The Next Re-release

Of course, we all know that Monsters, Inc.'s 3D re-release has been moved forward to December 19th. It was originally scheduled for release on January 18th. Currently, the next 3D re-release is The Little Mermaid, which is penciled for a September 13, 2013 release. Perhaps Disney can re-release something for January 2013, or maybe February or March.

What could they possibly re-release? Or better yet, will they even convert said film to 3D in such a short timeframe? Or not? Maybe they can convert something for the summer, that's also a possibility. What could they release though? A lot of people seem to be clamoring a 3D re-release of Aladdin, which would actually make sense since the Diamond Edition Blu-ray is coming and the fact that it is still a very popular film from the Disney canon. Since we don't know much about the upcoming Blu-ray release or anything else, it's unknown if Disney is converting Aladdin to 3D, will convert it, or not.

Anyways, what Disney animated classic would you like to see return to theaters? What Pixar film would you like to re-experience in theaters? Also, do you want Disney to continue re-releasing films without converting them to 3D? I sure would, as I ranted about this before. Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King's 3D conversions were experiments, and the latter actually boasted impressive 3D. (Haven't seen the 3D re-release of Beauty and the Beast, sadly.) Do you think they should continue re-releasing them in 3D? Fire away!

Personally, my first choices would be the first five Disney animated films, but NOT in 3D.

Spirited Away: A Personal Journey

So, this post is kind of unrelated to Oscar nominated animated shorts, but it is about an Oscar winning piece of animation, so it's got more in common than the one post that has the most views on this blog: the top 5 animated nuclear explosions.

Anyways, my favorite movie of all time turned 10 last year. It's a pretty significant milestone, and I celebrated it by watching the film (although I missed the actual anniversary by a couple of days.) I didn't do any writing about it, probably because I wanted to get back to playing Tales of Symphonia. However, now is the time that is a much more significant anniversary for me personally: the 10th anniversary of the first time I watched the film. Now that this anniversary has arrived, I think it's a good time to look back on my experiences with the movie.

So what movie am I talking about? Well, it's in the title, but just for the heck of it, it's 千と千尋の神隠し (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi), better known in the United States as Spirited Away.

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Don't You Forget About Me

Remember Walt Disney Feature Animation's Florida studio? Wasn't it terrible that it was shut down way back in 2004?

Well, this thought just crossed my mind yesterday. With Disney getting better and going back to what's right, what if Disney were to revive that studio? Think about it. Disney is trying to bring back hand-drawn animation while also finding revolutionary new ways to blend computer animation with hand-drawn animation. If the pipeline fills up, they can do certain films while also working on new short films and other projects. Pixar set up Pixar Canada to do this, as their pipeline expands in both the world of feature films and short films. It could also help speed up production while still having quality product turned out. Lasseter's short film training program has already paid off, as seen in The Princess and the Frog, Tangled and Winnie the Pooh.

Would you like for that to happen? Or do you think Walt Disney Animation Studios can manage without another studio?

Best Animated Short - 1979 (NSFW)

We have arrived in the 1970s in our trip through the Best Animated Short Oscar. The 1970s, as you know, are a decade full of crisis and turmoil. Another source of crisis and turmoil for this blog is our ever-lengthening introductions. Originally I had trouble putting enough substance in my intros, but for the past four reviews I've noticed that my introductions are getting longer than my reviews. This probably came about from when I started adding baseball stories for that particular year. I love baseball and have the tendency to ramble when it comes to baseball. And I can go off on Oscars stuff as well. Frankly I love doing these things more than coming up with historical events for that year, but if you have any suggestions as to what I should to please leave it in the comments. I've only gotten one comment so far, and it wasn't even in any of the reviews.

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Parallels

Disney animation is currently about to enter a new Renaissance, or in many ways, has already entered it. When? Why have they entered a new Renaissance, though? Why isn’t there much hubbub over this?

The last few Disney films, despite any box office performance, are critically successful. In fact, Disney’s slow rebirth is no different from their rise to glory in the late 1980s...

