Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- By far one of my favorite writers was the British author, John Fowles. I enjoyed The Magus, but with The French Lieutenant’s Woman he had me as more than a fan. His language, his intellectual arguments, his absolute respect for his reader all brought me back again and again to follow his every word. I spent time with a specific retailer in New York who specialized in Fowles’ books to make sure that I wasn’t missing anything that he published.

In 1985, on a vacation in London, I found a translation Fowles did of a French play, Martine by Jean Jacques Bernard, playing at the National theater. I hastily bought a couple of tickets to the show at the last preview, just prior to the play’s opening. Arriving early, there was an hour to kill before going into the theater. Fortunately, some vendors had set up book stalls selling used books, and I pleasantly sorted through the wares. Looking up from a book of Edmund Dulac’s illustrations, I saw John Fowles an aisle away. I was too timid back then to introduce myself and shake his hand. I just gloried in the knowledge that he was a brush away. The play was not memorable, but the evening was.

For a short while, Fowles wrote the text for a number of books which were really photographic essays. One of my favorites of these is one called Shipwreck. Featured throughout the book are historic photos of ships that crashed on the coasts of the Scilly Islands and West Cornwall. (Fowles was always dedicated to his home town of Lyme Regis.)

Here, I’m posting a few of the photos in the book because they are inordinately interesting to me, and I think you may also find them such. The text is by Fowles.

Seine
Ran ashore in Perran Bay (Perranporth), December 28th, 1900.
This beautiful ship was a French ‘bounty clipper’ – so called because
a government subsidy to French ship-owners allowed them to build
for elegance rather than more mundane qualities. The crew got off
in heavy seas. By dawn the next day she was dismasted and on her
beam-ends, and broke up on the next flood-tide. Two weeks later the
hulk of this celebrated barque was bought for only £42.

Mildred
Struck under Gurnard’s Head in thick fog at midnight, April 6th, 1912.
She was carrying slag from Newport to London. When she began to
pound broadside on, the captain and crew launched a boat and rowed
along the cliffs to St Ives. The Mildred, Cornish built and owned,
was launched in 1889.

River Lune
Struck in fog and at night just south of Annet (Scillies), July 27th, 1879 –
the same day as the Maipu. The master later blamed a faulty
chronometer, since he had believed himself fifteen miles to the west.
The ship heeled and sunk aft in the first ten minutes. The crew took
to their boats, but returned in daylight to collect their belongings.
This barque was only eleven years old. She broke up soon afterwards.

Jeune Hortense
Stranded near St Michael’s Mount, May lyth, 1888. The foreground
carriage is for the Penzance lifeboat. This sturdy brigantine lived
to sail another day.

Mohegan
Struck the Manacles, October 14th, 1898. One of the most dreaded of all reefs,
the Manacles (from the Cornish ‘maen eglos’, rocks of the church, a reference
to the landmark of St Keverne’s tower) stand east of the Lizard promontory,
in a perfect position to catch shipping on the way into Falmouth — and before
Marconi ‘Falmouth for orders’ (as to final North European destination) was
the commonest of all instructions to masters abroad. But the Mohegan was
outward bound, and hers is one of the most mysterious of all Victorian sea-disasters.
She was a luxury liner on only her second voyage, from Tilbury to New York.
Somewhere off Plymouth a wrong course was given. A number of people on shore
realized the ship was sailing full speed (13 knots) for catastrophe; a coastguard
even fired a warning rocket, but it came too late. The great ship struck just as
the passengers were sitting down to dinner. She sank in less than ten minutes,
and 106 people were drowned, including the captain and every single deck officer,
so we shall never know how the extraordinary mistake, in good visibility, was made.
The captain’s body was washed up headless in Caernarvon Bay three months later.
Most of the dead were buried in a mass grave at St. Keverne.

