Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney “nine Old Men” animators, and one half of the famed “Frank ‘n’ Ollie” duo has died, taking with him another piece of history.

The “Nine Old Men” were Les Clark, Wolfgang Reitherman, John Lounsbery, Marc Davis, Milt Kahl, Eric Larson, Ward Kimball, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. As animators and directors they worked on all the significant Disney films from Snow White on to The Rescuers and gave life to such characters as Malificient, Shere Khan, Cruella de Vil, Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Brer Rabbit and so on.

Johnston was the last surviving member, and with his frequent partner Thomas authored several classic book on aniation, including The Illusion of Life.

Mark Evanier has some remembrances here and Jim Hill here. Although Hill attempts to remember the train-loving Johnston as a real person and not just the symbol of an end of an era…well…it is the end of an era. The Disney animated film classics stand as one one of the most prolonged achievements of 20th century imagination and are arguably the greatest single achievement of corporate creativity ever. Johnston was an integral part of that and you’ll be seeing lots of tributes to this consummate craftsman, artist and teacher over the next few days. Cartoon Brew has many many links including a tribute from John Canemaker:

Ollie was a survivor, a wonderful combination of inner strength and outer gentleness. He could be practical, thoughtful and tough in making life decisions, such as buying property or cutting down a favorite old tree when it loomed dangerously. But he was also a passionate man, full of emotions that found the perfect outlet in his soft, blue pencil lines that, as Glen Keane said, “coaxed into being” the most sensitive of character relationships. “I seem to have a kind of reservoir of feelings about how people felt in certain situations,” Ollie once explained.

Sob sob. Cartoon Brew on what might have been.

Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter books have had a long bumpy road to the screen. While Pixar is now on track to make an animated John Carter movie, this isn’t the first attempt. Back in the 30s, legendary animator Bob Clampett and ERB teamed up on an animated version:

With such a hot property, one might expect it to have been adapted to film. Well, the Mars books weren’t quite as popular as the Tarzan books, but that didn’t stop Burroughs from trying when the opportunity arose. That opportunity came in the early 1930’s from animation pioneer Bob Clampett, who had recently earned his animation stripes at Warner Bros. studios. Clampett approached Burroughs with an idea for an animated film about one of his favorite characters: John Carter.

The surviving footage of the fabled team-up is shown in the above YouTube clip, and one can only imagine what a swashbuckling mind bender this would have been, equalling the Fleischer Superman for fantasy rooted in heightened naturalism.

Disney is bullish on animation as a full slate of animated films for the next few years has been announced, including Cars 2; Bolt, starring Miley Cyrus and John Travola; Toy Story 3, set for June 18, 2010; The Princess and the Frog from John Musker and Ron Clements; Rapunzel, directed by Glen Keane and Dean Wellins; Pixar’s Newt and The Bear and the Bow; and King of the Elves, based on a story by Philip K. Dick.

Also revealed: all films will henceforth be released in digital 3D.

Many more details in the link, but just to repeat:

DISNEY DOES PHILIP K. DICK.

Technorati Tags: Disney

Legendary animator Ralph Bakshi is one of those few creator who really deserve the “legendary” before his name. Besides just directing the first x-rated cartoon movie (FRITZ THE CAT), he pioneered animation as an adult medium with movies like COONSKIN, HEAVY TRAFFIC and the fantasies WIZARDS and the first LORD OF THE RINGS adaptation. Sadly, he gave up movies after the controversial COOL WORLD. Black Book has a new and meaty interview with Bakshi that fills in some of the picture:

BB: How do you think Fritz the Cat would have turned out if the studio heads at Warner Bros. had gotten their way?

RB: There’s a picture called The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, the sequel to my movie. If you want to see how Fritz would have turned out, look at that. It would have been this cat that, once in a while, said something hip, and then falls in love with some girl and chases her all over town. [Laughs.] You should have seen their faces in the screening room when I first screened a bit of Fritz. I’ll remember their faces until I die. One of them left the room. Holy hell, you should have seen his face. “Shut up, Frank! This is not the movie you’re allowed to make!” And I said, Bullshit, I just made it.

Bakshi will also be making three upcoming appearances in New York, including NYCC 08 in conjunction with a new book on his work:

Ralph Bakshi will be appearing in person in New York City at the following events! Also you will find the co-authors of Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi Jon M. Gibson and Chris McDonnell and copies of the book at each event.

Thursday, April 17th:
Animazing Gallery Exhibition and Book signing.
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
416 Broome Street
New York, NY 10013
RSVP at their site.

