Links To Believe In

I'm off at a secret location, and handing over the dashboard keys for the next ten days to my sterling assistant, the estimable Jeff Massie. So you'll see fewer posts from me, and more from him. Please play nice while I'm gone.

The Disney Co. has released Sleeping Beauty to Blu-Ray and the internets are abuzz:

BURNY MATTINSON: When we first worked on Sleeping Beauty we were trying to do a more classic approach to our animation. We were trying to be more exacting in the design aspects - that was strongly influenced. We were trying to learn our 'straights' against 'curves' to fit within Eyvind Earle's stylized backgrounds. This was a slow process. Later on we went to a looser approach on 101 Dalmatians, where we could speed up the process but we were also trying to get back into the classic style of animation. Even today, we still try to keep a classic approach - perhaps not as designed as on Sleeping Beauty, but we still try to keep a classic approach to our contemporary titles.

The Wall Street Journal examines adult-themed animations you might not have have heard much about:.

The protagonist of "Berni's Doll" is a loner who retreats to a grimy apartment in the evening after long tedious days at his factory job packing the remains of trapped rats into cat-food cans. Berni wants a girlfriend, and buys one, in various modular parts. It makes for an odd relationship.

Yann Jouette's latest work, short film called "Berni's Doll," is on view at the Woodstock Film Festival.

It's a challenging role -- not for any actor, but for the animator who drew Berni, Yann Jouette. It's also challenging to find a place to see the short film, which has too much sex, violence and grotesquery for American broadcast or cable television ...

And Japanese film producers plan to produce a c.g.i. animated feature they hope you'll hear somethig about:

Japanese broadcast major Fuji TV and animation house Production I.G have announced plans to co-produce a wholly CG animated feature film.

With a working title of Hottarake No Shima: Haruka To Maho No Kagami (Hottarake Island: Haruka And The Magic Mirror), the film will be directed by Shinsuke Sato.

The fantasy follows a female high school student and a fox as they search for the titular mirror in a land created from humans' abandoned possessions.

And Indian animation, even though it hasn't made much of a ripple beyond the sub-continent, is stirring the interest of some Hollywood majors, specifically Disney:

ndian movies for Hollywood, through all these years, are still at the low end of the revenue pie, even with all the languages they are now dubbed in. This, paradoxically, is also the reason why they have headed to Indian shores - some with JVs, some with tie-ups - trying to see if they can tap the right local talent and nurture it to grow as a good, sustainable entertainment business in India ... “Ninety per cent of what we make is made in Burbank and exported," says Andy Bird, president, Walt Disney International. "The way we saw the world evolving, we saw that technology was advancing and changing the very way consumers were taking in entertainment, markets were evolving and fast. We observed that Bollywood captures as much as 97% of the market ..."

Disney Contracts and Correspondence ('30s and '40s style) are offered up at the ASIFA Animation Archive.

Have a glorious week. I plan to.