Before The Renaissance

Years before the Disney Renaissance began, Disney’s animated output was problematic to say the least. As I had explained in my three-part series “The Dark Ages?”, it wasn’t necessarily absolutely terrible times for the studio, but tough nonetheless. There was only one flop, The Black Cauldron, which wasn’t as a big as a bomb as Disney and others made it out to be. The Rescuers and The Great Mouse Detective were certainly good, while not great by any means due to other problems. Oliver & Company is dated, relying on what was big in the 80s that made it the box office success it was. The Fox and the Hound has a great central theme, but it’s plagued with sloppy storytelling and a lack of a consistent tone. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is merely a compilation feature more than anything, though the individual short subjects are great. The only true post-Walt/pre-Renaissance clunkers are The Aristocats and Robin Hood, films with lazy storytelling and equally unimpressive animation, yet those two films were highly successful.

Likewise, before this new era of Disney (the Lasseter era), the Disney output was flawed. After the Renaissance, there were three real gems: Fantasia 2000, The Emperor's New Groove and Lilo & Stitch. The rest of the films were all messy or lacking in something some way or another, and this is all thanks to the executives, who stuck their spoons into the broth and found a way to ruin each big budget project. Treasure Planet was screwed by its attempts to be teen-friendly, despite already having a good heartfelt story and a lot of ambition. Atlantis: The Lost Empire suffers from a story that immediately loses direction after its first act, being more of a visual showcase than a story-driven experience. Brother Bear has excellent animation, but the film is too talky and riddled with 2003 talk and "hip" dialogue. Dinosaur was planned as a silent film, but again, the executives had the characters talk, and in awful modern dialect. Home on the Range was bland and badly written, and on top of that, offered nothing new. Chicken Little? That was a product of Michael Eisner’s rush to compete with DreamWorks’ pop culture joke-laden schlockfests.

Then we look at the few films that came before the Disney Renaissance, namely The Great Mouse Detective, and we see a small path to improvement. Oliver & Company on the other hand was a step backwards in terms of storytelling, but was a big hit nonetheless since it was hip and cool with the 80s audience. It was nothing more than a test, to see if Disney could re-enter the animated feature business and compete with Don Bluth.

However, the two films released between Chicken Little and The Princess and the Frog show a striking amount of improvement. Meet the Robinsons was half late Eisner-era caffeinated flick, half Lasseter Pixar-esque story that was heartwarming and touching. While not a big success, it wasn’t a flop by any means. Critics were generally positive in their reviews as well. At least it didn’t get the mixed to negative reviews that Brother Bear, Home on the Range and Chicken Little received. This was followed by Bolt, which boasted very good storytelling though it was a bit too familiar. Despite some safer elements, it was a deserved critical success and was a slow burner at the box office, but not a big blockbuster.

The New Renaissance

This is where your mileage may vary. When do you think the new Renaissance started? Did it start with Tangled? The Princess and the Frog? Bolt? Or do you think it hasn’t started yet? Be sure to tell me what you think, by voting in the poll.

Remember not to confuse this with a Golden Age, I separate the two. For me, a Golden Age equals the amount of films being produced and the fact that they’re all successful and high quality. Renaissance, to me, means an era films that are advancements of the art form regardless of how they do at the box office. The Little Mermaid and The Rescuers Down Under certainly live up to that title, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King are good works of storytelling though they have their shortcomings.

Personally, I believe the second Disney Renaissance has already started. It started with a fairy tale adaptation, The Princess and the Frog. There’s a pattern with Disney. Disney’s feature animation legacy started with a fairy tale adaptation. After World War II cut off profits from the following films (with the exception of Dumbo), Walt Disney turned to cheaper endeavors in the package “anthology” features. While they were successful for the most part, what got the Disney studios out of that temporary slump? A fairy tale adaptation. None other than Cinderella. No more cost-cutting anthology films came after that, all original single-story films like Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp.

Then it gets tricky when you say The Little Mermaid saved Disney from a slump. It didn’t, The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company already did, plus Who Framed Roger Rabbit really did a lot too. But... The Little Mermaid was the first “great” Disney animated film in a long while. The Princess and the Frog is also the first “great” Disney animated film in nearly a decade, and one that arguably gets right what many of the butchered post-Lion King films got wrong.

