Weekend Linkorama

I'm on the road today, off to the Land of Enchantment and the IATSE's Winter Executive Board meeting. In the meantime, the Festival of Links proceeds without me.

There will be another whack taken at Tom and Jerry, the Feature:

... Plans [by Warner Bros.] are to bring the constantly warring cat and mouse to life as CG characters that run around in live-action settings ...

Warners owns the rights to Hanna-Barbera’s slate of popular animated properties and has several of them in development for bigscreen adaptation.

Those include Robert Rodriguez’s version of "The Jetsons" and producer Donald De Line’s "Yogi Bear."

What was it about that old animation/live-action borderline blurring and blurring? (I guess they want to be away from the last feature incarnation, which wasn't an altogether fulfilling experience.)

Screenwriter John August will pen the stop-motion feature Frankenweenie.

He's set to write "Frankenweenie" for Tim Burton and Disney after first tackling the comic book adaptation "Preacher" for Sam Mendes and Columbia.

"Frankenweenie" is based on a comedic horror short that Burton made in 1984 while a film school student. The story tells of a man who brings his dog back to life after it is killed by a car.

While the original "Frankenweenie" was a live-action project, the new one will be made using stop-motion animation and be in 3-D. Like the original, the feature version is to be shot in black & white. Burton is producing, and many of the animation artists and crew from the director's "Corpse Bride" will be involved, with the studio aiming for a 2011 release.

The confused Hollywood Reporter seems to believe that director Tim Burton made the short, live-action version of Frankenweenie while a film student. Uh, no. Burton made the first pass of the pic while an employee at Walt Disney Productions, in 1984.

Samuel L. Jackson, who has acted in almost every film made since 1990, is headlining a new 'toon:

"Afro Samurai: Resurrection," a two-hour animated film that premieres this Sunday night on Spike TV and then hits stores as a DVD release on Feb. 3. In it, Jackson reprises his dual role as the Afro, a haunted warrior in a bleak world, and also his sidekick, the motor-mouthed Ninja Ninja.

The cartoon adapts the vision of manga star Takashi Okazaki and melds the stylized sword violence with the music of RZA, the hip-hop auteur of Wu-Tang Clan fame. "It’s a wonderful adventure about a black samurai in a post-apocalyptic world that’s a rich blend of the ancient and the new with a hip-hop beat," said Jackson, who is also executive producer. "It’s sexy, violent and extremely cool."

One of the things that the nation has long been waiting for: the Jetson's Movie coming to DVD.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has recently added Hanna-Barbera's full-length JETSONS: THE MOVIE to their DVD release schedule for April 28, 2009 (SRP $14.98). The 1990 animated family film will be presented in its original widescreen ratio of 1.85:1 – at this time no bonus features are specified.

Enjoy the balance of your Sunday.