Blue Jacket
Stuck fast – and surely a classic example of the expression-on the
Longships lighthouse rocks off Land’s End, December 9th, 1898. This
tramp was in ballast from Plymouth to Cardiff. The captain went below
to his cabin – and his wife – at 9.30 p.m., leaving the mate on watch.
He was woken near midnight by a tremendous crash, and came on deck
to find his listing ship brilliantly illuminated by the lighthouse only a few
yards away. Captain, wife and crew took to their boats and were picked
up by the Sennen lifeboat. How the mate managed to play moth to this
gigantic candle-the weather was poor, but provided at least two miles’
visibility-has remained a mystery. The Bluejacket sat perched in this
ludicrous position for over a year.

Hansy
Wrecked in Housel Bay near the Lizard Point, November 13th, 1911.
Sailing from Sweden to Melbourne with timber and pig-iron, she missed stays
while trying to come about in a gale. The crew were brought ashore by
breeches-buoy. Two days later a salvage party boarded – to find a pair of
goats lying happily in a seaman’s bunk. Local fishermen did a thriving trade
in timber for weeks afterwards; and the iron pigs are fished up for ballast
to this day. The Scottish-built Hansy (formerly Aberfoyle) had had an
unhappy history. In 1890 the bulk of the crew jumped ship in Australia,
after a bad voyage out – only to be returned on board following a fortnight
in jail. Jail must have been more agreeable, for eight men jumped ship again
at the next port of call. In 1896 a steamer found the Aberfoyle drifting helplessly
off Tasmania. The captain had been swept overboard, the first mate had
committed suicide by leaping into the sea and the rest had given up hope.
Similar stories of low morale – and often of insane bitterness between
officers and crew – are manifold.

Susan Elizabeth
Driven ashore at Porthminster Beach (St Ives), October 17th, 1907.
A gale blew this collier’s sails out off the Mumbles. Less than three months
later the Lizzie R. Wilce and the Mary Barrow also had to beach here.

- Every couple of months HBO Family schedules a lot of my shows for a one day marathon. Today’s one of those days. Here’s the schedule for the films on that channel in case you’re channel surfing looking to fill a couple of minutes:

Saturday January 16th

LYLE LYLE CROCODILE
2:00 PM HBO FAMILY – EAST
5:00 PM HBO FAMILY – WEST

THE STORY OF THE DANCING FROG
2:30 PM HBO FAMILY – EAST
5:30 PM HBO FAMILY – WEST

THE RED SHOES
3:00 PM HBO FAMILY – EAST
6:00 PM HBO FAMILY – WEST

EARTHDAY BIRTHDAY
3:30 PM HBO FAMILY – EAST
6:30 PM HBO FAMILY – WEST

MIKE MULLIGAN & HIS STEAMSHOVEL
4:00 PM HBO FAMILY – EAST
7:00 PM HBO FAMILY – WEST

THE MARZIPAN PIG
5:00 PM HBO FAMILY – EAST
8:00 PM HBO FAMILY – WEST

THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL
5:30 PM HBO FAMILY – EAST
5:30 PM HBO FAMILY – WEST

IRA SLEEPS OVER
6:30 PM HBO FAMILY – EAST
9:30 PM HBO FAMILY – WEST

Each month I update the full monthly schedule of the screening of my work over at my site www.michaelspornanimation.com

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- Variety, this week, had a couple of articles about animation that were probably designed to catch the eye of Oscar voters, but gave me a bit of reading about 2D, Hollywood style.

Strong voices toon up was nominally about voices for animation, but in this case, particularly Keith David who did a couple of voices for animated features this year. He was the villain, Dr. Facilier, in The Princess and the Frog and the cat in Coraline.

Retro sequence sings in ‘Princess’ is a short piece about the well-designed “Moderne” song number (“Almost There”) from The Princess and the Frog. I rather liked this sequence and would have hoped for more from Variety on this piece (probably also promoting the song for the Oscar). During Friday Night’s Critics’ Choice Awards, this was the song that was singled out for attention. It might have been nice if Variety had named an animator or designer in the article.

This image was pulled from Chronicle Books’ The Art of The Princess and the Frog by Jeff Kurti. The four images are credited to visual development artist, Sue Nichols. I would have liked to have seen more about this sequence in this book, as well. A total of two pages go to the standout sequence. Short shrift.

