New Animated Features and Shorts

[Jem]

A Second Trailer For Christian Volckman's Renaissance

[Lino]

Wondering what the creator of Belleville Rendez-vous is up to these days? Well, wonder no more:

His upcoming film is The Illusionist and is based on a script from the late great Jaques Tati. It is another 'wordless' film that is set in Scotland and is about an aging magician (which will be an animated version of Tati) who cannot break the mystique of his craft to a befriended little girl.

More here and while you're at it follow the links there to watch a commercial he did for Winterthur.

All great stuff! I love this guy. Just the other day I was sitting with my nieces at my side as I rewatched Belleville and besides the fact that they were simply enraptured by the whole movie, I was just feeling kind of thankful that this guy was able to come up with such a quirky movie in 2D no less and get away with it with flying honors! Let there be more, indeed.

[Jem]

Tartakovsky directing Dark Crystal sequel

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The trailer for Oshii's latest, Tachiguishi retsuden. It's in Japanese with no subtitles but I'm not sure how much they'd help.

A synopsis of sorts, from Production I.G:

Eating on the street without paying -
the artistry of the tachigui people.
So much is in the dark and left unsaid.

Immediately following the end of the World War II in 1945, or the 20th year of the Showa era, Tokyo was trying to emerge from the rubble. In a black market in one corner of Tokyo stood a flimsy tachigui soba (buckwheat noodle) place.

It was a funny time just before the closing. A man appeared at the threshold. "One Tsukimi (raw egg). With soba". This was none other than the legendary Fast Food Grifter, "Tsukimi" Ginji. His relentless "foul play" quietly initiates.

The time changes. In the midst of the first anti Japan-US Security Treaty movement (1960), the streets rumoured about "Ketsune Croquette" O-Gin, a beautiful Fast Food Grifter lady, who disappeared all of a sudden. Wandering the alleys in the years of skyrocketing economic growth was Crying Inumaru. Then came "Cold Tanuki" Masa, whose scandalous death made people aware of the presence of Fast Food Grifters within the Japanese society. "Gyudon" Ushigoro put an end to a major gyudon (beef and rice bowl) restaurant chain. And it is not possible not to mention "Hamburger" Tetsu, who shocked the entire American fast food industry.

Fast Food Grifters are the phantoms that rise and fall with the shifting diet-styles. They are the dissenting heroes that left their names on the dark side of dietary culture with their glare. Now their legend revives, strong as ever...

[denti alligator]

Apparently the creators of Futurama have struck a deal with Fox to make four (!!) straight-to-DVD features. Yippee!

[Lino]

Watch this one on your coffee break. It's SO worth your time! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the recently banned episode of South Park.

[Cinéslob]

An interview with Studio 4°C's founder Eiko Tanaka was rrecentlyposted at Midnight Eye, containing interesting tidbits relating to Mind Game.

Also, upstart Studio Ghibli fansite Ghibli World recently featured a rare interview with Isao Takahata, discussing, amongst many other things, what may or may not be on the horizon for Ghibli's other leading light:

[quote]With the exception of the short feature you made for “Fuyu no hi weâ€

[Lino]

If you can imagine an animation short that combines the worlds of Karel Zeman and Jan Svankmaker while at the same time conjuring the otherworldly whimsy of Lewis Carroll, here it is - The Tale of How

[Lino]

This looks like fun

[Cinéslob]

Coming soon from Studio 4°C: Tekkon! Suffice to say, I'm all in a tizzy about this one...

[Lino]

This one looks amazing!

[Toxicologist]

I really second that. The Kawamoto disc is part of a wonderful DVD series called the New Animation Animation Series which includes works by.... Norman Mclaren

On the subject of Norman Mclaren, has anyone picked up this French release?

[Steven H]

IYamamura Koji Sakuhinshu
This includes the Oscar-winning Mt. Head (Atama yama)

There's a great review of this disc (here's a yesasia.com link) on midnighteye.com now. I'm glad I didn't go too much longer with this passing under my radar. I loved Mt Head when I saw it a while back, and look forward to seeing more of the director's work.

I also want to second the recommendations for Kawamoto Kihachiro's DVD, and Lino's suggestion of seeing Belladonna of Sadness. Pretty interesting film (need to watch it again to say why, exactly, it was interesting, but Nakadai's narration and the minimalist animation initially spring to mind).

