Daily post 18 Aug 2007 07:48 am
Persepolis moves on
I thought I’d take this time to announce that the Museum of Modern Art will be doing a full-out retrospective of my work over the Armistice Day weekend (Nov. 9th through 12th).
There will be three programs of films and a fourth program which will feature John Canemaker and Josh Siegel (of MOMA) chatting with me onstage and screening some odds and ends. I’ll post more about these screenings in the near future.
- The New York Film Festival announced this week that Persepolis would be their closing night film. Traditionally, this is the key film of the Festival, and it’s something of a coup for the directors, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud to have been given such a prime position.
This Festival does not have a long history of including animated features, so it’s quite a headline for the Sony Pictures Classics release. Although Paprika was included in last year’s program. (The first animated feature I can remember seeing there was the work-in-progress version of Beauty and the Beast that was programmed as a special midnight screening. The crowd bought it up and cheered endlessly. That was a smart move for Disney to get the word of mouth out on that feature.)
It was the lead story for several papers making headlines in the NY Times and Hollywood Reporter.
Persepolis, of course, did will at Cannes, winning a jury prize, and making its way into several other important festivals including the upcoming Ottawa Animation Festival.
By the way the Persepolis site now has a “making of” featurette to watch.
- Michael Barrier posts more comments about Neal Gabler’s book, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. I enjoy the fact that Mike doggedly goes after this book; it’s not good and has been given too high a status by the Disney organization. He is the the perfect person to lead the charge.
Gabler’s book has been christened the “official” biography of Walt Disney, yet it’s a poor book. It’s excessively long, while offering nothing original. Gabler seems to want to psychoanalyze Disney, however Walt seems to have an hostile analyst here.
I was glad to learn that Diane Disney Miller is speaking up and offering her opinion. Hopefully, she’ll eventually get the ear of a board member or two. Where’s Roy when you need him?
Just goes to show you that politics exists even in biographies.
Jaime Weinman has an excellent column about Duckman, a show that deserves a lot more attention. I think this was probably the finest work from Klasky-Csupo in their meteoric golden era.
on 18 Aug 2007 at 1:00 pm 1.Tom Sito said …
The discussion between Barrier and Gabler and whose perception of Walt’s history is correct reminds me of Napoleon’s quote-
“History are but myths we all agree on.”
on 19 Aug 2007 at 12:19 pm 2.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
Congrats on the MoMA retrospective! Wow! What an honor!
Mike really had some hard luck with the timing of his book. It must be every author’s nightmare to have someone who superficilly treats the same subject and who has more media access hit the market just before you do. I spot read Gabler’s book and came away with the same impression of it that you did.