Friday Links

This bear is a big hit in China ... and some Chinese are saying: "Why didn't we create him?"

The weekend festival of links arrives with the following:

TIME Magazine beats the "Wall-E for Best Picture Oscar" drum:

... Cries that WALL-E should be considered for a Best Picture nod began as soon as the film hit theaters on June 27. Writers at New York magazine and sites like The Movie Blog and Obsessed With Film declared WALL-E worthy of a Best Picture, and high-profile movie critics are discussing the little robot's odds for that award among themselves ...

Ain't never going to happen. Academy membership is heavily skewed to live action categories, and no way are those folks going to give the top award to a cartoon. That's why they instituted a "Best Animated Film" category.

New series Click and Clack, directed by TAG Prez emeritus Tom Sito, premiered this week on various PBS stations around the country ...

Almost since the radio show started in 1987, there has been steady interest in bringing fictional Click & Clack, the Tappet brothers, to TV ...

Tonight, an animated adaptation, "Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns" makes its national premiere ... "It was designed and developed in Connecticut," says Howard K. Grossman of CTTV of South Norwalk, executive producer of the series.

Grossman says his involvement began as a longtime listener.

"I'm a huge 'Car Talk' fan," Grossman says. "I tried to get on the show at least 100 times but I couldn't get someone to return my call."

He didn't get any reaction to his idea to turn the show into a cartoon series until he finally e-mailed the Magliozzis. "I got an e-mail back, saying they always thought of themselves as cartoon characters" ...

Over time, things changed in the approach to making the cartoon. "The original vision was a direct adaptation of the show, from a soundtrack of an existing show," he says. "That didn't work. It was missing something. It was too much like the radio show." ...

Characters based on the Magliozzi brothers were designed, and a group of color characters were created around them, from an Eastern European named Stash to an ex-Harvard professor named Crusty. The impeccably dressed Fidel is of indeterminate background ...

Variety gives a qualified thumbs up to the latest animated incarnation of Star Wars:

... as with the earlier "Clone Wars" shorts crafted using traditional cel animation, the vibrant imagery and sweeping scope provided by animation allows the series to achieve a theatrical level of excitement at a significantly reduced cost -- and in a tighter episodic format, transforming each mini-adventure into a get-to-the-fun-stuff romp. Alien worlds and characters are rendered in explosions of color, with the computer process creating extraordinary depth and detail ...

The Den of Geek has interesting mini-reviews of every DreamWorks animated film except for the newest one:

DreamWorks Animation has proven itself to be the only operation of its ilk to date to threaten the Disney/Pixar empire. But are its films any good?

Click on the link above and see if you agree with DG's judgements ...

Finally, the Washington Post tells us that the Chinese are a tad jealous of the hit film titled Kung Fu Panda:

... The blockbuster ... American animated movie that's set in ancient China, highlights Chinese culture, mythology and architecture and stars a kung fu fighting panda has filmmakers and ordinary Chinese wondering: Why wasn't this hit made . . . in China?

... Even an advisory body to China's parliament debated why China hadn't been first with such a big hit using Chinese themes. "The film's protagonist is China's national treasure and all the elements are Chinese, but why didn't we make such a film?" the president of the National Peking Opera Company, Wu Jiang, told the official New China News Agency last Saturday ...

I'll tell you why. Jeffrey Katzenberg got there first.

Have a most excellent weekend.