Friday, April 18th
New York Comic Con Panel Talk & Book Signing
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
IGN Theater
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
655 West 34th Street
New York, NY 10001
Presented by MoCCA.

Saturday, April 19th
Anthology Film Archives Author Q&A, Book Signing & Film Screenings
7:00 PM Heavy Traffic
9:00 PM Coonskin (on a restored 35mm print)
32 2nd Avenue
New York, NY 10003
Tickets $8 at the door, good for one or both features.

It looks like room will need to be made at Stately Beat Manor …

ADULT SWIM toys!

From the Kidrobot Discussion Board:

Adult Swim - Mini Figures
We’ve teamed up with Adult Swim to bring your late night to life. From Robot Chicken and Mad Scientist to Assy McGee, Carl and the Mooninites, ridiculous-ness in a box can be yours for just $7.95 a piece. 18 characters in all, including two secret chases. Badass!

Posted by Mark Coale

After a long radio silence, Jackson Publick runs an update on Venture Bros. Season 3 and confirms that the new season will debut on June 1st, 2008. Can we hold out that long? Can it really have been a long, long 20 months since we saw the Venture Brothers? ALMOST TWO YEARS???? It can.

He also reports that on 4/1 Adult swim showed a “workprint” of the first 10 minutes of the season debut. There’s a very very bad YouTube video of a video of a TV screen of this, and out of respect to Jackson and the show we shan’t link to it, but it can probably be found if you want to see that kind of thing. We’re keeping ourselves pristine.

At their upfronts yesterday, the Cartoon network revealed a new Batman cartoon called Batman: The Brave and the Bold for the 2008-09 season:

Few details of the new Batman series were unveiled with the announcement. The show will carry on the Dark Knight’s crime-fighting crusade following the recent series finale of the Emmy-winning The Batman.

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You say you would like a site with streaming video of every South Park episode ever? M-kay. South Park Studios has launched. And you can search and embed clips. Like this one, in which the valiant Lesbos take on the Persians.

Oh hell…one more…

LEMMIWINKS!

Tons o’ guests have been recently announced for this year’s New York Comic-Con, including Gail Simone, Orson Scott Card and now =…the Venture Bros. crew of Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer will be on hand. REMINDER: ONLY THREE MONTHS TO GO! Season 3 debuts this June. It’s been a long lonely year (!) without the Ventures, and we’ve had to make do with beautiful concept art on Stephen De Stefano’s blog to keep us going. WE haven’t been running much NYCC PR, but these creator bios are a welcome reminder of why we can’t wait to go adventuring with Team Venture once again!

ABOUT JACKSON PUBLICK:
Jackson Publick III was born in 1971. The only son of Jackson Publick, Jr., author of the popular Rusty Venture series of boys’ adventure novels, he forsook his literary birthright to pursue comic books and a degree in the liberal arts. He was successful at neither, and after a period of sky country hoboing and soul-searching, he decided to put his limited skill-set to use in the Creative Warfare department of the Marine Corps; Psi-Ops division. His most notable achievements during his short tenure were designs for something called “The Mindcopter,” and a squadron of giant, flying metal lions which, when reconfigured and joined together via electrical current, formed a giant, flying metal man. Neither project was ever put into production and, upon learning that he had plagiarized the latter, the Marine Corps discharged Publick summarily, but honorably. It was to be the most important day ever. Drawing on the powers and influence of his amazing Bilderberg Group superpals, he then made up The Venture Bros.

ABOUT DOC HAMMER:
Doc Hammer was born in 1626 in Hamar, Norway under the name Erik VonHamer. Being the son of a humble cobbler, not much was expected of the young man other than to cobble, and to not complain about all the cobbling. But Doc was destined for greater things. “Greater things” being not cobbling. At seventeen, with nothing more than really well made shoes and a dream, he made his way to Antwerp to study oil painting under the great Rubens. Within a year the two were at odds. Rubens spoke (infrequently) of Doc as “that creepy skinny kid,” and Doc spoke of Rubens’s work as “kinda unattractive if you really look at it.” By 1648, Doc had relocated to Leiden, where he found his master in Rembrandt. It was there, in his 23rd year, that Doc met “She Who Was To Deliver The Kiss Of Eternal Youth.” After a spicy courtship, “She Who Was To Deliver The Kiss Of Eternal Youth” and Doc were married. By 1650, Doc had grown weary of immortality and committed an unsuccessful suicide by burying his never-corpse in the basement of a Dutch cottage. In 1870, Doc again resurfaced. Using the name Vilhelm Hammershoi, Doc resumed his painting career with mild success. After thanking his bride for “the immortality thing” and nicely reminding her that he had “heard every one of her stories like a billion times,” “She Who Was To Deliver The Kiss Of Eternal Youth” and Doc split up in 1916. Again, Doc literally went underground ’til the 1920’s, when Doc (now using the name Armond Hammer) resurfaced and made a whole mess of money selling overpriced meds to the Russians. Sick of all the baking soda jokes, Doc faked his death yet again. Biding his time ’til the MC Hammer thing had blown over, Doc again resurfaced as “Doc Hammer.” Today, Doc still paints in oils and writes, voices, and does other menial tasks for The Venture Bros. (A show you can watch on cable TV, were you to have cable TV.)

