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Rare classic cartoons are coming to Blu-ray at an affordable price.

The post Ant and the Aardvark, The Inspector, and Crazylegs Crane Coming To Blu-Ray appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

“In a time when Donald Trump is gaining momentum, the world needs Speedy more than ever,” says the film's producer.

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Now 75, Bugs Bunny remains a towering influence. We look at some of his greatest hits.

Simpsons Movie director (and longtime Simpsons producer) David Silverman is developing a CGI/live-action Pink Panther film for MGM, reports Deadline. Unlike the other Pink Panther features, which focused on Inspector Clouseau, a role made famous by Peter Sellers, this film would focus on the Pink Panther character himself. The iconic pink cartoon cat made his debut in the title sequence of the 1963 Blake Edwards comedy The Pink Panther, and was later developed by the team of Friz Freleng, John Dunn and Hawley Pratt for a long-running series of theatrical shorts. Producers of this new film would include Walter Mirisch, who exec produced the original live-action Pink Panther features, and actress Julie Andrews, the widow of Panther film director Edwards. (CG Pink Panther by 3DSud)

“Animation is a young man’s game,” Chuck Jones once said. There’s no question that animation is a labor-intensive art that requires mass quantities of energy and time. While it’s true that the majority of animation directors have directed a film by the age of 30, there are also a number of well known directors who started their careers later.

Directors like Pete Docter, John Kricfalusi and Bill Plympton didn’t begin directing films until they were in their 30s. Don Bluth, Winsor McCay and Frederic Back were late bloomers who embarked on directorial careers while in their 40s. Pioneering animator Emile Cohl didn’t make his first animated film, Fantasmagorie (1908), until he was 51 years old. Of course, that wasn’t just Cohl’s first film, but it is also considered by most historians to be the first true animated cartoon that anyone ever made.

Here is a cross-selection of 30 animation directors, past and present, and the age they were when their first professional film was released to the public.

1. Don Hertzfeldt (19 years old)
   Ah, L’Amour

On April 5th 1965, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed an Oscar to Friz Freleng for Best Animated Short – for The Pink Phink (1964), the first Pink Panther cartoon. The next day, Friz’s former Looney Tunes colleague Bob Clampett wrote a congratualtory note to him in the form of a poem (or “pome” as written below). Click image to read enlarged version:

Some notes on the references in the poem: Clampett refers to “(Richard) Burton and Liz (Elizabeth Taylor)”, the famous show-biz couple of the time, though only Burton was nominated for Best Actor that year (and lost), Liz was not.

“Where there’s a LIL…” is a reference to Freleng’s wife, Lillian. “Nudnik” was, of course, a reference to Gene Deitch’s character, also nominated that year – in fact, Deitch had two nominees that year (the other being How To Avoid Friendship).

This cool little historical curio is now on ebay, apparently found among Freleng’s mementoes by the folks compiling the book, Animation: The Art of Friz Freleng (a great book, if you can afford it).

(Thanks, Charles Brubaker)

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, pink panther

Once upon a time, way back in 1937… MGM decided to produce its own cartoons and set up a studio on the lot. They ended their arrangement with Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising (and their Happy Harmonies series), bought the rights to popular comic strip The Captain and The Kids, and hired Friz Freleng away from Leon Schlesinger to direct the shorts. A funny thing happened on the way to the big screen – the cartoons were not popular. Here’s an example:

A year later Freleng went back to making Looney Tunes, the studio brought back Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising — and Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had an opportunity to emerge…

Cut to 75 years later… Mike Van Eaton has come into a cache of Captain and The Kids model sheets and has graciously agreed to let me post them here. As best I can tell, these were all drawn by Charles Thorson. Thorson really got around, designing significant characters for Disney, MGM, Screen Gems, Warner Bros., Fleischer, Terrytoons – even George Pal – in the 30s and 40s before settling into a career in advertising and illustrating children’s books. Now everything you need to know about drawing the Captain and the Kids is here for you to enjoy (click on images below, and thumbnails below that, to enlarge).

Here’s a few more (below). The first two – probably not designed by Thorson – are from the short Old Smokey (1938).

Golden Age animator Phil Monroe (1916-1988) is rarely discussed, even amongst animation cognoscenti, which is unfortunate because he had an amazing career. Over the course of his career, he animated for an honor roll of legendary directors including Bob Clampett, John Hubley, Chuck Jones, Pete Burness, Friz Freleng, and Frank Tashlin. Animation historian Michael Barrier has posted a never-before-published 1976 interview with Phil Monroe that he and Milton Gray conducted.

The interview delves into details that may appeal to only a small portion of our twenty thousand-plus daily readers, but if you appreciate classic Warner Bros. shorts and animation history in general, the interview is guaranteed to blow your mind. There’s even a great story about how Monroe got Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng to square dance with one another, even though “they were barely on speaking terms.” Barrier conducted a follow-up interview with Monroe in 1987, which he promises to publish online soon.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Frank Tashlin, Friz Freleng, John Hubley, Michael Barrier, Pete Burness, Phil Monroe, Warner Bros.

TV Ontario, a public broadcaster in Canada, has an amazing archive online and here’s one for us. It’s an episode of Talking Film (1980) which compiles two interviews, one with Chuck Jones, another with Friz Freleng, with interviewer Elwy Yost originally conducted for a series called Saturday Night at the Movies. Much of it we’ve heard before, but there are a few new nuggets of information and opinion – and its certainly worth a view to spend a few more minutes with Chuck and Friz:

(Thanks, Mark Conolly)

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Warner Bros. Cartoons