I don’t really like to rant on this blog. That’s not what it’s about, but I think there is something wrong with today’s rules in regards to the Best Animated Short category.

Look at the list of potential winners for 2007:

The Danish Poet by Torill Kove (NFB)
Everything Will Be OK by Don Hertzfeldt
Family Ties: Dreams & Desires by Joanna Quinn
Guide Dog by Bill Plympton
Lifted by Gary Rydstrom (Pixar)
Little Match Girl by Roger Allers (Disney)
Maestro directed by Géza M Toth
No Time for Nuts directed by Chris Renaud & Mike Thurmeier (Blue Sky)
Tragic Story with Happy Ending by Regina Pessoa
One Rat Short by Alex Weil

The problem as I see it is in this part of the rules for the Oscars:

V. TELEVISION AND INTERNET TRANSMISSIONS
Feature Documentaries and Short Subject Documentaries

NO TYPE of television or internet transmission shall occur at any time prior to and for two months after the first day of the Qualifying Exhibition, or at any time before the film has completed its multi-city Theatrical Roll-Out.As indicated in ¶IV.4.b, i f a short documentary qualifies by the seven-day Qualifying Exhibition only, it must be withheld from television or the internet for six months following the day nominations are announced.

For studios with hundreds of people and millions of dollars behind them, it’s easy to get their films seen by millions of people by including it on a DVD release for a different film. Both Blue Sky and Disney did this with their shorts (available on “Ice Age 2″ and “The Little Mermaid Special Edition”).

My question is this: How are filmmakers who work on a smaller scale supposed to be able to compete with the larger stuios?

Based on the official rules, they aren’t allowed to show their films online, yet online distribution via YouTube, DailyMotion, (or better yet) our own Channel Frederator Podcast is one of the only ways they can (within their budgets) reach the same number of viewers as one of the big studios’ DVD releases.

Does the online showing of a film somehow lessen it’s artistic merit? Is it different than a DVD release of a short? If so, how? What about bootleg versions of a film showing up online? Should they disqualify a film from the Oscars? Should the category be split between independents and studio films?

What are your thoughts on this?

Good luck to everyone who is in the running, big or small.

-Floyd Bishop

This guy is an animator, storyboard artist, concept designer … basically what every one of us dreams of being. It’s not often you find a jack-of-all-trades and a master of just as many. Design, color, figure, character, this guy knows it all.

Vist SteveLambe.com to see more awesome art.

Enjoy!
-Jake

Move over, Aibo, the Japanese have created a new adorable robopet. Meet Paro, an animatronic, interactive seal pup designed to bring relaxation and cheer much like hospital therapy dogs.

-=Mercedes=-

Got cute? Submit it! cedesart(at)hotmail(dot)com

Hank Jones > Bloomdido

I’ve posted about Hank Jones a couple of times before and it isn’t just because I’ve produced some records, on him, but because when I think of the list of pianists I listen to he is consistently the first three or four on the list.

When I first started producing records they were labors of love, passion projects with avant-gardists I admired and wanted to share with the world. Then I got a couple of paying gigs with organists and beboppers. For about 10 minutes into the first session with Willis Jackson I put up with it (the music was so old school) until I found myself happier than I’d ever been in a recording studio. By the time Hank came out of 25 years at the CBS in-house orchestra I was ready for the best session of my life. After than it was downhill, and I left recording for more happiness in TV.

Hank Jones > Bloomdido

–Fred

‘Tis the season of receiving a whole bunch of Disney Television DVDs. So far, Disney has released volumes of Gummi Bears, Ducktales, Rescue Rangers, Talespin, Darkwing Duck and Gargoyles, which still leaves room for Goof Troop, the Wuzzles, and, well, a whole bunch of others.

However there is a logical reason why the fan-children of the ’80’s have caught the retro-virus of these animated shows. I’ll credit the Eisner administration for giving animated TV a jolt of story, style and character that was sorely lacking. Everything up to that point was used for commercialistic purposes; either promoting a toy [Smurfs, transformers, He-man, My Little Pony, Care Bears, Pound Puppies, Thundercats] or caving in to the trends that kids were already a part of [Jem, Dinosaucers, My Pet Monster]. The Disney animated shows went beyond that and were solely out to tell good, original stories.

I had plenty of Ducktales toys and Thundercats toys; only my Ducktales toys came free in a box of cereal.