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There were also quite a few lines about animation in other articles in Variety that perked my ears. This one, for example, had me wondering about the WGA:
“This year’s eligible WGA titles include an animated film — Henry Selick’s adapted script for Coraline from Neil Gaiman’s book. Since the WGA doesn’t usually cover animation, those screenplays are usually ineligible.”

Why are screenplays ineligible? Is it because animation is considered inferior by the WGA relegating animation writers to the Screen Cartoonists’ Guild? Ratatouille received a WGA nomination, though it looks as though Brad Bird was not a WGA member at the time.

Meanwhile the Oscar rules for music contribution have gotten a bit arcane and bizarre. This week it was decided that Randy Newman’s score for The Princess and the Frog was ineligible to compete for an Academy Award for the Best Score. The rule states: “scores diluted by the use of tracked themes or other preexisting music,
diminished in impact by the predominant use of songs, or assembled from the music of more than one composer.”

In English, that means there are songs so they don’t want the musicals to compete for score, too. Apparently this idiotic rule came in when Alan Menken won a number of Best Songs and Best Scores in a row. The board put a stop to that!

Why isn’t there still an award for Best Song Score? This existed for many years and now it’s a no-no. Pretty foolish. Just like the automatic selection of 10 films for Best Picture so that some popular films won’t be left out. The problem is this year there aren’t 10 films that I can name which are worthy of an Oscar.

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- There’s an excellent article in the NYTimes (actually one of many) by André Aciman celebrating the work and the intimacy of Eric Rohmer. I still am sad over this week’s enormous loss.

- Last week I posted the first part of this display of comic book covers (front and back) drawn by the inimitable Walt Kelly in his pre-Pogo days.

As he completed the series of Fairy Tale covers, he moved into Mother Goose and then The Brownies. There’s a charge I get looking at the brilliant draftsmanship on display here. The man could draw. We knew this from the quality of the art in Pogo, but these covers give us a different light in which to view this artist. It’s a great trip to waltz through the years 1942 – 1948 with Walt Kelly seeing the progression of his comic art.

As I mentioned last week, these covers were copied in the 1980′s by Bill Peckmann from the great collection of John Benson. Bill has loaned them to me, and I’m sharing.

Front cover__________________________ Back cover
1a 1b
(Click any image to enlarge.)

2a 2b
Mother Goose develops after the Fairy Tale comics.

3a 3b

4
Mother Goose becomes a holiday item.

5a 5b

6a 6b
An Easter version of Mother Goose

7a 7b
The Brownies debuts

8a 8b

- A second model sheet of Minnie shows the animation breakdown for scene 57 from the film, The Little Whirlwind. The scene was animated by Ward Kimball and Reuben Timmins (effx).

Here’s the full model sheet. Note that some of the drawings are out of order (row 2 should be row 3.)

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here’s a breakdown of those same drawings enlarged for viewing.

12

34

56

78

910

1112

1314

1516

1718

1920

2122

2324

2526

2728

2930

3132

33

The Following QT movie is exposed on
twos since I have nothing to go by, I just let it play itself.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

Thanks to Bill Peckmann for the generous loan of this model sheet.

Thia was Wes Anderson’s acceptance speech at the National Board of Review:

At the NYFilm Critics Awards on Monday, George Clooney introduced Wes Anderson with an embarrassing speech, according to Variety.
Clooney said, “Before the show started Wes said, ‘George, tonight when I give my acceptance speech, I am going to blow the roof off this place. I’m going to give the best god-damn acceptance speech in New York Film Critics Circle history.’
I said, ‘You know, Wes, there are some people here that are good at this shit like Meryl Streep,’ and he said, ‘Fuck her. Fuck Meryl Streep!’ I mean who says that? Really, Wes!”

A visibly embarrassed Anderson then gave a brief acceptance speech, to which Meryl Streep gave him a standing ovation.