• The English language version of the PERSEPOLIS animated film will be released on April 11.

This version features the voices of Chiara Mastroianni as Marjane; Sean Penn as Marjane’s father, Ebi; Catherine Deneuve as Marjane’s mother, Tadji; Gena Rowlands as Marjane’s grandmother; Iggy Pop as Uncle Anouche; and Amethyste Frezignac as young Marjane. It was recorded under the direction of Satrapi and Paronnaud as the French-language version of the film was being completed.

• Another story in The Hollywood Reporter mentions a pact between French production, distribution and international sales company MK2 and publisher Emmanuel Proust. This is of some interest to us because Proust specializes in graphic novels.

MK2 is hoping the collaboration will allow the producer to bring more books to the big screen and vice versa. MK2 is currently in production on Pascal Herold and Jerome Deschamps’ animated tale “The True Story of Puss ‘n Boots,” which Proust will adapt into a comic book. MK2 hopes to draw from Proust’s more than 120 titles and 30-40 future projects to be released per year by the publisher.

Maybe it’s just the movie trade papers picking up more on foreign film deals, but it seems like there’s been a teeny tiny move towards Euro-comics getting the kind of attention from movie studios that American comics have been receiving. First there was David Fincher being attached to Matz THE KILLER, then yesterday’s bit about James Mangold taking on CYCLOPES. Not to mention ancillary news like the TINTIN movies and Marvel’s publishing deal with Soleil. Not a landslide of activity, but it’s worth noting.

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ITEM! Fox heard ka-ching when the animated HORTON HEARS A WHO slew at the box office this weekend. It’s $45.1 million opening weekend was the biggest this year thus far and restored studio faith in both G-rated CGI films and Dr. Suess. The movie was produced by Blue Sky.

ITEM! Will Jim Sturgess, an English actor who starred in Julie Taymor’s ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, reunite with the director to play Spider-Man in the upcoming stage show? That’s the rumor..

“I haven’t spoken to Julie about it but we did do a two-week workshop for it over in New York, and it was just a real chance to hang out with Julie again,” the British actor told us. “I love Julie, she’s like a mentor to me, and Evan’s just a great friend, and the three of us are just so bound by the experience we had doing ‘Across the Universe.’ It was a lot of fun. I was just playing music with Bono and Edge from U2, singing songs about Spider-Man. The project is definitely happening. Julie will definitely make this piece of theater. Whether I’ll be in it or not, I have no idea at this point.”

Sturgess seems like a sprightly lad. He gets the Beat seal of approval if its true.

ITEM! Frank Miller has been blogging about The Spirit movie but it’s in Flash so we can’t link to it or quote it. Luckily, Cinematical has more patience than we do, and quotes his comments on Ellen Dolan:

“I love writing tough, powerful women.” And he has set out to do just that with one chick specifically — Ellen Dolan, love interest of the title character. The character has proved to be a challenge, a weak stereotype of the age in which she was created. Miller calls her “a lousy character” and complains, “[The Spirit] even tossed her over his knee and spanked her. And she took it. Ellen Dolan made Donna Reed look like Angelina Jolie.”

More in both links.

§ ITEM! Andy Serkis VERY BRIEFLY comments on working on the TINTIN movies with Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg.

§ ITEM! A new Speed Racer trailer is up and it’s even more TRON-tastic than the last one. Prediction: This will be the love it or loathe it film of the summer.