-Jake

I was a bit nervous when I first heard that there was going to be a new Ninja Turtles animated feature. I was a big fan of the Mirage comic, and even of the first (Krang/BeBop/Rocksteady) cartoon series.

After seeing some of the stuff from the trailer, I’m looking forward to the film. It looks to be a blend between the comics from the early parts of the Mirage series and some elements of the cartoon series.

The animation is being done by Imagi in Hong Kong.

Look for the film to hit theaters on March 23rd.

-Floyd Bishop

Lest we forget, funny paper hero Popeye was first introduced to movie audiences in a Betty Boop cartoon. Two things happened next: the really ugly, bulgy limbed sailor became, against all odds, an animated idol, and Betty’s job description was immediately expanded. Ms. Boop was now occasionally called on to chaperone other comic strip types in their bids for film stardom. So-o-o-o-o, today we get “Betty Boop and the Little King.”

Funny thing though. The Little King had already had his own cartoon series over at RKO/Van Beuren studios a couple of years earlier than this 1936 film. The RKO boys had bent over backwards trying to imitate New Yorker cartoonist Otto Soglow’s French curve drawing style (successfully) and wispy humor (a little shaky there.) But now the tiny monarch was on the Paramount ranch, and Max Fleischer was having none of that minimalist crappola — L.K. is plopped into a three dimensional world and outfitted with a dippy voice (he never said boo in the funnies.)

This one neatly fills out our ‘On with the Show’ theme, with Betty giving a command performance of her Vaudeville act. You people with over active imaginations can make what you will out of that song she sings (”I take a rope around wherever I go…”) but the final shot pretty much lays it on the line as to the idea of His Majesty and Betty having a Little Thing on the side.

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Dave Kirwan

More On with the Show Week festivities! Today we revisit 1930, and screen the very first Flip the Frog cartoon, “Fiddlesticks.” Momentous, landmark-type film. Director-producer Ub Iwerks had just left Disney and this, his maiden effort, was all cutting edge stuff — it’s even produced in early Technicolor, decked out in all the shades of the rainbow (providing your rainbow consists exclusively of pea green and washed out orange.)

Anyway, it’s a great showcase for state-of-the-art animation, 1930 style. Flip, who looks a lot froggier than we expect, dances all over the place, plays one of those great rubber cartoon pianos (he doesn’t just play the piano — he, ummm, gets REALLY personal with the thing!) and performs a wonderful duet with a violinist who looks something like Mickey Mouse after a very bad weekend. Okay, not much in the character development department, but charming as all get out. And, yeah, we have Carl Stalling doing the honors on the dandy music track!

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Dave Kirwan

Bugs Bunny certainly is an equal opportunity wisenheimer. His most famous adversaries may be sawed off runts (Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian and various other Napoleonic nudniks) but he takes on the big guys as well. The bulky magician in “The Case of the Missing Hare” towers over the resourceful rabbit, but he simply proves to be a bigger target for public humiliation.

This is a vintage Chuck Jones cartoon, which means (A) our peace loving hero is decisively and explicitly provoked — the offending schnook gets exactly one lick in before all of-course-you-know-this-means-war heck breaks loose. And (B) there are lots of carefully calibrated camera angles and crazy, stylized backgrounds. In fact the P.O.V. gets more dramatic and scenics more simplified as the film progresses (check out how they actually change the big color block backgrounds in the middle of the same scene by the end of the cartoon!)

We had a swords in a basket gag in yesterday’s film (”Hamateur Night”) — same set-up today, whole different take (and some great animated acting!)

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Dave Kirwan

On with the Show Week, and we raise the curtain with “Hamateur Night” a Tex Avery cartoon made just about the time Tex Avery was starting to get really Tex Avery-ish. A bunch of performers, some animals, some human, do their stuff, get gonged, are dropped through trap doors, but return to compete for ‘best of show.’ All very, very silly, and most of it very funny.

Reach over, turn up the volume and listen to the voice artists. When “Hamateur” was released in 1939, I think Warner Brothers was beginning to ‘get it’ on funny recording sessions. Not only is Mel Blanc front and center, knocking himself out with eleventeen wildly different characters, but there are some unusually strong supporting voices too. Cliff Nazarro and Avery himself were doing a lot of the funny stuff in front of a mike for this one. I don’t know who or how they did the voice for the little flea-girl, but that bit always gets the biggest laugh outta me.

More show stoppers tomorrow.

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Dave Kirwan