This was Anderson’s speech:

“This movie took approximately the same amount of time as an undergraduate college education, and to me it also had a kind of university-like atmosphere,” he said. “More or less every person in the entire very large crew was a kind of scholar in their area — a very gifted, knowledgeable specialist. And all the various movements, they often resembled basement laboratories where experimental projects were being invented. I certainly was a student in this establishment, although an extremely old one compared to most of my professors.” He concluded by thanking the “think tank of artists and crafts people” who “educated me in stop-motion animation.”

The Jan-Mar 1980 issue of Animafilm included this interview with George Dunning by John Canemaker. John was very taken by the Dunning film in progress, The Tempest, and he starts off his interview with questions about that film.

One has to live
George Dunning talks with John Canemaker

JOHN CANEMAKER: I saw a pencil test of “The Tempest” five years ago on CBS-TV. Are you still working on this film?

GEORGE DUNNING: I am indeed. More so, stronger on it than I was then. I’ve got a few hits and pieces in a rather unfinished state and some more going on now. It’s an attempt to he as personal as I can be. My approach is to do a few minutes to present to hackers. To justify doing Shakespeare as an animated film. Obviously live-action with stars and so on is a great advantage in box-office terms. People ask me why do it in animation. It’s all very well with the fantasy side of it, that seems appropriate. But beyond that, it’s something that I think should be demonstrated. And that’s what I’m doing, and then that helps open a technical line on it as well so that others can carry on.

J.C.: Will you be removing the words as you did with the poem you based “Damon the Mower” on?

G.D.: This is a difficult thing to make a statement about cause I’m in the middle of it. I might change my mind and do it all differently. But at this stage I find that I’m always taking out. I’ve taken a sequence of dialogue and cut it enormously -taken out half of it. Then I look at it and I take out more. I keep taking chunks away. I think this is legitimate but I am worried because it is tampering. But at the same time I think the verbal side of it, from a stage point of view, has a kind of function that on film is not necessary, if I could put it that way. I mean it sounds like I’m saying I know how to rewrite Shakespeare and I’m a bit timid about that. I just feel that in the end it is a film that one is making. I’m not rewriting Shakespeare, I’m making a film. In that sense it’s to use the dialogue but to pull a lot of it.

J.C.: The clip I saw showed a tree-like creature walking.

G.D.: That’s Caliban. He’s a tree through the whole thing. I just got carried away with that one phrase where he says, “This island is mine”. It just suddenly hit me, I saw this image of this tree, which is full of creatures as well. It’s sort of an ecology thing all together. And in the end of the play they leave and you have this island with Caliban left. And it’s sort of a hack-to-nature situation.

J.C.: Will you he mixing graphic techniques in the film?

G.D.: At this point it isn’t that far-out as far as technical things are concerned. I’ve been using ccl levels and Xerox drawings. It’s an attempt to keep things handle-able and in a condition where others can help. Cause if you get to do it in a technique which only one person can do it’s very limiting obviously.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

J.C.: Do you work out of a studio in London?

G.D.: Yes, our studio is TVC London. It’s based on the name TV Cartoons. Auspicious name! And we’re having our twenty-first birthday this year. In June we had it. It’s really a studio Dick Williams has had a lot to do with in the sense that he did a great deal to help in the early days to get it started. When I got to London he was working on “The Little Island”, and I helped him a little bit on that. Then he did a lot of commercials, a lot of stuff sort through our studio. I was sent over to London by Bosustow and UFA to set up a UFA satellite. They wanted to get some more footage for the “Gerald McBoing Show” on CBS. In those days Bosustow was on a big expansion drive and he sent Leo Salkin and me over to set that up. We set it up and seven months later UFA was practically bankrupt. This was ’56 or ’57.1 was in this position of going around to agencies cause we were doing commercials at that time and doing very well. Everyone was very glad that UFA was in London and so on. And Dick was doing commercials with us. So then I went around to all the agencies to say good-bye and they said, “Oh, stay. Can’t you keep this thing going? It’s marvelous”. So it was a matter of trying to make a set-up which I did with some businessmen. I had long talks with Dick, saying “What’ll I do…” And he said “I’ll help you and stick with it. This is great and you should stay on.” The prospect otherwise was
to go back to New York in tatters. It all seemed downhill. I remember Dick came to me exactly a year later and he said, “The year is up.” And I said, “What do you mean, the year is up?” He said, “I said I’ll help you, and give you a push. Now I really want to do stuff through my own company’s name and things like that.” We went on collaborating on some things but he was much more active with the Richard Williams Studio and developed it and so on. I have always had the greatest respect for all his abilities.