[MichaelB]

After running the Jiri Trnka disc specs through a Japanese translation program and matching its literal rendition to the English titles in the BFI database (i.e. "Fish of money" = "Gold Fish"/"Bush Warbler of Emperor" = "The Emperor's Nightingale"), I ended up with this:

VOLUME 1
Grandfather Plants a Turnip (1945)
Czech Year (1947)

VOLUME 2
Animals and Brigands (1946)
Old Czech Legends (1952)

VOLUME 3
Prince Bajaja (1950)
Gold Fish (1951)

VOLUME 4
The Emperor's Nightingale (1948)
The Gift (1946)

VOLUME 5
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1959)
How Grandpa Changed Till Nothing Was Left (1953)
Kutasek and Kutilka (1954) - I'm guessing this one, as the translation software could only manage "and"!

Has anyone bought any of these?

[Lino]

I have Volume 2 and Volume 5 (by the way, this should be in the Old Animation thread) and have been planning to get the other ones for the longest time (if only they weren't so darn expensive!).

The prints used on Old Czech Legends and Midsummer Night's Dream are acceptable if not spectacular looking. At least the latter comes in its right aspect ratio of 2.35 (first animated feature to be shot in that format). In fact, I had the good fortune of watching it on the big screen one lucky Sunday afternoon and it definitely looks better on the DVD. I hope you are in the know that none of these come with english subs -- only japanese. But if you are curious about them, why wait indeed when they're out there, right?

The shorts that come with them are all worthwhile and only serve to show the versatility of Trnka's talents, going from traditional cell animation, to stop-motion, to illustration, to hand-puppetry (yes, you read that right). If you want more of it, there is a japanese boxset that collects a great quantity of them over 3 DVDs. Another item worth exploring would also be the japanese DVD for Emperor's Nightingale which might contain the original czech dubbed track and intro as opposed to the Karloff narrated one with english opening credits that the US DVD sports.

As for the films themselves, if you haven't watched them, are you in for a treat -- this is animation of the highest caliber (the scores alone are worth a soundtrack CD reissue!) and it never fails to strike me everytime I watch them just how much emotional density and drama Trnka was able to give his puppets without ever changing their face expressions! There are people with great talents and then there are those with born gifts -- that is the main different between great crafts people and genius. Trnka was a genius and a terrific craftsman himself.

Hope I was of some help.

[mogwai]

Disney apparently has had a change of heart with regards to hand-drawn animation films. From Yahoo:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hand-drawn animation, out of fashion in the computer age, experienced a rescue worthy of a fairy tale on Thursday, when Walt Disney animators announced they would bring back the art form to the big screen.

"We will be bringing back hand-drawn (two-dimensional) films," said Disney's Ed Catmull, the President of Pixar and Disney Feature Animation.

Animators refer to hand-drawn animation as "two dimensional," as opposed to computer-generated animation, referred to as 3D.

Pixar created "Toy Story" and other computer animation hits, but was acquired by Walt Disney Co. last year.

Speculation has swirled since then over whether Catmull and Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, who took control of the ailing Disney animation facility, would reestablish the art form that made Disney the world's preeminenent animator.

All of Disney's feature animation films in production at the time of the Pixar deal were computer animated.

"Now that's we're a year into it, people want to know how it's going," Catmull told analysts at a Disney conference monitored by Web cast. He said Disney would do both computer animation and hand-drawn animation.

Lasseter spent several years as a Disney animator, but left over creative differences to form Pixar, where he was considered the main creative force. He revered Walt Disney, who with a group of legendary animators known as the "Nine Old Men," made such hand-drawn classics as "Cinderella" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

When Disney bought Pixar to try to revive its flagging animation program, Catmull and Lasseter took charge of both studios, which are run separately.

At least 300 Disney animation staff were laid off or reassigned in the months following the leadership change.

Catmull and Lasseter gave the first descriptions on Thursday on how they reshaped story lines of Disney films already in production, canceled others and restructured how the Disney artists work.

"Pixar is still Pixar -- nobody left," Catmull said. "At Disney, you have these remarkable artists there ... they were not kneaded together in the right way. At the heart of it there has to be a director and the director has to have a vision."

Catmull said there were no plans to merge the studios or to limit them to a certain type of animation.

"We always believed that quality is the best business plan," he said.

