Octolinks

Still more cartoon news in bite-size chunks.

Three European long-form animated features are up for "Best."

BERLIN -- Finnish Christmas film "Niko & The Way To The Stars," Ireland's "The Secret Of Kells" and "Mia And The Migoo" from French director Jacques-Remy Girerd are the nominees for best animated feature film for the 2009 European Film Awards ...

Blue Sky Animation is gearing up for their next feature.

Anne Hathaway, Neil Patrick Harris and Rodrigo Santoro are negotiating to lend their voices to "Rio," the next collaboration between Blue Sky Studios, Fox Animation and director Carlos Saldanha, all of whom are riding the $882 million global tsunami of "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs."

"Rio," which follows the adventures of a nerdy macaw who lights out from his small-town Minnesota cage for the exotic Summer Olympic city of Rio de Janeiro, is scheduled for an April 8, 2011, release. Like "Dinosaurs," it will be filmed in 3D digital animation ..

Not exactly animation related, but he catered to the same audience:

Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced, pie-in the-puss comic beloved by the Baby Boomer generation, died Thursday night. He was 83.

The funnyman's longtime friend Dave Usher said Sales succumbed to cancer at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx ...

Slash film is delighted to provide a tour of Disneyland's Club 33, the Disney Research Library and other Mousie points of interest:

... In the early 1960s as the New Orleans Square section of the park was under construction, Walt Disney decided he needed a bigger entertaining facility for various VIPs that came to the park. The apartment above the Fire Station on Main Street was too small to host elaborate events, so Walt decided to design a suite set back from the hustle and bustle of the park ...

Mouse Planet examines story development on Dumbo ... although no mention is made of the nasty little strike action that took place during production ... or the references to the strike allegedly in the finished film.

... In the original storyboard there was a psychiatrist, Dr. I. Hoot the owl. He is an owl in appearance, yet he behaves like a human being with no animal-like characteristics other than his appearance ...

Storymen Joe Grant and Dick Huemer ... wrote lyrics for a nightmare sequence for a Frank Churchill song called Pink Elephant Polka in May 1940 which may have inspired the later Oliver Wallace song that was used in the movie, Pink Elephants on Parade with lyrics by Ned Washington.

Nickelodeon slurps turtle soup.

... Nickelodeon has struck a $60 million deal with The Mirage Group and 4Kids Entertainment to acquire the rights to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," which was one of the biggest kids shows of the 1980s and even spawned a successful movie franchise. Nickeloden will produce a new cartoon series that it hopes to premier in 2012 and sister studio Paramount Pictures will release a new feature based on the series as well ...

The rosy-cheeked children of the British Isles get to make themselves a cartoon feature:

... [T]he Tate Movie Project appears to be one of those impeccably 21st century creations, designed to keep arts-funding bureaucrats, if no one else, on the edge of their seats. It's connected at one end to the 2012 Olympics – for whose benefit the Legacy Trust is funding the project – and at the other to "every child in Britain" who, if Tate director Nicholas Serota is to believed, will be contributing directly to the film ...

... [W]hatever the outcome, Aardman is the beneficiary of a chunk of money from the public purse. Can it really make a feature-length animated film for £4m? Sounds like credit-crunch economics are really kicking in ...

Just so long as they pay the kids more than 25 cents an hour.

And finally, over at SynchroLux Kevin takes on the question, What can animators learn from the music business?:

It sounds sooo seductive — shun the big blood-sucking corporations, create your own stuff, market and sell it yourself, keep all the rights, play your music locally, play for free until you build up a following, give your work away until you can sell your CDs, sell ‘em out of your car or on the web or at your free concerts. Soon you might be getting good live paydays, and you’ll keep all the money from your CDs, and your t-shirts yourself.

Have a glorious, end-of-week work experience.