J.C.: So you set up your own company and were doing commercials?

G.D.: Lots of stuff like that and industrial films.

J.C.: Did you do features before the “Yellow Submarine”?

G.D.: No, we did a Saturday morning (TV) series

J.C.: Did you do features before the “Yellow Submarine”?

G.D.: No, we did a Saturday morning (TV) series for the Beatles music. King Features organized that with the Beatles and got permission to do cartoon versions of the four of them. It was terrifying. It was a very poor kind of design, but there it was. The show was very ordinary, very cheap cut-rate kind of thing. It was that kind of show with two numbers set into fifteen minutes framing it then another fifteen minutes to make the half hour. We made up a new half hour show one way or another each week, got to the lab then got that onto the plane, had the day off, then started in again, grinding on with this. It was King Features (newspaper syndicate) that had the idea to do a feature-length film and they kept hammering away to Brian Epstein (Beatles’ manager). He didn’t want to buy that for the longest time. Then finally agreed.

J.C.: Which would be around 1967?

G.D.: Yes. So that’s why our studio did the thing. As I said, the design of the characters in the TV show was hopeless, although King Features had no objection. They were completely without any point of view on the thing. It was sort of business. We were desperate and I was jumping around like mad because I knew that had to be really well solved or we were dead. I tried with different kinds of designs. We got a bit of track of the four boys talking after they’d left the pot open once on a recording. So we took this talk and animated to it and kept testing and trying different things. We saw and had admired Heinz Edelmann’s graphic designs in “Twin” magazine. And thought why don’t we even try him. So we got in touch with him, he flew over and we showed him what we were doing and he disappeared for two weeks. I remember this brown envelope arrived with four drawings in it, one of each Beatle. It was really marvelous cause it had that solved, attended-to quality. You could see it wasn’t Mickey Mouse, it wasn’t this, it wasn’t that – it was just there! The film is very much a phenomenon.

J.C.: It’s a time capsule of the sixties.

G.D.: It is that. That’s the contribution of many people. The film would have had a life because of the Beatles music.

That’s a separate consideration. And the fact that Heinz solved that side of it was so great and that was marvelous.

We had a budget of a million dollars, and eleven months to do it. The Beatles took $ 200,000, off the budget. There were three animation directions on it: Jack Stokes, who learned his trade with a group of people – a whole generation of animators in London – from a Disney man who came over, David Hand (Director of “Snow White”). Eddie Radich was another animation director on “Submarine”; Bob Balser, who has been for a long time in Barcelona. He’s the third director.

There was a period of about five months where we had 200 people working together in out studio in Soho Square. My memory of that time is that it was amazingly unfrantic, in the sense of devoted and productive. Everybody was very grim, hardworking. The whole atmosphere was “We’ll show them” meaning the rest of the world “that we can do this in London.” This odd thing of making a feature.

J.C.: This was the first British feature since “Animal Farm”?

G.D.: Absolutely yes. The film made money left and right. But it didn’t for TVC and very nearly bust us. That’s a very long and very bitter story. We had a really nasty time of it. We went over the budget, not a large amount over. The producer people through King Features organized to take over the company. And we learned an awful lot. Very bitter situation. After it was all over it got smoothed down. We repaired our relationship with King Features. But the whole thing was very sour.

J.C.: You have retained your credentials as a film artist by making personal films. Is your work at TVC to help you to continue as an independent artist?