He and Lasseter showed clips from upcoming films, including "Ratatouille," "Meet the Robinsons," "Wall-E," "American Dog" and "Toy Story 3."

Edit: Meant to place this in the animation thread. Please move accordingly.

[Antoine Doinel]

Well, let's hope they can get back to "writing a halfway decent story" instead of churning out Cinderella sequels.

[jon]

I'm excited about the prospects of returning to 2-d animation. I am a little bit in the dark about how animation is really produced now. I know that a lot of anime looks hand drawn but is really (mostly) computer animated. Anyways, Cinderella 4 looks like it has potential.

[Matt]

I'm reading the excellent Disney biography by Neal Gabler (don't ask me why, I'm not even really a Disney fan), and in the very early days, Walt realized that he could not compete with established animators (the Fleischers, Pat Sullivan) with his drawing and technique, so he concentrated on storytelling. Of course, he later just hired the best draftsmen in the business to do his drawing for him, but I imagine it was especially painful for longtime fans to see the studio recently abandon both in favor of films exclusively featuring wisecracking animals, digitally rendered.

[kinjitsu]

Back to Hand Drawing for Disney

I'm always reminded of the real deal whenever I pass the animation studio on the freeway.

[Dear Catastrophe Totoro]

I'm reading the excellent Disney biography by Neal Gabler (don't ask me why, I'm not even really a Disney fan)...

Did you read Anthony Lane's article in The New Yorker on Walt Disney and Gabler's biography? It's mostly superb, though he still blames everything on Disneyland (only mentions Main Street, since it so clearly symbolizes an idealized version of America, and the characters, as if the park is supposed to be their home and they are the demigods of American purity; and yet, no one has the balls to admit that it is visited not as an icon, but as an amusement park [after all, it's sort of hard to demonize a merry-go-round]). Also, I thought he cropped his image of Walt in several places in order to explain his supposed artistic downfall in the fifties and his simultaneous plunge into becoming Walt Disney: corporate beelzebub (no question that the films got worse, but Walt's attention had already shifted to urban planning; Disneyland was actually more or less a learning experience). And, amazingly, he fails to blame Walt for what he should actually be blamed for: popularizing television through his weekly show that blurred the lines between art and advertisement, with his Uncle Walt persona being the perfect salesman (to give him a little credit, though, money meant nothing to him except to keep Roy happy so he could continue to create). Really, why is it so hard to write about Walt Disney's life without showing an extreme bias in one direction or the other? Glad to hear Gabler's biography is excellent!

I'm always reminded of the real deal whenever I pass the animation studio on the freeway.

I miss those days. For some reason I decided to move from California to Indiana a few years back. It's amazing how bad that idea turned out to be.

[Matt]

I'm reading the excellent Disney biography by Neal Gabler (don't ask me why, I'm not even really a Disney fan)...

Did you read Anthony Lane's article in The New Yorker on Walt Disney and Gabler's biography? ... Glad to hear Gabler's biography is excellent!

The Lane article is what got me interested in reading the Gabler book. I'm only a sixth of the way through it (the book is almost 900 pages, but well over 200 pages are the notes, appendices, and index), to the point where Walt gets Oswald the Rabbit (and most of his staff) snatched out from under him by his distributor.

Obviously, I can't say if Gabler has an ax to grind later on, but so far he has pointed out Walt's flaws as equally as his better personality traits and his achievements personal and professional. It's very balanced and in every situation (particularly the one I mentioned above), Gabler is careful to spread the blame around to each who deserves it. Only Ub Iwerks (so far at least) comes up smelling of roses every time.

I know very little about Disney other than what I'm reading in this book, but I have been watching the Tomorrowland programs from the Disneyland TV series (on one of the Disney Treasures discs). It's pretty astounding to see him go from proselytizing about space travel, complete control of the weather, and atomic energy in the 1950s to delivering what amounts to little more than a real estate development pitch (EPCOT) in the 1960s. What child of any age would be so devoted to Disney in the 1960s that he or she would sit through Uncle Walt's lecture on public transportation theory?

[Fletch F. Fletch]

The Lane article is what got me interested in reading the Gabler book. I'm only a sixth of the way through it (the book is almost 900 pages, but well over 200 pages are the notes, appendices, and index), to the point where Walt gets Oswald the Rabbit (and most of his staff) snatched out from under him by his distributor.

