Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir has been submitted by Israel as its contender for the foreign-language Oscar.

The film is also eligible for animated feature, but not for documentary. As reported in Variety, the film has instigated some complaints to the Academy over their documentary rules. Currently, a doc has to perform in NYC for a week prior to Aug. 31st to be eligible. If Sony Pictures Classics had followed this rule to qualify, the film could not have participated in the NY Film Festival.

A host of executives and festival veterans are calling on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to revise the rule. However, if the Academy does agree to change the rule, it wouldn’t help Bashir since the revised rule wouldn’t go into effect until 2009.

The film uses hand-drawn animation to illustrate Folman’s interviews with participants of the 1980s Lebanese war, including the massacre of Palestinian civilians. It was done, primarily, in Flash, and moves pretty stiffly. In fairness, I have to say I wasn’t overwhelmed by the film, so I suspect it’s not a challenge to either Religulous or Wall-E (not that I can say I liked either of those).

-Tuesday, September 30th marked the 80th anniversary of Mickey Mouse’s big sound recording. It was the second session that took three hours and ended brilliantly.

The film didn’t debut until November 18th when it opened at the Colony Theater in NYC. This theater was enormous, similar to Radio City Music Hall or the Roxy. There was a stageshow with the feature film as well as numerous shorts. In 1928, the Mickey Mouse cartoon was a hit – audiences demanded the cartoon be shown more than once on the program.

This small landmark passed virtually unnoticed, even on the blogosphere. The only site I know that mentioned it was Joe Campana‘s Animation Who & Where.

Perhaps things will be different for the November anniversary of it’s theatrical debut. I vividly remember the 50th Anniversary when they screened Steamboat Willie again at the Colony (now the Broadway Theater)for some invited guests and a bunch of stragglers, myself included. Of course, two other shorts were released earlier that same year in their silent version: Plane Crazy and Gallopin’ Gauchos.

- Speaking of Mickey Mouse, much has been made of the demotion of Glen Keane from director of Rapunzel to Directing Animator. The Cartoon Brew piece has generated quite a few comments and most of them bemoan the action taken by producers Lasseter and Catmull on the upcoming feature (projected release 2010). Keane has been involved as director for the past seven years.

My view is a bit different (and of course I have no information other than my own guesswork to go on) on the situation. Consequently, if anyone has a more informed psition, plese let me hear it.

I think that Disney has never treated directors of their animation features as any more than glorified production coordinators. They work incredibly hard to keep the people below them happy while at the same time trying to satisfy the wishes and needs of those above them. There are a lot of people above them these days. It becomes a position of controlling traffic and keeping the ship sailing fluidly. It’s not about opinion.

Certainly, directors have their say and their influence, but the Animation Directors have always dominated at Disney. You can’t tell me that Woolie Reitherman won many arguments directing Milt Kahl on any of the films – or Frank Thomas, or Marc Davis. These guys worked together intimately, but Fred Moore or Ward Kimball or Bill Tytla had their say, and Ben Sharpsteen or David Hand kept them happy while making sure Walt was happy.

This was very much unlike the situation at WB where a Chuck Jones or Bob Clampett ruled and was the most heard voice in the production. Animators, there, were certainly subservient to the directors.

Undoubtedly, this had to do with the budget of the WB cartoons over the Disney product. The single voice of the WB films dominated because they had to control every penny – it was too tight. Action, cutting, layout, even writing were subject to the budget, and the directors made sure they came in on that budget.

At Disney’s this became the rule in many of the later shorts, such as Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom where the director like Ward Kimball and the budget dominated, but, for the most part, the animators ruled at Disney.

Glen Keane’s move back to animation – excuse me, Directing Animator – is, in my eyes, a promotion. Lasseter and Catmull had to bring out the real Glen Keane while getting the production moving. (There also seems to be more involved than we’ve heard. Ed Catmull reports that Keane had to “attend to some non-life threatening health issues.” Of course this doesn’t explain why co-director Dean Wellins “removed himself.”)

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