keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

(Thanks Paul Teolis .)

July 20 is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. To commemorate it, Turner Classic Movies is running films relating to the moon for the entire day. At 1 p.m. Eastern time, they are running Destination Moon (1950), which is of interest to animation fans for an original segment where Woody Woodpecker demonstrates rocket propulsion. The segment is available on YouTube, so if you're not interested in the entire film, here's Woody.

Updated below. There was a time when companies owned the resources they used to produce their products. A company was its factories. However, in more recent times, companies have rebelled against the idea of overhead, so they simply contract out their needs to suppliers. In the past, the onus was on the company to keep factories and workers busy or they faced the possibility of financial losses. With subcontracting, companies only pay for the work they need when they need it, and it is the subcontractor's problem to meet overhead. You could say that companies have downloaded their overheads to subcontractors. When companies owned the means of production, they were not necessarily better behaved. The movie studios of the 1930s treated their employees so poorly that they unionized in self-defense. The concentration of production in Hollywood, with its high overhead of buildings, cameras, lights, props, costumes, etc, gave workers some degree of leverage. It was not financiall...

Kino Video will be releasing a collection of Osamu Tezuka's work on DVD on July 28 to customers in the U.S. and Canada. The DVD contains the following films: Tales of the Street Corner / 1962 / 16:9 / 39:04 / English Subtitles Male / 1962 / 4:3 / 03:09 / English Subtitles Memory / 1964 / 4:3 / 05:40 / English Subtitles Mermaid / 1964 / 4:3 / 08:17 / No Dialog The Drop / 1965 / 4:3 / 04:18 / No Dialog Pictures at an Exhibition / 1966 / 16:9 / 32:56 / No dialog The Genesis / 1968 / 4:3 / 04:02 / English Subtitles / B&W Jumping / 1984 / 4:3 / 06:22 / No Dialog Broken Down Film / 1985 / 4:3 / 05:42 / No Dialog / B&W Push / 1987 / 4:3 / 04:16 / English Subtitles Muramasa / 1987 / 16:9 / 08:42 / No Dialog Legend of the Forest / 1987 / 16:9 / 29:25 / No Dialog Self Portrait / 1988 / 0.13 / No Dialog Also includes: Interview with Tezuka / 1986 / 4:3 / 18:19 / English Subtitles The pre-order price is U.S. $20.97 with the eventual price to be $29.95. You can see two...

( Updated . Here's an interview with Yannis Mallat, who will be in charge of the Ubisoft Toronto facility. Thanks to Alan Cook for the link.) This will only be of interest to those working in animation in Toronto, but Ubisoft, the French videogame company, will be opening a studio in Toronto . I personally don't have much interest in games, but I do have a strong interest in the Toronto industry. For years, it has been anchored by Nelvana, which not only employed people but also subcontracted work to smaller studios in the city. More recently Starz has been working on features and has managed to keep a steady stream of work for its crew. A few weeks ago, I had lunch with several industry people and they asked me how I saw Toronto's future for animation. I wasn't optimistic. The TV industry is shrinking and budgets are being pushed lower as a result. While there is also visual effects work for features being done locally, that business has notoriously low margin...

Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation is profiled at Greenbriar Picture Shows. Steve has lovingly put together a series of DVDs of public domain material from various studios. Where most public domain releases are done on the cheap, Steve puts enormous effort into finding the best materials and creating extras. I heartily endorse his products. Spline Doctors has posted a podcast with Pete Docter and Bob Peterson of Pixar. Brad Bird is interviewed by Nancy Cartwright at AWN.com. The ASIFA Hollywood Archive presents artwork from Ray Patterson's time at the Mintz studio in the 1930's.

I've been catching up on some movies lately and three of them have helped sharpen my thoughts on an aspect of animated films. The Commitments (1991), directed by Alan Parker based on a novel by Roddy Doyle, is set in Dublin and is about a band that meshes well onstage but can't mesh off stage. A Soldier's Story (1984), directed by Norman Jewison based on the play by Charles Fuller, is set in Louisiana in 1944 and is about a murder that takes place on an army base that is home to black soldiers. Mean Streets (1973), directed by Martin Scorcese from a screenplay by him and Mardik Martin, is set in Manhattan's Little Italy and is about young people on the edges of the mob. What these films have in common is how thoroughly they evoke a milieu. The visuals are obviously a part of it, but the characters' patterns of speech and more importantly their attitudes, place the stories in very particular times and places. You could not drop a character from one of these mo...