Why is this? During the start of the Renaissance, Disney was run by Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, plus a barrage of executives who felt that animation was only a way to make more money and create more franchises. The films would be altered, and many times, watered down for the sake of entertaining everyone in the audience. Something Walt Disney would’ve NEVER done...

With that, the Second Golden Age and Renaissance quickly deflated after the runaway success of The Lion King when films like Pocahontas displayed Disney’s biggest weaknesses. The whole idea of when this Renaissance ended can be a bit contradictory. Pocahontas was a bump in the road, but The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan and Tarzan were above average. People usually say the Renaissance ended with Tarzan, box office wise. But what about Fantasia 2000? Like The Rescuers Down Under, that was a good, above average film. After Fantasia 2000, we had Dinosaur, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Brother Bear, Home on the Range and Chicken Little going against The Emperor's New Groove, Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet. When did the Renaissance end? That's up in the air, for me, I'd say it fell apart starting with Pocahontas and ended with Fantasia 2000. Disney entered the "inconsistent era", where it wasn't a string of critical successes.

We all know what ended it. Executives had their way with each of the films, even with something very risky like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with its unneeded comic relief. Audiences got tired of the same old routine too, as every Disney seemed to repeating itself over and over: Big musicals, big bad villains, annoying sidekicks and sassy dialogue. It frustrated audiences, who began turning to alternatives. This is why Pixar took off early on, because their films avoided this. Toy Story, A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2 were all fantastic films that weren’t products of executive meddling. No reliances on what focus groups said, or what marketing research firms showed. Pixar’s crew wisely ignored that and just gave audiences what they needed, not what they exactly “wanted”. Good films...

The Princess and the Frog is free from all that executive meddling and focus group nonsense, and on top of that, it was a great film. It returned to an art form that ignorant executives singlehandedly pushed to the wayside, while also trying new things with the art form. Critics praised it, word of mouth got it ahead of that awful opening weekend performance, and it did very well on home video. Bolt was free of these problems, too, but I felt it was a stepping stone to the Renaissance since it wasn’t a spectacular film by any means. It was more like The Rescuers, a film made between Walt’s death and The Little Mermaid that happened to be significantly better than the rest of the Disney output at the time. Bolt is far superior to several of the post-Renaissance films, but did it kick off the Renaissance? You could say it did, given the quality of the film.

I am also tempted to say it did, but The Princess and the Frog really set things in motion like The Little Mermaid did compared to the last couple of films. I could care less how much money The Princess and the Frog made compared to Tangled (though it would've been great to see it perform like gangbusters), to me, this little film was what kicked off this new Renaissance that we are currently going through. Tangled tried new things with computer animation, as we all know, it attempted to look like a traditionally animated film. Oddly enough, I consider Bolt superior to this film, but I still believe it didn't kick off the Renaissance. Despite the fact that is a very good film that also made use of the new painterly look that Disney is currently experimenting with, I still see it as more of a modest effort. One to bring audiences back to "good Disney" after years of hit-or-miss films, just like The Great Mouse Detective did back in 1986. The Princess and the Frog is much more ambitious, and visually, Tangled is too. It's a bit contradictory from here, I'll admit, but I still see Bolt as a sort of Mouse Detective project while Frog and Tangled are more in line with Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Kind of like fuel to the start of the Renaissance, that and Meet the Robinsons.

After Tangled came Winnie the Pooh, which was gap filler, but very good gap filler! Next comes Wreck-It Ralph. I've raved about it many times, but how does this look innovative? Story-wise, it’s unique. It’s no fairy tale or musical, it’s not a talking animals comedy or anything. It’s an action-comedy about video games. Many will complain about this, but Disney NEEDS to leave the comfort zone. They can’t just make fairy tale after fairy tale. Not every movie they make has to be something familiar. If that were the case, then they'd just be on indefinite loop. People complain that Disney repeats themselves, but then they try something new, people still complain.

Walt Disney made all kinds of films: Fairy tales, adventure stories, mystery stories, experimental epics like Fantasia, films that had contemporary settings, dialogue-driven comedies without much action. He never repeated himself, though he would do more than one fairy tale or fantasy story. But he would also do something like Lady and the Tramp or Fantasia. Post-Renaissance Disney did so as well, with films like Atlantis and Treasure Planet, but those two aren’t given enough attention. Lilo & Stitch luckily did well, and remains one of the most unique post-Walt films. Which is why Wreck-It Ralph will continue this Renaissance. It’s not a repeat of something Disney already did many times before, it’s something completely different!

