Weekend LinkFest

Your end-of-week links to various 'toonish articles that may or may not inform and/or amuse you ...

Like for instance this silly opening paragraph to a VARIETY article, "Actors lend more than voices to toons":

As filmmakers blend elements of live action, traditiona forms of animation, CG, motion capgure and other filmmaking technologies, actors and animators have become close collaborators in creating performances.

Just kill me.

It's like the performances of Marge Belcher (aka Champion) for Snow White, Hans Conreid for Peter Pan, and whoever that forgotten actor is in Gullver's Travels just never freaking happened on film, because the trade papers and most of the corporate media keep thinking this mo cap thing is just so gosh darn new. But the piece does have worthwhile bits...

..."Great animators have the same skills as a great actor because they understand how much can be communicated with just the raising of an eyebrow," [Brad Bird explains].

James Baxter, supervising animator on Disney's "Enchanted," agrees and found himself gathering a lot of inspiration from the live-action reference footage given to him.

"We were taking living actors and trying to create sort of traditional 2-D animated versions of them," Baxter says. "They were trying to behave -- in real life -- as though they originated in that traditional animated world, so there was interplay and we were inspired by each other." ...

It's probably pointless to explain (yet again) the glories of rotoscope, and how long those glories have been around. Reporters just look at you as though you stepped off the interstellar shuttle from the Planet Xernon.

Alvin and Co. make "Biggest Movie Mistakes of '07" list, although this does not prevent Fox executives from turning more handsprings as the "A and C" grosses pile up:

Must Hollywood ruin everything about my childhood? What's next? Muppet Babies? Captain Planet? The Critic? The Tick? They've already sucked the life out of The Power Rangers. What else would they tarnish? And then they answered: Alvin and the Chipmunks ...

And Jason Lee is in Alvin and the Chipmunks! I loved you in Dogma. What's the deal, man? ...

Forget penguins as cgi characters. Polar bears, despite being Godless killing machines, are the coming thing:

Knut, Germany's celebrity polar bear, is poised to feature in a Hollywood film which could bring Berlin Zoo hundreds of thousands of dollars ...

... Producer Ash R. Shah, who has made animated films about Garfield, the ginger cat, has offered the zoo $100,000 to make a cartoon with Knut starring in the main role ...

And look who's getting protectionist and interested in government subsidies for its domestic animation industry. South Korea!

The domestic and international successes of Korean produced animation for both television and feature film markets reached a fever pitch in the 2007-year, and according to media reports, could serve as the ideal springboard for regional artists to break out further.

"In step with Korean animation's rising status, the government plans to provide various benefits to related small and medium-sized producers," Yoon Sojung, a Korea.net staff writer commented in a recent article. "By the first half of 2008, it will extend the domestic animation quota system for national broadcasters to cable networks to stimulate more animation content." International co-productions and domestically produced videogames will also become an area of emphasis for financiers of the creative, moving picture arts.

I guess it's just not enough that they animate The Simpsons Movie and the related teevee shows...

And besides the theatrical grosses, here is yet another reason that, when the WGA strike ends this year or the next, there will be a Homer and Marge 2.0 put into production, and artists going back to work:

"The Simpsons Movie" ruled the national sales chart for a second week, while "Rush Hour 3" and "The Kingdom" bowed at No. 2 and No. 3, respectively, according to Nielsen VideoScan data issued Thursday...

And now that Your Corporate Media has finished dissecting the Iowa Caucuses, it turns its attention to the Winner and Losers of Movieland in 2008:

March: Fox's animated "Horton Hears a Who" has the voice of Jim Carrey ... June: Another month of would-be blockbusters includes DreamWorks Animation's "Kung Fu Panda" ... But never bet against Disney's Pixar animation team, whose next is the robot tale "Wall-E." ...November DreamWorks' "Madagascar" sequel appears imposing ...

Hmm. No mention of Disney's Bolt. I'm sure it's an oversight.

Have a fantabulous weekend.