keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

My visit to the Ottawa International Animation Festival got off to a bad start. I usually walk from the bus station to the hotel, but it was pouring rain when I arrived. As the walk would have been a half hour, I would have been thoroughly soaked, so I was forced to take a cab. The wireless at my hotel was not working when I arrived, which was frustrating. The first program I attended was the International Student Showcase, which was a unrelieved depression and boredom. It may be the choice of films or maybe students are actually this depressed, pretentious and boring, but I was contemplating never coming back to the festival during this screening. Fortunately, this was the low point and things rapidly improved. The next thing I attended was Amid Amidi's presentation on Ward Kimball, a teaser for his forthcoming book Full Steam Ahead: The Life and Art of Ward Kimball .  Amidi covered things I didn't know about Kimball's childhood and his artistic evolution...

JUNKYARD WINS BEST SHORT, ARRUGAS SELECTED BEST FEATURE,  AT OTTAWA INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL OTTAWA (September 23, 2012) – The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) came to an end Sunday, with closing ceremonies held at the National Arts Centre. Organizers announced the winners of the official competition during the ceremonies. This year’s event, held September 19th-23rd, was a tremendous success with packed screenings, sold out workshops, high profile networking events such at the Television Animation Conference (TAC) and a strong weekend of professional development. The OIAF is a major international film event that attracts 1500 industry pass holders from across Canada and around the world with a total attendance of close to 30,000. Although the final numbers are not officially in, there are strong indications that this year’s Festival reached its highest attendance to date. The 2012 international jury for Short Program, Student and Commissioned F...

September 21, 2012 is the 100th birthday of Charles Martin Jones, arguably the greatest director of animated shorts in history.  While there will be justifiable celebrations of his life and work this day, his career strikes me as a very curious thing.  There was a period of brilliance, but there was also a period of decline which lasted much longer. I've wrote about Jones' career back in the '90s and while my knowledge of Jones has been augmented by many interviews with his co-workers (see Michael Barrier's site for many of these), my opinion has remained constant. Whatever your opinion of Jones, there are worse ways to spend the day than to watch some of his films.

The world of film distribution is changing.  What we take for granted, and have for years, may soon no longer be the case.  Movies open in theatres.  Three months later, they're on DVD.  Then they move to pay TV and finally free TV. Theatre audiences in the U.S. and Canada are shrinking.  Hollywood has compensated for this by raising prices, so that the overall theatrical grosses go up while the number of people buying tickets goes down.  Last summer was a disappointment in that everything went down.  Deadline Hollywood reports that the summer movie season ended with grosses in the U.S. and Canada down 2.8% over last summer and the number of tickets sold dropped 4.3%.  And that was with a rise in ticket prices of 1.5%. Just like studios have gone to digital projection as a way to cut their distribution costs, they're now shifting to downloads to cut their costs on DVD manufacture and distribution.  DVD sales have gone down in recent years, s...

If you're riding the Toronto subway between Sept. 7 and 17, check out the electronic message boards for the Toronto Urban Film Festival .  Films are screened in the subways, so while waiting for your train, you have the chance to see one or more short films. Three of this year's films are by Sheridan students.  Yeti by Eva Zhou, Amare by Katarina Antonic and Bygone Bounce by Shen Ramu.

Here's another Storycorps short animated by the Rauch Brothers. Storycorps is raising money through Kickstarter to do a half hour special.  The goal is only $25,000, so I don't know if the money is to simply top up a budget or if they're going to do a slight amount of new animation to wrap around the work they've already done. In any case, I'm a fan of their work and look forward to them doing more.

I've written previously about Kevin Schreck's documentary on the making of The Cobbler and the Thief , Dick Williams' ill-fated feature.  Above is more preview footage of the finished documentary that is making the rounds at festivals.  If you're interested in finding out where it will show, you can check the film's Facebook page. (I really wish that Schreck would identify the people on screen in these clips.  I'm sure that they'll be identified in the final product, but I'm frustrated not knowing who I'm looking at.  That's Greg Duffell at the 25 second mark, but I have no idea who else is on screen.)

Amid Amidi recently posted this picture of (L to R) Robert Armstrong, Ward Kimball and R. Crumb on the blog 365 Days of Ward Kimball .  If you're interested in Crumb's thoughts on Kimball, you can go here and scroll down.  Crumb also comments on Matt Groening and Ralph Bakshi on the same page.  You'll have to scroll down to find them, but he also talks about Winsor McCay and Walt Disney , among many other people of note outside animation.