Then there’s Frozen, which is yet again another fairy tale. That said, The Princess and the Frog and Tangled aren’t the same movie. Tangled is not a rehash of what we saw in Frog. Beauty and the Beast, on the other hand, had no trouble taking cues from The Little Mermaid. Aladdin and The Lion King did so too, then it got to the point where it became stale. Frozen will most likely be something different, and not a rehash of Frog, Tangled or any of the other fairy tales. Well at least I hope it won’t be, but knowing Lasseter and the crew, it should not be.

Big Hero 6 is obviously way out of Disney’s “comfort zone”, which makes it all the more exciting. I’m really anticipating this for several reasons, since it will be a stab at the action film genre and get an even wider audience for Disney animation and rival Pixar and DreamWorks.

After that, we get the untitled Ron Clements and John Musker project, which is confirmed to be a hand-drawn film that might be done in the same style as John Kahrs' short film, Paperman. I’ve raved about that before, and from the stills we’ve gotten over the months, it’s already the signal to the next frontier in animation. There are also rumors floating around about a third Fantasia film, and there are numerous possibilities there. Tons of scrapped projects are laying around too, from King of the Elves to My Peoples to Fraidy Cat to Don Quixote to Antonius.

All of this happening right now is why I believe we are already going through the next Renaissance. Frog and Tangled already tried new things in some way or another while being good films, Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6 and the untitled Ron & John film should do the same... As long as they are very good films. Then you have the short films, which are also quietly fueling the Renaissance. How To Hook Up Your Home Theater was a return to the short film format for Disney, and hand-drawn animation. Safer shorts were training vehicles for younger animators, like the successful Prep & Landing shorts and Tangled Ever After. Two shorts remain out of reach, Glago's Guest and Tick Tock Tale, but at least we are getting Paperman before Wreck-It Ralph this autumn.

After that, one can only imagine what we’re going to get. If Disney’s upcoming slate is already loaded, there are so many possibilities on the horizon. Films that can keep the Renaissance going, longer than the first one and perhaps an extremely long time. Walt Disney Animation Studios is bursting like fireworks now since they are free from the clutches that held them back, with Bolt, The Princess and the Frog and Tangled behind them. Fulfilling Uncle Walt’s dreams? It’s going to happen...

DreamWorks' New Partner

After a six-year partnership with Paramount, DreamWorks Animation SKG has now entered a five-year distribution deal with 20th Century Fox, of all studios. Now for a long time, us animation fans wondered who would start distributing the moon boy productions after the deal with Paramount would end. I always thought it would be Warner Bros., since they have never had a big animation studio making hit after hit for them. Every other studio is taken, but that didn't stop them from turning to Fox.

It'll be interesting to see what their schedules will be like in the coming years, since DreamWorks is now adapting the "three films a year" routine. Like Paramount, Fox will get 8% of the box office and home media sales revenue, but DreamWorks will have the rights to air their films on television. Even more shocking news is Jeffrey Katzenberg's plans of launching a DreamWorks channel. What? Does he think DreamWorks will grow into big Disney-sized empire one day? Who knows...

Anyways, this will be interesting to keep an eye on. Blue Sky will most likely change the release dates of their films over the next few years, and next year's Epic won't have to move since DreamWorks' summer release that year (Turbo) will be released in July. I have a feeling that Fox's logo won't appear before the films, much like how Paramount's didn't. How Fox will handle the marketing, we don't know. They've done well enough with advertising Blue Sky's films, so we'll see if their marketing beats that of Paramount's lazy advertising that plagued the last couple of DreamWorks films.

What do you think? Do you DreamWorks made the right choice? Or do you think they should've went with someone else? Sound off!

Animation Artwork Auction.

Okay, so I said I would do a post on what I feel was surely one of the biggest auctions of classic animation artwork ever. Unfortunately I wasn't able to post about it earlier, but I promised myself I would put some of this stuff up on the blog once I got back, which isn't really that bad, because now the prices realised are known, so I can add some of that stuff into the post!