ITEM! Long-banished director Alex Cox has been getting a lot of press lately for the comics-only sequel to REPO MAN. The AV Club has a much more extensive interview with him:

AVC: Several of your recent films haven’t had much theatrical distribution in the States. Does that bother you, or do you just consider it a byproduct of the kind of films you make? AC: What can you do, you know? Distribution is controlled by the studios, and I’ve been on the blacklist of the studios for the last 20 years. It’s not very likely that I’m going to get New Line to come along and distribute one of my films.

ITEM! Longtime Disney Watcher Jim Hill digs up some rumors and info about Pixar’s upcoming JOHN CARTER OF MARS movies. Among the speculations: the film will be live-action.

According to what Mouse House insiders recently told me, Mark Andrews (i.e. the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of “Ratatouille”) has allegedly already completed a first pass on a screenplay for the first film in the proposed “Mars” series. And given that both Pixar and Disney execs have reportedly responded very enthusiastically to Andrews’ script … Well, both companies are now anxious to put this project in the development pipeline ASAP. “So what sort of timetable are we talking about here?,” you ask. Well, really serious work on the first “Mars” movie can’t get underway ’til this Fall. Which is when Stanton will finally be through with all of his “WALL * E” -related promotional obligations

Hill also mentions that Disney might be cooling on the idea of making all seven Narnia movies, especially if PRINCE CASPIAN isn’t a monster hit. That bums us out because the next two movies DAWN TREADER and THE SILVER CHAIR are the best books, but apparently DAWN TREADER will get made regardless.

Is the world ready for a an updated trippy director/artist-cartoon mash-up, all influenced by European sex and drugs comics of the 70s and 80s?
Yes.:

Variety is reporting that Paramount is planning a new animated Heavy Metal film with segments directed by David Fincher (Seven, Zodiac), Tim Miller (Rockfish) and Kevin Eastman of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fame (and coincidentally the owner and publisher of Heavy Metal). The new Heavy Metal film will consist of eight or nine individual animated short films that will mirror the format of the anthology magazine, which debuted in the U.S. in 1977 and brought a new level of sex, violence and sophistication to the world of U.S. comics to which it also introduced a number of key European creators including Moebius, Enki Bilal, Phillippe Druillet and Milo Manara to name just a few.

Oh God.

Some days it is hard to get out of bed. This is why.

PS: Not to get all serious, but as ICv2 points out, Britney adapting an anime cartoon style is an attempt to ally herself with something cool and up-to-date…not the other way around.

We’re reasonably sure that the highly erudite folks who read The Beat get this joke, but just to give a little background, Bass was the immensely influential and highly imitated graphic designer whose logos, movie posters and, most importantly, animated film credit sequences created a whole strain of drastically pared down modernism, minimal yet elegant. Influenced by the Bauhaus movement and Russian Constructivism, his titles for THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM were considered shocking at the time, focusing on the jagged image of an arm to impart the pain of drug addiction. (The movie featured Frank Sinatra as a heroin-addicted ex-con and musician.) Bass would go on to do more groundbreaking work with Alfred Hitchock, Stanley Kubrick and Billy Wilder, among others.

Okay, hilarious right?

§ IGN has the new Iron Man Trailer in high def.

§ Should there be a VENTURE BROS. feature film? Hell yes!

Really, the fact that one of the show’s creators, Jackson Publick, worked on both the animated and live-action offerings of The Tick should be enough. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. In case you’re ignorant to the ways of the Ventures … The show is a spoof of the retro series Jonny Quest, and parodies much more than just father and son Quest — it takes on media from Indiana Jones and Scooby Doo to that light-saber Internet kid. The show focuses on the Venture family — super-scientist Dr. Venture, sons Hank and Dean, and his bloody tough and unstoppable bodyguard and reluctant friend, Brock Samson. They are constantly having to deal with a number of dastardly assailants, the most determined being Dr. Venture’s arch-enemy — The Monarch. He’s an ineffectual villain who has the heart of Dr. Girlfriend — a paramour with the body of a goddess and the voice of a fat and hairy henchman. It’s just comic gold.

§ Freddie Highmore, of The Spiderwick Chronicles, will voice Astro Boy in the upcoming CGI feature.

Based on Neil Gaiman’s short story and directed by Henry Selick, this movie features the voices of Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher and Ian McShane.

Via Cartoon Brew

As usual, it takes no skill to figure out the big winners at the Oscars, the occasional Crash aside. Picking the Coen Brothers, Javier Bardem and Diablo Cody is about as safe as predicting the appearance of another Skrull poster from Marvel next week. No, where Oscar pools are won and lost is in the Live Action Short and Animated Short categories. These obscure nominees crawl from the primordial ooze of doing it for art, get a brief touching moment and then go back to their careers of dedication to craft. We can’t really pick the live action shorts, but figure we should have a shot at the animated shorts. And good news! You can play along as they are almost all available on YouTube!