G.D.: I would guess that is the answer, yes. One has to live. I had a long stint at the Canadian Film Board. I learned a lot and enjoyed that kind of existence – government backing, budgets for films and all kinds of special facilities that you could get that way, that you don’t get out in the cold world of commerce.

J.C.: Who were some of the artistic influences in your career?

G.D.: McLaren. Alexeleff. Bartosch. Then there’s that whole world of Disney stuff that we’d all he poorer without, and I think in hits and pieces and in various ways it’s been an enormous influence.

J.C.: What is your age?

G.D.: 57

J.C.: Thank you very much for your time.

G.D.: Pleasure.

GEORGE DUNNING (1920-1979): FILMOGRAPHY
1943: J’AI TANT DANSE (I have danced so much), AUPRES DE MA BLONDE (By my blonde, Chants populates), 1944: GRIM PASTURES, 1945: THREE BLIND MICE, 1946: CADET ROUSSELIE, (UPRIGHT AND WRONG), 1947: THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHHAUSEN, FAMILY TREE (with Evelyn Lambard), 1959: THE WARDROBE, 1962: THE FLYING MAN, THE APPLE, 1968: CHARLEY, THE LADDER, THE YELLOW SUBMARINE, 1970: MOON ROCK, 1973: THE MAGGOT.
Publicity and sponsored films including: 1946: DISCOVERY – PENICILLIN, 1958: THE STORY OF THE MOTOR-CAR ENGINE, 1962: THE EVER-CHANGING MOTOR-CAR, 1962-65: THE ADVENTURES OF THUD AND BLUNDER (safety film for the Coal Board), 1966: BEATLES (TVseries with Jack Stokes), CANADA IS MY PIANO (with Bill Sewell).

- One of my favorite directors died yesterday, Eric Rohmer was 89. He made 24 films over a period of 50 years with his principal work being his cycle of films entitled, Six Moral Tales.

The third in the series, My Night at Maud’s (Ma Nuit Chez Maud) (1969), brought him international success and recognition. It was nominated for 2 Oscars, Best Foreign Language Film and Best Screenplay.

That film was seminal to my thoughts about filmmaking; I’ve seen it at least a dozen times. His film My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend (1987) opened my eyes to a style of cutting that I used in my film Abel’s Island.

There was a time when I would wait excitedly anticipating his latest annual film. Unfortunately, his work slowed down somewhat in recent years. His last film, The Romance of Astree and Celadon (2007), was poorly distributed in the US, playing briefly in NY at the Anthology Film Archives.

I met him, only to shake his hand, at the New York Film Festival back in the early 80s. I’ll miss his presence in the world.

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- From one of my favorite directors to Robert Zemeckis. News is that he has his cast. The Beatles will be played by the all-star team of Cary Elwes, Dean Lennox Kelly, Peter Serafinowicz and Adam Campbell according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter. Of course, as with all Hollywood gossip they’re still in negotiation.

Did you notice . . . This time Ringo gets to be the most handsome.

We mustn’t forget that Zemeckis wrote and directed the film I Want To Hold Your Hand as one of his earlier movies. He obviously has a thing for the Fab Four. Too bad he doesn’t have a thing for animation.

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This morning’s NYTimes has an article about The Fantastic Mr. Fox and the run that’s being made against Up for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Read this article to find out what Jerry Beck has to say about it. This has gotten to be BIG Business. The $40 million film against the $175 million film.

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The New York Times, on Monday, had an extiensive article on Blue Sky studios in Greenwich, Conn. The article addresses the fact that Blue Sky last year outgrossed the International box office of Pixar and Dreamworks with their very successful film, Ice Age 3: The Dawn of the Dinosaurs. The article may have been missed since it’s in the Media & Advertising section, not the Film section of the Times.

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- This past weekend I watched Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke for about the fifth time. What a gorgeous, intelligent, adult animated film. This, to me, is the very highest of the canon of his films possibly tied with My Neighbor Totoro as my favorites. I love the open spirituality of the film, the conflict between those who want to preserve the earth vs those who want to exploit it. Neither side is a villain; both sides have their points. This, despite the fact, that the director so blatantly supports those who look to preserve the planet and its environs. It’s a film that just gets better, for me, with each viewing.