The auction was organized by 'Profiles in history', which is set up by Joe Maddalena, an industry expert on historical documents and the world's largest auctioneer of original movie, television and pop culture relics. You might know Joe from his show 'Hollywood Treasure' which airs regularly on Syfy channel since 2010 and is currently in it's second season (on the show Joe and his team track down, appraise and auction off some of the amazing artifacts ('Hollywood Treasure') they find from Tinseltown's golden years.

Born into a family of antique dealers he staged his own baseball card convention at the age of twelve, two years later he already had over one million baseball cards, and over 100,000 precious comic books and original pieces of art! He's mentioned in the Guiness book of records for paying the highest price ever at a public auction for a handwritten letter of President Abrahan Lincoln.

Above: Joe Maddalena and his team have tracked down a copy of Action comics #1, which featured the first starring role of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman/Clark Kent character. Last November actor Nicholas Cage's pristine 9.0 graded copy (one of five in the world) sold online for a record $2.1 Million Dollars. Guess he didn't want it anymore after it got robbed from his home and was miraculously returned to him, when someone found it in a storage locker.

Okay, so, enough about Joe, let's focus on some of that amazing artwork that was sold last month and let's just hope that the people who acquired will have the finesse to take good care of it, for it could/should have belonged in a museum, so we can all share the grace of such fine talent. Anyway that's why I'm posting some of it up here now. There was a huge bunch of original cels with matching backgrounds, but I decided not to add them here, as I feel they're not as essential.

The auction existed of 910 pieces of artwork, so I can only post some of my personal favorites. The official catalogue was available for $35 Dollars, which unfortunately sold out in no time. However, If you still want to view all of it and at a much higher resolution, Joe put up a free online catalogue (PDF) that is still downloadable at the moment. I suggest you get it immedeately before it dissapears. For all images below: Click to enlarge !

An original background layout drawing for Fleischer's 'Gulliver's Travels' from 1939. Price was originally set at $800 to $1200 and was sold in the end for $4250. Below is another piece from the Fleischer studio, an extremely rare original production drawing from the 1930's of 'Koko the Clown' used for Fleischer's 'Out of the Inkwell' cartoon shorts.

Some of Carl Barks' preliminary sketches, which he did for his paintings:

Here are some of the great original production drawings created for Disney's Mickey Mouse Black & White shorts from the 1930's, just a few, because the collection had such a large amount of them:

Below: Two original production drawings from 'The Klondike Kid', released on November 12, 1932. As with many of Disney's early shorts, it was animated by a legendary team of artists, including Ben Sharpsteen, Freddy Moore and Art babbitt. Directed by Wilfred Jackson.

In this short, we see Minnie sitting on a barrel by the stove in the back of a busy saloon in Alaska, after she was dragged inside and saved from the winter cold by Mickey. He feeds her and gets her warm again while a wanted poster hangs on the wall behind Minnie conveying a $2000 Dollar reward for 'Terrible Pierre' aka Black Pete. A huge ominous presence enters the saloon. It's Black Pete covered in snow, who starts shooting up the joint. The camera cuts back to Mickey feeding Minnie and there you have this production drawing, from a sequence drawn by Norm Ferguson (the first scene with Mickey and Minnie is almost identical and was drawn by Tom palmer, but the angle is slightly different). I put the matching frames from the short below the drawings.

The second drawing is from a sequence by Ben Sharpsteen with Archie Robins assisting him. This was Robins first short with Disney. After Black Pete has kidnapped Minnie from the saloon, he rides out on a dog slay. Mickey of course follows him with Pluto and tracks him down to a lonesome cabane on the edge of a slopy hill. Once entered Black Pete hangs Minnie dangling on a mounted moose head and comes for him, knives in hand. By the way, this was also Fred Moore's first Mickey short, after working on a couple of Silly Symphonies for Disney. Moore (who worked on a scene later on, where the whole cabane shoots down the hill) would eventually become one of Disney's most important animators working on Mickey, and changed his appearance in 1939, turning him into the Mickey we all know now.