Obviously, I can't say if Gabler has an ax to grind later on, but so far he has pointed out Walt's flaws as equally as his better personality traits and his achievements personal and professional. It's very balanced and in every situation (particularly the one I mentioned above), Gabler is careful to spread the blame around to each who deserves it. Only Ub Iwerks (so far at least) comes up smelling of roses every time.

I know very little about Disney other than what I'm reading in this book, but I have been watching the Tomorrowland programs from the Disneyland TV series (on one of the Disney Treasures discs). It's pretty astounding to see him go from proselytizing about space travel, complete control of the weather, and atomic energy in the 1950s to delivering what amounts to little more than a real estate development pitch (EPCOT) in the 1960s. What child of any age would be so devoted to Disney in the 1960s that he or she would sit through Uncle Walt's lecture on public transportation theory?

This all sounds fascinating. I'll have to pick this book up. I really love classic Disney and I've been watching those Disney Treasure discs as well. And you're right, it is weird to see ol' Walt's shift in focus from idealistic looks at space travel to pimping EPCOT Center. Have you watched the Disney Treasures disc on the war time propaganda? Very interesting stuff.

[Dear Catastrophe Totoro]

It's pretty astounding to see him go from proselytizing about space travel, complete control of the weather, and atomic energy in the 1950s to delivering what amounts to little more than a real estate development pitch (EPCOT) in the 1960s. What child of any age would be so devoted to Disney in the 1960s that he or she would sit through Uncle Walt's lecture on public transportation theory?

The EPCOT pitch was for the financial backers, I believe. Actually, its inclusion on the Walt Disney Treasures disc was the first time it was made available to the public. Also, and maybe this is a blind spot for me, but I really don't think Walt changed that much. I would say he was constantly smoothing his rough edges after every experience (after all; he only had a 7th grade education). He went corporate only because he started think on a huge scale. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll attempt be brief, but Disneyland was built more or less to see how people moved, reacted to their environment, and to each other. He then took what he learned and put it into designing EPCOT, which was supposed to be an actual city, not a theme park. Fault him for placing moral restrictions on the city's would-be inhabitants, and for wanting to build a completely controlled environment, but really, this city was to correct what he felt were major flaws in urban planning, to be a prototype city, a showcase. His city would basically eliminate cars and pollution, at least, as much as one could in the 1960's. Amazingly, some of the technology that would have gone into EPCOT still has not been implemented in major cities today. For example, trash would be automatically collected and sent to a main storage bin, where the trash would be burned. The smoke would go through a series of filters, until finally it was released into the atmosphere, considerably cleaner than what was expected at that time. And cars would only be used when entering or leaving the city. The city itself would make no money, and the Disneyland park would be used again as a draw to interest the public in Disney World (he even placed it back on the property so they would have to drive through the city).

Here's a quote from Walt Disney:

"I believe that people still want to live like human beings. There's a lot of things that could be done. I'm not against the automobile, but I just feel the automobile has moved into communities too much. I feel that you can design so that the automobile is there, but still put people back as pedestrians again, you see. Also, I mean, in the way of schools, facilities for the community, community entertainments and life. I'd love to be part of building up a school of tomorrow....The great problem today is one of teaching."

I found this quote from Bob Thomas' Walt Disney: An American Original rather interesting:

"Archaic building codes, protective labor unions, building material contractors, and shortsighted politicians inevitably made progressive change impossible [in past efforts to create model cities]. With his customary distrust of politicians, Walt Disney sought unprecedented freedom to develop a model city without interference. Donn Tatum pointed out that what he really wanted was 'an experimental, absolute monarchy.' Walt raised an eyebrow and asked puckishly, 'Can I have one?'"

Also, it's worth noting that he saved two schools in Los Angeles from closing, and combined them into one new school, Calarts, which created an environment where art students would learn something from all the arts, not just their major. He spent plenty of his own money into the school, and much of his personal time. After Walt died, however, his company choked itself on the commercial aspects of what Walt did, which it still hasn't recovered from, and most likely never will.

[Matt]

The EPCOT pitch was for the financial backers, I believe. Actually, its inclusion on the Walt Disney Treasures disc was the first time it was made available to the public.

I believe you're right in that the DVD was the first time it was available in its entirety, but it had been excerpted for other broadcasts.