I could only wish that one day something as responsible as this comes from the US without our obviously commercializing and diminishing such a story. Soon, I hope to pull some frame grabs from this movie to take a closer look at some of the animation and background work.

– Here is the third and final part of this scene from The Jungle Book in which Kaa, the snake, tries to capture Mowgli, the boy.

Dale Oliver (1919-2003) was Frank Thomas‘s assistant for twenty years. His generosity was responsible ultimately for getting these drawings to John Canemaker who has, once again, kindly lent them to me to post on this site. I thought it nice that one of the brilliant Disney assistant animators deserved a small token of positive appreciation for all his extraordinary work on so many of those wonderful scenes.

You can find the first two parts of the scene by going to these links:
Part 1
Part 2

As with last week, we pick up with the last drawing from that part – #69.

69

71

73

75

77

79

81

82

83

85

87

89

91

93

95

97

99

101

103

The Following QT movie is of the complete scene.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- The BAFTA short list released on Thursday includes five nominees for Best Animated Film (meaning feature – they haven’t released the names of the Animated Short nominees, as yet.) The five features are:
CORALINE, Disney’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL, FANTASTIC MR. FOX, UP, and ICE AGE 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

Interesting their choices of popular films over quality in a couple of the titles. Missing, of course, are PONYO and THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG.

The Producers’ Guild chose as their five nominees:
9, CORALINE, FANTASTIC MR. FOX, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, and UP.

Of course, the one that stands out is “9″. No other awards group has chosen that film among their nominees.

The Golden Globes have chosen CORALINE, FANTASTIC MR. FOX, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, UP and CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS.

How populist of them!

Who knows what the Oscars will choose. Perhaps TINKER BELL AND THE LOST TREASURE has a chance.

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- I thought I’d point out the most popular post I’ve put up in the past four years of this website. The piece features the book by Frank Webb, How To Make Faces – Part 2.
It and the original post, Part 1, on this book continue to generate comments every week or two. It certainly wasn’t planned on my part, back in Aug. 2007 and Mar. 2008, but apparently Frank Webb had a large extended family and a lot of friends.

Even this last week two people added comments (unfortunately, you have to go back to those original posts to read the comments.) Often enough, the contributors are writing to each other rather than to the rest of us. This was, for me, a little annoying at first. But then I came to realize that they were using these pages as a way of gathering. The Frank Webb lovers meeting place. How could I be bothered with that?

Check out the whole book by following the links above.

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- Signe Baumane writes to tell us of a screening this coming Wednesday, Jan 13th. (The 13th already! My how the year is whizzing by.)

She writes:

Woodstock Film Festival that normally takes place in mountainy Woodstock, 384 miles, or $26.50 by bus from NYC is coming to the City That Never Sleeps to present an animated film program curated by Bill Plympton and me.

There are 13 films to watch. Six very special animators will attend the screening to answer your burning questions about meaning of life, if eating fish is healthy and why animation.

Festival’s director Meira Blaustein and Festival’s adviser as well NYC liaison Sabine Hoffman are going to be there for you to make the connection with the Festival directly.
At $12 it’s a steal. Or magic, depends how you look at it.

92YTribeca Screening Room is at 200 Hudson Street, 1 block south of Canal.

Detailed info about the films and how to get the tickets is here.

Bring your money pot – filmmakers are going to sell DVDs of their work at special Woodstock prices.

- I’ve not paid much attention to Errol LeCain lately, so I thought it might be amusing to revisit a book that I only touched on in the past. Le Cain illustrated two books out of T.S. Eliot’s book of poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. See the first post here.

In one of the two books, Growltiger’s Last Stand, three of the poems are illustrated. In my initial post, I only offered the illustrations from one of the the three. To amend for that, this post will include illustrations from the other two.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

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Of the Awful Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles

The Song of the Jellicles