An original production drawing from 'Mickey's Good Deed', which was directed by Burt Gillett and released on December 17, 1932. This drawing is part of a scene done by Johnny Cannon. I put the actual frame as it appears in the short below it.

Below a drawing from 'Puppy Love', released on September 2, 1933. Directed by Wilfred Jackson, with animations again done by Freddy Moore, Ben Sharpsteen, Norm Ferguson a.o. The drawing below is actually from the introduction sequence, the set-up, if you will, animated by Johnny Cannon. It shows  Mickey and Pluto on their way to Minnie's home, who now has a dog named Fifi. It's spring and both Mickey and Pluto are happily in love, as are the birds and the squirrels in the trees and even the statues in the park.

Mickey and Pluto are watching the little animals in the tree at this particular point (who were animated seperately by Paula Allen with Sharpsteen (it was Allen's first job on a Disney short). The scene was accompanied by the song 'Puppy Love' by composer Frank Churchill, known for his popular songs 'Heigh-Ho' and 'Some day my prince will come' ('Snow White') and 'Who's affraid of the big bad wolf' ('The Three little pigs').

An original production drawing of Minnie from 'Building a building', released on January 7, 1933. Directed by Dave Hand. This short was nominated for an Academy Award (which was won by Disney's other short 'The Three Little Pigs').

Below is a beautiful original production drawing of Minnie, showing one of her lunchboxes, which she's selling at a construction site to the workmen in the 1933 short 'Building a building'. This drawing comes from a sequence drawn by Ben Sharpsteen, where Minnie sings her song while dancing across the steal beams that make up the primary skeleton of the building. She loses her hat which is picked up by Mickey's excavator.

Some more production drawings of Mickey shorts from 1933,'Ye Olden Days' and 'Giantland', also known as 'Mickey and the Giant'.

Mickey's Service Station from 1935, the first cartoon that featured our three friends together in animated short:

From Mickey's short 'On Ice' released in 1935 and directed by Ben Sharpsteen:

From my favorite short 'Brave Little Tailor' from 1938, a great production drawing of Willy, the giant, and one of Mickey. This short has got such beautiful artwork from Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. 

From the 'Silly Symphonies' short the 'The Big Bad Wolf' directed by Burt Gillett, released in April 1934, a follow up on Disney's earlier hit 'The Three Little Pigs', which was released in May the year before.

Two production layout's from 'Three blind Mouseketeers', Disney's Silly Symphonies short from 1936, directed by Dave Hand:

Some production drawings from Disney's first animated feature fom 1937, 'Snow White and the seven Dwarfs'.



 

A beautiful production drawing from 'Cinderella' (1950):

Here are some original production drawings from Aurora and Prince Phillip (voiced by Mary Costa and Bill Shirley) from production 2082, Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty', which was released in january 1959. Disney's 16th animated feature was drawn by an amazing crew featuring Milt Kahl, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, Marc Davis and John Lunsbery as directing animators with Clyde Geronimi acting as supervising director.

Mary Blair (sister in-law of animator Preston Blair) did concept paintings for backgrounds for Disney feature animation. She created some amazing designs, trying to capture the feeling that would entice so many viewers.'Alice in Wonderland' (1959) was one of the movies that featured her beautiful paintings, which are pretty high in demand now. The last concept painting is from 'Peter Pan' (1953). The going price was between $18.000 and $20.000 Dollars a piece (click to enlarge):

Eyvind Earl's also created coloful concept designs for backgrounds. These two were made for Disney's 'Lady and the Tramp' (1955), Disney's first feature shot in CinemaScope.

And some more design paintings he did for Sleeping Beauty (as always, click to enlarge):

Below is an original pan production background from 'Alice' from the Tulgey woods sequence, created with Gouache and Tempera on board (not by Blair). it fetched $5000,-

Below: One of the beautiful original watercolor backgrounds from Art Riley and Don schaffer for the 1938 'Silly Symphonies' short 'Merbabies', directed by Rudolph Ising. Riley is also credited as backgroundpainter on the 1953 short 'Don's fountain of youth'. Lee Blair, the younger brother of Preston Blair (and husband of Mary) was one of the animators on 'Merbabies'.