Daily post 11 Jan 2007 08:49 am
Mickey Dolls
- There was a good screening Tuesday night at the Kodak theater midtown, and a great overspilling audience. A number of Independent animators got to display their wares on 35mm.
. Seeing Chris Wedge’s Bunny next to Alex Weil’s One Rat Short next to Jimmy Picker’s Jimmy the C was quite interesting. Nina Paley offered another Sita tale and Patrick Smith Puppet.
. I hadn’t seen The Dentist from Signe Bauman who did a fine job of hosting the program. Bill Plympton not only screened Guide Dog but unveiled a rough cut of his latest short, Shut Eye Hotel. Kodak offered drinks and hor d’oeurves afterward and allowed us to comingle for a bit.
. Thanks to all those with kind words for my short The Man Who Walked Between The Towers.
When you work in animation, you’re doomed to be graced with Disneyana-gifts through your life. When you’re a puppet fanatic, you’re doubly doomed.
The wonderful part of it all is that as time goes on the Disneyana gets better every year so that you not only don’t mind the infrequent Mickey dolls, but you actually want them.
Thus these two dolls were among my Christmas gifts/treasures.
I particularly like the Steamboat Willie doll. It’s my favorite Mickey, and it’s a good likeness and it looks great among the other gimcracks on my shelves.
– If you’d like to hear the children’s record of Ted Geisel’s Gerald McBoing Boing you can get the MP3 here.
It’s read by The Great Gildersleeve with music by the great Billy May.
The Great Gildersleeve was originally a radio show; a very successful radio show that moved to television in the 50′s. The original Gildersleeve was Harold Peary, but he was replaced in 1950 by Willard Waterman. Peary did some bits in WB cartoons as Gildersleeve.
After listening to the record, you get to realize how good the tracks were on some of those UPA shorts.
Luc Besson appeared on NPR Jan 9th to talk about his film, Arthur and the Invisibles. Besson is the fourth live-action director to have an animated feature this past year. George Miller directed Happy Feet, Steve Oedekerk directed Barnyard and Christopher Reeve was credited as directing Everyone’s Hero. Does anyone remember how many live-action directors worked in animation prior to the development of MoCap ?
Maybe Peter Jackson would have the answer.
If you want to hear the Luc Besson interview, click here.
Thanks to Mark Mayerson for the info on the death of Steve Krantz. He was the producer of the Fritz the Cat directed by Bakshi and The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat directed by Bob Taylor. He also produced Bakshi’s greatest critical success, Heavy Traffic. Krantz was married to the novelist, Judith Krantz, and had produced a number of television shows after separating from animation. The Variety obit.
Carlo Ponti and Yvonne de Carlo have also died. Jaime Weinman has an excellent commentary on Yvonne de Carlo and here.
on 13 Jan 2007 at 11:21 am 1.slowtiger said …
The only live action directors who came from animation I can recall are Frank Tashlin and Walerian Borowzyk. There should have been more, but I haven’t heard of any.
on 13 Jan 2007 at 11:55 am 2.Michael said …
Gregory La Cava and Ernie Pintoff are two others to add to the list of pre-MoCap animation directors that turned to live action.
However, my point wasn’t that the four recent converts to animation are all directors of MoCap “animation”. This is not my idea of animation, it’s my idea of electronic puppetry with computer assitance from animators. Anyone can say they’re directing it if they have the money.
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