seen it. It’s a good film.

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- I haven’t seen Zemeckis‘ The Christmas Carol, but I eventually will. There’s an Academy screening next Tuesday, but I’ll have to miss it. A more interesting event has surfaced which I’ll attend. (Henry Selick is having a meet-and-greet as part of his Coraline promotion.)

I’ll probably see it on DVD since I don’t like the 3D experience. (I don’t much like seeing grayed-down movies, and those glasses certainly do that.) The film looks to me like one of those 1950′s 3D movies. Everything and its brother looks to be hurled at the audience so your headache can come even sooner than it would with the 3D process, alone.

Then there’s the Mo-Cap issue. I honestly don’t think of this “process” as animation. I do liken it to puppetry – electronic puppetry. Jim Carrey is one of the puppeteers of his character and too much of him comes through for an animator to claim “character animation.”

Regardless, I’ll eventually see it for the film, itself. Zemeckis has made a few competent films in the past, and there’s a possibility he might make another one. Castaway was my favorite film of the year 2000. I still find myself absorbed whenever it plays on cable. It’s unlikely, but maybe this will be Zemeckis’ Mo-Cap Castaway.

Aside from all of these obvious reasons why I’ll probably dislike The Christmas Carol, there’s one reason why I already like it – sight unseen.

This is a digital film. It’s only a hop skip and a jump away from all those films Pixar and Dreamworks make. The computer also rules those films. However, I’ve never quite understood why those big studios are intent in designing films that imitate puppet animation. Why, with the tools at their hand, do the films have to inhabit the child’s world of those Viewmaster puppets when they have the whole of the art world at their hand in 2D animation?

Zemeckis has found that he can make films look like Impressionist paintings (even when they aren’t well rendered) rather than puppet films. Monster House and Happy Feet used the same technique Zemeckis employs to create their mundane puppet worlds, but Polar Express used a 2D style in a 3D environment to get its look. The same was true for Beowulf and The Christmas Carol.

True, the images in those three films are frighteningly ugly, but one wonders what they might look like if some hugely talented artist were designing them. Perhaps that’s what he plans for his next film. Robert Zemeckis presents Walt Disney’s The Yellow Submarine. (Don’t forget that Zemeckis did I Wanna Hold Your Hand as his first major film.) Will anything of Heinz Edelman be left? Will the Beatles be hurled into the audience, or how about the Submarine, itself? We can only wait and hope.

Like those monkeys sitting at typewriters, we’re still waiting to see them write Hamlet. Maybe now that they have computer keyboards, it might be easier for them.

GO YANKEES!

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- Zemeckis’ Disney’s Christmas Carol was reviewed in the trades.

Uh, oh!

Here are some pieces of the Variety review by Todd McCarthy:

Shortchanging traditional animation by literalizing it while robbing actors of their full range of facial expressiveness, the performance-capture technique favored by director Robert Zemeckis looks more than ever like the emperor’s new clothes in “Disney’s A Christmas Carol.” Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella and screen perennial has been retrofitted here as a so-called thrill ride in which Scrooge zooms above the streets of London and rockets halfway to the moon and back, only because now he technologically can. . . .

But then, as with “Romeo and Juliet” and other imperishables, perhaps every generation gets the “Christmas Carol” it deserves: The postwar British feature, starring Alastair Sim, was no doubt the best; next came a bloated, musicalized post-”Oliver!” version; then, in the ’80s, Bill Murray starred in a hipster “SNL”-era modernization. In this context, it makes a certain sense that the early 21st-century edition is dominated or, more accurately, dictated by technology; there’s no other impulse running through it other than the desire to create shots and pull off effects that would have been impossible, or at least prohibitively expensive, prior to the invention of CGI, the performance-capture technique and the rebirth of 3D. . . .

To capitalize upon the latter, Zemeckis favors placing objects such as hands or chains in the extreme foreground so as to create a 3D deep-focus effect. He’s also developed many scenes with an eye to moving the camera constantly in relation to the characters and settings, keeping editing to a minimum. But given the overall animated patina, this doesn’t create anywhere near the beauty or excitement that similar moves would in live-action cinematography. Also, the diminishment in image brightness by at least 20% when the 3D glasses are put on is quite noticeable.

And here’s bits of Kirk Honeycutt’s review from The Hollywood Reporter:

Bottom Line: Exuberant movie technology overwhelms, then buries Dickens’ emotional tale.

Didn’t Charles Dickens use to be the author of “A Christmas Carol?” Well, now it’s “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” that opens later this week. Even that’s a misnomer. It should be “Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol.”

. . . as the spirits escort Scrooge through his sorry life, Zemeckis gradually makes this “Christmas Carol” his own. But as he does, with his intense reliance and belief in movie technology, this auteur shuns the beating heart of Dickens’ story.

Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is about emotions. It’s about how emotions can get stunted and tramped down, how they can be revived and how empathy and affection can bring joy to the human soul. One will find none of that here.

. . . The worst offense to the spirit of Dickens comes with Tiny Tim. He, more than any other character in this tale, represents its true spirit. In the Zemeckis version, he’s a dress extra who tiresomely exclaims, “God bless us, everyone!”

So deck the halls with praise for the crew . . . But a rousing humbug to those who confuse the media for the message.

Looking forward to it.