I Met the Walrus
Directed by Josh Raskin

Imaginative animated interpretation of a John Lennon interview.

Madame Tutli-Putli
Directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski

Part Two
Canadian film about a woman who takes a train journey and encounters weirdness.

Même les Pigeons vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go To Heaven)
Directed by Samuel Tourneux and Simon Vanesse.

Humorous French CGI entry

My Love (Moya Lyubov)
Directed by Alexander Petrov

Part Two
The Russian entry. Petrov, a previous Oscar® winner, presents a love story told in a stunning oil painting style.

Peter & the Wolf
Directed by Suzie Templeton

Part Two
Part Three

From England, a stop-motion retelling of the familiar legend.

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Ratatouille, the Pixar feature about a gourmet food loving rat won 10 Annie Awards over the weekend, including best feature, best writing and directing for Brad Bird, best voice acting for Ian Holm, best character animation, music, storyboarding, production design and best animated video game. Creature Comforts America won for best television program, and Seth Green won for best television directing for Robot Chicken Star Wars.

See the winning list in its entirety at the ASIFA-Hollywood site .

This year’s nominees for Best Animated Feature are:

* “Persepolis”
* “Ratatouille”
* “Surf’s Up”

This year’s nominees for Best Animated Short Film are:

* Même les pigeons vont au paradis
* I Met the Walrus
* Madame Tutli-Putli
* Moya lyubov
* Peter & the Wolf

Other tidbits:

* Five nominations in all for “Ratatouille,” including Best Screenplay and Score.
* Two nominations for BEAT favorite “Pirates 3.”
* Three nominations for “Sweeney Todd,” including Best Actor for Johnny Depp.
* Three nominations for nerd favorite “Transformers.”

Who ya got?

Posted by Mark Coale

Via Bryan Talbot’s website:

As mentioned before in this news column, last year Bryan took on the responsibility of being the sole agent for Veronique Tanaka and to find a publisher for her innovative graphic novel METRONOME, an experimental and erotically-charged “visual poem”. Well the book is published this month by the New York company NBM. You can buy the book at www.nbmpub.com

There is also made available a 17 minute animated version of the book at http://metronome.shadowgallery.co.uk/

It’s quite amazing - frame-by-frame at one second a frame, the book works equally well as an animation, though the experience is very different. In the animation, you can’t see the subliminal shapes that the panels make on the page. NBM are offering a free 3 minute excerpt on their site as the animation is usually pay-to-view but we can offer you unlimited access for the limited time of one month. Just go to the site and put in this free access code: 04545

Perhaps one or two of you have not been pelted — nay, basted, stuffed and roasted with the Lasagna Cat meme over the last two days or so. For you unfortunate souls, here is what you need to know: some guy recreates a live action version of a Garfield strip and follows it up with a music video by Expose or Snap or Barenaked Ladies. In the one we’ve linked to, Jon discovers he’s been using the cat comb instead of the human comb! This necessitates a move into a video based on NiN’s “Head Like a Hole.” For many that may summarize the entire Garfield experience. In fact we couldn’t link to just one:

This one mixes Jon, Garfield, Odie and the soundtrack to Final Fantasy.

Perhaps this is the magical, magical moment when the internet has, in fact, achieved the vast potential for betterment of the human race first shown with the “I kiss you!!!!” guy, and continued in an unbroken line through Peter Pan Guy, Viking Kittens, All Your Base, Amazon.com, Google, the Star Wars Kid, Tila Tequila, LOLCats, Lonelygirl15 and the parakeet that danced.

Best Week ever agrees.These appeared seemingly out-of-nowhere, all at the same time, and will undoubtedly be the best thing to happen to the Internet in a very, very long time.

Could it be that GARFIELD is in fact the tabula rasa of our time; the blank slate upon which the inner zeitgesit of every subsequent generation can be writ; the cave wall of the information era’s children?

Perhaps.

Widely seen as a shoo in for a Best Foreign Picture nomination at this year’s Oscars (it was France’s official submission) PERSEPOLIS has instead been brutally snubbed:

Surprisingly missing from the list is “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the European Film Award for best picture. Missing, too, is critically hailed “Persepolis,” which won a jury prize at Cannes and was voted best animated film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and New York Film Critics Circle.

Ouch.