Linkages de Animation

Photo: Cesar Rubio (Walt Disney Family Foundation)

An amusement park of animation links, starting with ...

China's plans for creating major toonage:

Beijing is going to raise 50 billion yuan to build up Chinese Animation and Game City as China's "animation Hollywood and Disneyland".

Besides, Beijing will provide 100 million yuan each year as financial suport for the Animation city which is located in the former site of Shougang Group, China's eighth largest steel maker.

In the 83-hectare area, the Animation city will include six major function areas such as theme park, trade management center, research and production center, business service platform, office building, hotel and living area ...

Speaking of expansions, Fox looks to extend its cartoon empire.

Fox has picked up a new animated series developed by Jonah Hill as the network continues to expand its “Animation Domination” line up.

Hill – who is perhaps best known for his roles in “Superbad” and “Knocked Up” – will be a featured voiceover actor on the show in addition to developing the script with writers Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul. Hill, Mogel and Paul will also be onboard as executive producers. The series revolves around a 7-year-old socialite who behaves like an adult but is forced to attend a public school ...

And TIME magazine overviews the king of Fox's Animation Domination (Is that a cartoon rabbit in leather? Snapping a whip?)

... "Family Guy" is "The Simpsons" on Red Bull, with a dysfunctional family--the Griffins of Quahog, R.I.--but twice the outrageousness and thrice the pace. Its signature move is to cut away from a story line for a non sequitur gag (a pop-culture parody, a celebrity spoof, a Star Wars reference). The Simpsons is a satire, but it's rooted in its family. Family Guy is less a half-hour narrative about characters than a delivery system for unconnected jokes the writers can't bear to part with ...

Reviews for Astroboy -- launching October 23rd here in the U.S. -- begin to come in.

The anxiety of influence is a palpable force in "Astro Boy," although it owes just as much to "Wall-E," "The Iron Giant" and "Pinocchio" as it does to its source -- Tezuka Osamu's 1952 manga that spawned multiple cartoon series and bequeathed contemporary anime with a hefty chunk of its DNA.

... [T]he film easily should draw sizable family crowds and hold their attention well; whether it sticks in their memory is another question.

Oh. My. God. After all the breathless projections that there would be five contenders for Best Animated Feature this year, turns out there could be only three.

... This Oscar race will only have three nominees, as usual. Today we hear from a spokesperson for Funimation that "Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone" ... is not a contender. It is ineligible because it opened in Japan in September 2007 ...

This brings the list of entries that we know about to 15. According to academy rules, if there are eight to 15 entries, there can only be three nominees in the race,

Story artist Ed Gombert posts more story art -- this time from The Hunchback of Notre Dame -- from Disney veteran Vance Gerry. (Go look at all of it.)

Lastly, Meon posts photos of the opening of the Walt Disney Museum up at the Presidio in San Francisco, and the Wall Street Journal details some of the exhibits within it.

... The last galleries of the museum cover the rebuilding of the studio and the success of Disney's nature documentaries, such as "Seal Island" (1948); the animated features "Cinderella" (1950) and "Lady and the Tramp" (1955); and hit movies such as "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954) and "Mary Poppins" (1964).

On display are more family photos and personal artifacts, such as replicas of cans of Walt's two favorite kinds of chili and the miniatures he loved to craft in his spare time. A ramp leads downward to a 12-foot-diameter model of Disneyland ...

Enjoy your weekend.