Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

A lot of things seem to have happened in the past few weeks. I thought it time to just ramble about some of them.

- Bill Plympton‘s feature, Idiots and Angels, has hit NY’s IFC Center like a storm. Bill seems to be attending quite a few of the screenings with Q&A’s added. News about the show is everywhere in NY. The film got glowing reviews from the NYTimes and the NYPost. No word from the NYDaily News (which didn’t review My Dog Tulip, either.)

Bill’s been working overtime promoting the movie. Since he’s self distributing the film, it takes real drive to get the attention he’s created. His is a lesson we can all learn from. It’s a small part of the job making the film; the largest part is selling it. Kudo’s to team Plympton for a job well done.

Bill’s film had an Academy screening this past Thursday in New York and will screen for the Academy in LA on Oct. 31st, Halloween night. It’s quite a coup, I think, to see that he’s gotten the film on their schedule to make sure members can see it. The Oscar push has already started (and Nikki Finke took note in her column.)

- Last week John Canemaker appeared at the Museum of Modern Art with a talk and book signing for his Two Guys Named Joe. The house was packed and the talk was light and informative. The power-point show was choc-a-block with great photos and artwork. Many of them didn’t appear in the book.

John has a way about these talks that just keep you interested and entertained. To get a good idea, he was on NPR’s Leonard Lopate show that same day as his MOMA talk. You can listen to it here.

Meanwhile, there are two articles by John posted on the Print Magazine website. One about the Disney Family Museum and a second about the Irish Animation scene. Both are enormously informative reads. The Irish article includes several embedded videos.

- Darrell Van Citters has started a new blog dedicated to Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. Take a look. He has pieces on some of the artists. An article about designer Bob Inman is particularly informative as is another about Phil Norman. This is fast becoming a must-view blog.

You’ll remember that Darrell has written one of last year’s best books, called The Making of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. I’ve read the book three times already and suggest you all buy a copy.

- While away on Vacation, I missed John Dilworth‘s talk at the 92nd Street Y (downtown). The ASIFA East blog covers this event well and I suggest you all turn there to read a report on the event. Sounds like it was fun, as I expected it might have been.

- I’d been entertaining the idea of travelling down to Washington D.C. to attend the rally which John Stewart is gathering. It’s sort of an anti-Glenn Beck rally. Arianna Huffington is supplying free buses from NY to D.C. and back. It makes it just too damn attractive. But I’ll have just returned that week from a trip to Ottawa, and I’ll be feeling my age if I do go down to Washington.

I’ll have to miss it.

By the way, I believe the Festival in Ottawa has given me a hotel room where I’ll have access to the Internet. This means I’ll be able to add updates to my regular blog posts, even during the Festival. I did this the last time I was up there, and it worked out well.

- I’ve gotten a lot of flack in NY recently for comments I’ve posted about the Dash Shaw trailer posted on Cartoon Brew. Too bad. I didn’t like what I saw and I commented. We’re accepting too much crap these days, and animation as a medium is taking a bad hit for it. Some of us have to start saying that the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes; oh, and he’s also not an Emperor. It’s just my opinion, and you, certainly, can think I’m wrong. He does have one of NY’s greats working for him – Biljana Labovic. If anyone will make the film worth seeing, it will be she. Her work on Bill Plympton’s films went unsung for too long, and she finally got a co-producer credit on Idiots and Angels. I think highly of her opinion, and she must like the work or she wouldn’t be there. So maybe it’s my age or my ego somehow out of whack, but I’ll stick with my opinion until I see something that changes my mind.

However, for those who do like his work, Dash Shaw will lecture at SVA on Nov. 4th. Here’s a press release for this event:

Thursday, November 4, 7pm
SVA Theatre
333 West 23 Street

The New York Times has called artist and SVA alumnus Dash Shaw (BFA 2005 Illustration) “a hard-core experimentalist” and “a hell of an artist, constructing vivid, uncanny compositions with a spectacular sense of color and space.” With the publication of Bottomless Belly Button (Fantagraphics, 2008) and BodyWorld (Pantheon, 2010), Shaw has quickly established himself as a leader among today’s graphic novelists. The animator and director of IFC’s The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D., Shaw is currently working on the animated feature The Ruined Cast. The event is free and open to the public and presented by the The Alumni Society of School of Visual Arts.

- I still roil over the young death of Japanese director, Satoshi Kon. He was a brilliant animation artist who deserved greater attention. International success seemed to be just starting to touch his films, when he died. I’m glad I had the opportunity of interviewing him several months before his death. (I wrote about it here.)

His film Paprika will play at the Gotham Screen International Film Festival, on Oct. 13th at the Tribeca Film Theater, 54 Varick Street (just off 6th Ave, south of Houston). Tickets are $8 – $10.

- Today’s NYTimes reviews the new DVD release from WB: Essential Bugs Bunny Collection. It’s a 2 disc set with one disc containing not very essential material or shorts. The reviewer for the Times ends with this paragraph:

Better that you explore the several volumes in the “Looney Tunes Golden Collection,” also from Warner Home Video. Here you will find all these and more, including “What’s Up, Doc?,” a semi-autobiographical cartoon from 1950 that is not in this “essential” collection, yet is essential to any understanding of the artist. Among other insights, it includes an epiphany by Mr. Bunny that rings so true I just can’t get it out of my head: “I was a rabbit in a human woild.”

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