keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

I find that many of the most interesting animated films these days are being made in the genre of animated documentaries.  Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, The Rauch Brothers, and Marjane Satrapi ground their films in every day life, rather than fantasy.  This isn't to say that their films don't take advantage of animation's ability to use exaggeration, symbol and metaphor.  It's just that their films illuminate real life instead of providing the audience with an escape from it. I am late in getting to John Canemaker's The Moon and the Son .  I never saw it in its original release and have only now caught up to it on DVD .  The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 2005 and it deals with the relationship between John Canemaker and his father. There's been no shortage of father-son relationship issues in recent animated features.  Finding Nemo , Chicken Little , Ratatouille , and How to Train Your Dragon come to mind.  In each of these films...

John Canemaker's latest article for Print is online , with a survey of the Irish animation scene. It includes embedded versions of two films by Brown Bag, Give Up Yer Aul Sins and Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty , as well as trailers for two Cartoon Saloon productions, The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea .

John Canemaker has been contributing articles to Print 's online version. His latest is " Chuck Jones at the MacDowell Colony ," a speech that Canemaker made as the prelude to Chuck Jones receiving the MacDowell Medal. Jones was only the second filmmaker to receive it (the first was experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage). You may have seen video of Pixar's three dimensional zoetrope. If not, you can see it here . Gregory Barsamian is a sculptor who does something similar, creating sequential sculptures that he then films using strobe lights. Unfortunately, his site does not allow embedding or direct links to specific pages, but you can see his work here . Hogan's Alley is an eclectic magazine about all forms of cartooning. The 17th issue is out and the articles relating to animation include a career-spanning interview with the late Bill Scott conducted by Jim Korkis. Scott was a writer for Warner Bros, UPA and most especially, Jay Ward. There is also an or...

John Canemaker has become one of our leading animation historians for several reasons. As an artist and animator himself, he has an advantage over non-artists such as Bob Thomas or Charles Solomon in understanding the process. As someone immersed in animation history, he is familiar with the field in a way that dabblers like Stefan Kanfer or Neal Gabler never can be. As someone who has personal relationships with many of the people he writes about, he has insights that are not available to authors like Donald Crafton, who write about the remote past. However, all these qualities are trumped by Canemaker's honesty and, perhaps, his courage. Older books on animation tended to be scrubbed clean of studio politics and personal foibles. They were usually content to present chronologies of events and talk of technical and artistic innovations. Canemaker understands that artists are human and so are not wholly admirable and that studios are often battlegrounds where various aestheti...

(There are mild spoilers below.) Watching Toy Story 3 , I think I'm getting a clearer understanding of Andrew Stanton's contribution to Pixar. While most people are comparing the latest Toy Story to the two previous films, it seems to me that the new Toy Story relates most closely to Finding Nemo and Wall-E , two films directed by Stanton. Stanton is listed as one of the writers on the latest Toy Story . Toy Story 3 resembles Nemo in that it is about moving to a new stage of life, where old relationships cannot stay the same. Marlin has to loosen his grip on Nemo in order for Nemo to grow. Andy has to let go of his childhood in order to become an adult; the toys have to accept that their time with Andy is over. Both films (and many of the Pixar features Stanton has contributed to) deal with separation. Stanton was adamant about Wall-E not being an ecological fable, yet Toy Story 3 takes the characters to a dump, an endless stretch of society's garbage. It's...

Dick Williams will be appearing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on September 22. Here's the press release: MASTER CLASS: RICHARD WILLIAMS IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHN CANEMAKER Monday, September 22 7:00 p.m. The Roy and Niuta Titus 2 Theater Three-time Academy Award winner Richard Williams discusses his long and influential career in a conversation with animation filmmaker and historian (and fellow Oscar-winner) John Canemaker. Williams, who was awarded Oscars for Special Achievement and for Visual Effects as the director of animation of the Walt Disney/Steven Spielberg blockbuster Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and for his short film A Christmas Carol (1971), is one of the finest animation filmmakers of our time. His stunningly crafted, award-winning films have featured the work of veteran animators from the Disney studio's "Golden Age" and from Warner Bros. Cartoons, most notably Grim Natwick (Snow White), Art Babbitt (Fantasia), and Ken Harris (Bugs Bunn...